Read Online The Towers of the Sunset by L. E. Modesitt Jr. - Free Book Online

perhaps ten cubits from his hollowedout den.
    Between the branches of the low, bluish-needled trees there is a distance of less than two cubits, an expanse untouched even by hare prints. Behind the spruces, the wind gusts shuffle and reshuffle the white powder that has already covered most of the lines left by Creslin's skis.
    Unmoving, he watches, his left hand ready to pull the sword from the scabbard set on the pack by his feet. The wind reshuffles the fine ice dust again, moaning without tone in the darkness that has dropped on the high forest.
    Creslin sinks into a lower profile within his hollow, drawing pack and sword within, still watching the silence.
    Wooooooooo . . .
    He ignores the bird of prey, wriggling only his toes to warm them within his still-dry boots.
    Click ...
    A frozen limb, or a pine cone, drops against a tree trunk.
    Wooooooo . . .
    The shadow is back, although it appears from nowhere.
    Creslin sucks in his breath silently, for the shadowy figure wears no parka, stands on the powdered snow crust without making a track, and stares across the space between them. She wears but thin trousers and a high-necked and long-sleeved blouse. She is clearly female. Her eyes burn.
    Creslin stares back, but says nothing.
    Then the shadow is gone as if it had never been. Creslin shivers, for he has never seen the woman before, nor one like her. Yet she hunts him. Of that he is certain.
    Although he is not cold, he draws his parka around him. The morning will be early, and he has hundreds of kays upon hundreds of kays to go before he can escape the regent of Westwind and the Marshall of the Roof of the World. And that is just the beginning.
    But first, he must escape. If he can ever escape. He purses his lips, studies the two spruces for a last time before leaning back into his den, fully out of the wind. Wooooooo ... Click . . .
     
     
    XIV
     
    EVEN BEFORE DAWN, Creslin wakes stiff, but pleased that no shadows await him, female or otherwise.
    Moving slowly in air so cold and still that the crystals of his breath fall like snow upon his parka sleeves, the would-have-been consort wriggles his toes to ensure they are still functional before he extracts the small packet of battle rations from his pack, chewing the dried-apple slices first. Each small bite is a chore for his dry mouth.
    He moistens his lips with a thin trickle of water from the melt bottle carried in his trousers. When he is finished, he scoops more snow into the bottle and replaces it, then nibbles on a piece of hard cheese from his pack. The remaining dried fruit and cheese he repacks.
    Silent is the high forest, except for the faintest whisper of branches and breeze stirring the dry powder snow that lies on the heavier whiteness.
    Creslin must also meet other needs, and before too long, despite the chill such necessities will entail.
    The night winds have swept clear his tracks, or enough that it would take far more guards than accompanied him to find him. With that thought he proceeds, beginning with physical necessities, then with packing, and covering his shelter. Standing on the skis, he brushes away as much as he can of his traces, trusting to the snows and winds to do the rest.
    His pace is measured; he takes even, long-sliding stride upon long-sliding stride. Before the cloud-shrouded sun has lifted dawn into gray day, he has covered another three kays or more through the high forest that falls and rises, falls and rises, as he heads toward the northeast and the eastern barrier peaks of the Westhorns.
    The dry whisper of wind through fir branches, loose snow sifting down from the trees, and the faint scraping of his skis: the sole sounds he hears as his legs drive him onward.
    No roads, no trails, mark the northeast route he takes, and it is for this reason he takes it, knowing that where lies a surface uncovered by snow, or by a road, there the guards would find him.
    Food? He has enough for an eight-day, in battle rations. Water? He has