Trinity Rising: Book Two of the Wild Hunt (Wild Hunt Trilogy 2) by Elspeth Cooper Read Free Book Online Page B

terrified her – even apparently simple ones, like the boy with the chief’s torc, for not understanding the significance of even the most innocuous image frightened her all the more.
    The last things she had seen had been that eagle’s-eye view of summer plains and her own bloody face. During the long nights in Drwyn’s tent, she had tried to puzzle out what they might mean, had dredged her memory for every scrap of lore Ytha had ever uttered on the subject of interpreting dreams and visions, but come no closer to the truth. Blood could mean an argument, a difficult decision, damage to one’s aspirations or, more often than not, just blood: someone would be hurt. That frustrated her; it was not an abstract vision of blood, but a very specific one. Her blood, on her face. Something was going to happen to her and she did not know what it was.

    Storm clouds roiled overhead. Rain plastered Savin’s shirt to his skin and the wind shrieking around the towers of Renngald’s fortress whipped his hair across his face. He shook it free and squinted at the image rendered in miniature in the basin resting on the iron tripod in front of him: a tiny ship on a storm-tossed sea, wavering as the rain lashed the shallow water. One toothpick-slender mast was already broken; surely it couldn’t be long before the others followed, yet somehow the ship battled on; climbed each towering wave, survived the dizzying drop into the following trough and did not broach. Spread around it like a fabulous cloak was an intricate tapestry of the Song that bulged and billowed with the force of the storm pummelling it.
    The Guardian was the architect of that glittering web. Savin could feel his will in the shaping of it – after so many years, he knew Alderan’s work the way he recognised the hand of a master sculptor – but the power that gave each gossamer strand the strength of an anchor chain, that was the boy. Untrained, raw as meat on a butcher’s slab, but between his strength and the old man’s skill they were deflecting a gale that should by now have smashed the ship to kindling.
    His name was Gair, the man in Mesarild had said before he died. Some fatherless wretch the Church had cast out; a nonentity, but for his gift. They’re going to the Isles that’s all I know I swear please Goddess it hurts—
    Precious little, and it had taken one of the woman’s eyes to get that much, despite her protestations that they would tell him everything. Alderan, it appeared, was as close-mouthed with his own subordinates as he was with everyone else. Still, it had given Savin a direction of travel to pursue; learning the rest had only required a little silver in the right palms. Now he had a chance to be rid of the old meddler for good.
    Gripping the rim of the basin so tightly the cold metal bit into his fingertips, he threw more power into his working. It sang over him, through him, and he channelled it into the storm he had wrought.
    The winds rose again and slammed into the old man’s weaving. The ship staggered, her single topsail straining against its reefs. Point by point, her course veered southwards, closer to the foaming shoals just visible at the edge of the image. Around him the northern storm-winds howled in sympathy and set the Kaldsmirgen Sea thundering against the rocks below the castle walls.
    Despite the slap and scour of the storm on his face, his lips stretched into a grin. This Gair boy was strong but Savin knew the Guardian’s tricks far too well: he’d had the measure of them for years.
    You’ll have to try harder than that to beat me, old man!
    Already the billowing curtain of the Song that shielded the distant ship was beginning to fray under the strain of wind and water. It could last only minutes longer, then the shoals would have them. The whelp was no threat: without training, with no more discipline than was required to call and hold the power, all the strength in the world was as nothing. If he survived the storm,