Sword of Caledor by William King Read Free Book Online

its possessors heroes and mighty champions among humans. It had not brought them luck though. Johan Argentes, the last bearer, had become a landless wandering mercenary.
    Tyrion and his brother had spent years following this long trail across the Old World, retracing Argentes’s steps, following up all rumours of his whereabouts. The trail had been lost when Argentes had set sail from Estalia aboard an explorer’s ship bound for the uttermost west. Leiber had been the ship’s captain. It had never returned to its home port and it seemed the trail was lost.
    Pure chance had brought word of a shipwrecked captain called Leiber washed up in Skeggi. He had been spotted by a trading captain from House Emeraldsea who knew something of the twin’s quest and remembered the name of the lost ship’s master. It was a very long shot, but the twins had followed it up, taking passage on a trading clipper to the coast of Lustria. They had heard another rumour about a human with a fiery sword who had vanished into the interior, searching for the gold of the lost slann cities.
    Eventually they had found Leiber who had witnessed Argentes’s disappearance and been the only survivor, and who brought word of Argentes’s loss, staggering out of the jungle half-mad with hunger, thirst and fever.
    He had spent months making a map to Zultec and seeking to tempt accomplices with tales of a hoard of treasure big enough to fire the imagination of a hundred pirate kings.
    Leiber had agreed to guide the two elves to Zultec in return for gold and their protection. The three of them had organised this expedition and followed the long trail that had led them to this accursed place.
    So far, Leiber had proved to be a bold and reliable companion, but Tyrion was not sure of his friends.
    Not that it mattered much at the moment; they were all in the same boat, outnumbered and far from home, seeking a ruined metropolis haunted by the last degenerate remains of the once mighty race of lizardmen who had built the place when the world was young.
    Tyrion could not keep from grinning. He was hacking his way through the overgrown jungle in search of a lost alien city, where he hoped to find a legendary artefact from the dawn ages of his people.
    ‘Why do you have that inane smirk on your face?’ his twin asked.
    ‘I was just thinking that this was exactly the sort of thing we used to talk about doing back in father’s villa when we were boys.’
    Teclis smiled back. It was a slow secret smile, a mere sliver like a quarter moon seen through cloud, but coming from him it was like a belly laugh from any other elf. ‘We’ve come a long way from the mountains of Cothique, brother.’
    ‘That is something of an understatement.’
    ‘I like to keep in practice at that. A talent unused rusts.’
    ‘Of course, I did not imagine the mosquitoes. I thought it would be vampires that tried to drink my blood and dragons that tried to bite me to death.’
    ‘An old swamp witch back in Skeggi told me that the mosquitoes there once drained a baby of blood while it slept. She swore to me it was true. She had seen it with her own eyes. Of course, she also swore to me that the charms she was selling would make me irresistible to women and a mighty warrior.’
    ‘Stranger things have happened.’
    Teclis shrugged. ‘There was no magic in them, brother. Even you could have seen that with your vision.’
    ‘I have heard it said humans practise a different type of magic.’
    ‘There is only one type of magic. There are different ways of using it, true enough, but all magic draws its power from the same place and all magical objects radiate a similar aura.’
    ‘I’ll take your word for it.’
    ‘That would be an excellent idea. If you keep giving me advice about magic, I will have to start giving you my views on warfare and blade work.’
    ‘Let’s not stoop to absurdities,’ said Tyrion. Leiber gave the sign that it was time to halt for food.
    Tyrion slapped the