Read Online Shadowrise by Tad Williams - Free Book Online

another.”
    “And all are sticky and dangerous,” said Chaven.
    Ferras Vansen turned and gave him a sharp look. “Ah, yes. Do not fear I have forgotten you, sir. Chert talked about you and mirrors—now it is your turn. Tell us everything you know. We can no longer afford to keep secrets from each other.”
    The physician groaned softly and patted his much-shrunken paunch. “My story is a long and distressing one—distressing to me, anyway. I had hoped we could find something to eat before I began, just to strengthen myself.”
    “I’ll confess that I’m hungry too,” said Cinnabar, “but I think you will talk better and more to the point, Ulosian, if you know you will not get fed until you finish. It seems there are many stories still to be told before this evening ends—so, Chaven, you first, then supper.”
    Chaven sighed. “I feared you’d say that.”

3
    Silky Wood
    “Another story, related by the Soterian scholar Kyros, is that an old goblin told him ‘the gods followed us here’ from some original homeland beyond the tracks of the sea.”
    —from “A Treatise on the Fairy Peoples of Eion and Xand”
     
     
    “I HAVE A PLAN, BIRD.” Barrick Eddon unwound another strand of prickly creeper from his arm, hook by barbed, painful hook. “A very clever plan. You find me a path that doesn’t take me through every single thornbush in Fairyland . . . and I won’t flatten your nasty little skull with a rock.”
    Skurn hopped down to a lower branch, but prudently remained out of Barrick’s reach. He fluffed his blotched feathers. “It all do look different from up in sky, don’t it?” The raven’s tone was sullen. Neither of them had eaten since the middle of the day before. “Us can’t always tell.”
    “Well, fly lower.” Barrick stood up and rubbed at the line of small, bleeding holes, then pulled his ragged shirtsleeve back down.
    “ ‘Fly lower,’ says he,” Skurn grumbled. “Like he were the master and Skurn the servant, ’stead of equable partners as us’n be by agreement .” He flapped his wings. “By agreement!”
    Barrick groaned. “Then why does my . . . partner keep leading me through all the pointiest bits of territory? It’s taken us a day to go a few hundred paces. At this pace, by the time we bring the . . .” It suddenly occurred to Barrick that perhaps a dark forest, filled with who knew how many or what kind of listening ears, might not the best place to talk about Lady Porcupine’s mirror, the object he was sworn to carry all the way to the throne of the Qar. “At this pace, by the time we find them even the immortals will have died.”
    Skurn seemed to soften a bit. “Can’t see the ground from high because trees be too thick, ’special them hartstangle trees. But us daren’t fly no lower. Don’t you see? Silks be strung in the high branches and some even wave above the treetops, just to catch fine fellows like us.”
    “Silks?” Barrick began to trudge forward again, using the ancient, corroded spearhead he had found beside the road out of Greatdeeps to clear his way when the undergrowth became too dense. This was not the thickest forest he’d seen since he’d been behind the Shadowline but it was full of stubborn, grasping creepers that made each step hard as wading through mud. Combined with the unchanging twilight of these lands it was enough to make even the boldest heart despair.
    “Aye. This be Silky Wood, hereabouts,” the raven croaked. “Where them silkins live.”
    “Silkins? What are those?” They didn’t sound particularly threatening, which would be a nice change after dealing with Jack Chain and his monstrous servants. “Are they fairies?”
    “If you mean be they High Folk, nay.” Skurn fluttered ahead to another branch and waited for Barrick to make his monotonous, slow way after. “They speak not, nor do they go to market.”
    “Go to market ?”
    “Not like proper fairy folk, no.” The bird lifted its head. “Hist,” he