Read Online Storm at the Edge of Time by Pamela F. Service - Free Book Online Page B

flatly.
    â€œNo, it’s not!” she objected. “We must be able to work magic. Urkar already had us doing it, looking through the sky to see that supernatural storm. I don’t quite know how I did that, but I just kept looking harder and harder, like Urkar said, and then it was like I had switched on an extra battery or something becausesuddenly I
could
see deeper, and that made me want to look deeper yet.”
    â€œThat’s it!” Arni said excitedly. “I don’t know what a battery is, but for me it was like discovering I had an extra arm or eye that let me do things I normally couldn’t. What about you, Tyaak?”
    â€œWhat about me what? This whole thing is ridiculous.”
    â€œBut you saw through the sky, too, didn’t you?” Arni demanded.
    â€œYes, but—”
    Jamie interrupted. “So you tapped into some magical force. And you’ve done it before, haven’t you? You just don’t want to admit it.”
    â€œNonsense! That had nothing to do with magic!” “So what is ‘that,’ anyway?”
    â€œNothing! Look, the riders are starting across now. If we are going to do this, we had better go.”
    He headed quickly down the path and the others followed. Jamie didn’t call Tyaak on the sudden way he’d changed the subject. She was concentrating too hard on hugging the inside of the cliff path. It had been safe enough for horses, she knew, but she always felt queasy on slanting paths with nothing along one side.
    Once at the bottom, she decided to drop the earlier matter. Some things were best not probed at, she thought uneasily, and quickly turned to Arni. “Are you sure this staff is on the island?”
    He shrugged. “Not
sure,
no. But don’t you sort of get a feeling it is?”
    Tyaak grunted. “The only thing you’re feeling is that you have a home and food over there. But we have tolook someplace.” He walked to where the small beach joined the still-damp rocks and began to cross.
    Sighing, Jamie followed. At the moment, food seemed as good a motive as any.
    Foam-fringed ocean was still drawing away on both sides, but ahead of them now stretched a natural causeway of dark rock, water-worn slabs all tilting up at the same angle. The pattern was echoed in the cliffs of the island ahead, where slab upon tilted slab was piled up and capped with a layer of pale winter grass. The low end of the island that they were approaching seemed weighed down with stone houses, but the rest, tilting swiftly upward like the prow of a ship, was dotted only with white sheep.
    But Jamie couldn’t afford much sightseeing. The rocks they were crossing were damp and slippery. Several times her leather boots skidded into trapped pools of tidal water, sending tiny creatures scurrying out of her way. Once she reached down and scooped up a handful of little shells, pink, green, and white, and let them tinkle in her hand. But then she had to scatter them back. The heavy wool outfit she was wearing had no pockets.
    The wind roaring through the channel was even noisier here. But once they stood under the island’s dark cliffs, its song mingled with voices and barking dogs: the sounds of the village that began above them on the cliff’s edge.
    â€œThe first thing we should do,” Arni said as he stopped to wring water out of the hem of his cape, “is go to my house and get something to eat. Then we can plan our attack.”
    â€œWhat do you have in mind?” Jamie asked.
    â€œWell, think. If someone were to bring home an interesting old piece of carved wood, what would he do with it?”
    â€œUse it to start a fire?” Tyaak suggested.
    â€œNo! Wood’s too rare to use for that. We burn peat. He’d probably use it as a walking stick or as part of a fancy piece of furniture. Or maybe as a rafter. Yes, I think that’s it. Something high, near a roof, feels right. Come on.