Read Online Children of Fire by Drew Karpyshyn - Free Book Online Page B

dark brown breeches, a sandy tunic, and a pair of calf-high leather boots. It was only his eyes that revealed he was anything more than a common villager upon the road: twin orbs of milky gray, completely dead to the world.
    As a Pilgrim of the Order he was capable of far greater exertions than ordinary travelers, but he had pushed himself to his limits on this journey, driven by the news of Ezra’s death. Four days at such a grueling pace had left him weary in both body and spirit. Now, however, his trip was nearing an end. The sun had reached its zenith in the sky and he was finally rewarded with his first sight of the wizard’s manse—or rather, his first
awareness
of it, for sight was no true description of how his altered senses perceived the world.
    The manse was a large, sprawling building of white stone, the spire of its central tower peeking up from behind the barren, rocky hills common to the region. There were no other buildings around; the nearest village was a full day’s ride to the north. Like most Chaos wielders, Rexol—the owner of the manse—lived in isolation. Unlike others of his kind, however, his exile was self-imposed, a conscious effort to distance himself from the noble Houses that had turned their back on him twenty years ago during the Purge.
    Yet as he had come to know Rexol, Jerrod began to understand that there was another reason he chose to live here. The deep Southlands were the frontier, the most remote edge of the kingdoms that had united over four hundred years ago under the rule of the Seven Capitals. The great cities that made up the Capitals themselves lay far to the north and west, in the lush fields of the midlands or along the coast of the Endless Sea. Other settlements had sprung up along the fertile banks of the many rivers that crossed the land, snaking from the mountains of the east to drain into the ocean to the west. But none of them ran this far south.
    Here the land still echoed the uninhabitable realm of the desert. Water was scarce, the soil made up of scrabbling stone ill suited to farming. The few trees that pushed up from the raw earth were stunted and deformed. With plenty of good farmland only a few days’ ride to the north, nobody was foolish enough to try to survive here. Nobody but one touched by the arrogant madness of Chaos.
    By choosing to live here on the edges of the Southern Desert the mage was making a statement, one simultaneously echoing the Order’s power while defying the Pontiff’s authority. Rexol’s dwelling dominated the horizon, looming above the barren hills in the same way the great Monastery loomed over the desert landscape a hundred leagues to the south. However, the stark white walls of the tower rising up from the center of the wizard’s manse stood in sharp contrast with the black walls of the Order’s ancient fortress.
    Jerrod was drawing close now. He could see the high wrought-iron fence encircling the property grounds, constructed in the fashion of the wealthy noble estates far to the north.
    To the naked eye, Rexol’s manse was surrounded by a beautiful, self-sustaining garden. The estate was a flourishing paradise any lord within the Seven Capitals would be proud to have cultivated in his manor yard. The three-story marble tower was encircled by a verdant garden extending out twenty yards to the very edges of the iron fence. Lush grass covered the earth like a fertile carpet. Twenty-foot oaks lined the perimeter, their heavy, leaf-laden branches extending out over the railing to cast cool shade over the brown and barren dirt on the other side.
    A dozen small ponds dotted the landscape, the three largest remarkable for the cascading fountains of crystal water arcing up from their centers. Lacing out from the ponds a web of small, babbling irrigation streams wove its way throughout the numerous groves of fruit trees and the abundant vegetable gardens scattered about the grounds.
    But Jerrod