Days Of Light And Shadow by Greg Curtis Read Free Book Online Page B

sacrifice. And part of that was in always looking respectable. That didn’t come naturally to him. He had been a wild child, and still he’d rather play in the fields of home than walk the streets of a strange city in all his finery. And he wasn’t sure it even helped. Those that didn’t care that he was human, didn’t care what he wore. While to those that did care, he could have worn a suit of moon silver and it wouldn’t have mattered. They saw his sturdy frame, dark brown hair and muscles grown from years of training in combat, and saw a savage. Dressed in all his finery he was still a savage to them.
     
    At least Leafshade was a pretty city. Very pretty with its polished wood filigree adorning every building, fence and lamppost. And of course every building and structure was constructed of wood, sawn, sanded, stained and polished until it shone in the sun. Carefully trimmed flower gardens were bedded in front of every house, while the vegetable gardens and orchard trees filled the back yards. And between all the buildings were large open tracts of lawn, the green grass glowing with vitality.
     
    Even the paths had been thoughtfully set out. The perfectly placed flat river stones ran across the endless green lawn that was the base of the city. Together they formed a delicate tracery of river stones that ran in gentle curves from one end of the city to the other, and connected every house and building between them.
     
    Iros was constantly amazed by the river stone paths. It must have taken centuries for the masons to lay them out. The stones were dragged up from the nearby Aora, gathered together in a makeshift store as masons split them, then carted over to the city where more artisans had carved out the shape of each new path to be built and levelled it with river sand. Then each stone was painstakingly placed in the sand and when it was just right, set there with a special preparation of lime mortar and clay. Some days it seemed to him that the elves took even more care with their foot paths then they did with their houses. And they took great care with their houses.
     
    The architecture wasn’t truly to his taste; Iros much preferred the permanence of stone to wood. The solidity of block work to the delicacy of carving. There was something reassuring in stone. But still the houses were well built as well as perfectly decorated, and inside the mission he seldom heard the wind or felt the rain.
     
    But the perfection of the city’s construction was only a part of what amazed him. The artistry of the paths as they ran from the front door step of every house and building was even more breath taking. None of the paths were straight. They were flat and even, but the elves did love their curves. And no two were alike. Yet when seen from above, say from the first floor balcony of the mission, one could see the tracery that the paths made across the verdant beauty of the grass, and realise that together they formed a pattern. The buildings seemed randomly placed on the giant pasture, the paths meandering, and yet together they formed a giant weaving of stone and wood across the grass. The pattern of the veins in a fern leaf. The tracery of the wind swept ripples of water across a lake.
     
    When the city was busy, when the people were rushing about their duties, the elves’ brightly coloured hair shining in the sun made it seem as though the paths were really rivers of flowing magic. There was a reason they were known as rainbow elves. He loved to stand on the balcony of the top floor of the mission and watch that.
     
    In the distance, there was the forest, completely surrounding the city, framing it like an artist’s painting. It was a strange thing for a man born and raised in a land of flowing green meadows and fields to see. Leafshade had been built in a glade. A huge glade three leagues across, and so instead of a backdrop of distant mountains or seas, there were trees. Walls of impossibly tall