The Golden Door Read Online Free PDF

red hair in that mass of white, the healer had made a quick movement, and suddenly the arm that had been twisted out of shape was straight again, and the pain had gone.
    Remembering, Rye smiled, and knocked at the door.
    “What is it?” a gruff voice shouted.
    “It is Rye, Sholto’s brother, Healer Tallus!” Rye called. “I need to speak to you … if you please.”
    “Oh, very well,” the voice replied ungraciously. “Come in.”
    Rye opened the door. He saw a large room lined with shelves of labeled jars. Pots bubbled on the stove in one corner. The room was filled with steam and reeked of skimmers.
    Tallus, a small, crabbed figure wrapped in a stained white apron and wearing thick eyeglasses, was standing at a bench vigorously sharpening a thin-bladed knife.
    “Shut that door!” he yelled, swinging around and brandishing the knife. “Do you want to stink the whole house out?”
    Rye made haste to do as he was told, took two steps through the billowing steam, and stopped dead.
    A dead skimmer, the largest he had ever seen, lay on a long table in the center of the room. Foam clotted its snarling jaws and ratlike snout. Its eyes were open, glazed in death so they looked like chips of white china. Its body, covered in pale, velvety fuzz, was as big as the body of a half-grown goat. Its leathery wings, spread wide and pinned flat, covered the table from end to end.
    “Yes, they are larger this year,” Tallus said, seeing his visitor’s eyes widen. “And this one is still quite young, by the looks of the wings, which tend to becomeragged with age. See how strong the spurs have become, too!”
    He limped to the table and with the point of the knife he lifted one of the spines that jutted from the monster’s legs, just above the razor-sharp claws. The spur was half as long as the knife blade and twice as broad.
    “The eyes,” Rye murmured, gazing in fascination at the skimmer’s blind white stare. “I have never seen them open before. I did not realize they were so —”
    “Yes, this is a perfect specimen!” said Tallus, looking down at the skimmer with satisfaction. “Almost undamaged and very fresh. I found it only this morning in the water trap your brother made for me. A clever piece of work, that trap. You simply float spoiled goat meat in a tank of water, and —”
    “Sholto has been declared lost,” Rye blurted out, and to his horror, he felt sudden tears burning behind his eyes and heard his voice quaver.
    “Indeed?” Tallus murmured absently, moving the knifepoint to a swelling beside the skimmer’s spur and probing gently. “Has he been away a year already? Bless me, where has the time gone?”
    Rye bit back a furious retort. What sort of master was Tallus, to encourage Sholto to go into danger and then care so little about what happened to him?
    He took a deep breath to calm himself and was relieved to find that his anger had driven away thethreatened tears. The blood rushed into his face as he realized that perhaps this was exactly what Tallus had intended.
    “There, you see that?” Tallus said, adjusting his eyeglasses and nodding down at the skimmer.
    Rye looked and saw the dribble of pale green fluid oozing from the swelling beneath the knifepoint.
    “These spur venom pouches are at least twice the size of those I have seen on other young skimmers,” said Tallus. “That proves what I have been saying for years. As a species, skimmers adapt very quickly to conditions.”
    “What … conditions?” Rye asked weakly.
    “Why, a reliable source of nourishing prey!” Tallus exclaimed. “Prey that fights back, but which can be paralyzed almost instantly by skimmer venom.”
    “By ‘nourishing prey’ you mean us, I suppose,” said Rye, feeling sick.
    “Certainly!” cried Tallus. “Venom has become an important weapon for skimmers who prey on us. So, if my theory is correct, more and more young with large venom pouches will be born over the next few years.”
    He straightened