Things Unseen: (An epic fantasy adventure series) (The Caris Chronicles Book 1) Read Online Free

his parents had always taught him were among the most important. Clover would, at least, be something for him to start over with. He wouldn’t have any money, the last of that having been used to stock the larder and buy supplies for the farm until the next harvest.
    He would have clothes, some food, his bow and arrows, a sword, and now a horse. More than enough for a man to make his way in the world, he thought with determination. Though not enough to provide for a wife, and never enough to pay a bride price. Not that that had ever really been a possibility anyway. The thought came unbidden with a stab of pain in his chest, adding to the familiar ache he had carried for the last few years.
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    The soldiers had set up camp on the north side of the village in the Robin’s Field. The few surviving villagers had gathered the Rocweeds intended for the evening’s fire and created a pyre. In an area so barren, they never used wood for burning. It would not need to be a large fire, though close to six hundred had been slain, there was not much left of them.
    Caris stood by her house, not sure what to do. Someone had cleared the area in front of her property; most of the activity was concentrated in the middle of the village now. Though she knew she should help, she could not bring herself to approach the people who knew how she had killed her mother.
    Caris decided that when her fellow villagers left to find another village or city to settle in, she would not go with them. A surge of excitement welled up in her, hope that she had not felt in years lifted her. Guiltily she squashed it. How could she be happy when so many of her loved ones had just died? The thought could not be fully quenched, however, that though she would mourn, she might also find a life. It would be a difficult one, full of hardship, she was sure, but perhaps it would also be interesting, at the least, it would be different.
    At her front door, Caris found her arrows. Someone had removed all of them from the dead derks before the soldiers had dragged them to a massive mound outside the village. Caris wondered that anyone had the stomach for such a gruesome job. Though such quality wood was precious, she had determined to find some more and make new arrows rather than retrieve them.
    They had not been washed; there was so much work to be done, her benefactor would not have had the time to go to the creek . It must have been one of my sister’s husbands looking out for me for the sake of his wife.
    With a stab of guilt, Caris realised she hadn’t even found out who among her sisters had survived. Still she could not bring herself to go amongst her people. She would go to the funeral, she decided; she knew she could not stay away from that no matter how much she wasn’t wanted there. It would be dark and she could hang back. Though she would never see any of them again, she wanted to know who had survived.
    Caris picked up her arrows and headed down to the creek. When she arrived, she washed them numbly. Finishing, she sat down beside the water. Loss hit her ─ not the loss of her family, friends, and home; she wasn’t ready to face that yet, but the loss of this creek where she had spent so many of the best hours of her life.
    This thin corridor of paradise, in an otherwise bare rocky landscape, had been the destination of many of the villagers whenever they had a spare afternoon, or if they just had to escape the heat or take a break. There were plenty of places along its shady course that people frequented, but this spot behind her field had always been her favourite.
    She had spent so many happy hours as a child here with her sisters, and as they grew and moved on to their new responsibilities, she had enjoyed coming on her own to wade in the water and sit on the bank under the trees, watching the birds and listening to the merry tune of the creek.
    Caris watched the water splashing over rocks now, and a deep longing filled her. A longing for her