Read Online The Demon Awakens by R.A. Salvatore - Free Book Online

stop the behemoth. The fomorian charged ahead with a tremendous, hideous howl, its cudgel going high. Elbryan, puny and helpless beneath it, held aloft his short sword, though he could not possibly deflect such a mighty blow.
    The next volley was concentrated, sixty arrows flying fast for the giant’s face and throat, sixty bolts that looked indeed like a swarm of bees. The fomorian staggered once, twice, and then again, as the bolts burrowed in, one on top of the other, a dozen on top of the previous dozen. Finally, the stinging ended, and the fomorian tried to move forward, back toward its prey. But before it could get anywhere near to the young man, the giant went down, choking in its own blood.
    Elbryan never saw it; he had fainted dead away.

 
    > CHAPTER 5
     
    > God’s Chosen
     
     
    Brother Avelyn turned hard on the crank, both wood and man groaning with each rotation. When would that bucket finally appear? the young novice wondered.
    “Faster,” insisted Quintall, Avelyn’s work partner and classmate. The class had been divided by birth dates; Avelyn and Quintall had been put together solely because they had been born in the same week, and not for compatibility, either physical or emotional. Indeed, the two seemed obviously mismatched. Quintall was the shortest man in the class of twenty-five, while Avelyn was among the tallest. Both were large boned, but Avelyn was gawky and awkward, whereas Quintall was muscular, a fine athlete.
    They were opposites in temperament, as well: Avelyn calm and reverent, always in control, and Quintall a “firework,” as Master Siherton, the class overseer, often appropriately referred to him.
    “Is it near?” Avelyn asked after a few more unrewarded turns.
    “Halfway,” Quintall answered coldly, “if that.”
    Avelyn sighed deeply and put his aching arms into motion.
    Quintall offered a disgusted snort; he would have had the bucket up by this time and the pair could have gone off and gotten their midday meal. But it was Avelyn’s turn to crank, and the taskmasters were particular about such things. If Quintall tried to sneak in and push that crank, it would likely cost them both their meal.
    “He is an impatient one,” noted Master Jojonah, a portly man of about fifty, with soft brown eyes and rich brown hair that showed not a speck of gray. Jojonah’s skin was tanned and smooth, except for a fan of lines spreading out from each of his eyes—“credibility wrinkles,” he called them.
    “Firework,” explained Master Siherton, tall and angular and thin, though his shoulders were wide, protruding many inches from either side of his skinny neck. Siherton’s features befit his rank of class overseer, the disciplinarian of the newest brothers. His face was sharp and hawkish, his eyes small and dark—and smaller still on those many occasions that he squinted ominously at his young students. “Quintall is full of passion,” he added with obvious admiration.
    Jojonah regarded the man curiously. They were inside the abbey’s highest chamber, a long, narrow room with windows overlooking the rough ocean breakers on one side and the abbey courtyard on the other. All twenty-four—one novice had been forced to leave because of illness—brothers of the newest class were out in the courtyard, tending their chores, but the focus of the two masters was Avelyn and Quintall, considered the exceptional novices.
    “Avelyn is the best of the class,” Jojonah remarked, mostly to gauge Siherton’s reaction.
    The taller man shrugged noncommittally.
    “Some say that he is the best in many years,” Jojonah pressed. It was true enough; Avelyn’s incredible dedication was fast becoming the talk of St.-Mere-Abelle.
    Again, the shrug. “He is without passion,” Siherton replied.
    “Without human passion because he is closer to God?” Jojonah replied, thinking that he had finally caught Siherton.
    “Perhaps because he is already dead,” the tall man said dryly, and he turned to