The Elves of Cintra by Terry Brooks Read Free Book Online

others, they would have to find a way past the Croaks.
    He looked into Sparrow’s eyes.
    “I’m through being chased,” she declared, as if she had read his mind, as if she knew what he wanted to hear.
    Wordlessly, they turned to face the onslaught.
    Then abruptly a stream of white fire surged out of the darkness behind them, lancing into the Croaks and exploding across the entire width of the street ahead.
    Panther had not been mistaken. Logan Tom had found them.
     

     
    O WL STARED down the short black barrel of the handgun and fought to stay calm. She saw that wires attached to its handle ran to a solar pack strapped to the boy’s waist. Some sort of stun gun, a variation on a prod. It would shock its victim if fired. Maybe it would kill. In any case, she didn’t want to find out the hard way.
    Around her, the other Ghosts had frozen in their tracks, no one wanting to do anything that would cause the kid with the weapon to hurt her. But they wouldn’t stay still forever.
    She took a deep breath and said, “What’s your name?”
    He scowled. “What does it matter?”
    “Just tell me, I want to know.”
    “You don’t need to know my name.” He looked uncomfortable, his ruined face tightening further. “Are you going to give us the cart or not?”
    “My name is Owl,” she said, ignoring him. “I am mother to the Ghosts. It is my job to protect them. Like it is your job to protect those who travel with you. Sometimes people make that very hard. Sometimes they make us feel foolish and weak and even helpless. They do this by threatening to hurt us because they don’t like us. That’s happened to you, hasn’t it? That’s what you were talking about when you said everyone always tells you to go away.”
    She waited for him to say something, but he just stared at her, the gun steady in his hand.
    “Tell him to quit pointing that at you,” Chalk said at her elbow.
    “The thing is,” she continued, keeping her eyes fixed on the boy’s face, “you are doing to us what others have done to you. You are acting just like them, telling us we have to do something we don’t want to. You are stealing from us and telling us to just turn around and leave. Why are you doing that?”
    Again, no answer, but she could see the confusion and anger mirrored in the boy’s one good eye.
    “Don’t you see that you are no better than those people you don’t like if you do this?”
    “Stop talking!” he shouted suddenly.
    Everyone tensed. Bear came forward a few steps until he had moved between the cart with their goods and the street kids who wanted it. He didn’t say anything, but she could see the determination in his eyes. A few of the street kids glanced his way uneasily.
    “What do you expect us to do?” she asked the boy with the gun. “Do you expect us to just stand here and let you take everything we have?”
    “Everyone takes everything we have,” he snapped angrily. “Everyone calls us Freaks! We’re not Freaks!”
    “Then don’t act—”
    “Don’t tell me what to do!”
    There was sudden movement to her left, and he shifted his weapon in response. Owl raised her hand to stay his, saying, “No!” The boy flinched, turning back to her as quickly as he had turned away. Seeing her raised arm and mistaking her intent, alarm flooded his face.
    Then he shot her.

 
    FOUR
    I T WAS THE WAY that everything changed so suddenly that shocked Hawk the most.
    One moment he was falling from the compound walls, the hands of his captors releasing him for the long drop, his stomach lurching as he struggled in vain to find something to hold on to, his fate a dark rush of gut-wrenching certainty flooding through him. He glimpsed the rubble waiting below, the sharp outline of the bricks and cement chunks clearly visible even in the fading light of the sunset. He caught sight of Tessa tumbling away next to him, her arms windmilling and her legs kicking, her slender body just out of his reach. He wanted to close his