Shadowfell Read Online Free Page A

Let’s say I did it to give you a choice. Where were you and your father headed?’
    ‘Nowhere. You saw what he did, how he was. We’re wanderers. We go where we might find food and shelter for the next night.’ And keep one step ahead of the Enforcers. I would not say that aloud. If those years on the road had taught me anything, it was that nobody could be trusted. Nobody.
    ‘Mm-hm,’ muttered my companion. ‘You plan to keep doing that now he’s gone?’
    That was blunt to the point of cruelty. What could I say? I hardly knew what tomorrow might hold, for tonight my world had turned upside down.
    ‘Why wouldn’t I?’
    He gave me a penetrating look. ‘If you’ve been on the road awhile, you already know the answer to that.’
    Even as he spoke, an idea formed in my mind, born of something my brother and his friends had mentioned in hushed voices. A secret. A secret too perilous to share with this stranger, even if he had saved me from dying in flames along with my father. There was a place I could go. A good place. A place that might or might not be real.
    ‘North,’ I said, giving him a small part of the truth. ‘There’s a place a kinsman of mine once spoke of, in the mountains. I will head that way.’ Something made me add, ‘I’ve had enough of this realm of distrust and fear. I’m coming to think rocks and trees make better companions than men and women.’
    ‘Mm-hm.’ I could not tell what he thought of my statement. He passed me his water skin. I drank and passed it back. ‘North,’ he said eventually. ‘On your own. How far?’
    ‘Far,’ I said. ‘I’ll cope. I know how to look after myself.’
    ‘Mm-hm.’ He regarded me levelly. In his eyes I saw my ragged, weary, half-starved self, a pitiful stick of a girl with defeat written all over her.
    ‘Without Father it will be easier,’ I said, and to my surprise hot tears began to run down my cheeks. I had thought myself beyond weeping. ‘He was once a fine man,’ I murmured, wiping my face with a corner of the cloak. Stop talking, Neryn , I ordered myself. Don’t speak about the past. Don’t tell him anything at all . ‘I should thank you,’ I said. ‘What is your name?’
    He threw a handful of twigs onto the fire, watching them flare up. ‘That’s of no importance.’
    ‘You know my name.’ But then, he only knew it because he’d heard Father use it, back on the chancy-boat. And there were many reasons why a person would want to withhold his real name. ‘Never mind,’ I said quickly. ‘I shouldn’t have asked.’
    ‘Flint,’ my companion said, not meeting my eye. ‘That’s what they call me.’
    If I had been asked to pick a name that suited him, I could hardly have chosen better. ‘Then thank you, Flint,’ I managed before a yawn overtook me. Gods, I longed to lie down and rest. I needed to let the tears fall freely, without anyone watching. I wanted to think of the good times, before the shadows engulfed my family. I needed to remember Father as he had been, a bright-eyed, clever man who used to whirl me around in his arms, laughing.
    ‘Don’t be tempted to go back down there.’ Flint’s tone was sombre. ‘There’ll be Enforcers on the lookout for a few days at least, in case someone they missed tries to slip back in to check on family or lay the dead to rest.’ He glanced at me and I thought he guessed how much I longed to do just that. It was wrong to leave Father’s body, drowned or burned, perhaps both, to drift alone in the depths of Darkwater. Perhaps he would be washed ashore, carrion for wild creatures to feed upon.
    ‘I won’t go back,’ I said, and it was the truth. I knew how hopeless a quest that would be.
    ‘Listen,’ Flint said, not meeting my eye now but stirring the fire with a stick, making sparks rise into the night. ‘You know, and I know, how hard it is to make a journey like that alone. Summer’s over and the Cull’s under way. You should be safe enough here for a day or so;