Dragon Forge: The Draconic Prophecies - Book Two Read Online Free Page A

name—who rowed him across on a small raft. The rather sudden appearance of heavy clouds to blot out the moons made him suspect his accomplice had ties to House Lyrandar.
    He had made camp on the Eldeen side of the river and walked into Riverweep with the farmers bringing their goods to market. By luncheon, he had secured a seat on a coach bound for Varna. A wagon the size of a small house pulled by a team of magebred draft horses. And the next morning, as the coach pulled out of whatever farming village it had stopped in for the night, he had spotted the shifter.
    The descendants of werewolves and other lycanthropes, shifters looked like hirsute, somewhat savage humans—most of the time. In the heat of battle, they showed their heritage. Some grew sharp claws, and the jaws of others grew into muzzles full of deadly teeth. They were more common in the Eldeen Reaches than anywhere else in Khorvaire. There, they lived in bands,almost packs, in the wilder lands, coming into more settled areas to trade furs and meat for grains and cheeses. A shifter traveling alone, though, was exactly the kind of person Kauth was looking for—a man with no ties, with plenty of experience surviving in the wild, and tough enough to survive the journey into the Demon Wastes.
    So he kept an eye on the shifter for the rest of the journey. The man was tall and strongly built, and armored in a shirt of gleaming silver chainmail made from light, flexible mithral. Two long-bladed knives hung at his belt, and he carried a quiver of red-feathered arrows on his back. A long bow, unstrung, leaned against the window beside him. His mane of brown hair was streaked with blond and woven into two thin braids that hung in front of his slightly pointed ears. He had amber eyes that never seemed to lift their gaze above the floor. Whenever Kauth tried to catch his eye, the shifter simply ignored him.
    He hadn’t moved since Kauth had last studied him. He sat across the aisle running down the center of the coach, as alone on a bench as Kauth was. Leaning forward, the shifter rested his head on the seat in front of him, staring down at the floor, his hands clenched as if in prayer.
    Kauth felt the coach slow, and he looked back out the window just in time to see the river and the forest beyond it disappear as they passed through the walls of Varna into the city. The quiet fields and ranches gave way to the noisy bustle of city life—people on the move, buying, selling, and crafting.
    He suddenly felt very tired, and he leaned his head against the glass. Here was a city full of life and energy, people going about their lives trying their hardest to find fulfillment and happiness in the circumstances they were given. And if his mission succeeded, the city would soon be a ruin—either besieged by Aundairian forces or razed by the hordes of the Carrion Tribes.
    Nothing is permanent, he reminded himself. Change is part of the cycles of time. Creation, destruction—one flows into the other and neither is cause for joy or grief. Detachment is the key to peace and understanding.
    He glanced back to the shifter’s seat. It was empty. He leapedto his feet and scanned the coach, but the shifter had vanished. He threw himself into the shifter’s vacated seat, heedless of the stares he drew, and peered out the window. A quick glimpse confirmed his fear. The shifter had leaped off the moving coach and was doing his best to lose himself in the crowd.
    Kauth cursed under his breath and ran to the front of the coach. The busy street passed by more quickly than he liked. Shifters had a natural agility that would have made the jump relatively easy for his quarry, but it made him nervous. For a moment he questioned whether this particular shifter was worth the risk of a broken bone.
    I’ll get a lot more than a broken bone if I try the Demon Wastes alone, he told himself.
    Drawing a deep breath, he jumped. He landed hard but kept his feet. Scanning the street, he spotted the area