The Last Garrison (Dungeons & Dragons Novel) Read Online Free PDF Page B

wife—a good problem, because he loved her—and also Kohel, who he did not, not always.
    Londih had grown into his position. He had gained the Crook through chance, and through an ill-considered curiosity, then a deadly deception to cover up that curiosity. He had been guilty, but after the guilt had fallen away, after the obligations of the great burden had inspired in him a dedication he was unaware had existed in him, after he had learned that he could be a leader, he had risen to it. In moments of gentler feelings toward his son, he imagined the same could also be true of Kohel. But always reality reared its harsh, unpleasant visage. The boy would never be anything but a boy. He was frivolous. He was unkind. He was endlessly, reprehensibly arrogant. He was spoiled.

    “Honored One,” said Pyla. “We are here.”
    Londih shook the memories from his head, rubbed the sadness they brought from his face. Before himstood the doors to the village meeting hall, heavy and hewn of the oaks that grew high in the timber around Haven, their bark as tough as iron, as old as the mountains themselves. He took a breath, put his hands to the doors, shoved them open.
    Londih moved into the room without hesitation, letting Pyla trail behind him as they strode to their places at the long wooden table. Normally, village council meetings necessitated a large meal, and mead to keep the council members friendly enough to debate trivialities at great length. But there was no food spread on the table end to end, and no bottomless casks of strong, warm mead, either. Instead, the table was covered with heavy cloth, meant to protect the wood, and atop the cloth were the two dead kenku felled in the woods, one smoldering and one more whole, the wound through its throat the only cause for its state, its feathered limbs curling with the stiffness that comes to the dead.
    The kenku had been killed by his boy and Orick’s, if the young men were to be believed, and perhaps that was true of the whole one, which had clearly been shot with an arrow, presumably by Padlur. But the other? It was a lie, but Londih had not called it one yet, and now he wondered if he had it in him to support his son’s deceptions, as his own father had supported his, and perhaps this too was what it meantto be chief. When Padlur and Kohel had returned to Haven with the kenku bodies, Kohel had done the talking, explaining how they had been killed, and he had done so with confidence in his voice, as if he believed what he was saying when he described the flight of Padlur’s arrows, the skillful strokes of his own blade.
    The arrows were easy enough to believe, but the blade?
    Unless the boy’s blade had suddenly become enchanted with flame, there was no way it burned through the kenku’s torso, as something certainly had. And yet, so Kohel had claimed, and so Londih would claim too, for as long as he could.

    Around the table the landed men of the village were already assembled, as well as the two Peloran counselors, the Voice and the Hand. Orick stood to the left side of the table, as was his due, and Londih would stand between him and Pyla for the duration of the meeting, never moving from their stations, always representing what their stations symbolized. Each had already inspected the body, and stood waiting for Londih and Pyla to begin the meeting. There was panic in the voices that filled the room, a development Londih could only see as positive, a move past the naked shock, the disbelief that had characterized theirfirst discussions, after the boys had returned but before Orick had gone with Padlur to retrieve the second corpse—the burnt one—and bring it to the village.
    Londih barely had time to take in the kenku’s body once more—the feathered torso, the beaked head, the arms that were really half wing and half arm, even the band of burnt bird between the torso and the clawed feet—and then the elders were upon him, all speaking at once, all vying for his