The Fifth Dawn Read Online Free PDF

light of the new moon, was that even if the vedalken claimed they were embracing freedom and some kind of self-rule they were still at heart religious fanatics. They still served Memnarch. Pontifex was dead, maybe Memnarch too. The green moon had come, yet here Bruenna was, alive. Surely if Glissa had failed the Neurok mage would have seen evidence of Memnarch’s ascension by now. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to believe the god of the vedalken was truly gone.
    Even if Memnarch was dead, and Bruenna’s world faced a future free of the ancient creature’s “guardianship,” how long before another Pontifex rose to power? What would her people do if their vedalken “friends” called on the Neurok to help hunt down Glissa? What would Bruenna do?
    She didn’t think she had it in her to turn on her Viridian friend. But Bruenna hoped she’d never have to make that choice.
    The mage danced back from the viscous silver of the sea, which had been restless of late. The new moon had thrown the tide patterns into an uproar. She hadn’t been around when the first four moons erupted from the surface, but she imagined that each time a new satellite had come forth, the same thing had happened—the sea went crazy. At the moment, the new green moon hung low behind Lumengrid, the only light in the night sky. The scattered light of the city cast strange shadows on the quicksilver water and gave the illusion of monstrous swimming creatures.
    They were almost upon her before Bruenna realized that she wasn’t looking at any illusion. Dark shapes moved just below the surface, creating shallow wakes that belied their location. The lights of the city were still there, but now they camouflaged…what?
    Bruenna backed away from the waves to get a better look at the mysterious sea creatures just as the shoreline erupted in aspray of silver foam. She found herself staring back at hundreds of red, glowing eyes.
    Bruenna stumbled on a piece of driftmetal as she turned and ran back to her village, shouting at the top of her lungs.
    “To arms! To arms! Levelers on the beach!”

IN THE COURT OF THE BLIND …
    They received no warning before the day of the trial. Slobad had just torn open the day’s nayan loaf and was about to hand half of it to Glissa when they both simply stopped being inside the cell.
    They stood in shackles on a large, broad platform that offered a view of the whole of Viridia, dominated by the massive shadow of Tel-Jilad, the Tree of Tales. Glissa was struck again by how empty the village looked, but still there was a small crowd.
    “Okay, this might be bad,” the elf girl whispered.
    “Why’s that, huh?” Slobad hissed, his eyes bugging.
    “Because the trial is going to be public.” Glissa formed her clawed hands into fists. “And I’ve never, ever, seen that happen before. In fact, I can’t remember the last time
anyone
stood trial under threat of execution.”
    “So? That good, huh? Means elves don’t like to kill each other, right?” Slobad asked hopefully.
    “No, it just means that they’re really serious this time. They really expect me to hang, and they want everyone in the village to watch.”
    “I don’t like your home very much, Glissa.”
    “It feels less and less like home all the time.”
    “Hey, cheer up. Manacles,” Slobad said, waggling his eye brows with the exact opposite of subtlety. Slobad could pick thelocks on a set of manacles. Glissa had no doubt about that at all. But how were they going to escape standing on an open terrace in the middle of the village? Still, she silently wished him luck.
    Glissa felt she had run out of options. She had to prove her innocence, for Lyese’s sake if not her own. The crash of a gong signaled that the judges had assembled, and they called the trial to order.
    “Okay,” Glissa said, “judges. Silver-hair’s got to be Lendano. He’s one of the oldest elves in the Tangle. I don’t think he’ll fall for any tricks. You know Yulyn, and … I’m