The Sin War Box Set: Birthright, Scales of the Serpent, and The Veiled Prophet Read Online Free Page A

feel anything?”
    “I felt…I felt an emptiness, Mendeln. It reminded me of…of death.”
    As a hunter, the blond man dealt with death on an almost daily basis, usually because of the animals he killed, but occasionally because of close scrapes with wild boars, cats, or bears, where for a time he became the prey. Yet, the manner in which Achilios spoke of death now gave it a new and far more ominous connotation, one which, oddly, stirred further curiosity, not fear, in the heart of his companion.
    “What about death?” Mendeln asked almost eagerly. “Can you describe it better? Was it—”
    Achilios, expression suddenly guarded, cut him off with a sharp slash of his hand. “That’s all. I went for you right after.”
    Clearly, there was much, much more involved, but Uldyssian’s brother did not push. Perhaps he could slowly gain the information over time. For the moment, he would satisfy himself with the stone artifact. Mendeln seized a small broken branch and scraped the ground near the bottom edge. The mysterious relic appeared to be planted deep in the soil, but how far? Was there more beneath the surface than above? Again, the temptation came to touch it, this time grabbing hold with both hands in order to see if he could move the piece at all. How much more useful it would be if Mendeln could take it back to the farm so as to study it at his leisure.
    Mendeln’s head shot up. The farm! Uldyssian!
    He leapt to his feet, startling the generally unperturbable Achilios. The stone’s discovery seemed to have upset the archer in a way Mendeln had never seen before. Achilios was known for his fearlessness, but now he seemed to look to Mendeln for reassurance, certainly a first.
    “I have to get back,” he explained to the hunter. “Uldyssian will be wondering where I am.” Mendeln did not like disappointing his older sibling, even though Uldyssian would not have shown any such emotion. Nevertheless, Mendeln lived with the memories of the terrible burdens Uldyssian had taken on with the sicknesses and, later, deaths of their loved ones. The younger brother felt beholden to the older for that reason, not to mention many other, lesser ones.
    “What about that?” Achilios grumbled, gesturing at the stone with his bow. “Do we just leave it like that?”
    After a moment’s consideration, Mendeln replied, “We shall cover it over. Help me with it.”
    The two of them gathered loose branches and bits of leafy shrubbery. Yet, although they quickly had the artifact hidden from sight, Mendeln felt as if it still stood naked to the world. He considered covering it further, then decided to make do with what they had already done. The first opportunity he had to return to it, he would.
    As Mendeln focused on the path back, he belatedly noticed that the weather had taken an odd and very sudden turn. The day had been fairly clear and bright before, but now clouds began to gather in earnest to the west, as if in preparation for a major storm. The wind had also begun to pick up.
    “That’s odd,” murmured Achilios, also evidently seeing the change for the first time.
    “It is, yes.” Uldyssian’s brother did not understand the wind and weather in terms of hunting, as his companion did, but rather in measurements of currents and such. Mendeln constantly saw the aspects of farm life in such terms, and while Uldyssian—who knew weather only in how it affected his crops and his animals—constantly shook his head at his brother’s ways, he could not deny that once in a while Mendeln had come up with some idea that had helped ease their tasks a bit.
    The clouds rapidly thickened. Mendeln said nothing more to Achilios about the strange weather, but at one point when the archer moved a step ahead, Uldyssian’s brother glanced back in the direction of the stone.
    Glanced back…and wondered.
     
    Uldyssian, too, noticed the peculiar shift in the weather, but chalked it up to one of those quirks of nature to which a farmer