Defiant Swords (Durlindrath #2) Read Online Free

mind, he could avoid it no longer. Aranloth
had misled him. There was no real power in his staff. Brand knew that now. He realized
also that Kareste had known the same thing from the moment they had first met,
and had not meddled in Aranloth’s affairs by stating it directly,
though she had hinted at it.
    Aranloth’s staff was different to Shurilgar’s. The broken
staff was a relic, infused of old with enormous power, but with the lòhren’s
there was only the memory of enchantments worked
through it, the bare traces of things that once were.
    What power Brand had summoned had come from within himself.
The thing that he most mistrusted in all the world was a part of him, inside
him, at his very core. But why had Aranloth not told him that?
    He felt a flicker of doubt at the lòhren’s motives. And
though what Aranloth had said could not be called a lie, it was bordering on it
as close as was possible. He shrugged his misgivings aside, for he trusted
Aranloth, and trust was easily eaten away by doubt. He would not doubt him, and
he would not doubt Kareste either. They each had reasons for what they did,
though it occurred to him with unexpected clarity that so too did Khamdar. In
the sorcerer’s own mind he was doing the right thing.
    It was a startling realization , and it did not make
Brand comfortable.

3. From Another World
     
     
    Gilhain did not know what was happening, but he knew this much:
Aranloth was right. Something was approaching; something wicked beyond the
reach of thought.
    The black-cloaked elùgroths sat in their wedge before the
wall. Their wych-wood staffs pointed menacingly at the Cardurleth, and the
rising chant of their spell smoked through the sorcery-laden air .
    Beyond the wedge was
the enemy host, and its multitudinous voice rose also
in some eerie union with the invocation of the elùgroths, lending them power.
    A wind blew, dry and hot, and then suddenly it changed. In
what way, Gilhain could not be sure. It now smelled
of moisture, or mold, or the decaying leaves of a forest that was thicker than
any that grew near Cardoroth. But it was more than that.
    “It comes!” hissed Aranloth.
    Gilhain was sick to the pit of his stomach. He felt a great
evil. It washed over him as did nausea to an ill man, in ever-greater waves that took him deeper into misery. Something was coming,
and its arrival was inevitable. He could do nothing but wait.
    He did not speak. Aranloth did not move. Soldiers waited all
along the wall, and Gilhain knew that each and every one of them felt just as
he.
    The sun dimmed. The sky grew dark. The wind dropped, but the
smell in the air intensified. It was putrid. He knew now that his guess was
right. It was of a forest. A wet forest. A forest layered deep by centuries of rotted leaves and mildew.
    There was a growing sound also. It was an eerie thing,
something over and above the world that surrounded him; he heard rain. Not just
any rain – and certainly not the gentle nighttime rain that usually
fell over Cardoroth, but a torrential downpour. It was a sound of watery fury,
a sound that thrummed and boomed and lashed like a hundred storms gathering
together and drawing near.
    Gilhain looked around, confused. He did not know what was
happening, nor did he understand why it grew suddenly hot. But hot it was, and more humid than he had ever felt
before. The very earth before the Cardurleth began to steam.
    Wisps of vapor rose sluggishly from the trampled earth. The
gray tendrils twined about each other, swirling and undulating. His eyes
followed them upward for a
moment, and when he looked down again, he saw that the earth was gone. Where
the ground had been, the same ground that he had known all his life and trod
uncounted times, there was now a gaping void.
    He saw at once that it was not quite empty. It seemed to be
a valley, even if it had no place in Cardoroth. And within he saw a vague
outline of steep banks, wind-lashed trees and cascading water.
    But none of