Haven Magic Read Online Free Page B

it down on the creaking boards while still eyeing the approaching figure. Then he shook his head, chiding himself. Of course it was Corbin. No shadow man could walk like that.
    Corbin stepped closer and threw back the hood of his cloak. “It’s a cold one tonight, isn’t it? It took you gentlemen quite some time to get here. Couldn’t use the sails?” he asked. His wide face split with a smile that showed his strong white teeth. “Good to see you, in any case.” He was the same age as Brand, both of them being about twenty, but looked older with his heavy reddish beard and big-boned shoulders. Corbin was as wide as Brand was tall. As was often the case with young hard-working men, there was no fat on either of them.
    Although he felt a bit silly, Brand grabbed Corbin’s free hand and shook it. He couldn’t help but feel relieved. “Good to see you too, my cousin.”
    Jak, standing in the skiff, was looking up at them with his fists on his hips. He said nothing, but Brand could tell what he was thinking: You’ve been acting jumpy all day, ever since... there was no need to finish the thought.
    With renewed energy, Brand jumped back into the skiff and began handing up the cargo with Jak. Corbin stacked the casks two at a time and piled the melons beside them with easy, deliberate movements.
    Soon they were finished unloading, and after securing the skiff for the night they carried the cargo to the cart and loaded it. Lastly, they tossed up their rucksacks with their fresh clothes and gear. “I wish that Tator would come out on the dock,” said Jak. “Although I can’t say that I blame him for being skittish about the water.”
    The chestnut carthorse tossed his head, perhaps recognizing his name. Corbin patted him as he loaded two more broadleaf melons. “Tator knows what’s best for him,” he said gently. “And falling into the lagoon ain’t it.”
    While Jak climbed up onto the board next to the driver’s seat and Brand tried to get comfortable perched on the wine casks, Corbin fed Tator an apple from his pocket. Then he heaved himself into the driver’s seat and they set off. The horse pulled the cart slowly but gamely up the hill toward Riverton.
    The first houses they passed were mounted on spindly-looking stilts. Neither the stilts nor the rickety houses themselves appeared to be in the best of repair. Most of these belonged to the less reputable clans among the Riverton folk, which meant the Hoots, who were the most numerous, as well as the Silures and the Fobs. They inhabited the dock region primarily because the land was cheap, as no one else wanted to live on stilts that may or may not hold up in the yearly floods. It was even cheaper if one simply squatted on the land and built a shack there, which was what many of them did. Brand always disliked the first part of the road up from the docks as it wound through this section of town. It was no fun passing beneath the sour eyes of the Hoots and the Silures who had made a family tradition of sitting out on the raised porches of their shacks in the evenings. There they would sit, some rocking, most smoking long-stemmed clay pipes, all with a large corked jug of fruit wine at their feet.
    Years ago, when Jak and Brand had been children and their parents had still lived, the Silures had tried to take Rabing Isle from them with an ancient writ of inheritance. The writ, supposedly discovered among the effects of old man Tad Silure, had turned out to be a forgery. The entire Silure clan, and the Hoots, who counted the Silures as close kinsfolk due to excessive intermarriage between the two clans, had never forgotten the loss of Rabing Isle, which they still regarded as rightfully theirs. Brand looked at the others on the driver’s board, and noted their determined postures. They leaned forward, hunching over without glancing from side to side. He could imagine the grim look of distaste on their faces. No one in the Rabing clan would give a Silure or a