The Art of Hunting Read Online Free Page A

crackling within, part of a
rusted metal desk, hooks and loops of chain depending from the ceiling. She laid her hands upon the smooth black joists and peered between them. Hundreds of small glass phials – ichusae?
– stood glittering in wire racks upon the desk. And there she spied the whetstone she had heard. But no sword. No owner.
    ‘So it’s you.’
    Ianthe spun to face the voice.
    The Unmer prince stood outside the shack door. He was every bit as handsome as she remembered: young and pale and slender, strong of jaw and with a rickle of hair as golden as summer hay. He
wore a white uniform brocaded with silver cord and crusted with gemstones around the collar and lapels. His posture averred the calm confidence and arrogance of his noble heritage. His violet eyes,
so clear and sharp, crackled with a hint of cruelty. They were very old eyes indeed, at odds with his youthful appearance. His hand rested on the pommel of a curved sword lashed to his waist by a
red silkspun cummerbund. His gaze lingered a moment on her torn and bloody Haurstaf robe, then snapped back up to meet her own expression of wonder.
    ‘Do you know where you are?’ he said.
    ‘I’m dreaming?’
    ‘
I’m dreaming
,’ he said. ‘My dream. You’re the interloper.’
    Ianthe felt herself wilt under his unflinching scrutiny. She was suddenly acutely aware of her sorry state of dress, her bruised and naked feet. She raised a hand to hide her swollen lip.
‘Maybe it’s
my
dream,’ she said, ‘and
you’re
the interloper.’
    ‘How could
I
possibly invade
your
mind?’
    ‘How could I invade yours?’
    ‘You’re Haurstaf.’
    ‘I’m
not
Haurstaf.’
    A sudden rumble of thunder broke across the mountain tops, startling Ianthe. It seemed to her that this dream world had just voiced her anger. And now it looked to be assuming her mood. The
stars above, so clear mere moments ago, were being swallowed quickly by dark reefs of cloud.
    The prince glanced up and gave a mirthless smile. ‘You’re already changing things,’ he said, ‘asserting control, asserting your own dominance. It’s a Haurstaf
trait.’
    Another crack of thunder. Lightning ripped across the north, illuminating the corrie and the mounded mountains around them. In that instant it seemed to Ianthe that they were standing in the
heart of an ocean tempest, that those granite peaks would come crashing down and obliterate them both. But then cold, quiet darkness returned.
    In a low, measured tone, she said, ‘I told you, I’m not Haurstaf.’
    He studied her for a moment longer, his brow furrowed in thought. Then he turned and swept a hand towards the luminous pools. ‘These mountains are the Lakuna Aressi. The pools . . .’
He gazed at them with the detachment of someone lost in their own memories. ‘My father told me stories of this place when I was young, that’s why I dream of it.’ He hesitated
again, idly rubbing a tiny white brine scar on the back of his hand. ‘The real brine pools didn’t contain
these
people. You brought them here with you. They’re your
memories.’ His white teeth flashed. ‘May I ask why you have imagined them all to be blind?’
    Ianthe looked away, her heart quickening.
    The storm in the heavens began to dissolve. The thunderclouds thinned to a haze and then to nothing and moments later the stars had been restored to their full brilliance in that cold clear
sky.
    ‘What is your name?’ he said.
    ‘Ianthe.’
    ‘I am—’
    ‘Paulus Marquetta,’ she said.
    ‘You know of me?’
    If only he knew the truth. How many times had she gazed on him from afar? She had seen him through the eyes of his own captors, a lonely prisoner kept in a cell deep below the Haurstaf palace.
She had looked upon his sleeping face, the golden tangle of his hair upon his pillow, so peaceful and beautiful, and him so utterly unaware of his power over her. And through his own eyes
she’d read the letters he’d written to his dying princess;
I