Into Eden: Pangaea - Book 1 Read Online Free Page A

portrayed his father with spear in hand slaying a lion: Nashon the great hunter. There had been lions in the Foothills in those days—and pterodactyls too—but as more and more of the forest was claimed for farmland the creatures were killed off or fled. In time men in this part of Atlantis would only know of them from the stories that the old folks told, and the buildings that dotted the farms in the Foothills and along the Southern Highway reflected that new reality. Iron gated compounds were unnecessary where lions didn’t stalk at night; and heavy slate roofs had been replaced with lighter, cheaper thatch where pterodactyls no longer threatened to torch roofs with the flames that they breathed down on houses and barns.
    The largest mural, however, was over the massive hearth between the two stairways, on which a large hourglass rested. This visitors faced as they entered the room. It depicted an older Nashon, clad in Foothills farmer’s attire, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Behind him were fields covered with golden sheaves of wheat. In his hand Nashon held a great scythe, and one foot rested on a wooden barrel turned on its side. Next to him a large, black dog sat contentedly. On Nashon’s face was not the stern look of a soldier or hunter, but a small grin creased the corners of his features: Nashon the farmer. This, thought Jesse, was the father that he knew—a happy, prosperous farmer and businessman whose fields of wheat and barley were turned into beer in the brewery that his father owned in Albion. The beer that was shipped north to Atlantis had made him a wealthy man, and the dogs that he raised in the kennels on his farm had made him wealthier still, for spirit-hosts were hard to come by, and the elite gi-nefs of Atlantis paid handsomely for them when their end was near. Tonight, however, Nashon had need of one from his own stock. For all his wealth even he could not escape the inevitability of time.
    Jesse continued up the stairs with Doc Paron close behind. The door to his father’s room was locked, but one of the servant girls opened it when he knocked.
    “Nice that you could make it,” Jesse’s brother Josiah said sarcastically. “Sorry that we had to drag you away from your drinking.”
    Jesse ignored the barb. Josiah was quick-tempered and sharp of tongue, but he had to be nice to him. In just a few hours his father would be dead and Josiah had been named as his heir. Spirit-hosts had no rights under the Law of Atlantis. Josiah was his full brother, and Nashon had named him as heir to guarantee that their mother, Tamar, would be well cared for upon his death. She was, after all, Nashon’s favorite wife—and he had eight of them. At one-hundred and seventy, Josiah would take over the main estate, but when Jesse turned one-hundred Josiah was likely to give him some small piece of land to the south—hopefully with a house and barn on it. At least then he could provide for the girl that his mother had chosen as his bride.
    Jesse looked around the room as Doc Paron stepped to the head of the bed. Four of Nashon’s wives sat on one side of the bed, four sat on the other. At the foot of the bed a large, black dog was chained to the bedpost with a heavy iron collar. By the door the servant-girl sat while his brother paced back and forth nervously. His father’s youngest wife, a girl by the name of Beka (who couldn’t have been more than eighty) cried on the lap of Jesse’s mother, Tamar. On the wall above the headboard was his father’s old shield, with two crossed spears over it. One of those, Jesse thought, his father had used to kill the lion in the painting downstairs.
    “May I talk to him?” Jesse asked the doctor.
    “Yes. But your father is very weak. If you have something to say to him you’d best say it quickly.”
    The doctor stepped aside and Jesse took his place at the head of the bed. Leaning over, he could hear his father’s shallow breath in rasping wheezing.
    “Dad, can