Read Online The Four Forges by Jenna Rhodes - Free Book Online Page B

her things. Leaves. Twigs with moss. Caterpillars. She would read the seasons ahead, and tell people when to plant, what to grow, when to shear.” Sevryn put his chin up then. She had a worth. They had had a worth. He hadn’t been turned out till her coin ran out, and her return was so long overdue, only the worst could be imagined. Lost. He’d lost her. Mista of the long sable hair fixed with many small jeweled combs, combs her lover, he’d , bought for her and which she’d sold one by one while they’d journeyed to look for him. Beautiful in Sevryn’s memory with her sable hair and light blue eyes, smiling at him as she reached out to push aside his own unruly hair, reading his face just as she read the leaves and mosses of faraway places. His father had had gray eyes, like his own, she would murmur to him. Well, not like his own. His father had had Vaelinar eyes of many colors, rich and striking.
    “Ah.”
    Sevryn cleared his throat roughly.
    “Time passes differently for us than others,” the Vaelinar commented. “He may have forgotten that.”
    Sevryn cleared his throat again and spat to one side, dismissing the father who’d left them.
    “Well. This visit has surprised me in more ways than one.” The other leaned a shoulder against a charred beam and the whole lean-to creaked ominously. He made a fist and rapped his knuckles against the wood. He looked to Sevryn again.
    Sevryn felt himself color. “I . . . hmmm . . . have it rigged for noise. Just in case. It’s lashed tightly, but it sways and moans.”
    “Good idea. It does seem a good deal more unsafe than it is. All right. Here is the thing. You’ve Vaelinar blood. Most of my kin would just as soon see you dead as would the others of Kerith for that, but I feel that blood is blood. I’ve my own ideas about the purity of our line and what our get have to offer. I’ve business to handle, but I’ll be back for you.” He looked about the bolt-hole. “You stay here?”
    “Only if there’s reason. I’ve lodging of a kind in town.”
    “Stay here on nights when the moon is full. Can you manage that? I don’t know when I’ll be back, but I will.”
    “But—”
    “What? You have better prospects?”
    Sevryn closed his mouth. He didn’t like the idea of another winter when the traders’ stables would be nearly shut down from the weather, and his life on the streets that much harder. Soon enough, the traders would notice that he did not age as they did, and he’d have to move on anyway. It had happened before and would again. “No.”
    “My name is Gilgarran. Use it, and I will know, and you’ll be dead for your indiscretion.”
    “That is hardly incentive for me to stay to meet you.”
    The Vaelinar chuckled. “True, but it’s only fair of me to warn you.” He put his hand out. “Shake on an unlikely partnership.”
    “Partnership?”
    “I need an apprentice and you need to find out who the hell you are.” He waited, a touch of impatience dancing in his aquamarine eyes, lighter streaks accenting them with liveliness. The stud in his ear winked as though a star had been brought down from the skies.
    Sevryn stirred. It was one of those moments when he knew the whole world, his part of it anyway, would change by what he did at that moment. Some people could move through life unaware of decisions that so affected them, but he could not. Something as minor as squashing a bug or as major as pledging a partnership could and would change his world. Of course, those moments were few and far between, but he recognized this one. He straightened, took his hand out from behind his back, wiped it on his trousers to clean it as best he could, before placing it in the other’s hold.
    They shook. The strength of the fingers he knew from a still throbbing ear, but this was tempered strength, and a warmth, and . . . a promise. He could feel it leap between them.
    Gilgarran opened his hand then and stepped back. He fished inside his cloak, and coins