The King of Forever (Scarlet and the White Wolf, #4) Read Online Free PDF Page B

jangled thrashing as it hit the snow.
    It had missed Scarlet by the length of one arm.
    Blood stained the ice as the cat clawed its way toward him, and Tesk grabbed his shoulder, shoving him back. Scarlet fell out of the way and the cat changed direction, struggling up the hill with the arrow shaft bobbing from its neck. Tesk nocked another arrow and loosed. The cat screamed, shuddered, then was still.
    “Deva save us.” Scarlet looked wide-eyed at Tesk, knife still in hand.
    Tesk’s boots stomped up clouds of snow as he strode to him, anger in every muscle. “Hell’s teeth! Why didn’t you move?”
    Scarlet saw that Tesk was shaking. Not with fear for me, surely. He swallowed and glanced at the carcass on the hill, curls of steam rising from its blood. “I didn’t know it would attack. I thought they were like river cats back home. In Byzantur, no one would believe a cat trying to take down a man.”
    Tesk slung his bow over his shoulder. “That was not a Byzan animal, ser. She was of Rshan. I thought you’d learned by now: every creature in Rshan can be deadly.”
    Scarlet nodded, staring at the dead cat. Tesk muttered curses in Sinha and helped him up.
    On his feet, Scarlet nodded his thanks. “I owe you, friend.” He looked at the hill with the cat crowning it. “She’ll make a fine pelt anyway.”
    Tesk didn’t seem to be listening. He was looking around at the scraggly apple trees as if they might sprout arms and lunge for them. “We should return to the hunting party now, ser.”
    “Oh, they’ll come running soon enough. You could hear that cat for miles.” Scarlet sheathed his knife. He’d be damned if he’d leave without his buck, but Tesk should have something for his trouble, too. He tramped a few steps up the steep hill, his calves disappearing into snow. The ground beneath felt rocky, uneven.
    “Ser, get down!” Tesk called in alarm.
    For Deva’s sake, he was halfway up already! “In a moment. I’m just—”
    The hill gave a loud crack like an iceberg breaking in half.
    Just getting your kill, he thought, then the hill collapsed and the earth gave way, and he was falling past sharpness and rock.
    Scarlet felt a burning, tearing pain claw up his leg. His arm was seized and jerked nearly out of its socket. He sucked in a breath of ice crystals and falling earth, but there was not enough air to shout. Stone crashed against his cheek and he was clasped in darkness like a coffin inside a tomb.
    ***
    T he Overworld was not like he imagined.
    Scarlet brushed a hanging branch of cedar aside, intent on following a patch of golden light far in the distance. He was in a clearing in a forest, the sun warm on his shoulders. He looked down and saw that he was wearing his red pedlar’s coat. It had been months since he took it from the chest. It was patched on the elbows and cuffs, worn and grubby, but it comforted him all the same.
    There was music on the wind. Faint, like whispers or birdsong, and not like any music he knew of. The wind smelled like late spring, of flowers and earth.
    “Hello?” he called. If it was truly the Overworld, his father should be here to greet him, along with Linhona and all his friends; everyone who had died in Lysia. His chest ached to think of that awful last day, the smell of ashes and rubble, and how empty the world became when he realized his home was gone forever.
    Earth is dirt, came Scaja’s voice in his ear. Home is being with the people you love, nothing more.
    He turned and Scaja was there, just like that. “Dad?”
    Scaja’s smile broke his heart.
    “It is you, isn’t it?” Scarlet touched Scaja’s face with a fingertip, afraid he might vanish like a dream. But I am dreaming, he thought.
    Scaja clasped him in a bear hug and lifted him off his feet. “There’s my wild lad!”
    No dream, then. He could scarcely breathe, but he didn’t care a bit. Scaja was all right, everyone was all right. He could feel them, all his friends. Old Rufa, who owned