The Rose of the World Read Online Free PDF Page A

bone on the inside of his scalp like nails on rock. No one else appeared to be aware of this vile sound: it was the stone’s love song and lament for him alone, a babe wailing for its parent.
    He closed off the other sounds around him, opened his eyes and focused grimly. It took only a few seconds to locate the thin call, some way distant and to his left, moving slowly, backwards, forwards, sideways. The captain’s horse was an impressive bay with a fine arched neck and powerful chest, and just now it was stepping nervously out of the path of a grey with its rider dangling half-dead from its back. As soon as his gaze alighted upon the leather saddlebags it still carried, the noise in his head increased, became a buzzing as of many flies.
    Saro closed the space between himself and the horse in a few short strides. The bay eyed him suspiciously and skittered away, eyes rolling. Knowing what would follow the action but making it anyway, Saro caught at the flailing bridle and laid a hand firmly on the beast’s neck. At once he was assailed by the horse’s experience of its world. Blood. Salty and sweet and tangy. Freshly shed blood, men’s blood. Horses’ too. Blood and churned earth, human shit. The reek of it clung to the roof of the mouth, making the tongue sticky and rough. The gelding wanted to flee, but could find no clear path in which the scent was not strong. Its skin crawled with apprehension; its heart beat wildly. Saro took his hand off the horse’s slick skin and in seconds the terror faded. The bay snorted and threw its head up, but it stopped its neurotic dance and its breathing came more steadily.
    The deathstone was in the nearside saddlepack. He unlatched the buckle, felt inside. As if working the stone’s will rather than his own, his fingers closed around a wrapped package. He drew it out and peeled away the layers. There it was, in its nest of fabrics. Caged in silver wire, threaded on its leather thong, the moodstone looked like the trinket it once had been, the simple piece of jewellery he had thought to purchase as a gift for his mother. He closed his fingers over it convulsively and shuddered at the familiar dull vibration which travelled up his arm. But at least the noise had stilled. He breathed a deep sigh, somewhere between relief and resignation, and started to unwind the thong to replace the deathstone around his neck.
    The next thing he knew, something sharp prodded him in the back.
    ‘Thought you’d do a little looting, did you, laddie?’
    A dagger point was digging into his chest, held by a slabcheeked man whose eyes glinting balefully.
    ‘Gissit here!’ he insisted, gesturing with his chin at Saro’s hand, which had at the interruption closed instinctively into a fist.
    ‘You don’t want it,’ Saro said desperately. ‘Truly, you don’t.’
    ‘That’s for me to decide,’ the big man said, scowling.‘Open yer hand or lose it.’
    Saro’s fingers unfurled like the petals of some lethal flower. The soldier stared at what he held there and his scowl deepened.
    ‘Bit of tat,’ he opined.
    Saro smiled weakly.‘It is. Yes. Just a moodstone. Not worth much . . .’
    The dagger bit deeper. ‘Even so,’ the man snarled, ‘it’s winner’s takings. Some gormless bugger’ll pay me a cantari or two for it. Gissit here!’ He snatched at the boy’s hand, but Saro’s reflexes were too slow to prevent what happened next.
    As the soldier’s grip closed over the moodstone three things occurred with such apparent simultaneity that it would have been impossible to say which occurred first. The flesh of their two hands seemed to fuse; the stone glowed silver-white like metal heated to liquid; and Saro felt the man’s soul flee his body in a bewildered rush of regret and utmost terror. As his grip faltered and failed, the soldier’s eyes rolled up into his sockets and he dropped to his knees, his mouth stretched wide in a soundless rictus.
    The moodstone, as grey and lifeless as the