The Twins Read Online Free PDF Page A

great council and the Lalas, the high ones, including Lanatrae and Breardan, met and planned the course of events to come. The contemplation of these council meetings invoked images of mystery, beauty and power in the mind of each person and being devoted to the light, while it precipitated immeasurable fear in the hearts of the disruptive and the evil.
    Alas, though, those times are long past , he thought sadly.
    Baladar shrugged and brushed his hand over his brow to settle his thoughts on the hopes of today, rather than upon the glories of the past. The boy needed to be trained, educated, loved and nurtured. He needed to be prepared. And he would be, he averred. Baladar knew that the time was ripe and the boy would be everything and more than he and the world had hoped for. If he should fail in his teachings, or if the boy should fail in his future quests, the world was doomed and dissolution was inevitable. The boy was given unto Baladar to train and to protect. This vast responsibility weighed heavily upon his shoulders, but he accepted this charge with pride and gratitude. He would see it through to the end, at the expense of his own life if need be.
    Baladar walked across the softly lit room to the darkness of the sheltered alcove at the far side of his work table. The chamber in which he worked was at the very top of the castle. Octagonal in shape, the windows, edged in stone and clear as could be, surrounded him. The sun shone through them from many angles, glittering and sparkling upon the furniture and implements that filled it. From here he could see as far as anyone on earth without the aid of either any instrument or of magic. The majestic Thorndar mountains to the south glimmered in the distance. The snow capping their summits looked like icing upon an enormous cake.
    Baladar removed from the ornate wooden cabinet in the alcove a round piece of what looked like burnished stone. Moving across the chamber, back to his large desk that occupied a prominent place in the center of the room, he cleared off a space upon its smooth surface. He placed this object in the middle of the work space and walked around and took his seat. The stone shimmered as if made of liquid within its sharply defined borders. Baladar placed his palms upon the center of the stone and closed his eyes. The designs in the stone swirled and spun as Baladar hummed.
    In fact, this object was not a stone at all. What Baladar was working with was a disk-shaped piece of Briland’s deceased Lalas. Briland had left this to Baladar after her death. With it, Baladar was able to gaze almost anywhere on earth. All he needed to do was concentrate and mentally request a location. He neither had to have been to the place previously, nor did the disk require an image in his mind in order to locate the spot. All that was necessary was that at one time a Lalas had been in the vicinity of the desired location and that Baladar knew approximately where he wished the disk to search. If he could provide the disk with rough coordinates, an idea of the location he sought, it utilized his thoughts and intuitions, as well as its own special ‘instincts,’ and provided him with images almost instantaneously.
    At this time, Baladar was seeking out the origin of the boy’s casting. If he could find the place from whence he came, he might be able to determine if his casting was observed by the enemy. The dilemma was how to instruct the disk and how to accurately guide it to a location that Baladar did not yet know even remotely. He concentrated on a point south of the mountains, for he knew that the boy had come from somewhere in the immense southern regions of Gwendolen. He had to be more precise than that though if he wished to find anything of use to him, the area he was searching was so vast.
    Suddenly and abruptly he stopped and thrust the disk into his inside pocket. He strode across the floor and threw the door to the chamber open.
    “Dalek! Come here quickly. And