The River of Shadows Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Not like wildfire,” he said. “More like a snowfall. Everywhere at once, but softly, quietly. We took no notice at first. Who minds a few snowflakes on the wind?” He looked up at them, and his eyes were far away. “Until they turn into a blizzard, that is.”
    “The plague has to do with woken animals,” said Thasha. The others looked at her, amazed. “Well doesn’t it stand to reason? Animals bursting suddenly into human intelligence, humans turning suddenly into beasts?”
    The phenomenon of waking animals had been a strange part of life in Alifros for centuries. Strange and exceedingly rare, at least in the North: so rare indeed that most people had never seen such a creature. But in the last several years the number of wakings had exploded.
    “Are there woken animals in the South, Mr. Isul?” asked Bolutu.
    The old man’s look of worry intensified. “Thinkers, you mean? Beasts with reason, and human speech? No, no more. They were wicked creatures, maukslarets , little demons.” He looked down, suddenly abashed. “Or so we were told.”
    “What happened to them?” asked Pazel, dreading the answer.
    Isul drew a finger across his throat. “Condemned, all condemned,” he said. “Back when I was a child. And it’s still the law of the land: you’re obliged to kill a Thinker on sight, before he works black magic against your family, your neighbors, the Crown. You can get away with harboring tol-chenni , if you’re careful—in Masalym there’s even a place that breeds ’em—but get caught with a thinking mouse or bird under your roof, and it’s the axe. They’re all dead and gone, is what I reckon. And if there are any left you can be sure they won’t let you know they can think. You could be looking right at one, a stray dog, a dune tortoise, and be none the wiser.”
    Now it was Thasha’s turn to look at Bolutu with rage. “We should never have trusted you,” she said. “They started killing woken animals when he was a child ? That was a lot more than twenty years ago! Why didn’t you warn us? Do you realize what we might have done?”
    Aboard the Chathrand was a woken rat, their dear friend Felthrup Stargraven. Despite his suspicion that something terrible awaited them ashore he had wanted to join the landing party—to share in any danger, he’d said. They had almost agreed.
    The old man put a hand on the side of his woolen sack, probing something within. He glanced uncertainly at Bolutu. “Twenty?” he said.
    Bolutu rose to his feet and dusted off his trousers. “Mr. Isul,” he said, “be so good as to tell us the date.”
    “You know I can’t,” said the other, a bit testily.
    “The year will suffice.”
    It was then that Pazel noticed the tremor in Bolutu’s voice. The old man, however, was put at ease. “That much I know,” he said. “We haven’t lost our bearings altogether out here. It’s the year thirty fifty-seven, His Majesty’s ninth on the throne.”
    Thasha looked at Bolutu. “You use a different calendar in the South. You told us that weeks ago.”
    Bolutu nodded, his face working strangely. He bent and plucked a stick from the old man’s bundle. He squinted at it, picked at the bark.
    “Of course, after all those years in Arqual, you’d know both calendars,” said Pazel.
    Another nod. Bolutu raised the stick and considered it lengthwise, as though studying its straightness. It was not very straight.
    “What’s wrong with you?” said Thasha sharply. “What are you trying to tell us?”
    “If Mr. Isul is correct—”
    “You don’t believe me, go ahead, ask anyone,” said the old man.
    “—we have rather misjudged our time on the Nelluroq. By your calendar, it is Western Solar Year Eleven Forty-four, and we have been two centuries at sea.”
    In the silence that followed Pazel heard the drums of the armada, still echoing faintly from the gulf. He heard the breakers on the north beach, the wind in the forest, the cry of a hawk as it circled the