Deepwood: Karavans # 2 Read Online Free

body, beginning to dry his mudstained, sodden clothing and dirt-crusted fair hair. Beneath caked mud the leather of his boots was still damp and pliable; he dared not take them off lest they dry too rigid to put on again.
     
    Where?
     
    “Mother,” he rasped, “show me where they are.”
     
    Desperation crept up from his belly and lodged in his chest and throat. Gone.
Gone
. All of them. He was stiff-jointed with dread, with the immensity of his fear. He could see nothing, where he stood, beyond the horizon. Were he a bird, he could fly and see the land stretching below him.
     
    Fly
. He could not. But the wagon stood upright, canted though it was.
     
    Davyn clutched at rain-soaked wood, pulled himself up into the back of the wagon. Inside, amid the tangle of storm-tossed possessions, were two narrow cots, a massive trunk, a chest of drawers he had fashioned for Audrun in their first year of marriage, and other belongings. He was a tall man, but no oilcloth canopy remained to hinder his height. Davyn climbedup onto the chest, balanced himself against the tilt of the wagon with a hand on one arching rib, blocked out the sun with his other hand, and stared across the land. He turned, searched. Turned and searched again.
     
    Where?
     
    Four children, lost. Audrun, gone. And no guide on horseback offering answers to his questions.
     
    North. South. East. West.
     
    A harsh, strangled sound broke from Davyn’s throat. For a long, excrutiating moment he battled freshening tears, struggled to tamp down panic. And then he began to think.
     
    There was food in the wagon. Waterskins. And now, in the brilliance of the day, he could see in all directions. He could orient himself. His sense of direction, overwhelmed in the storm, was restored again.
     
    Bless you, Mother. Thank you
.
     
    Davyn began to gather the items that would be necessary for his journey.
     
    BETHID SAW THAT Jorda was correct: Ilona’s wagon was missing its colorful canopy, but the rest of it appeared to be intact, if in disarray. She jogged ahead, hastily dropped the folding wood steps, and pulled open the door. Bethid kicked aside various objects to clear a path for Jorda, and lifted a scattering of fallen possessions from the narrow cot. Part of her was aware that she paid no attention to neatness as shestuffed objects here and there away from the cot, but there was no time for such things.
     
    “Willow bark tea,” she muttered, kneeling down beside the cot. Beneath it was a many-drawered cabinet with brass pull knobs. Bethid began pulling them open one by one, inspecting the contents. She was no diviner and knew nothing of such objects as one might use, but herbs she was familiar with. The fourth small drawer contained a small drawstring muslin bag through which she smelled the astringency of the tea that, steeped, might offer surcease from pain. “I think Mikal’s spirits will do better …” Bethid tucked the bag into her belt, then cast about for a kettle.
     
    Jorda was at the steps. “Is there room?”
     
    “A moment …” Bethid looked this way and that. “Ah—here.” She rose quickly and made her way to the door, slipping out with the kettle in one hand and the muslin bag of tea plus flint and steel in the other. Ilona, she saw, was markedly pale but for a bluish bruise rising on her brow and left cheekbone, and unconscious. Bethid waved Jorda in and searched for a nearby fire cairn or ring. With trees upended all around her, branches stripped of leaves, she was even more aware of a funereal feeling. The world was upside down.
     
    She had a task, and was grateful for it. Yet part of her was aware of a burgeoning anxiety, an apprehension that, once marked, twisted her belly upon itself. Two fellow couriers had also been in the settlement, sharing the common tent. She had seen neither Timmonnor Alorn in the midst of the storm as she, with Mikal, ran through the tents shouting for people to hasten eastward. There hadn’t been