Read Online Tides of Rythe (The Rythe Trilogy) by Craig Saunders - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Craig Saunders
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It takes a special kind of breed to be smart, whether they come to their conclusions swiftly, or with the patience and planning only a builder could bring to bear.
At last, the quill joined the paper. The Kuh’taenium was under attack…and it was time for the family to do their duty. The builders were going to war. Their name would be remembered again.
Sventhan wrote as he thought, with great care. It was this attention to care that ensured his family had survived through the ages – it pays to heed caution when creating tower structures from blocks of stone.
He could sense movement in the fabric of society. The Protectorate becoming overly bold, a sense of cowering among the people of the street, a darkening of the soul of the city. The buildings spoke to him, as they spoke to all his family – and they were afraid. The souls of people soaked into them, and the buildings felt their fear. He should have heeded the warnings long ago, but now there were no more excuses for inaction.
Gurt was family. While Reih did not know the builders, they knew her. She had asked Gurt for help, not knowing what she had set in motion, but now events were out of her hands. She must live. She was twinned with the building. There was no other way.
Duty was clear. Protect the Kuh’taenium, at whatever the cost.
The family might be simple builders who knew no other trade, but they could still wield the hammer, and the blade.
*
Chapter Fourteen
Jek Yrie sought allies in any place he could. He had travelled further than any of his peers (he thought he only had a few – those who were among the ascended, and even then only on the most tenuous of levels) seeing the distant lands that were to be of no consequence in the coming battle. There were thousands of small islands, archipelagos, peninsulas, mountain plains, cavernous lakes and natural tunnels underground, forests, deserts – anywhere people could live, there were humans. Some places he could not travel, no matter how powerful he had become since his eyes had turned to red; the blasted planes of the underground, where the Naum were rumoured to exist in their land of perpetual night, within mountain ranges where strange light skinned people lived under the stone, in the depths of the sea. If the Speculate could not see his destination, he could not travel there by magical means. But it did not matter. These hidden peoples, little more than barbaric tribes eking out a pathetic existence, were not players in the final game – the return.
He was not interested in them, but he was interested in an isolated city on the coast of a distant continent – the fourth continent. There lived a people not unlike his own, a diluted race of Hierarchs, touched by time and weakening blood, but the city he saw through his blooded eyes was remarkable in many ways. The Hierarchs there ruled with open cruelty, its humans little more than slaves.
The only problem was how to approach them. He would have to think on it. But he had time yet. If all of his resources could not stop the awakening of the wizard, then he would need all the allies with power he could muster. The future was far from certain. But foolish was the leader who did not plan for every eventuality. He was a proud being, but wise enough to know that even he did not have the foresight of the gods. He was, after all, still mortal.
Well, close enough.
*
Chapter Fifteen
Forces clashed across the world of Rythe, and pulled apart again, seeking weakness, openings, that elusive chink in an enemy’s armour.
On Lianthre, Roth’s race, the mighty rahken s, stood against the Protectorate. They did not seek to openly attack their might, but held their ground, holding the underground lairs of their kind, allowing magically gifted human dissidents sanctuary, actively seeking out those with vestiges of magical power and training them in the ways of the magi.
They would need allies in the final battle, and the humans
At last, the quill joined the paper. The Kuh’taenium was under attack…and it was time for the family to do their duty. The builders were going to war. Their name would be remembered again.
Sventhan wrote as he thought, with great care. It was this attention to care that ensured his family had survived through the ages – it pays to heed caution when creating tower structures from blocks of stone.
He could sense movement in the fabric of society. The Protectorate becoming overly bold, a sense of cowering among the people of the street, a darkening of the soul of the city. The buildings spoke to him, as they spoke to all his family – and they were afraid. The souls of people soaked into them, and the buildings felt their fear. He should have heeded the warnings long ago, but now there were no more excuses for inaction.
Gurt was family. While Reih did not know the builders, they knew her. She had asked Gurt for help, not knowing what she had set in motion, but now events were out of her hands. She must live. She was twinned with the building. There was no other way.
Duty was clear. Protect the Kuh’taenium, at whatever the cost.
The family might be simple builders who knew no other trade, but they could still wield the hammer, and the blade.
*
Chapter Fourteen
Jek Yrie sought allies in any place he could. He had travelled further than any of his peers (he thought he only had a few – those who were among the ascended, and even then only on the most tenuous of levels) seeing the distant lands that were to be of no consequence in the coming battle. There were thousands of small islands, archipelagos, peninsulas, mountain plains, cavernous lakes and natural tunnels underground, forests, deserts – anywhere people could live, there were humans. Some places he could not travel, no matter how powerful he had become since his eyes had turned to red; the blasted planes of the underground, where the Naum were rumoured to exist in their land of perpetual night, within mountain ranges where strange light skinned people lived under the stone, in the depths of the sea. If the Speculate could not see his destination, he could not travel there by magical means. But it did not matter. These hidden peoples, little more than barbaric tribes eking out a pathetic existence, were not players in the final game – the return.
He was not interested in them, but he was interested in an isolated city on the coast of a distant continent – the fourth continent. There lived a people not unlike his own, a diluted race of Hierarchs, touched by time and weakening blood, but the city he saw through his blooded eyes was remarkable in many ways. The Hierarchs there ruled with open cruelty, its humans little more than slaves.
The only problem was how to approach them. He would have to think on it. But he had time yet. If all of his resources could not stop the awakening of the wizard, then he would need all the allies with power he could muster. The future was far from certain. But foolish was the leader who did not plan for every eventuality. He was a proud being, but wise enough to know that even he did not have the foresight of the gods. He was, after all, still mortal.
Well, close enough.
*
Chapter Fifteen
Forces clashed across the world of Rythe, and pulled apart again, seeking weakness, openings, that elusive chink in an enemy’s armour.
On Lianthre, Roth’s race, the mighty rahken s, stood against the Protectorate. They did not seek to openly attack their might, but held their ground, holding the underground lairs of their kind, allowing magically gifted human dissidents sanctuary, actively seeking out those with vestiges of magical power and training them in the ways of the magi.
They would need allies in the final battle, and the humans
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