The White Towers Read Online Free Page A

back door to the cottage was half open, and a young deer had wandered in from the forest. It trusted Agathe and Grace, for they often left food out for the creature. A bowl was there, filled with fruit, wild flowers and nuts. The fawn’s nostrils twitched and it moved forward, checking around with care, before lowering its muzzle into the bowl and savouring the offering. No sound intruded on the scene, except the nearby stream running through its frozen channel. But the deer lifted its head and, suddenly, for no apparent reason, its ears pinned back against its skull and it bolted, zig-zagging as it disappeared through the trees.
    Inside the kitchen, Agathe was standing, staring out of the window as tea brewed in a pot. She’d seen the deer arrive, but had not heard it depart. So when the cracking of a twig brought her from her day-dreaming, her reverie, she thought it was still the deer and a smile broadened her wrinkled face…
    But the shadow that fell across the threshold to the kitchen was not the deer. It was a small, hunkered, twisted creature with skin like bark and dark eyes that glittered. It hobbled into the kitchen and stood, staring at Agathe. She gasped, hand coming to her mouth.
    “You,” she hissed, in awe and terror.
    “You know me, then?” said Salvond, voice a curious mixture of low and musical, and yet also cracked, degraded.
    “I know what you are,” said Agathe, voice low and level, eyes fixed on the elf rat. “I know you are a scourge. Cast out. Filled with poison, with plague. Go on! Get out!”
    “You are mistaken,” said Salvond, moving closer.
    Agathe grabbed a bread knife from the table beside her, and slashed it in front of her. “I said stay back! You are diseased! Get out of my house! Grace! Grace!”
    “I wouldn’t do that,” said Salvond, face cracking into a broken smile.
    Agathe launched herself at the creature, knife plunging down. Despite his deformities, the elf rat side-stepped the attack, his own corrugated, twisted fingers lashing out and closing like powerful tree roots around Agathe’s throat. He squeezed. She gasped, and the knife clattered to the kitchen flags.
    Salvond glanced left, down the corridor towards the front room where Crowe was sleeping. He squeezed harder, and Agathe’s legs went weak, collapsing at the knees – but still she remained in position as Salvond exerted pressure, held her there…
    “Leave her be!” screamed Grace, hitting Salvond over the back of the head with a hefty log. But rather than collapse, or even shift, Salvond remained solid in place and turned slowly on Grace, who lifted the chunk of oak again, her intention to crack the elf rat’s skull clean open. His hand came up, and tendrils like tree roots flowed from a circular wound in his palm. They wrapped around Grace’s elderly face and she screamed, a scream which became quickly muffled. There were tiny crackling sounds as more strands snapped out, engulfing Grace’s whole head. They wrapped around her, quivering, questing, entombing her completely and then pushing into her mouth, into her ears, up her nose, pushing into her eye sockets past her writhing, rolling eyeballs; then with the slow, gentle, unbending pressure that can send tree roots through lime mortar, these invading strands eased forward into Grace’s skull. Her legs gave way suddenly, she sagged, held there, and then Salvond eased her to the floor and turned back to Agathe. She was purple, her own eyes rolling in disbelief and horror.
    “I’m sorry, Old One,” soothed Salvond, almost in sorrow. “But it has to be this way.” Within the next minute Agathe, also, was dead.
    Salvond straightened a little, his spine making crackling noises and the roots came back to him, wavering, quivering, and he closed his eyes for a moment as they were accepted back into his own body. Then he turned, and stared down the short corridor towards Crowe.
    The elf rat limped across threadbare carpet. At the sound of his approach,