The Rose of Sarifal Read Online Free PDF

thicker and darker on her back, rising to a ridge along her spine. She had only two fingers on each hand and foot, thick, fleshy fingers over a wad of callous, fingers that were sharp and heavy, narrowing to curved, wicked points.
    The queen shifted her hand, and a single beam of light touched the animal, caressing her long jaw, showing the curved horns at the corners of her mouth, the predatory teeth, the small eyes, the wide, distorted nose with its upturned nostrils. “Look,” repeated the queen. She let the beam play along the creature’s sinewy arm, and then she showed a bald place at her waist where the hair was thin or else shaved away, revealing a pattern that was artificial and deliberate, a tattoo of a climbing rose, a yellow rose etched in black and silver.
    “The Rose of Sarifal,” murmured Lukas.
    It was the royal symbol of the leShays. “Do you think? If that were true, then I would—wait,” said Lady Ordalf, and with her right hand she pulled her black hair away from her neck, while with her right hand sheturned the light, so he could see the elegant tattoo below her ear, this one tinted pink. “My mother had a white rose inked on her backside because she was a whore, and died a whore’s death. Yellow was my sister’s color. But what is it doing here? Does this mean my sister …?”
    She clapped her hands together, loud as a thunderbolt. The animal started awake, and then immediately began to shift into a more human shape, her features shortening and softening, her hair receding or else falling away, her fingers dividing and growing longer. Embarrassed suddenly, she put one arm over her breasts, while she brought her thighs together and put her other hand into her lap. She bowed her head, and her pale hair hid her face.
    “There exists no force or power,” said the queen, “that can transform one race of creature into another. Amaranth was a leShay, half of my own blood, heiress to a royal house. Perhaps she was bound for Snowdown and the court of the Daressins. But what if the wounded rider fell into the sea, perhaps in the channel between Gwynneth and Moray? What if he was lost as he made his turn, and left my nine-year-old half sister buckled in her seat? Tell me, what do you know of Moray Island? You must have seen the coast from your ship as you came down from Alaron.”
    Lukas shook his head. “I’ve never set my foot on Oman or Moray. It’s true, we saw the fires on the way, and at night you can see the signal fires back in the hills. Men used to live there. Maybe some still do. There were men in all these islands once upon a time.”
    “Yes,” replied the queen, “the fey remember. But we’re not travelers like you. There are too few of us. You hate us, hunt us down if you find us away from home. It is your jealousy. You love to kill what lives so long, what is so much wiser and more beautiful. As for this creature, she’s from Moray, we know. She was dressed in leather clothes made from the hide of those great animals who live there. We do not have such beasts. Even instead, the lycanthropes do not wear clothes or sail on boats. We found her drifting on a spar after a storm. She will not speak to us. No pain was too great for her to bear. She spoke no words, either in Elvish or the Common tongue, which is all we know. Perhaps you would care to try.”
    Lukas shrugged, then asked the lycanthrope her name in several languages, Chondathan, Damaran, Draconic, and Primordial. She raised her head, and he could see her porcine eyes shining in the dark. But she said nothing.
    Curious, the gnome cocked her head. “Captain,” she said in Damaran, “you will not leave me here?”
    “No,” Lukas told her in the same language. “I promise.”
    Suka smiled, showed her tongue. “Fourteen days is all you have, before that creature—” she nodded toward the fomorian who, on her hands and doughy knees, had pressed the side of her face against the bars—“turns me into soup.”
    When Lady