Read Online Shadows on the Stars by T. A. Barron - Free Book Online

needs me—that’s all I need to know.” Elli gave the sprite on her shoulder an uncertain glance. “The Lady will understand, won’t she?”
    Nuic’s color darkened to grayish purple. “No,” he answered flatly. “She won’t. After several centuries of being her faithful maryth—and several weeks of being yours—I can assure you that she’s just as stubborn as you are.”
    The young priestess swallowed. “Well then, I’ll just have to hope she can understand that I’m doing this out of friendship.”
    The sprite’s little mouth turned down in a scowl. “We’d better get going again.”

6 • Never to Fly
    Grasping the strip of Coerria’s gown, Elli started to stride, with Nuic holding tight to her shoulder. Her pace was even faster than before, since she wanted to reach the Drumadian compound—and Coerria—before nightfall. Brionna adjusted her longbow and followed, treading lightly over the patches of snow and dry grass. Behind them, running to keep up, came Shim.
    Out of the hills they strode, and into the sprawling farms of central Stoneroot. Although the climate here was generally warmer than in the hills, drifts of snow lay in every furrow and in the shade of every fruit tree. The companions passed through fields where people had long planted barley for ale-making, as well as unfenced pasturelands where horses and sheep chose to winter.
    More and more they heard the sound of bells: chiming from rooftops, barn doors, and weather vanes; clinking from the legs of ducks and geese who flew overhead; and clanging from the necks of goats and the hips of women, men, and children who lived in the flatrock homes that tilled every village. For this region was truly the land of bells, where bells made from stone or metal or wood sounded constantly.
    Elli, stepping through a field where melting snow had turned everything to mud, stopped to shake a clump from her leather sandal. In the distance, she could hear the bell of a trotting colt; the sound reminded her of the small quartz bell that hung from Tamwyn’s hip, always clinking as he moved. Her jaw tightened.
    As she started off again, her thoughts shifted to another bell, one she had grown to love in her short time at the Drumadian compound. The Buckle Bell—made from the belt buckle of a giant, melted down by the breath of a fire dragon, and crafted by dwarf metalworkers and faery artisans—dated back to Elen the Founder. For nearly a thousand years, as long as the Society of the Whole had existed, it had symbolized the Society’s highest ideal of harmony among all creatures. If that ideal was the heart of life in the compound—or perhaps, Elli wondered, of life in Avalon—no single object better signified it than the Buckle Bell.
    And what a sound it made! She smiled to herself, remembering the first time she’d heard it toll. She had arrived only that morning, and decided to skip formal prayers—something she would come to do often. Hiding by a thick bush of ripe blackberries, she was eating a juicy handful when suddenly, right behind her, the great bell sounded—so loud that Elli had fallen over backward, scattering blackberries everywhere.
    Onward they marched, through Stoneroot’s living quilt of pastures, cornfields, and wild meadows. With every step, it seemed, their shared sense of urgency increased. As did their speed, so that Shim often had to run to keep up.
    Suddenly, as Elli topped the brim of a hill, she stopped—so abruptly that Nuic barely managed to cling to her shoulder. Brionna halted as well, and like Elli, stood as still as a sapling on a windless night. Until, that is, Shim charged into them both from behind.
    “Well, I neverly!” he growled, rubbing the tip of his bulbous nose. “You shouldn’t stop like that, Elli. Nor you neither, Rowanna.”
    The elf maiden growled, “Brionna. For the hundredth time, Brionna.”
    “What dids you say, Rowanna?” he asked, cupping his ear.
    But she didn’t respond. For, like Elli