The Three Lands Omnibus (2011 Edition) Read Online Free

the dispute would be ended as soon as someone was caught in the act of carrying out a part of the feud. This being the case, I could not understand why Fenton would waste my birthday vow with a peace oath, which was usually used only to settle a prolonged blood feud. But I was too loyal to Fenton to voice my disappointment; instead I hid my feelings by saying, "Oh, listen to me, will you? I've been writing a journal for several months now, all about everything that happens to me. I just started the second volume – it's lying next to us here."

That caught Hamar's attention. He was always the sort of person who needed to have something right in front of him to fully understand it, this being the reason he did so badly at playing Jackal and Prey. I sometimes wondered too whether he hadn't inherited most of the Emorian blood in our family, for he was as pale-faced as an Emorian, and he sometimes talked about the unseen gods as though he were not quite sure he believed in them – but of course I would not insult him by pointing this out to him.

Now he said, "I wondered about that book, but I thought it was one of those volumes Fenton taught you to bind."

"He did," I said, "but I only bound blank pages, so I decided to fill them as a journal."

"What does it say? Does it have anything in it about me?" He reached toward the book.

I pulled it hastily from his hands, remembering what I had written about him earlier that day. "Not this one," I said, offering a silent apology up to the Jackal for my falsehood. "My earlier volume has some passages in it about you." Some of those passages, I knew, were complimentary enough to my brother that he would be pleased to hear them.

"Read them to me now," he ordered.

"I can't. I don't have the first volume with me. I hid it back in the house, where you and Mira couldn't paw your way through it."

"Then fetch it," ordered Hamar. He's like that sometimes.

I could see that he was on the point of going into one of his rages, so I said wearily, "You can fetch it yourself. I've hidden it in—"

"I can find it," he said, clearly annoyed that I had so little faith in his hunting abilities.

I shrugged and turned my attention back to my wine flask. When I looked again, Hamar was gone.

After a minute, I regretted his departure. All around me, villagers were chatting and laughing, but Hamar and I had set ourselves slightly apart from the rest, and no one rose now to take Hamar's place.

I looked about. Drew was on the other side of the fire with some of his playmates, and he looked longingly at me, but I was sure it could not be a manly act for me to go sit with a cousin so much younger than myself, so I turned my gaze away from him toward the younger men of the village. They were all standing in a knot, gathered round Drew's father, Lange, who was talking about the latest village council meeting. I realized, with a lowering of the heart, that I would have nothing to contribute to such a conversation.

Leda was sitting nearby, holding her baby and smiling as she watched Lange. I was trying to decide whether it would be manly to go talk with my own sister when, to my relief, I caught sight of Fenton gesturing to me. I rose and rushed to join him.

He said in a low voice, "Adrian, where is your brother? Your father wants to start the village's vow-taking now."

I looked at the hall, which was farther down the mountain. "He went back to our house to fetch something."

"Well, have someone bring him back here. He should be present for the ceremony, and he will need to be here for its sequel, when you and he exchange vows."

I looked round, but Leda was now in conversation with one of the more garrulous older women in the village; I knew that it would be difficult for her to extract herself from the talk. After a minute's more frantic searching with my eyes, I found Mira.

She was sitting with her friend Chloris, who recently married Titus. Some of the older boys were saying at the time of the marriage