Aenir by Garth Nix, Steve Rawlings Read Free Book Online Page A

that she could fight and kill. Not these games of words and magic.
    "Even if the Danir who bound you was the same as my far ancestor, I do not have the knowledge to free you," Milla said. "I do not count this answer as the third in the game. You must ask a proper riddle."
    "No, no," sobbed the Face, tears of darker water streaming down its cheeks. "You must free me. So many Chosen have come over the centuries, but none could free me, for none were of Danir's line. I would serve as your Spiritshadow"
    "She's already got me!" interrupted Odris. "What would she need a great lump of wet for?"
    "Please," begged the Face. "I have sat here too long. Set me free!"
    "I do not know how," whispered Milla. She felt the Face's desire for freedom. The worst punishment an Icecarl could imagine would be to be penned up and unable to move. If the Icecarls could not follow the Selski migration, they would die.
    "I do," said Odris. "Do you want me to tell you how?"
     

 

     
     

CHAPTER TEN
     

    After a few hours of steady walking, Tal had left the grasslands behind. Possibly they had been moving the other way as well, all the time. In Aenir it was hard to be sure.
    The grass ended in a completely straight border that stretched as far as Tal could see to the north and south. On the western side it was grass, on the eastern, a strange desert of red sand and spiky blue crystals that grew up in columns, looking from a distance almost like trees.
    The major difference was that the crystals were very sharp, and they seemed to be carnivorous. At least, there were scraps of flesh and skin hanging off many of the "plants," and all of them were surrounded by rings of broken bones.
    Tal gave each crystal plant a wide berth. As far as he could tell, they couldn't move, but he didn't trust them. They might be like the trees of the forest where he'd arrived and would move when it suited them.
    As he walked farther into the desert, it got much hotter. The crystals shone more brightly, with a hypnotic glare. This was how they caught their prey, and Tal had to stop himself several times from walking into one of the plants. He wished for his old shadowguard. It would have shaded his head from the sun, and shielded his eyes. But the shadowguard was gone, back to living its life as a growing Dattu.
    Then Tal remembered that he did have a companion that could shade him. He stopped and looked up. Adras had been trailing behind, quite high up. Now he was nowhere to be seen. But he wasn't too far away. Tal could feel his presence, a connection between them. He recognized it as being like the link he'd had with his shadowguard.
    "Adras!" Tal shouted. His voice was hoarse. He'd drunk from a small stream that morning, but had been wanting another drink for some hours. This desert was much hotter than it had any right to be.
    Adras did not answer his call.
    Tal called again, and listened. There was a faint boom up ahead, a rather pathetic thunderclap.
    Tal sighed and began to slog toward the sound, carefully winding his way between the crystal plants.
    A few hundred stretches farther on, he came to an oasis in the blue crystal desert a patch of more usual earth, with a small bubbling spring surrounded by a stand of tall, thin trees with greenypurple fronds.
    Adras was hovering above the spring, sucking up moisture. A thick column of vapor spun out of the spring and into his open mouth.
    Tal hurried down to get a drink. There might be something to eat, too, for the trees had fruit between the fronds.
    There was also fruit on the ground. Tal had a drink, then picked up a piece of fruit and examined it. It had a hard skin, but was soft and pulpy inside. He had seen such fruit before, though only in baskets brought to the Chosen Enclave. His mother had called it cakefruit, cut it into slices, and cooked it in the oven.
    Tal couldn't do that here, but he did roast the fruit with a beam of hot white light from his Sunstone, until the pulp browned. Eating it brought back