The Nomad Read Online Free PDF Page A

marauders of Nibenay had their base camp somewhere near the mountains, and Sorak knew they had no cause to love him. He had foiled their plot to ambush a merchant caravan from Tyr, and had brought down one of their leaders. If they encountered the marauders, things would not go well for them.
    In order to reach their destination, the village of Salt View, they had to cross the mountains—in itself no easy task. And once they reached the village, they would have other thorny problems to resolve. The Sage had sent them there to find a druid named the Silent One, who was to guide them to the city of Bodach, where they were to seek an ancient artifact known as the Breastplate of Argentum. However, they did not even know what this mysterious druid looked like. For that matter, they did not know what the Breastplate of Argentum looked like, either, and Bodach was the worst place in the world to search for anything.
    Legend had it there was a great treasure to be found in Bodach, but few adventurers who went in search of it ever managed to return. Located at the tip of a peninsula extending into one of the great inland silt basins, Bodach was a city of the undead. Formerly a mighty domain of the ancients, its once-magnificent towers could be seen from a great distance, and it covered many square miles of the peninsula. Finding one relic in a large city that had fallen into ruin would be, in itself, a daunting task, but once the sun went down, thousands of undead crept from their lairs and prowled the ancient city streets. As a result, very few were tempted to seek out Bodach’s riches. The greatest treasure in the world was of no use to one who never lived to spend it.
    Sorak cared nothing for treasure. What he sought, no amount of riches could buy, and that was the truth. Ever since he was a child, he had wanted to know who his parents were and what had become of them. Were they still alive? How did it come about that a halfling had mated with an elf? Had they met and somehow, against all odds, fallen in love? Or was it that his mother had been raped by an invader, making him a hated offspring, cast out because she had not wanted him? Perhaps it had not been her choice to cast him out. Had she loved him and tried to protect him, only to have his true nature discovered by the other members of her tribe, who had refused to accept him in their midst? That seemed to be the most likely possibility, since he had been about five or six years old when he was left out on the desert. In that case, what had become of his mother? Had she remained with her tribe, or was she, too, cast out? Or worse. He knew that he would never find true peace within himself until he had the answers to those questions, which had plagued him all his life.
    Beyond that, he now had another purpose. Even if he did succeed in discovering the truth about himself, he would still forever remain an outsider. He was not human, nor had he ever met, among the other races of Athas, anyone even remotely like himself. Perhaps he was the only elfling. Where was there a place for him? If he wished, he could return to the villichi convent in the Ringing Mountains, where he had been raised. They would always accept him there, yet he was not truly one of them and never could be. And somehow, he believed his destiny lay elsewhere. He had sworn to follow the Path of the Preserver and the Way of the Druid. Could there be any higher calling for him than to enter into the service of the one man who stood alone against the power of the sorcerer-kings?
    The Sage was testing him. Perhaps the wizard who had once been called the Wanderer required these items they were collecting to aid him in his metamorphosis into an avangion. On the other hand, perhaps it was merely a test of their metric and resolve to see if they were truly worthy and capable of serving him. Sorak did not know, but there was only one way to find out, and that was to see the quest through to its end. He had to find the