The River of Shadows Read Online Free PDF Page A

you berate me for not striking a match.”
    They followed (almost chased) the men back to the pilot boat, and watched them row for the Chathrand , where men thronged like beggars to the gunwale. Elkstem had tucked the ship in behind the largest island, out of sight from the gulf. It was a sensible precaution, for they had not been an hour in the vicinity of Cape Lasung when a trio of unknown ships had passed: slender vessels, running east by southeast with all the canvas they could bear. They were battle-scarred, and too small in any event to threaten Chathrand , but who could say what followed in their wake?
    The answer to that question, when it came, had brought with it the second terrible shock of this new world. It had occurred shortly after the standoff at the gatehouse. Pazel and Thasha were searching the village for Bolutu, who had blundered off into the streets, like a dazed survivor of a massacre. Ibjen’s father had said something about food and hobbled away. Pazel and Thasha were sweating: there was no breeze inside the wall. From sandy lanes and unglazed windows, the dlömu peeked out at them in awe. Once a boy of five or six burst laughing from a doorway and collided with Pazel’s legs.
    He saw the human hands first, then looked up in terror at Pazel’s pale, brown-eyed human face, and screamed. “Don’t worry, we’re friends,” Pazel ventured. But the boy fled back into the house, wailing, and the word on his lips was, “Monsters!”
    The village was small, and in short order they reached a second gate, the chains of its rusty portcullis snapped, the gate itself propped open with timbers. Passing beneath it, they found themselves west of the village, on a footpath that led by way of grass-covered dunes into the stunted forest. Near the edge of the trees, his back to a small, wind-tortured oak, sat Bolutu. His face was grim and distracted. They were about to hail him when voices from inside the gate began to shout in alarm:
    “Hide! Fires out! Wagons in! An armada comes!”
    They ducked back inside the wall. No one gaped at them now. Children were running, weeping; a woman swept two children into her arms and dashed for cover. Dlömic boys were crouching behind the parapet atop the wall, raising their heads just high enough to peer at the gulf. After a quick scramble, Pazel and Thasha found a staircase and joined them.
    It was like a vision of the damned. Four or five hundred ships of unthinkable size and ferocity, rushing east to a blasting of horns and a thundering of drums. Ships that dwarfed their own great Chathrand , ships hauled by those horrific serpents, or pulled by kite-like sails that strained before them like tethered birds. Ships crudely built, dubiously repaired: fitted with blackened timbers, clad in scorched armor, heaped with cannon and ballistas and strange, bone-white devices Pazel could not identify. A bright haze surrounded the armada, of a sort that Pazel felt obscurely convinced he had seen before, though he could not say where. The haze was brighter in the spots where the vessels seemed most nearly ruined: so bright in places that he could not stand to look at all. Fire belched from cauldron-like devices on the decks, and swarms of figures tended the fires, goaded by whips and spears.
    The villagers were as frightened as the humans: they had seen many terrible things, they whispered, but this armada was on another scale altogether. Some looked at the newcomers with renewed fright, as if the vessels flowing endlessly past the cape must have something to do with their arrival.
    “They’re making for Karysk,” said Ibjen, who was among the boys. “They’re going to destroy it, aren’t they?”
    The boys pointed at Bolutu, shaking their heads in despair. He had not moved from his tree by the dunes, and they had no doubt that the armada’s leaders would spot him, and send a force to investigate.
    But the horrid fleet showed no interest in the village—which was fortunate,