To Green Angel Tower, Volume 1 Read Online Free PDF Page A

swords. They knew him now.
    There was a rustle like the beating of many wings, then the Earl of Utanyeat suddenly felt an opening appear before him, an empty spot in the otherwise unbroken wall of flame—a doorway that breathed cool air. With nowhere else to turn, he threw his cloak over his head and stumbled down into a hall of quieter, colder shadows.

PART ONE

    The Waiting Stone

1
    Under Strange Skies

    Simon squinted up at the stars swimming in the black night. He was finding it increasingly difficult to stay awake. His weary eyes turned to the brightest constellation, a rough circle of lights hovering what seemed a handsbreadth above the gaping, broken-eggshell edge of the dome.
    There. That was the Spinning Wheel, wasn’t it? It did seem oddly elliptical—as though the very sky in which the stars hung had been stretched into an unfamiliar shape—but if that wasn’t the Spinning Wheel, what else could be so high in the sky in mid-autumn? The Hare? But the Hare had a little nubbly star close beside it—the Tail. And the Hare wasn’t ever that big, was it?
    A claw of wind reached down into the half-ruined building. Geloë called this hall “the Observatory”—one of her dry jokes, Simon had decided. Only the passing of long centuries had opened the white stone dome to the night skies, so Simon knew it couldn’t really have been an observatory. Surely even the mysterious Sithi couldn’t watch stars through a ceiling of solid rock.
    The wind came again, sharper this time, bearing a flurry of snowflakes. Though it wracked him with shivers, Simon was thankful: the chill scraped some of his drowsiness away. It wouldn’t do to fall asleep—not this night of all nights.
    So, now I am a man, he thought. Well, almost. Almost a man.
    Simon drew back the sleeve of his shirt and looked at his arm. He tried to make the muscles stand up, then frowned at the less than satisfactory results. He ran his fingers through the hair on his forearm, feeling the places where cuts had become ridged scars: here, where a Hunë’s blackened nails had left their mark; there, where he had slipped and dashed himself against a stone on Sikkihoq’s slope. Was that what being grown meant? Having a lot of scars? He supposed it also meant learning from the wounds, as well—but what could he learn from the sort of things that had happened to him during the last year?
    Don’t let your friends get killed, he thought sourly. That’s one. Don’t go out in the world and get chased by monsters and madmen. Don’t make enemies.
    So much for the words of wisdom that people were always so eager to share with him. No decisions were ever as easy as they had seemed in Father Dreosan’s sermons, where people always got to make a clean choice between Evil’s Way and the Aedon’s Way. In Simon’s recent experience of the world, all the choices seemed between one unpleasant possibility and another, with only the faintest reference to good and evil.
    The wind skirling through the Observatory dome grew more shrill. It put Simon’s teeth on edge. Despite the beauty of the intricately sculpted pearlescent walls, this was still a place that did not seem to welcome him. The angles were strange, the proportions designed to please an alien sensibility. Like other products of its immortal architects, the Observatory belonged completely to the Sithi; it would never feel quite comfortable to mortals.
    Unsettled, Simon got up and began to pace, the faint echo of his footsteps lost in the noise of the wind. One of the interesting things about this large circular hall, he decided, was that it had stone floors, something the Sithi no longer seemed to utilize, He flexed his toes inside his boots as a memory of Jao é-Tinukai’i’s warm, grassy meadows tugged at him. He had walked barefoot there, and every day had been a summer day. Remembering, Simon curled his arms across his chest for warmth and comfort.
    The Observatory’s floor was made up of exquisitely cut