The Viper's Fangs (Book 2) Read Online Free Page A

he didn’t
have it. He walked over to his desk, picked up the books and carefully set them
on the floor beside it. Then he opened the drawer and took out the vellum
scroll he had bought but a few days earlier. It was still blank, but it
wouldn’t be for long….

Fletchings
    1
    By the time they made camp at the end of the third day,
Angus was tired of talking. What was there left to say, anyway? “I studied my
spells and learned a few new ones.” He could describe each spell in excessive
detail—tie this knot that way, draw upon those threads, remember to turn your
finger such and so, be mindful of the power—but there was no point in doing so.
He was the only wizard among The Banner of the Wounded Hand, and the others
wouldn’t understand the nuances of magic that he loved so much. But they could
understand the effects of the spells when they saw them, and he prepared them for
the effects of most of the spells, even though he had not cast them. There had
been no need to waste a good priming.
    “I practiced flying every morning for two months,” he had
told them. “I won’t be banging into walls anymore.” That had elicited the
expected chuckle, but it was also true. He could now soar with the eagles or dart
about like a giant sparrow. But he hadn’t primed for the Flying spell in some
time; his focus had shifted to learning new spells, and he had mastered three
of them. Two others were almost perfected, but he needed more practice.
    “I found a buyer for the Angst tomes,” he told them not long
after leaving Hellsbreath. When they asked if he got a fair price, he reached
into a pocket and brought out the pouch of gems. He tossed them to Hobart, who
grinned as he distributed the proceeds among their appreciative hands. “Too bad
there wasn’t time for me to decipher the Angst language; I would have liked to know
what they contained.” Hopefully there wasn’t any dangerous knowledge , he
silently added. His companions were more than satisfied with the gems, but
Angus felt as if the exchange had been somehow incomplete. He had wanted very
much to know what was in the two texts, and when he returned to Hellsbreath, he
planned to find out what the buyer had learned from them. But translation of
old, dead languages is a slow, methodical process that often fails. It couldn’t
be rushed.
    “I read a lot,” he had said, and when pressed, added, “about
history.” He shrugged when they asked what part of history, and then told them a
half-truth. “The time of the Angst,” he had said. It wasn’t quite a lie, since
he was reading about events of that time—the Dwarf Wars, the founding of the
Kingdom, the plains folk—but it wasn’t quite true, either, since he had found
nothing of consequence about the Angst. The strange religious sect seemed to
have been completely forgotten even in its own time. Then there were the
fishmen incursions. He hadn’t mentioned those, either. He didn’t need to; they
already knew about them. The fishmen had been attacking The Borderlands at
harvest time for centuries, and then last year they hadn’t shown up. But there had
been fishmen at the Angst Temple, a long way from the Death Swamps and much too
close to Hellsbreath. It seemed prudent to become more acquainted with the
conflict, but he was certain Hobart knew more about it than he did. So did
Ortis.
    Mostly, though, he had turned the conversation toward his
companions. Four months is a long time to be idle, and he was curious about
what they had been doing. He wasn’t really interested in their answers—he still
didn’t know them very well—but it was a good way to deflect their attention
away from him. Besides, their answers were disappointing and predictable. There
wasn’t that much a man could do during winter, not even in Hellsbreath. Hobart,
now clad in his familiar metal skin, had spent much of the time training with
the soldiers and drinking with Bandor. He had new stories aplenty, most of them
about this