The Tracker Read Online Free

princess and it turns out that she was within your section of the perindens all along, I will dismiss you from the palace. Are we clear about that?” Arden listened without worry; he could not be dismissed with his penchant. His life and skill belonged to the king. In his angrier moments with Tolaman, he wished that he could be dismissed.
    Tolaman’s voice grew even more loud and imperious, drowning out the first lead for the squires nearby. “Enter each exhibit, each pantry, each storeroom, and turn over every rock and saddle and bag of dragon meal. And if you do find her, do not run screaming it through the grounds! Notify me quietly and immediately. Now go.”
    As they were leaving, the king’s man called for Tolaman. He flapped at them to go on and doubled back to speak to him. The reason Tolaman wanted to be notified first was so he could claim the discovery for himself. He was a man hungry for glory in a position that offered little. Arden had been tired of him within an hour of their meeting. Seven years of bombast and bossiness had only deepened the tiredness. The only way to contend with him was to keep one’s head low, and Arden had learned to keep his head so low that he was almost tripping upon it when he walked. There had been times after he’d first come that he had imagined running back to the orphanage. The matron there was harried but gentle, and liked Arden for taking care of the horses.
    He began at the lowest of the middle branches and searched methodically through the exhibits. A monkey looked slyly at the door when he opened it and Arden thought shoo . He had to push his command harder into its mind; monkeys were much smarter than dragons and his penchant was less effective for their intelligence. He could tire himself out using his skill too long with them.
    The princess was not with the monkeys, either in the exhibit or behind it, and he crossed the passageway to take a look at the birds. Neither was Princess Briala there. Of all four children of King Heros, she was the one he was most familiar with. Now and then she came to the perindens to set up a chair by an exhibit and practice her sketching of the animals within. Only once had they exchanged words. She had been about fifteen at the time, and had flown around the branches calling for help because one of the dear little dragons was caught in the net. Her black hair was falling everywhere and sweat was beaded on her brow from her franticness.
    She watched anxiously from outside as Arden brought in the ladder and climbed up, and she clapped in relief when he freed it. No, she was not very knowledgeable about dragons, who regularly got themselves stuck in everything and occasionally spontaneously combusted if they were so stupid that they swallowed their flames. But she was kind. Arden had liked that about her very much. Although they had not spoken since then, she always smiled at him in passing. Her proclivity to practical jokes was new information to him; Arden paid little mind to the third floor and its inhabitants. Half of the year they weren’t even at the palace but in another of their homes around Odri, or traveling through the nearby lands of Loria, Isle Zayre, and less often Havanath. As Arden’s role was in the perindens, he stayed behind.
    From the birds he went to the squelly pools, which were indeed a mess from the clogged pipes. The water creatures fought for dominance by encasing one another in a jelly-like substance vomited up from their gullets, and it did not disperse on its own. When Arden had been lower on the lead chain, he had made a weekly habit of dunking under the surface of the pools to root out the pipes. He didn’t wait for the clog to build up. Stepping around the murky pools as the creatures splashed water on his legs, he checked over the whole of the exhibit. The princess wasn’t there.
    From the squelly pools he went to the pasture, which he paced from end to end. No one had ever informed the nag unicorn that