Read Online Scarlet From Gold (Book 3) by Jeffrey Quyle - Free Book Online

woven into a pattern on its surface.
    And then he was off, leaving the great cathedral city behind and headed towards the east.
    The sun was not far above the horizon, so that Marco sometimes squinted and sometimes walked with his head lowered as he moved in the opposite direction of the incoming pilgrims who were arriving in the city.  And he continued to walk.
    For ten days he traveled along the route, a lonely traveler moving against the steady spring season flow of pilgrims who had started their travels to the shrine as soon as the weather had broken.  The days were growing longer; even since his memories of the days when he had appeared on Station Island – not so long ago – Marco could tell that there was more daylight.
    The first few days of the journey were relatively easy, as the pilgrim’s way stayed within river valleys that had relatively easy slopes and only moderate changes in elevation.  Some evenings he stayed where inbound pilgrims stayed, and listened to their stories about harsh weather in the mountains that were behind them, or ahead of him in his case, and how thankful they were to have an easy road for the rest of the way into Compostela.  There were a few stories about robbers in the mountains as well, and Marco clinched his jaw in anger at the thought of pilgrims being preyed on.
    After ten days he began to climb higher, as the road left the valleys and started working its way up towards the mountain passes at the higher elevations.  His poncho kept him dry and warm, as random showers at the lower levels occasionally became flurries in the evening at the higher elevations.
    Marco was anxious to make progress, driven by the geas, the one that the spirit of Ophiuchus had said had been laid upon him by Lethe, driven to move constantly forward as he had felt driven before Dex and Pivot had persuaded him to slow down and make his early journey a pilgrimage.  He walked after sunset on many days, and sometimes simply bedded down beneath bushes on the ground.
    He grew thinner as he traveled without always stopping to eat, and after more than a fortnight, as he reached a high altitude pass at night, he decided he had to splurge and eat a meal at an inn, even though the establishment had no image of a swift above its door.  The proprietor told him there was no lodging, because a large party of nobles were riding on the pilgrimage and had paid handsomely to rent out nearly every room, but for a pence Marco secured a spot in the stable loft.
    He dropped his belongings in the spot he selected among the bales of hay stacked above the stables, as he heard several sets of boots trod past the stables and enter the inn.  There was a burst of indistinct shouts, and then silence from the inn as Marco descended down the ladder; he was eager to return to the inn and eat a hot meal.
    As he approached the kitchen door, he saw the cook come running out, and the woman ran into Marco as she flung the door open, spilling them both to the ground, as two men came running out the door after the cook.
    The men grabbed her by the arms and roughly lifted her off of Marco.
    "Not so fast, my pretty," one of the men said to the cook, then slapped her viciously, making her wail with profound fear.
    "Hey!" Marco exclaimed in shock and dismay.
    "You don't look like you're worth anything," the other man said as he looked at Marco.  And then, to Marco's horror, the man raised his sword and stabbed it down at Marco's chest.
    The tip of the sword plunged down at his heart, and as it pierced his poncho and clothing, it struck squarely upon the violet tattoo on his chest.  There was a bright flash of light, and the sword momentarily glowed as a charge of energy ran up the blade from Marco to the attacker, killing the man in an instant.
    The cook and the man holding her looked at Marco and the dead man's body, then the man let loose of the cook and looked at Marco in fear.
    "What did you do?" he asked plaintively, as he backed towards