Raveler: The Dark God Book 3 Read Online Free

turning, we’ll need to be quick. They might have him on a leash at this very moment. In fact, I’ll bet on it.” He put his hand on the pommel of his sword. “Let me do it now, put him out of his misery. Put him out of mine.” He turned back to Talen. “What do you say?”
    “Well,” Talen said. “I’d say you’re an extremely generous fellow, but I’m kind of hoping to avoid the death thing for a while. It’s a little overrated.”
    “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
    “Actually,” said Talen, “I do.”
    Harnock shook his head. “It’s a mercy I’m promising. In fact, if you want my help, you’ll promise a mercy in return.”
    “You need only ask,” River said.
    “If I’m taken, you’re going to kill me. And you’re going to do it quick. I will not be their thrall again. Swear to me by your ancestors you will do it.”
    “I swear,” River said.
    Harnock leveled his gaze at Talen. “Swear.”
    If a Divine took Harnock, then Talen would have to fight Harnock. How could he—
    “Swear!” Harnock commanded.
    Talen jumped. “I’ll murder you straight out,” he said. “I swear it.”
    “Good,” Harnock said, satisfied. “Send your eel things forth, but know I’m watching you.”
    “That term,” Talen said. “‘Eel things’ makes me feel like some sort of squid. Why don’t we call them roamlings?”
    Harnock looked at him like he was a bug. Like he might squish him.
    “Right,” Talen said. “Eel things, I’ll just send them out.” But the two of them staring at him made him uncomfortable, so he turned around. He loosened his shoulders, took a breath, and felt after his parts. A moment later, two of the roamlings emerged from his wrists. Except they weren’t separate from him. They were him. Just like an arm or leg.
    The yellow world mixed with the blue in his multiple vision. He closed the eyes of his flesh to concentrate better and soared up past the roof on Harnock’s house and into the lavender-tinged sky to see at a distance, to see what others could not.
    Above him the crows started to caw, then something spooked them, and they fled. Talen continued to rise until Harnock, River, and the houses below all looked like small carved figurines. He scanned the hills and woods about him with both roamlings. In the distance, he saw some pale orange creatures, skir probably. From the sun, he knew which way was East and West. Nashrud and his dreadmen would probably be coming from the East, the direction of the clan lands. So he flew that way, above the hill on that side of the vale, and scanned the trees, rills, and slopes below him. A minute or so later, he found the dreadmen.
    “They’re about two miles back, east southeast,” he said with his body. “They’re working their way up a slope.”
    “You’re sure it’s them and not some troop of woodikin?”
    “Positive. They’re mounted. I can see Scruff.”
    “Our horse,” River clarified.
    “Fine,” Harnock said. “Keep an eye on them. I think it’s time they get introduced to the Wilds properly.”
    Talen opened his eyes. While the triple vision didn’t overwhelm him as he thought it might, he knew he wasn’t going to be able to run looking multiple ways. So he pulled one roamling back.
    He expected Harnock to move out, but he walked over to the stone shrine instead and knelt next to the grave there. He clasped the bone that hung from his necklace and began to murmur something under his breath.
    “Whose grave is that?” Talen asked.
    “Moon’s, she was his wife.”
    “He had a wife?”
    “Moon was not your average woman,” she said. “She was a beautiful copper-skinned beauty that could gut you as easily as she could look at you. A smuggler from a rough family.”
    “She was married to him? In his blended form?”
    “It’s a long story,” said River.
    “I’m not going anywhere.”
    “It’s his to tell,” she said.
    Talen thought of the lace in Harnock’s house and the tidy