Morningstar by David Gemmell Read Free Book Online

her eyes were wide and frightened. She shrank back against the side of the building, her gaze locked to us. I smiled at her, and she turned and sped away between the houses.
    “Ilka,” said Jarek. “The village whore.”
    “She is but a child.”
    “Fifteen or thereabouts,” he said, “but she was raped twoyears ago in the forest and left to die. She is an orphan with no hope of marriage. What else could she become?”
    “Why no hope of marriage? She is comely.”
    “The rapists cut out her tongue,” he answered.
    “And for that she is condemned?”
    He stopped and turned to face me. “Why do you say condemned? She has employment, she earns her bread, she is not despised.”
    I was lost for words. I could see from his expression that he was genuinely curious and lacked any understanding of the girl’s grief. Her future had been stolen from her, the gift of speech cruelly ripped from her mouth. Yet she was the one who faced a lifetime of punishment. I tried to explain this, but Jarek merely chuckled, shook his head, and walked on. I wondered then if I had missed some subtlety or overlooked an obvious point. But her face stayed in my mind, haunted and frightened.
    We came at last to a narrow house built near the water’s edge. Beyond the dwelling was a tall net hut and a fenced area that had been dug over and shaped for a vegetable patch. Nothing was growing now, but inside the house there were sacks of carrots and dried onions and various containers filled with edible tubers that were unknown to me. It was a long one-room dwelling with a central hearth of fired clay and stone. Screens had been set around the hearth, and there were four rough-hewn seats close to the fire. Against the far wall was a wide bed. Jarek loosened the string of his bow and laid it against the wall, his quiver and sword alongside it. Shrugging off his sheepskin cloak, he sat beside the fire, staring into the flames.
    “Who lives here?” I asked, pulling up a seat alongside him.
    “Megan,” he answered, which told me little.
    “Is she your lover?”
    He chuckled and shook his head; he had a fine smile, warm and friendly. “You’ll meet her soon enough,” he said. “Show me some magick. I have been here for only a few moments, and already I’m bored.”
    “What would you like to see?”
    “I don’t care. Entertain me. Pretend I’m a full audience in a tavern.”
    “Very well …” I sat back, thinking through my repertoire. Then I smiled. Before his eyes on the dirt floor a small building appeared, then another, and another. Between them was an alleyway.A young girl, no taller than the length of my hand, came running into sight, pursued by ruffians. A brightly garbed young man carrying a harp entered the scene. “Stop that!” he cried, his voice thin and reedy and far away. The ruffians advanced on him, but suddenly a tall hero leapt from an upper balcony. He moved like a dancer, yet his sword was deadly, and soon the ruffians were either dead or fleeing. I let the scene fade from sight. It took great concentration, but to have enchantment merely vanish always seemed to me to be the mark of a clumsy magicker.
    He was silent for a moment, staring at the dirt floor. “That’s good, bard,” he said softly. “That’s very good. Is that how it looked to you?”
    “It did at the time.”
    “How have you lived so long?” he asked me.
    “What do you mean?”
    “The romance in your heart. This world of ours is a garden of evil. You should have been a monk, locked away in some gray monastery with high walls and strong gates.”
    “Life can be like the stories,” I said. “There are still heroes, men of great soul.”
    “You have met them?”
    “No, but that does not mean they do not exist. Manannan, the last knight of the Gabala, and Rabain the Vampyre slayer, both walked these woods, saw the stars above the same mountains. It is a dream of mine to see such a man, perhaps to serve him. A soldier or a poet, I do not