Lord of the Isles Read Online Free

where’s Barca’s Hamlet?” the woman whispered. “Am I on Yole?”
    Reise threw the door fully open and stepped aside. Lora was in the central corridor, and Sharina leaned over the balustrade to see what was happening.
    â€œYole?” said Garric. “What’s Yole?”
    â€œYole?” his father repeated in a questioning tone. “Yole sank into the sea a thousand years ago!”

3
    S harina tied the sash around the waist of the tunic she’d been wearing as a nightdress.
    â€œSharina! Go get the hermit!” Garric called as he stepped through the doorway sideways to keep the dangling legs of the person he carried from knocking on the doorposts. “This lady needs help!”
    â€œI’ll get him!” Sharina said. Her cape was upstairs, but the air’s slight chill wasn’t worth the delay. She’d be running most of the way to Nonnus’ hut, though the last of the path twisting down to the hut at the creekside had to be walked with care even in full daylight.
    â€œNo, you can’t go out at this hour, Sharina!” her mother cried. “And not dressed like that!”

    â€œTake a light, Sharina!” Reise said, waggling the hemlock stem for emphasis. He couldn’t raise it inside without searing the ceiling.
    Sharina ignored both Lora and Reise. She didn’t need a light any more than she did a cape … though she might have taken both if she hadn’t known her parents would want her to do that. Sharina was through the front door and into the courtyard before either of them could stop her.
    The double gates of the courtyard hadn’t been closed in so long that high grass grew beneath the edges of both and one sagged away from its upper hinge. The part-moon was clear above her, but the sky was already too pale for stars to show.
    The only real street in Barca’s Hamlet followed the line of houses which backed up to the shallow bay. A flat stone bridge crossed the impoundment pool itself; it had been built at the same time as the mill. For the rest, the street was dirt, dust, or mud depending on the weather. After the huge storm of the previous day, water stood in the ruts that ages of traffic had pounded into the surface. Sharina splashed across the road with the ease of long practice and headed up one of the lesser paths out of the community.
    Barca’s Hamlet didn’t have physical boundaries except for the coastline. Houses straggled in all directions, making it hard for a stranger to say where the hamlet ended and outlying farms began. There were tracts of pasture and forest attached in common to certain households, however. and those households made up what the folk of the region themselves thought of as Barca’s Hamlet.
    The path Sharina followed plunged almost immediately into common woodlands where hogs foraged for acorns and certain families had the right to cut deadwood for their fires. Only one person lived in the forest, and he in a sense was owned in common as well.
    Instead of going himself, Garric had told Sharina to fetch the hermit Nonnus. Everyone knew that Sharina was the only person whom the hermit seemed to treat as a person rather than an event like springtime or the rain.

    Sharina’s honey-blond hair and gray eyes set her apart from everyone she knew, her parents included. Perhaps it was her looks that made her feel like an outsider among the locals despite her having lived in Barca’s Hamlet for all but the first week of her life. The simple acceptance which Nonnus offered her was as reassuring as the feel of the bedclothes when she woke up from a dream of falling.
    The path meandered on to join the drove road near Hafner’s Ford, but almost no one came this way through the woods except to see Nonnus—which meant almost no one at all. Brambles waved from both sides, occasionally snagging Sharina’s shift. She pulled free without slowing, because she knew a life might depend