The Gypsy Morph Read Online Free PDF

ratcheted through his muscles and joints and made him feel as if he had been hammered with rocks. Dropping his cloak, he stumbled over to Angel and knelt down. He could just discern the slow rise and fall of her chest. Her face was purpled with bruises, and the knuckles of her hands were scraped raw. That was just the surface damage. The damage beneath the coverings was far worse.
    “How do we get her back down the mountain?” he said.
    “We make a sling and carry her. We can’t afford to try to slide her down. The terrain is too rough for that. She’s damaged internally—ribs broken, maybe more. We can’t risk knocking her around by dragging her along the ground. We have to keep her elevated and still. We’ll use her staff as a support for the sling. Why don’t you see if you can pry it loose from her fingers so I can get to work?”
    Kirisin glanced down. Angel gripped the black staff tightly with both hands and didn’t look ready to let go. Nevertheless, he reached down carefully and tried to slide the staff free.
    Instantly the Knight’s eyes snapped open. “Kirisin,” she whispered in a voice dark with warning. “Don’t.”
    He pulled back quickly. “Sorry. But we need your staff to make a sling to carry you back down the mountain so that we can . . . we can find help for you . . .”
    He trailed off, realizing suddenly that he didn’t know how that was supposed to happen. He looked over at Simralin, who had stopped what she was doing and was watching them. “I guess I don’t know what happens when we get back down the mountain.”
    His sister rose and came over to them, kneeling next to her brother. “Once we reach the meadows, we’ll use the hot-air balloon to fly ourselves out of here.” She bent close to Angel. “Here’s the truth of things. Kirisin has done what he can for you, but his training is in healing plants, not people. I don’t know how bad your injuries are, and neither does he. We need someone more skilled than we are to determine that. How bad do they feel to you?”
    Angel shook her head. “Broken ribs, maybe my arm. Or maybe they’re only cracked. Hard to tell. Everything hurts, even when I don’t move.” She wet her lips and shifted her gaze to Kirisin. “Did you find the Loden?”
    He nodded. “I have it.”
    “Tell me what happened.”
    He glanced at Simralin, who nodded. Quickly he sketched out the events that had led to the unexpected appearance of the demon Culph and the discovery of its complex deception. He told of entering the ice dragon’s maw and gaining possession of the Loden, then emerging to find the old man waiting. He related how the demon had tried to hypnotize him using the silver cord and rings, intending afterward to transport him back to the Cintra and there use him to summon the Loden’s magic and imprison the Elves and their city. Simralin had saved him by stabbing the demon in the leg with her knife, disrupting his concentration and allowing Kirisin to break free of the spell that bound him and use the magic of the blue Elfstones.
    He quite deliberately said nothing of the strange euphoria he had experienced when he summoned and gained command of the Elfstone magic, not yet certain how he felt about it, keeping it a secret even from Simralin. He wasn’t ready to talk about it yet, wasn’t ready to admit what it might mean.
    “You were incredibly brave,” she told them. “Both of you. I thought that if I didn’t reach you, the demon would finish you both. But I was the one who needed saving.”
    “Tell us what happened after we left you,” Simralin urged her.
    So Angel related the details of her battle with Culph’s companion, the four-legged demon that had tracked her all the way from Los Angeles, first as the spiky-haired blond female and later as a wolfish beast. How much farther it might have evolved was a matter of speculation, but it had been dangerous enough at the end to almost finish her. As it was, she had been unable to do