Deepwood: Karavans # 2 Read Online Free Page A

time to look for specific individuals, only to cry over and over again that all should flee the settlement. Many had, but some had not. They remained behind now as corpses, clothes made muddy and sodden. Bethid prayed Timmon and Alorn had heard her shouted instructions and obeyed them. Later, she would search for their bodies, hoping not to find them.
     
    Beneath a sky now naked of shielding tree canopies, where grass did not grow, beside a massive grandfather oak that had withstood the storm, Bethid knelt in the mud. With a handful of rocks she built a haphazard fire ring atop a broad, flat stone. But the deadfall of leaves dropped from trees, of small twigs and brittle leaves, had been torn from the ground by wind. “Tinder … tinder,” Bethid muttered absently, glancing around. But anything stripped from the trees by winds would be too green, too damp to catch fire.
     
    She rose and went to the wagon, climbing onto the bottom step. “I need kindling,” she told Jorda, who was bent over Ilona. “Anything of wood, to burn. Everything on the ground is wet.”
     
    Jorda dwarfed the tall wagon, despite its size. Muttering, he cast about awkwardly, eventually scooping up something he found on the floorboards. “Here.” He thrust the handful to Bethid. “Wood.”
     
    She stared at what she grasped. Her spine felt cold. “These are rune sticks.”
     
    “They’ll burn. And here is dry cloth to help—we’ll hope Ilona forgives the sacrifice.”
     
    “But these are
rune
sticks, Jorda.”
     
    “Beth, not now. You wanted kindling. There’s kindling.”
     
    “But, Jorda—”
     
    The karavan-master was clearly impatient and irritated.
“Burn
them, Beth! Ilona’s a hand-reader—those are for show.”
     
    Bethid felt slow and stupid under his green-eyed gaze. “But
I
use a rune-reader.”
     
    That he understood; everyone in Sancorra province relied on diviners as something akin to extensions of the gods, to learn if their futures were good or bad, if they were worthy of a good afterlife when they crossed the river, and to confirm that plans were auspicious.
     
    Jorda’s irritation was dispersed behind an expressionless face. “You do this to aid a diviner, even if her art is not the one you rely on. In these circumstances, I think the gods will forgive you.”
     
    It felt wrong, utterly wrong, but Bethid, with effort, mentally shoved that feeling aside, dismissing it with the discipline of a trained courier. Yet even as she knelt and began to arrange the rune sticks within the small stone ring, a rebellious portion of her mind betrayed that discipline. “Mother of Moons, forgive me. I do this for one of your daughters.”
     
    A man’s voice, heavy with irony and scorn, yanked her attention from the fire ring. “Your Mother ofMoons has nothing to do with this, Bethid. It’s Alisanos you should concern yourself with.”
     
    “Brodhi!” Bethid stared at the copper-haired, manybraided Shoia. He was wet as all of them were, but cleaner, and moved with the efficient grace of a man unaware of personal discomfort. In fact, he looked angry. That was not an emotion she was used to seeing in her fellow courier, who generally wore an implacable mask that hid all feelings except for a habitual and annoying arrogance.
     
    It struck her then with a tangible shock that though she remained concerned for the safety of Timmon and Alorn, she had not thought of Brodhi at all.
     
    TORVIC PEELED BACK the blanket and oilcloth he had clutched around his body in the midst of the storm. Beside him, Megritte was crying. The rain had stopped, the wind, the lightning and thunder; the world was calm again. Steam rose from the ground, filling the forest and muting sound.
     
    He and his sister had been put into a crevice between two huge tree-shielded boulders, cautioned by Rhuan, the karavan guide, to remain where they were, to not stir until the storm died. Well, the storm was dead; Torvic saw no sense in continuing to