The Mansions of Idumea (Book 3 Forest at the Edge series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

one of
his soldiers was reading his mind and had his horn to his lips.
    Two short blasts. One longer blast. Two more
short ones.
    The pattern signaled not an emergency of
thieves or fire, but warned the citizens to keep an eye out for
something unexpected. Such as a nervous hog barreling down on
them.
    Perrin smiled in approval as the corporal
saluted him. The horns had been a logical additional to the tall
wooden towers. Three soldiers manned this one, the busiest of the
twelve constructed throughout Edge to look for Guarders or any
other trouble. Each tower had been originally outfitted with
colored banners the soldiers hoisted as a signal to the fort that
help was needed, or an official coach was on its way. But after a
while Perrin realized villagers could use a bit of warning too. It
didn’t take much to come up with some simple patterns soldiers
could trumpet to neighborhoods to signal that a child was lost,
someone required a doctor, or stray livestock needed to be
corralled.
    No, what took much longer was to get Major
Yordin in Mountseen to come up with it all.
    Perrin realized that if he kept coming up
with innovations to improve the world, he’d also keep being
promoted. While his parents thought it was now tradition that the
High General of Idumea needed the last name of Shin, Perrin wasn’t
one much for the tradition. So when General Shin sent out his son
to all the forts in the world to bring them in line with his (a
gesture that was met with a predictable amount of resistance and
resentment), Perrin knew he needed to start scaling himself
back.
    When he met Major Yordin at Mountseen, a loud
but personable fort commander, Perrin knew he’d found the perfect
conduit. It was during his explanation of how the towers could best
be placed throughout the village that Perrin began to hint at ways
to make the towers even more useful. It took the entire afternoon,
but by dinner Yordin had jotted down a variety of patterns and
meanings, and had even sketched a crude drawing of a serviceable
horn, modified by Perrin.
    The next year when Major Yordin was named
Officer of the Year for his contribution of the horn system, now
adopted throughout the world, Perrin was more than happy to let him
take all the credit.
    It meant that Perrin’s promotion to
lieutenant colonel wouldn’t be immediate, which meant his promotion
to full colonel would also be delayed, and so too would be becoming
general.
    If Perrin stayed quiet enough, Idumea might
forget about him altogether.
    After Perrin helped corral the hog with a few
other villagers, and the grateful owner said he’d later send over a
few pounds of bacon as thanks, Perrin rode through the most
expensive part of Edge: the Edge of Idumea Estates, with its
appending Edge of Idumea Hot Springs Villas and Cottages for
Citizens Over 50, where the name was bigger than some of the
houses, or rather, cottages. Hycymum and many of her sewing
group friends had moved over to the Cottages, lured by the promise
that they could paint their homes in one of four approved colors to
match each other.
    The Cottages had their own private guards who
were occasionally effective at catching the teenagers slipping into
back doors while their owners were going out the front to catch the
latest Idumea-imported entertainment at the amphitheater or the new
arena. But more often than not it was Perrin and his men who nabbed
the boys somewhere between their permanently borrowing baubles of
gold and silver, and dropping them off somewhere down the slope
that led to the marshes in the east.
    Shem was the one who figured that out, many
years ago now, when he spied a boy leaving a fine leather jacket
under an old basket, then saw a man in black slip out of the trees
to retrieve it. It wasn’t until Shem chased the man through two
farms, tackled him in a pig sty, then watched, horrified, as the
man used a jagged blade to kill himself that they had evidence: the
Guarders were using the impressionable youth of