The Sea of Time Read Online Free PDF

Face of God, That-Which-Destroys.
    And what would you destroy this time, Jamethiel Priest’s-bane? Kothifir, the Kencyrath, yourself?
    A foot shuffled on the debris behind her. Jame spun around to confront a young, blond acolyte in a brown robe.
    “Who are you?” he demanded. “Why are you spying on us?” He peered at her more closely. “Why, you’re Kencyr. That half-breed sneak we’ve heard about, probably.”
    Jame didn’t like being confused with Graykin, much less the boy’s snotty manner or the way he drew back as if to avoid contact with something unclean. Then the floor gave slightly underfoot. It felt rotten. The temple’s rogue power must be gnawing continually at it.
    The boy smiled. “I should let you fall. The next floor might stop you, or maybe not. It’s a long way down.”
    The spar of a rafter jutted out overhead. Jame sprang and caught it just as the floor dropped away beneath her. The beam felt none too solid either and gave an ominous crack. The boy laughed. Jame launched herself at the doorway where he stood and knocked him back through it into a mural stair. The rafter snapped and plummeted like a spear. Angry shouts below greeted its descent.
    “Get off of me, you filth!” the boy snarled, wriggling under her and scrabbling at her jacket front. His expression changed. “Why, you’re a girl!”
    Jame reared back, driving a knee into his groin in the process. “Surprise.”
    He was, she supposed, a year or two younger than she, but that didn’t excuse bad manners. Speaking of which . . .
    “I suppose I had better greet your high priest while I’m here.”
    Sulky and limping, he led her down the mural stair past doorways gaping on shattered floors and the looming blackness within. It was the third Kencyr temple that Jame had seen, and no two of them had been alike. The mysterious Builders seemed to enjoy variety. This one resembled a sheer, black pyramid with its top missing. A clutch of priests had gathered, exclaiming angrily, at its foot around the fallen beam and the mound of debris it had brought down. At least it hadn’t landed on anyone, as far as Jame could tell.
    “Grandfather.” The boy tugged at a black sleeve. “We have company.”
    The high priest swung around and glared in Jame’s general direction. His eyes, under tangled white brows, were clouded over with milky cataracts. How odd that he hadn’t consulted one of the order’s many healers. Perhaps none were available this far south. “And who might that be, eh?”
    Jame offered him a half-hearted salute which, in any event, he couldn’t see. “The Talisman, sir.”
    As soon as she spoke, she knew she had made a mistake.
    “What, M’lord Ishtier’s foe? Oh, we’ve heard all about you and the trouble that you caused in Tai-tastigon. Theocide. Nemesis. Well, I won’t have any of that nonsense here. Leave, before I bring the rest of the roof down on you!”
    His gnarled hands rose, clenched, and drew down power along with more wreckage. The others huddled close to the temple’s flanks although they didn’t dare touch them. The temple itself trembled and seemed for a moment to be less substantial.
    The boy plucked at her jacket. “Leave,” he hissed. “Before worse happens.”
    Jame retreated step by step, unwilling to turn her back on that sullen edifice. What worse could it do? How unstable was it, really, and did she really want to find out? Then she was out of the tower, free of the baleful thing that it contained and its churlish priests.
    III
    ONCE AWAY, Jame tried to clear her senses in order to pick up Graykin’s trail again. It came to her, faintly, and she followed it back into the forest of ghostly towers.
    Finally here was one that seemed, after a fashion, to be occupied. At least it had a door and, inside, dusty tapestries hung on the walls between the arched windows. Most of the weavings depicted shadowy figures with their backs turned although a few pale, hooded visages faced the room. A