Read Online Shadow Chaser by Alexey Pehov - Free Book Online

knowing that he would take everything he heard from me to the grave with him.
    “We were friends ever since we were kids,” I began. “We lived in the slums of Avendoom, and we went through a lot together … hunger, freezing winters, raids by the guards.… We survived all sorts of things.… Bass and I looked out for each other and more or less managed to make ends meet until a master thief took us under his wing. His name was For.…
    “That man taught us a lot.… For used to say I had a natural gift for thievery, and maybe he was right. Bass wasn’t quite so.… When were living on the street, I was the one who picked people’s pockets, not him. My friend had a different passion—cards and dice. For eventually gave up on my friend, and Bass got more and more involved in gambling.”
    I frowned. I still found remembering this episode from the past as painful as ever.
    “A couple of times he got himself into nasty situations when he was completely wiped out. Back then For was a major figure in the criminal world of Avendoom and he was able to get his pupil off the hook. But everything has to come to an end sometime. One day Bass got into really serious trouble—my friend found himself owing a large sum of money to Markun, a man who was the head of the Avendoom Guild of Thieves for a long time. Bass didn’t tell me or For anything about it. He just took our money and disappeared. He stole his teacher’s and his friend’s gold. Then the rumors spread that Markun’s lads had left him floating under the piers, but the body was never found. For these last twelve years For and I thought that Bass was dead. So you can imagine how amazed I was to see him in Ranneng, alive and well.”
    “Yes indeed…,” Eel grunted. “Let’s hope that your meeting really was just coincidence.… You’re not planning to meet up with him for a talk?”
    “No,” I replied without even thinking about it, and the conversation fizzled out of its own accord.
    Eel and I turned our attention back to what was happening down by the lectern.
    The professor was clutching the instrument of torture in one hand as he lectured the students.
    “… As you can see, the dental system of gnomes is rather similar to the human dental system. But there are certain differences. The structure of the skull and the alveolar appendages is not quite the same in gnomes. This race has a straight bite, and fewer teeth than humans—only twenty-four, twelve in each jaw. They have no canines and only one set of premolars. Unfortunately, my friends, I am not able to show you the teeth of orcs or elves. But believe me, they are absolutely identical, which proves just how closely related the two races are. The hyperdevelopment of the lower canines has led to the development of a rather specific bite in the elves and the Firstborn—when the mouth is opened, the lower jaw is displaced.… But I am digressing. The reason that has brought our patient to us today is the fourth tooth on the upper right. I am inclined to believe that the factor that induced the pain was abrupt hypothermia of the entire organism. But here, of course, it would be better to take a case history, because suppositions will not get you very far. I remember I had a case in which my patient…”
    “I think this will go on and on for a very long time.” Eel chuckled.
    The Garrakian wasn’t the only one who thought so. Several of the students were looking quite frankly bored. Kli-Kli was gazing curiously at the glittering knife left lying beside the corpse, and Deler was yawning desperately, covering his mouth with his massive hand. Hallas was squirming impatiently in the chair, his color gradually changing from pale to scarlet. Just as the talkative professor started analyzing the tenth clinical case from his own practice, the gnome’s patience finally ran out.
    “Aaah! I swear by the ice-worms!” the gnome roared, then he leapt up out of his chair and set off resolutely in our