Rainbow's End - Wizard Read Online Free Page A

flashlight ’s beam, and for once not caring about his precious coat, Orson slowly sat down on its shiny wet surface; tired and despondent and very worried about the life of the young boy somewhere out there in the dark surrounding them. The Labrador, after a few long minutes of staring into the night, came back and joined the old man, lying down in the white at his feet; her head resting on her paws and her big brown eyes forlorn…
     
    *
     
    Orson played the beam down her sleek, golden-haired body. Her pelt was soaked and shiny-wet and he said, ‘You’re wet right through Tessa,’ before turning the light on himself. His coat was shedding tiny streams of water and looked exactly like what it was - Otter-skin: wet Otter-skin. The water would soon start seeping through, and then, well… Cold and wet and without shelter…
    He lamented then, his voice bitter and filled with “I told you so”, “It’s going to be cold, Ariana”, I said, but nooo. He stretched the negative and then changed to a high falsetto, supposedly mimicking Ariana’s voice. “You have plenty of warm clothes, Orson.”
    “I t’s going to rain Ariana”, I said.
    A nd the falsetto: “Wear your coat, Orson.”
    “ I’ll get lost, Ariana.”
    Falsetto : “Tessie will see you don’t, Orson.”
    The dog cocked one floppy ear at him and then Orson was shouting at her - ‘And now what, dog?! Look at the… the… crap you and Madame Ariana have dropped us in! “Find the boy?!”’ He spluttered, ‘We can’t even find ourselves!’ An icy sliver of water rolled into the layered jersey’s high neck, and with a shiver he deflated; was suddenly, morosely quiet.
    For a long time they stayed like that : one thoroughly soaked and the other getting there; both staring gloomily off into the darkness. The snow became heavier still, and it became colder still...
     
    *****
     
    Far, far away… Kraylle’s Castle; Desolation
    Barren ... And bleak... Flat and empty and starkly grey. Unforgiving... Heart-breaking... Desolate. Call it what you will. It was a rock. Just a rock; floating in its own little part of space. Aeons of exposure had swept its surface clean, and now, whenever the terrible winds and storms of rain and sleet and snow howled and crashed in from its black, black sea, and screamed across its granite-hard plains, they found not as much as a single grain of sand to take with them.
    Its light came from its three moons. It had no sun. No day and no heat. Only dark, and only cold: Bone-breaking, marrow-freezing, unspeakable cold…
     
    His house was made of stone. It stood in the centre of the plain and many centuries of screaming, scourging winds, had tempered it to the consistency of steel. It was huge: it had no doors or windows, except one large cavernous hole, and the ball of one of its ever-present, low-hanging moons, bathed its ghostly dark walls a surreal, ghostly grey.
    He named it Kraylle’s Castle, and the rock, Desolation…
     
    He was over seven feet tall with massive arms and shoulders, and immensely strong. His head was totally bald, his face handsome and thin and very white; a hawkish nose and thin bloodless lips, and black eyes as infinitely cold as the ice around him. His heavy white robes were for comfort: the cold did not bother him. It never had, in all of his centuries. His name was Kraylle…
     
    *
     
    The throne was made of ice. He was leaning forward in it, his large hands and long fingers like talons around its freezing white armrests.
    ‘What do you mean “can’t”, Rudi?’ Kraylle’s voice was soft, but - like the hiss of a deadly snake, it warned of menace and malice and fury, and terrible, terrible danger.
    There were ten young men - some of them just boys - standing in front of the throne. They were all dressed in black, they were pale from lack of sunshine, they were cold and they were all scared. One stood half a step in front of the others. Older and taller than the rest, he was in his mid-teens