The Mad Giant (Shioni of Sheba Book 3) Read Online Free Page A

her from the giant?
    Clearly, s omething weird was happening to her. What if she too started growing madly… or just growing mad?
    Biting the inside of her cheek as hard as she could bear, Shioni watched Talaku choose a fallen branch. Holding it in his right hand, he stretched out his long arm and poked the ground ahead of them. Nothing. He stepped forward, repeating the action. Again… and the ground cover moved. Another firm prod and a section easily large enough to swallow her for breakfast, caved in suddenly.
    H e grinned and mimed a set of sharp stakes within a pit. ‘Go around,’ he gestured, indicating a faint path to the right.
    Shioni peered into the pit in passing. Ouch! The bottom bristled with sharpened stakes–anyone who fell in would have a most unpleasant landing. She rubbed the gooseflesh on her neck. What were the Wasabi hiding?
    “Stop!” squeaked Azurelle. Talaku was moving toward the fallen tree.
    Too late. His giant foot snagged a concealed rope. A great log all set with spikes came whooshing through the trees–but the Fiuri’s call had given him enough time to react. Talaku sprang aside in a huge bound no ordinary man could have made, and for his trouble, received but a glancing blow upon his shoulder as the log crashed down into the bushes.
    The giant grunted something curt and probably rather rude beneath his beard.
    Moving with even greater caution now, Talaku and Shioni skirted the fallen tree. They could make out the dark, sheer cliff face through the thinning foliage. They stepped clear of the treeline and looked warily about.
    Shioni’s attention immediately fixed on a bridge, not a stone’s throw to her right hand, which spanned a deep gully. The gully’s sides appeared to have been carved smooth–in places, weathered chisel marks were picked out by the angle of the lowering afternoon sun. The bridge pointed straight at a jagged black hole in the cliff; clearly the mouth of a cave or a tunnel leading somewhere beneath the ridge. Her eyes flicked back to the bridge. It was in excellent condition, blocks of dressed stone seamlessly fitted together by master builders… remarkable, and so bizarrely out of place that she did not trust it for an instant.
    Talaku found his voice first. “Right through the mountain,” he said, laying one huge paw upon his axe as though to assure himself it was still sheathed upon his back. “This goes right through or I’m a monkey’s uncle.”
    “They ’ve gone in, haven’t they?”
    “Yes, Zi.”
    “Look,” Azurelle pointed, her voice rising with excitement. “Isn’t that similar to the stele you found, Shioni–the one by the Mesheha River?”
    Following the Fiuri’s quivering finger to its target, Shioni saw that at the entrance of the cave, a three-sided stone column had been carved out of the living rock. The fourth side was the mountain itself. Zi was right. Apparently identical to the stele they had discovered alongside the Mesheha, it was covered in lettering, and about fifteen feet above ground level she noticed the imprint of a hand so gigantic that not even Talaku’s paw could have filled it. Yet? She should keep that thought private… but what a discovery! Annakiya would be agog. She would be down here faster than a sparrowhawk. Did this mean the Wasabi had their own tunnel through the mountains? Had they just averted a surprise attack on Castle Asmat? Or were those warriors just a scouting party?
    And the Sheban scouts had missed this–how? Getu would not be angry. He would be livid. She could just picture his face darkening, his throat swelling with words to scorch and blister even a seasoned warrior…
    She should not be so frightened of him. ‘ Trembling like a leaf,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Brave warrior of Sheba you are.’
    “Move closer, Shioni. I want to read that inscription.” As she stepped forward, the Fiuri added, “But not onto the bridge. That’s too obvious a place for a trap. Hmm… I see. It says,