The Visitor Read Online Free PDF Page A

Masochism. I enjoy sitting there flipping sheets while I have my coffee, seeing what flickers at me. Usually it’s some speck of light. This time it was some speck of dark. Thought for a minute I had something wrong with my eyes, but it’s there, all right.”
    â€œI can get a message to Neils,” I told her. “Since he knows you personally, he probably would want to know.”
    â€œFine. You do that. My phone number’s right there. When you get it figured out, call me. I’m not going to tell anybody about it. Tell Neils that. Tell him the news junkies won’t find out from me…”
    And she was out the door. Gone. A few moments later, I saw an aged red pickup truck headed down the mountain as I stood there puzzling over Selma’s last words. Why would it matter if she told anyone? Then the implication kicked in, and I shook my head, trying to dislodge the idea. The thing is headed in our direction. At this point, the only interesting thing about this darkness is that it’s headed toward us.

3
general gregor gowl turnaway
    O f the three tribes which had settled Bastion—Comadors, Praisers, and Turnaways—the strongest leaders were found among the Turnaways. General Gregor Gowl, Perpetual Chair of the Regimic Council, was a Turnaway. He’d been a leader since his youth, born to dominance and to mischief, a stocky, strong boy well able to intimidate others. He often remarked that nobody could tell him what to do, which was true. Not a day went by without Gowl doing something he’d been told not to.
    A crucial point in Gowl’s development came at age ten, when he heard of a parade to be held at the nearby garrison, a dress rehearsal for the annual Muster of Bastion. He told his lackeys that no boy of spirit could hold his head up unless he witnessed this event and if they weren’t weak baaing ewe sheep, they could see it if they skipped school and came with him.
    No Bastion boy could bear to be called a ewe sheep, for reasons to do with ovine anatomy of which they were largely ignorant, so four of them, Banner, Skiffle, Brant, and little lopsided Fortrees—whom Gowl called the sand bur because he never gave up sticking to them, no matter how they pounded him—went on their bellies under the school back fence and cross country to the parade ground.
    Gowl had already reconnoitered the garrison fence, finding a convenient hole behind a set of bleachers where someone had haphazardly stacked a pile of straw bales for the archery butts, which Gowl, who always had an eye toward his own safety, had already identified as usable cover. He did not, however, mention the possibility of being caught to the others. Instead, Gowl led them through the hole and lined them up under the bleachers with little Fortrees nearest the parade ground and himself nearest the stray bales, lying at his ease as the event began.
    Prancing from the barracks ground at the far end of the field came a white horse bearing a white-clad officer with enough gold braid on him to sink a dinghy. His aides to either side bore his battle flags, unfaded and unmarred, for the previous general had made a non-aggression pact with the demons, and there’d been no forays or wars since.
    The leader was followed by gray-clad officers on black horses, then by brown-clad, brown-horsed subordinate officers, then bowmen in black leather, bows across their shoulders, quivers at their backs, then lancemen with red sleeves and spear tips glittering; then blade fighters laden with swords and daggers. Last of all came the blue-clad engineers, sappers and builders, creators of bridges and siege engines, with their support wagons behind. The buglers let loose with a great blat of brass that made all the horses go on tiptoe until the drummers came in with a steady blam, blam, blam that settled the marchers into a clockwork pace and sent echoes caroming off the nearest mountains.
    Staring at the commander on the