Blood Of The Wizard (Book 1) Read Online Free

run off with dwarf maidens.  Haven’t I spent my life among them?  I should know their ways!”
    “ But my dear fellow, if she isn’t in the hall, and isn’t in the woods or in the garden, can’t you see, the elvish encampment is the only possible explanation?”
    The lines on his face deepened.  A sort of blackness overcame his brow.  He made a noise you might hear in the shadows of a forest, and if ever I’ve seen murder written on a face, it was on Halvgar’s.
    “ What tribe were they, anyway?” I asked, trying to speak indifferently, for every question was a dirk in his heart.
    “ Mongrel curs, neither one thing nor the other.  Some are Lepre Cruithne canoemen, guides for the men of Delmark, the rest are just your normal elvish vagabonds!  But they’re all connected with those merchant crews stuck in the bay north of Dragonfell.  When the ice breaks up and the kilted devils can leave to circle the Great Horn, the elvish riffraff will follow in their dugouts!”
    “ Know any of them?”
    “ No, I don’t think—Let me see!  Thundering hell!  Yes, Killroot!” he shouted.
    “ What about Killroot?” I asked.  I had never heard of him.  I was just pinning Halvgar down to the subject; his mind was instantly lost in angry memories.
    “ What about him!  He’s my one enemy among the elves,” he answered.  “The thieving long-ear… I thrashed him within an inch of his life at Bardo Isle.  Having half human blood from those Cullish Clans at Bloodhelm’s Landing, he thought it a fine sport to pillage the pack of a Cutter.  The snake stole a silver dirk that my grandfather had at Cullo’s Den.  By thunder, Killroot!”
    “ Did you get it back?” I interrupted, referring to the silver dirk.
    “ No!  That’s why I nearly finished him!”
    “ Is that all about Killroot, Halvgar?” my uncle asked.
    He ran his fingers distractedly back through his long, red beard.  Then he rose and came over to me and laid a trembling hand on each shoulder.
    “Killroot,” he muttered.  “No, that isn’t all.  I didn’t think at the time, but the morning after the roll with that pointy devil, I found a dagger stuck on the door of my hut.  The point was through a fresh sprouted leaflet.  A withered twig was wound tightly over the blade.”
    “ Halvgar, old boy!  Are you mad?” cried Jack Jickie.  “He must be the very devil himself.  You weren’t married then—He couldn’t mean—”
    “ I thought it was an elvish threat,” Halvgar interjected. “I thought that if I had downed him in the fall, when the branches were bare, he meant to have his revenge in spring when the leaves were green; but you know I left the island that fall.”
    “ You were wrong, Halvgar!” I blurted, the significance of that threat dawning on me.  “That wasn’t the meaning at all.”
    But then I stopped.
    And we all just stood there a moment.
    Jickie was the first to pull himself together.
    “Come,” Uncle Jickie said.  “Gather up your wits!  To the camping ground!”
    The three of us flung through the pub room, much to the astonishment of the gossips who had been waiting outside for developments in the quarrel with Addly.
    There was no time to explain ourselves. 
    At the outer porch, Halvgar laid a hand on Jickie’s shoulder.
    “Old friend, I pray don’t come,” he begged.  “There’s a storm blowing.  It’s rough weather and a rough road, full of drifts.”
    “ Nonsense!”
    “ Please, Master Jickie.  Make my peace with that old tall bastard in there I struck.”
    And with a huff, Jickie nodded.
    Then Halvgar and I whisked out into the blackness of a boisterous, windy night. A moment later, our horses were dashing over snow-packed cobblestones.

 
     
     
    Chapter 4
     
     
    “ It will snow more,” I said, already feeling a few flakes driven through the darkness against my face.  “The wind’s veered north.  After the sleet, it will come thick as feathers.  We need to get out to the