Read Online The Circle of Stone (Darkest Age) by A. J. Lake - Free Book Online

fire set by bandits, although they may have taken advantage of those that managed to escape,’ Cluaran said, pointing.
    It was a hundred paces ahead of them, but clearly visible through the stumps: a great circle of blackness. The ash had piled like snow around its edges, drifting downwards into the pit with each breath of wind. It was wider than the black hole they had seen in Grufweld’s forest, and there were no stumps around it: the place had been a clearing when the fire hit it. The sad heaps of ashes within the circle gave way to charred wooden beams at the edge: this had once been a settlement.
    Elspeth had come up beside him and stopped, her eyes wide with horror. Beside her, Wulf scuffed with his feet in the ash as if it were snow. Elspeth reached down to touch something among the blackened debris at the circle’s edge – then recoiled and turned away, grabbing at the child as she did so.
    ‘Come away, Wulf,’ she said, and her voice shook.
    Edmund fought back sickness as he looked down. The thing Elspeth had seen was a charred human bone.
    ‘It’s still hot,’ Cathbar muttered. From the drifting ash around the pit, wisps of smoke rose into the cold air. ‘
He
did this; no question of it.’
    Elspeth was standing at the edge of the clearing with her back to them, her shoulders shaking as she gripped the boy’s hand. Eolande stood beside them, rigid and stony-faced.
    ‘How many . . . ?’ Edmund could not get the words out. ‘How many people would have been here?’
    ‘Twenty, maybe,’ Cluaran said softly. ‘There’s space for a dozen huts, I’d say.’ He turned away. ‘It would have been quick,’ he muttered.
    ‘He must have come down as a fireball, and then . . .’ Cathbar looked around. ‘Where did he go then?’
    No path had been smashed through the trees. The black, levelled stumps stretched around them in all directions, giving way to taller trunks in the far distance.
    ‘Edmund?’ Cluaran called – but Edmund was already searching: casting his mind around for any sign; any flicker of life. Nothing. Apart from themselves, it seemed that the whole forest was dead. He cast further, finding only a few small creatures hiding in deep burrows or fled into water. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘There’s nobody.’
    Elspeth had come over to him again, the child trailing behind her. ‘We should look for Wulf’s parents,’ she said. Shebent down to the boy. ‘Wulf,’ she said, ‘can you remember anything about where your family was when the fire started?’
    The boy thought. ‘There was a river,’ he said.
    Edmund cast his eyes back to the creatures that had been looking at the water: a small bird, perching nervously on a clump of reeds; a vole or water rat, submerged to the nose, watching the bubbles and flecks of white ash as they floated past its whiskers. He opened his eyes.
    ‘It’s this way,’ he said.
    They found a stream-bed first, dried to a channel of cracked mud. Further along the mud became sticky, interspersed with a few damp pebbles, but they had not yet reached water when they came to the remains.
    There were two heaps of ash, at the stream’s edge, one of them covering a blackened end of wood that had recognisably been a plank. Edmund froze, as he spotted several teeth littering the ash piles. He also noticed that the ground was speckled with streaks and blobs of dull colour.
    ‘Metal,’ said Cluaran, kneeling to look at the blobs closely. ‘This might have been a brooch or ring: brass, with a blue stone. That long one could have been a knife: cheap ware, to have melted so easily.’ He stepped back. ‘They must have been here to trade with the forest dwellers,’ he said, ‘and the fire caught them before they could reach the river.’
    Wulf was staring at the little heaps in silence. These must have been his father’s wares, Edmund thought, and wonderedat the child’s calmness. Elspeth moved close to Wulf as if trying to comfort him, but the boy did not move