The Complete Twilight Reign Ebook Collection by Tom Lloyd Read Free Book Online Page A

did this evening, and Isak wasn’t about to cry over spilt blood.
    The servant wore the traditional Parian costume of wide loose trousers bound down at the feet and a thick paral shirt, neatly arranged and tied at the waist with a belt the thickness of a man’s hand. It looked as if he were about to leave for the temple to take up some candle-lit vigil, except the man’s belt was decorated with Lord Bahl’s eagle rather than any divine symbol.
    The servant glowered at Isak; he too said nothing, but pointed at an empty table and left, returning shortly with a bowl of steaming venison stew, a flatbread draped over the top. Isak fell upon it ravenously, eating as fast as he could in case there’d been a mistake and it was removed before he’d finished. He’d barely started to mop up the last of the gravy when the empty bowl was replaced by a second, and accompanied this time by a flagon of beer. He ate this helping more slowly, but he was a growing boy already well ‘over six feet tall and it took a third large bowlful to satisfy him.
    Finally he settled back, wiped a smear of juice from his lips and looked around at his surroundings. It was the first chance he’d had to properly inspect the room. The tapestries, he could now confirm, were indeed scenes from famous battles, with the names of the actions woven into each picture in a variety of ways: in one it was spelled out in the shading of the trees in the background; a second was embroidered on a general’s banner. Isak remembered Carel’s tales of these very engagements: most featured Lord Bahl at the forefront of the action, riding a dragon or a rearing stallion, always leaving great swathes of dead in his wake.
    The tapestries were displayed around the room in chronological order, as far as Isak could see. The oldest, which happened more than two hundred summers ago, was positioned behind the top table at the right-hand end of the hall; the most recent engagement was sited by the grand main door - Isak knew Carel had taken part in that one shortly after joining the Ghosts. He spent an idle few minutes looking for a figure that could have been the white-haired old man in his youth, but most of the soldiers were just blank shapes rather than People. It gave him some comfort to think that some of those soldiers had been white-eyes: at this distance they all looked the same, and they had fought together, as a team.
    He smiled, thinking of Carel as a young man like himself; unsure quite what he should be doing, keeping close to the veterans, trying to absorb everything he could see while also keeping himself alive. Now he had the luxury of time to think, Isak wondered again why Carel had walked away at the palace gates - how could he just assume that Isak would be accepted here? Even Isak knew this was not how men were recruited to the guard. What in the name of Death was going on? For that matter, what had sent his father into such a rage? Isak knew his father was quick to anger, but he’d never seen him like that, or his friends. They had been like feral dogs, worked up into a frenzy; something must have happened to make them like that. Isak felt a shiver run down his spine. Somehow he knew it was to do with that strange mercenary, Aracnan.
    Now he looked around at the other men in the hall, searching for a friendly face. They were a motley collection; the handful of Ghosts were clean and neat in their uniforms, but most of the diners were forest rangers, dressed raggedly in dark woodland colours. Though their hands were clean for eating, mud still stained their clothing, and he could see a couple of dressings that looked hastily wrapped. One ranger had blood dried into his mess of hair and stained down his tunic. The rangers were all lean, tanned by sun and wind; they lacked the obvious bulk of the palace guards because their battles were not fought with armour and pikes, but with stealth and camouflage and swift arrows flashing out from the trees.
    Those who