The Witling Read Online Free PDF

hundred feet was a long way down. Once he had been jumped two thousand feet downward—directly, without first submerging in a transit pool. The heat shock had given him a headache that lasted a nineday.
    The water in the pool was cold and oily. Pelio was grateful for the watertight suit, even if it was an awkward nuisance. (It just proved again that the only sensible place for people to live was in the tropics, where winter never came.) In the water around him, Pelio could seng a familiar tension as Moragha prepared to jump. A second passed. The tension “brightened,” then twisted in upon itself as the pool and its contents were exchanged with the destination pool.
    They bobbed to the surface, the guards immediately taking positions around the pool. Pelio and Moragha pulled themselves from the water. The air stank, and the rockwort on the walls glowed bright green: the air hadn’t been changed for many hours. The green-lit dungeon was large, and fairly warm—yet it was still nothing more than an empty space carved from abyssal bedrock. Without the constant attention of the keepers who knew its location the cell would quickly become a coffin for its prisoners.
    “All right, on your feet,” came Moragha’s sharp voice. His man began kicking at the dark-clothed shapes on the floor. Pelio suppressed a gasp as the first of the strangers stood. The man—creature?—was incredibly tall, well over six feet. But even more grotesque was the spindly thinness of his limbs. The fellow looked as though he would shatter if he ever took a bad fall.
    “I said get up. Come to attention. You have been accorded an undeserved honor. Get up !” Moragha aimed a kick at the second creature, who rolled lithely to its feet as if it had been watching them alertly all the while.
    To Pelio, the rest of the universe retreated to a position of total irrelevance. He didn’t hear the stifled gasps of the guards. He didn’t notice the silence that stretched on and on.
    She was beautiful . The girl stood tall, as tall as Pelio, yet slender as a woods-doe. Even in the dim light her coveralls revealed the strange perfection of her figure. And her face—its beauty was unworldly. Her features were sharp, her nose and chin almost pointed. It was as if the dark, grotesque face of the tall one had been treated by a kinder artist. While the skin of the Snowfolk was chalky white, and Pelio’s was grayish green, her skin was almost black in the rockwort’s light. Her smooth face might have been carved from darkwood. All the childhood fairy tales of woods-elves and dryads came rushing to mind. She was the stuff of dreams.
    Pelio spent an unmeasured time lost in the deep, dark eyes that stared from that miraculous face. Finally the spell weakened and he asked faintly, “And she … they are witlings, Parapfu?”
    “As I said, Your Highness,” the prefect replied, looking at Pelio strangely.
    “Do they speak Azhiri?”
    “At least a little.”
    Pelio turned back to the girl, and spoke slowly, “What is your name?”
    “Yoninne.” Her answer was clear, but with overtones of fear and tension.
    “Ionina? A strange name. Where are you come from, Ionina?”
    “From—” Her answer was interrupted by an abrupt though unintelligible command from the spindly giant. The girl replied in kind, then turned back to Pelio. “No, I no tell that.” She backed away from them, looking both defiant and brave … . And she a witling, thought Pelio.
    Then he made his decision, and tried not to think of what might happen when his father heard of it. “Prefect, you have done well to detect and capture these intruders; I commend you. They seem interesting indeed. I will take them with me on my return to the Summerpalace.”
    “Your Highness! These are dangerous people. The monsters that accompanied them were so loud that we could hear them even here in Bodgaru.”
    Pelio turned on the prefect, and his smile was full of vengeance. “Dangerous, you say, good Parapfu?