The Warrior Returns - Anteros 04 Read Online Free PDF

made a grim face and sighed. "Well, there's nothing we can do but go on," I said. "They'll be expecting us, and we've letters and supplies to deliver."
    "Aye, that be our duty, me lady," he said quite mournfully. " 'N' it'll never be said that the likes o' Cap'n Carale ever shirked 'is duty. 'Sides, they's prob'ly lonely so far from home. Seein' us'11 bring a bit of cheer int' their lives."
    And with that he twisted his mustache points to make certain they drooped downward, then stalked away to make someone else's hours miserable. As I watched him slouch across the deck I thought the men at the outposts were likely to contemplate cutting short their lives if they looked too long on Carale's grim features. I decided to make the visit as brief as possible. Perhaps I could get them to cache the less perishable goods they'd traded for and somehow I'd make room for the rest
    The first place I considered was my own cabin, which was spacious enough, and I could get the ship's carpenter to knock up a little alcove near the entrance where I could store my Evocator's chests. I'd hang a hammock over them and would sleep comfortably enough on the voyage home.
    The lookout shouted and Demon's Point hove into view.
    It was a bleak hump of land jutting out from a range of desolate mountains. Two dark-eyed caves marked the highest region, separated by a huge black rocky hook that formed a nose. A twisted gash below made a bleak mouth, and two black spears twisted up from the head like horns.
    Demon's Point was well-named, although I do not know who first set eyes on it. An Ice Barbarian, perhaps, sailing out from some distant petty kingdom. A fellow with hairy shoulders and a filthy beard and yellow teeth to chatter with when the sight of that awful land struck fear in his savage heart.
    I'd been told by local seafarers that it's rare for the skies to be clear enough to see Demon's Point. The land is usually hidden by boiling storm clouds alive with—according to one old salt—crackling lightning that strikes upward instead of down. The rogue waves in that area are as notorious as the storms, and some say an entire fishing fleet was swallowed by waters that reached as high as the Pillars of Te-Date, which mark the entrance to the Southern Sea.
    Storms such as those had obscured any view of the point during the three trips I'd made before, although the blows never reached the fury local legend said was possible. This day, however, was as calm as the innocent brow of a novice priestess. A pale sun hung over the point, making the small white clouds hovering above glow with the softness of a maid. The seas were a placid blue, and as we rounded the point a troop of dolphins came out to greet us, leaping high and shrilling their joy at seeing company in such a lonely place.
    I was in a peaceful mood, a reflective mood, and for those reasons I was caught unawares.
    First the wind gentled and I heard Carale call to his men to make adjustments in the set of the sails. The echoes the men made as they relayed his orders were pleasant haunting sounds playing above the slow crash of the rolling seas. I smelled moist green plant life on the wind and I found myself wondering idly where that delightful odor could be from.
    I hadn't seen a speck of vegetation in several days. Only a cold black coastline so thick with rocks and washed by brine that no self-respecting tree or bush would ever consider setting down roots in such a place. I knew a wide desert lay some distance inland. Beyond that were high pine forests and a few valleys where savage farmers might poke the ground with sticks to plant a tuber which they'd leave for chance to rear.
    According to some the southern coastline continued like this for many a league. I found later that these claims were mostly true. And furthermore, there is a passage many leagues distant that leads to a great Eastern Sea that no one previously had known existed.
    While I stood there on the deck, marveling at the magical