The Great Rift Read Online Free PDF Page A

image with any level of clarity for more than scant seconds. Yet he kept at it. Recently, he'd been able to illustrate whole (if short) stories above his head while grinning norren bards chanted the poems his pictures matched.
    He hoped it would be enough.
    With the clan's warriors closing in, he dispelled the creature that had dogged Mourn for two straight days. A light bloomed amidst the darkened treetops. The norren tipped back their heads, eyes narrowed. At first the image in the sky was nothing more than simple color, silvery yet soft to the eye, but it quickly took on the shape of a young boy: black-haired, blue-eyed, his features, even at the age of five, sharp enough to skin a pear.
    High in the air, the glowing boy toddled through windy fields, overturning rocks at the edges of streams. By candlelight, a middle-aged man wearing a cassock and a kindly if impatient smile ran his finger along lines from a book of fairy stories. The next moment, the boy grew chest-high on the man, reciting unheard words from a book three times thicker. The boy grew taller yet; his dark hair flowed from his head, lengthening until it suddenly queued behind his head. By night, he walked down an overgrown lane—around him, green outlines suggested dense trees—where, in the basement of a ruined temple, he found a black book whose cover bore a stark white tree.
    The image shifted again; the young man sat at a library table, reading and rereading the book's opening pages. The scene leapt to a city street, cobbles and a flickering torch. A blond-haired boy stood beside the black-haired one, sword drawn against two armed and faceless men. The dark-haired boy, face twisted in terror, threw up his hand in a theatrical gesture. The group disappeared in a globe of darkness. When the scene returned to light, the two attackers lay dead.
    The images came fast—an old man lecturing the young man from inside a tomb, the blond boy with a noose around his neck, then racing away on horseback. The two boys riding north through the outlines of snowy mountains. Arriving at Narashtovik, the dead city, a sketch of ruins and a high citadel at its center. A stark-faced woman lectured from a cathedral podium; at the fringes of the crowd, the boys failed to fire their bows. But then they were inside the citadel where the woman lived and ruled; and then stood on a snowy march with her priests and soldiers, who battled rebels in a dark wood before arriving beneath the boughs of a monstrous white tree, its heavy limbs grown of sleek and solid bone.
    Light flashed beneath the tree; chanting faces summoned a black door; the old man reappeared in a scrum of bloody chaos. When it cleared, the woman was dead alongside dozens of others. The image pushed in on the dark-haired boy's face, closer and closer, his blue eyes frozen on something far away, more cold and forlorn than that icy hill.
    He meant to do more—their return to the hills of the territories, the grain they'd delivered to the village on Clearlake Hill, their pursuit of the men who'd slaughtered a norren wagon train—but his strength faltered. The illusion vanished. Dante dropped to one knee, panting. The norren looked down, blinking. Several dropped back a step.
    "There," Dante said. "We're no longer strangers."
    The scarred man glanced at the orange-eyed woman, then back to Dante. "Can you do more than find loopholes and paint pretty pictures?"
    "Yes." Dante let out a shaking breath; his head throbbed, overwhelmed. He blinked the blurriness from his blue eyes, swept sweaty black hair from his forehead. "Come at me, and I'll reduce you to the Clan of the Three or Four Pines before you bring me down."
    The woman gave the scarred man a small nod. "Why don't we take a walk to camp."
    They led the way, distancing themselves to speak in soft, rumbling tones. Blays elbowed him in the ribs.
    "I look much better than that."
    "At least I omitted the warts," Dante said.
    "Did you actually think that would have any