Shadowrise Read Online Free

they showed my kin. They are not dead, but only sleeping in cold, empty lands, as you soon will, too.’
    “ Stone Man laughed. They say it were like a wind from a tomb. ‘How is that better than death? Sleeping forever in emptiness? Well, you shall have no such gift, as you deem it. You will destroy yourself or your mother will bleed out her life, then I will kill you anyway.’
    “ Crooked lifted up Tricker, still choking in the grip of his bronze hand. ‘And what about your son?’
    “ Stone Man’s voice was the unkind rumble of the earth shaking. ‘I have had many sons. If I survive I can make many more. If I do not, I care not what survives me. Do what you will.’
    “Crooked threw Tricker aside. For a long time he and Stone Man looked at each other like wolves over a kill, neither willing to take the first step. Then Crooked’s mother raised her trembling hands to the sharp point of the spear and slashed her own throat with it, falling to the floor of Stone Man’s chamber in a great wash of blood.
    “ Stone Man did not wait. Even as Crooked stared at his mother gasping out her life on the floor, the lord of the black earth flung his great spear, still wet with his mother’s lifeblood, at Crooked’s heart. Crooked tried to make Earthstar obey him but Stone Man had laid his own words of power upon it and Crooked could not bend it to his mastery. Crooked only had time to step sideways into the empty lands. The spear flew past him and struck the wall so hard half the palace fell down and all the lands around shook and quivered.
    “ When Crooked stepped back out the roads of Emptiness, Stone Man was on him. They wrestled then for a long time as the palace itself fell around them, their strength so great and their contending so mighty that the very stones of the earth were all broken and crushed, so that what had once been a rocky fastness of peaks above Stone Man’s house fell down into dust, and the land sunk, and the ocean rushed in all around them, so at last they were fighting on an island of stone amid the waters.
    “ At last the two of them caught at each other’s throats. Stone Man was the stronger, and Crooked could only step into the ways of darkness, but Stone Man held on and was carried with him. As they fell through emptiness, Stone Man bent Crooked’s back until it was nearly breaking. Crooked could not draw another breath, and neither could he think as Stone Man crushed out his life.
    “ ‘ Now look into my eyes,’ Stone Man said. ‘You will see a darkness greater than anything Emptiness can make or even imagine.’
    “ Crooked was almost caught, for if he had looked once into the eyes of the Lord of the Black Depths he would have been pulled down into death, but instead he turned his head away and sank his teeth into Stone Man’s hand. Stone Man was so pained that his grip loosened and Crooked was able to shake him off, then Stone Man fell away and away into the cloudy, cold dark.
    “ Crooked wandered a while in the most distant lands of Emptiness, dizzy and confused, but at last found his way back to Stone Man’s house where his mother’s body lay. He kneeled over her but found he could not weep. Instead he touched his hand to the place she had kissed him, then bent and kissed her cold cheek.
    “ ‘ I have destroyed your destroyers,’ he told her silent form.
    “ Without warning, a terrible pain went through him as Stone Man’s great spear pierced his chest. Crooked staggered to his feet. Tricker stepped from the shadows where he had hidden. The mischief-maker laughed and capered.
    “ ‘ And now I have destroyed you,’ Tricker Zosim cried. ‘All the great ones except for me are all dead, and I alone am left to rule all the world and the seven times seven mountains and seven times seven seas!’
    “ Crooked grasped with his hand of bronze and his hand of ivory at the spear Earthstar that had stabbed him. The great weapon burst into flames and burned away to a cinder. ‘I am