The Winter Knights Read Online Free PDF Page B

the twenty-two apprentices from the Sanctaphrax schools chosen to enter the Knights Academy this year.’
    ‘You mean …’ Quint began.
    ‘We would like to invite both of you,’ said the Professor of Darkness, nodding. ‘Vilnix, you shall be my protégé.’
    ‘And you, Quint, shall be my protégé,’ said the Professor of Light. ‘It is what I had intended all along. You served our dear friend Linius well and would have made him an excellent protégé. Now you shall make me proud. The pair of you will carry the honour of the School of Light and Darkness into the Knights Academy.’
    ‘ If you choose to accept,’ the Professor of Darkness added.
    ‘Oh, I accept, all right,’ said Vilnix eagerly, seizing the professor's hand and shaking it vigorously.
    Quint glanced round at his father, his brow furrowed. Wind Jackal stepped forwards and embraced him warmly.
    ‘It's up to you, Quint, what you decide to do,’ he said.
    ‘Oh, Father,’ said Quint, looking up into Wind Jackal's concerned face. ‘I'm part of Sanctaphrax now – and it's a part of me.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Wind Jackal, ‘I can see that.’
    Behind them, Vilnix gave a sneering laugh, which the Professor of Darkness silenced with a disapproving look.
    ‘Besides,’ said Quint, ‘it isn't just for the Knights Academy that I want to stay in Sanctaphrax. There is another reason, too.’
    ‘And that is?’ said Wind Jackal, staring deep into his son's dark, troubled eyes.
    For a moment, Quint was lost in memories of the past. Dark memories. Painful memories. He returned his father's gaze.
    ‘Maris,’ he said.

•CHAPTER FOUR•
THE GATES OF
HUMILITY
    M aris!’ Quint called, seizing the handle of the heavy gilded door and pushing it open. ‘Maris! Maris, I …’
    He stopped, scarcely able to believe his eyes. He was standing in what had been Linius Pallitax's magnificent personal apartment in the School of Mist. But now the place was an empty, echoing hall, with open doors leading to other deserted rooms. In the middle of it all sat a great, glassy-bodied spindlebug trilling mournfully to himself.
    ‘Tweezel?’ Quint began uncertainly. ‘What in Earth and Sky …?’
    ‘Gone,’ trilled the spindlebug, shaking his huge angular head slowly from side to side. ‘All the master's things. His scrolls, his instruments, even his bed … and Mistress Maris with them. Gone, all gone.’
    ‘Gone where?’ Quint demanded.
    ‘To Undertown,’ Tweezel replied, turning and fixing his sad eyes on the youth. ‘They had an order, signed in the master's own hand,’ he added sorrowfully. ‘Mistress Maris didn't want to leave, but when she saw her father's signature, she couldn't argue. So she left with them …’
    ‘Left with who ?’ Quint demanded angrily. ‘I don't understand, Tweezel. What's going on?’
    ‘Heft Vespius and his wife, Dacia,’ the spindlebug trilled. ‘He's a prominent leaguesman in the League of Wicktwisters and Waxdippers. She's a distant cousin on Mistress Maris's mother's side.’
    ‘Cousin,’ Quint repeated.
    ‘Yes. Always pestering the master for favours, they were, and in the name of his poor, dear wife,’ said Tweezel scornfully. ‘Most distasteful. Mind you, he never gave in to them …’ He paused. ‘Never until, it seems, now. Made them Mistress Maris's guardians, he did …’
    ‘Her guardians?’ said Quint, frowning.
    ‘They showed me the scroll, signed in his own hand. It said that they should look after her until she came of age,’ the spindlebug continued. ‘They came at noon, Master Quint. Cleared the place out. By the time Maris returned from her father's funeral, they'd all but emptied her room, and then they whisked her away, too. I scarcely had time to say goodbye myself.’ The spindle-bug gave a sharp trill of misery. ‘And then they dismissed me, just like that!’ He gave a click of his claws.
    ‘They dismissed you!’ said Quint, shocked.
    ‘And Welma too,’ said the spindlebug, nodding