The Vitalis Chronicles: Steps of Krakador Read Online Free

he knows it, let alone would ever admit such folly.”
    She walked up the broad flight of steps that led to the thick wall surrounding the Temple. Its gate stood open, the hinges having never held doors in their long existence. Worship was open to all in the Temple. The Creator, it was said, closed His doors to no one seeking His face.
    She crossed the open courtyard, feeling somewhat under-dressed as she passed groups of worshipers, clad in their finest whites. She tried to pay their glances no mind as she reached a longer set of deep steps leading up to the Temple itself. The base of the building was practically a simple low box. The carved foundation and soaring crystal, developed by subsequent generations, were where the more intricate architecture had been realized. The four walls of the ancient structure were simple, but engraved into them was the most intricate visual representation of the history of the world that had ever been made.
    The Titans remained to the left of the main doors, just past the formation of the world. She knew their story well. As a child she had wandered around the Temple in its outer courtyard for hours, taking in the carvings and napping in the sun. At least, when the priests let her sleep for long. The tapestry woven in stone spoke of the Titans' rise in their care of the world, and of their fall in murder and war. The separation of the one continent into many was her favorite. She loved the intricate coastlines and mountain ranges that spread across the wall. Their Greater Being was represented, leading the people to peace, but in the next section he was corrupting and dividing mankind. Soon two stories unfolded. The East was steadily subdued, their people enslaved, monsters arising from their midst, as the West united under one king to stand and fight.
    Her ancestors were carved into this storyline, merging the kingdoms and principalities into one by treaties, war, or coercion. To the right of the doors, at the end of the story, her father stood at the head of a united people, facing what they now called the Greater Demon. The Relequim. The war looked lost until the shining Magi were shown at the battle of Albentine, pressing the enemy's forces and crushing them in defeat. The final images showed three winged warriors subduing the Relequim with the aid of the Magi and entombing him in the nameless mountain, the floating peak just north of Islenda, where the boy who represented all her hopes and dreams now sought to prevent the Relequim's escape.
    The stories all came and went in a flash, as familiar as her own. There was no time for reflecting on them now. She shuddered as she finished climbing the steps, her eyes locked on the carving of the Tomb of the Relequim, the Cathedral jutting out as if to catch the far side of the bridge that ran to it before it fell. She didn't know if Ardin would be successful in his task or what his failure might mean for her people, but her brother needed to know the dangers that approached.
    As Rain entered the alcove that led to the covered inner courtyard, she found herself in the midst of a large group of priests and their attendants. In their billowing crimson robes and tall pointed hats, the priests looked like drops of blood eternally falling to the ground and never to reaching their mark. She smiled to see them, too. Her father had always called them the jesters of the spiritual world, but she found comfort in their ritual as a girl and respected the discipline their choice of lives required as a woman.
    The light from the door and the torches around the interior of the courtyard hardly served to illuminate the area. It took her eyes a moment to adjust. As she neared the gate to the Temple proper, she was stopped by two shuffling blood droplets. “I'm sorry miss,” said the one on the left. His bulbous nose bobbed as toothless gums worked to form words without spitting. “No one is permitted within until the King has left the Temple.”
    She knew this