The Young Dread Read Online Free PDF

away.
    He threw a second knife immediately. She repeated the motion, faster. And then another knife, which she plucked from the air and flung as hard as she could.
    Her master looked appreciatively at a tree fifty feet away, where the three knives had planted themselves up to their hilts, each no more than half an inch from the others.
    “Ah, nicely done—” he began.
    He let fly two knives midsentence, the first one aimed, straight and deadly, at her heart, and the second at the tree.
    The Young Dread understood. She caught the first just in front of her chest, its point grazing her shirt, and then she hurled it, focusing every muscle of her body on the throw, releasing it like a bolt of silver lightning.
    The two knives hit the tree in quick succession. The first, the Old Dread’s knife, pierced the bark in perfect alignment with the others. The second, Maud’s blade, embedded itself into the handle of her master’s knife and stood out from the tree, quivering with the force of both throws.
    The Old Dread smiled. He had taught her to throw knives beginning at age seven, but she’d been practicing the skill on her own for a long time. She was very pleased to impress him.
    “Bring them back!” he said, the words coming so quickly they blended into one long sound.
    Maud created the dual time sense the Dreads trained themselves to use—slowing her experience of time while forcing her body into fast motion. She sprinted to the tree, retrieved five knives, and returned to him, all in the space of two breaths.
    She offered him the blades, and he took them, one by one, nodding his head at each.
    “The Middle Dread has done his duty well by you,” he told her. “You’re faster than when I left you.”
    “Thank you, Master. We’ve trained with the helm also.”
    The Old Dread examined the handle of the knife that had been pierced by Maud’s last blade. He clucked, as if to point out that he would need to repair it now. Then he tucked all the weapons back into his cloak, with a motion as quick and graceful as any magician’s.
    “The helm,” he said. “Child, there are limits to its value. Though I imagine it’s safer on you than most.”
    “We use it infrequently.”
    “He is a good teacher, then.” He must have noticed something in the Young Dread’s eyes, because he asked, “You have something to tell me about him?”
    She looked back over her shoulder. They were at least a mile away from the cottages, surely too far for the Middle Dread to hear them clearly, even if he threw his hearing to its limits.
    She thought of her life with the Middle—cold solitude, harsh words, vicious training. But the Old Dread knew this already.
    She told him only, “He is a good teacher, but he does not much care for me.”
    “Mmm. You may be right,” he said at length. “Bear in mind, though, child, that he does not much care for anyone.”
    At this, Maud felt herself smile. “I believe you’re right.”
    They began walking again, through the shadow and sunlight of the forest floor at noon.
    “There is value to him,” the Old Dread said. “We Dreads must stand apart from humanity, so our heads are clear to judge.” He tapped his temple in a familiar gesture. He’d said these very words to her on the first day they met, with the same tap upon his head. “The Middle stands apart very well.”
    The Young Dread thought this over and decided her master might be right. The Middle Dread was a brutal, even malicious, instructor, and yet…he’d made her better. He was an aspect of her life that she must tolerate. Seeing her master from time to time gave her the strength to do so.
    Enough. She would think of the Middle Dread no more on this morning.
    She asked, “How is it you can move so quickly? The last time I saw you, you walked as though asleep.”
    “The longer I rest
There,
the more I regain my youthful vigor. When I’ve just woken up, it’s the strongest. But it won’t last.”
    “You will slow down