Valley of Embers (The Landkist Saga Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

and Kole walked together for a spell in the soft light of dawn, while Karin stayed behind to give his reports. They did not speak, and Kole felt his scab burning angrily, though the rest of him had cooled. He was troubled by dark dreams that night. As always, they carried a core of hot flame and the echoes of a mother’s cry.

R estless was not a sharp enough word to describe Kole’s sleep that morning, so he settled on broken. The shards of dreaming were still nesting in his mind. He tried to shake them as he walked.
    The clouds had moved off and the moon shone bright and blue. No Dark Kind would harry them now. Attacks were more frequent than they had been in any of the previous seasons Kole could remember, but they never occurred consecutively. Karin had done his job thorough. There were no Dark Kind moving in the South Valley as far north as Hearth, and those that had fled the wrath of Last Lake had done so in numbers too few to scatter hares.
    Still, Tu’Ren was taking no chances, Kole saw as he approached the yawning and splintered gap where the gate had been. Men and women toiled into the night rebuilding a barrier out of the wreckage. Every brazier was lit, each Keeper on guard but for Kole. They thought they were doing him a favor. Perhaps they were. Or perhaps Linn Ve’Ran had had something to say about it.
    She froze when she saw his brown eyes reflect amber in the torchlight, and the smile she forced did little to ease the unspoken tension from the night before.
    “You’re awake,” she said, straightening from the beam she had been leaning against.
    “Can’t sleep.”
    She shifted uncomfortably, but the smile soon dissolved and she blew out a sigh.
    “Iyana forced my hand,” she said, nodding up toward the nearest platform, where Jenk stood beside his crackling brazier, his eyes focused on the trees ahead as he pretended not to eavesdrop.
    “Embers heal fast,” Kole said. “I’m more than fit to keep watch.”
    “Good,” Linn said, tossing him a pack. “Then you’re more than fit to hunt.”
    Hunting in the Valley was rarely a solitary effort. In the Dark Months, it never was. Kole was about to reprimand Linn for striking out on her own when someone approached at a trot from the road behind.
    “Nathen,” Kole said, nodding appreciatively at the fisherman’s son. “How are you?”
    “Hungry,” Nathen said, all good humor. He was a genuine lad from a hard working family, and younger than Linn and Kole by close to a decade—young enough not to know a Valley without the Dark Kind. As it happened, he was also the best hunter on the Lake. It was a fact not lost on his father’s friends, who never let Bali hear the end of it.
    “If Nathen Swell is hungry,” Kole said, “then it truly is past time to bring in some fresh game. Not that we don’t appreciate your father’s fish, but there’s something about sinew to get you through dark times.”
    “And Dark Months,” Nathen said with a smile before taking the lead as they passed under the scaffolding.
    “You three going out now?”
    It was Kaya, leaning on her Everwood staff and craning over from what was usually Linn’s perch. It was a slight intended and received.
    “We need some fresh air,” Linn said without breaking stride.
    “Plenty of that all around,” Kaya called after her.
    “Especially around you, Ferrahl, since you’ve no brazier stealing it away,” Linn shot back. A string of curses followed and Linn left a trail of bubbling laugher in their wake as they ducked beneath the canopy.
    Though there were six Embers at Last Lake, there were only five braziers. Kaya was a powerful Landkist and formidable enough with her flames, but she was want to suck up more heat than she could easily channel, and the results had been near-catastrophic in the past. Kole held no ill will toward her, but facts were facts.
    Nathen was always quiet on a hunt, a skill the others possessed but felt no need to adopt as they marked a path west