Secret of the Giants' Staircase by Amy Lynn Green Read Free Book Online Page A

faulty belief more than he trusted the messenger. The messenger tried again to gain audience with the sovereign, but he was denied. Three days later, the Westlund army attacked Lidia and put it under siege. After a few months, the city fell and was destroyed.”
    Jesse didn’t try to picture that scene. He had never seen warfare up close, not living in the tiny village of Mir. The war on the Northern Waste was weeks of travel away from District One, and very little news came to them from the battlefield.
    â€œTell me, Jesse, was it the messenger’s fault that the city fell?”
    â€œNo,” Jesse said immediately. “He did his duty. Even more by going back after he was thrown out of the sovereign’s court.”
    â€œAnd that is what you must always remember as a messenger of the truth of God,” Parvel said. “You cannot make people accept the truth. You can only present it and pray that God will change their hearts.”
    Jesse thought about that. “But there’s one difference from your story. After the second try, the messenger left. I will get thrown out of the court a hundred times if I need to. I will not give up on Rae and Silas.”
    â€œThat’s the spirit, Jesse.” Parvel clapped him on the back, probably harder than he meant to. He often underestimated his own strength. “When they are ready to listen, we will be there.”
    Jesse nodded. “If we make it out of the swamps alive.”
    â€œThe Swamps of the Vanished,” Parvel mused, stroking his chin. “I wonder what the Westlunders would think of that? It’s quite possible they marched across this very ground.”
    â€œYou mean—” Jesse started.
    â€œYes. There was once a city in these swamps…Lidia, the very one that fell to the Westlunder army. That was the last Amarias ever heard from these parts. The Lidians simply disappeared.”
    â€œOthers too, from what I’ve heard,” Jesse added.
    Parvel raised a skeptical eyebrow. “And what, exactly, have you heard?”
    â€œJust a few stories,” Jesse said quickly, “told by boastful travelers and traders at my aunt and uncle’s inn after a bit too much to drink. Probably just lies and exaggerations.”
    The truth was, he was trying to forget the stories he had heard. None of them ended well. They were tales of noxious bogs, “where just a whiff could poison your blood,” not to mention the strange creatures, including dragons. There were men who claimed that they were the only survivors of an expedition to the other side of the swamps, telling how the others in their group disappeared overnight, with most of their possessions left behind.
    And they told of giants, ones with matted, greasy hair and fists the size of horse carts. Evil smiles, too, ones that glowed in the darkness of the swamp. The Westlunders, though Jesse had never heard anyone call them by such a polite name.
    â€œThey say the giants of the swamp will jump across Amarias in three steps and snatch children from their beds as they go,” Parvel said, swooping down and picking Jesse up on the last words.
    Jesse kicked him in the shin, laughing. “Put me down, Parvel.”
    Parvel did. “Isn’t that what your nurse told you when you were young?”
    â€œI didn’t have a nurse, Parvel,” Jesse said, “just a mother and a father.”
    There it was again. Talk of his parents always made Jesse pull back. But if Parvel noticed, he didn’t say anything. Jesse was glad. Even though Parvel was usually right, he didn’t want a philosophical answer for why suffering and separation existed. He wanted his parents.
    â€œWhat is the other squad doing in the swamps, anyway?” Jesse asked, to change the subject.
    Parvel frowned in concentration. “You ought to ask Silas to be sure, but I’m fairly certain they are hunting for the fabled city of the giants, a fortress that