The Rose of Sarifal by Paulina Claiborne Read Free Book Online Page B

horizon. There were no nagas to be seen, and whatever foul creature had held him by the ankle, it had pulled back into its hole or cave to nurse its wound. Everything was peaceful, for the moment. Shivering on the cold sand, Lukas looked up at the sky. Malar’s Eye, the red star he’d used to set his course, looked down at him.
    “I’m hungry,” said Gaspar-shen. His voice was thin and high. His breath whistled through inhuman nasal cavities. The lines on his bald head glowed dimly in the quarter light.
    “You’re always hungry.”
    “I would like some … custard pastry.”
    “I’ll keep that in mind.”
    For a moment more they watched the play of the Savage’s silent lightning. Then suddenly there was another flash of light in another color, a white cyclone of flame. It wasn’t just the lycanthropes down there. “Let’sgo,” Lukas said. He staggered to his feet, and together they took off at a run, down toward the base of the sand spit and the bonfire there. All was silent as they ran half a mile along the packed sand toward the larger beach. Even with the east wind, Lukas could smell the swamp as they approached.
    They would be too late, he predicted. The storm of red lightning had blown over. In the bonfire’s glare, as he stood out of breath on the long strand, Lukas could see the damage it had caused. Two dozen shapes littered the water’s edge, lycanthropes caught in the act of changing, or else in their pure wolf’s shape, their bellies burned and slit, their guts black and smoking on the sand around the skiff, which they’d pulled up and then staved in. More corpses bobbed in the water, or else drifted inshore, all beasts and half-beasts, Lukas saw with relief. Kip’s oilskin hat floated on the surface. For whatever reason, they had taken his crew alive.
    He examined some of the corpses for the rose tattoo, but found nothing. All were wolves except for one, a red boar killed in the act of changing, tusks sprouting from his mouth. Everyone had heard of the lycanthropes of Moray Island, but this creature was a surprise to him, until he remembered the shape-shifting pig he had seen in Caer Corwell, in her cell.
    They had ransacked the skiff but left much of value, or at least of use—clothes, mostly. Lukas found a wool shirt and pulled it on. He found a pair of boots. Then he unfastened the hidden compartment and drew out his weapons, his long sword, his spare bow and quiver.Queen Ordalf’s gold he left behind. But they dragged the ruined skiff into the dunes and flipped it over.
    “Custard,” repeated the genasi in his high, soft voice. “With … white chocolate.”
    “Maybe tomorrow.” Lukas wondered if Gaspar-shen was joking, or half joking—sometimes it was hard to tell. The genasi had lived most of his life within the Elemental Chaos where, Lukas supposed, custard was in short supply, let alone white chocolate. Right now, he would be satisfied if they could avoid death for a few hours. That would be like icing on a cake.
    Lukas was a tracker, but the trail they followed from the beach required none of his skill, even in the dark. Behind the beach, in the wet, soggy ground, he saw paw prints and cloven footprints only just filling with water—the lycanthropes had scarcely ten minutes’ start. But even so, Lukas knew they’d never catch them. They would run like wolves.

B LACK B LOOD
    K IP, THE CAT-SHIFTER, CAME TO, TRUSSED-UP IN THE predawn chill, damp soot in his nose. The boy’s desire for a bath threatened to overwhelm him, make him move when he knew he shouldn’t move.
    When light broke, it would be the third morning after the fight on the beach, where he, Marikke, and the Savage had been taken prisoner. Since then the lycanthropes had brought them from the coast, the first day through swamps and forests, the second day through treeless, upland meadows—pastureland when men still lived here, when all of Moray was a Northlander redoubt, and where the shaggy, long-haired