Trail Of The Torean (Book 2) Read Online Free

he walked through the streets. What was wrong with him? He had to calm himself before he did something he would truly regret.

    Garrick came to Halley’s Inn, the roadhouse at the edge of town where he and Alistair had stayed on a previous trip. The swivel doors squealed as he pushed through. It was dark inside despite the time of day, and it took his eyes a moment to adjust.
    The room was smaller than he remembered.
    The place he recalled was an expansive, open place, filled with traders and rangers who came from all reaches of the plane to tell stories and partake in loud games. But, instead he found a cramped floor and a set of stairs that ran up the side of the room beside the counter. He found walls that were cracked, a floor that was watermarked, and dusty cobwebs that filled the corners of the windows—the glass of which had been painted over and probably hadn’t seen a rag since the place was first built. A weathered canvas hung over the entrance. A wave of laughter hit at the same time as the smell of stale smoke.
    People were gathered around a dragongriff table, and the sound of its spinning ball prattled in the background. The rest of the floor was maybe half-full of card players. Two girls, each certainly less than a dozen years old, mopped the floor in the back.
    He felt the power of Sjesko rising within him.
    There was so much he could do here, he thought. So much he could change.
    And old woman sat behind the counter with a bored expression on her face. Her hair was a wiry mess she had combed over an oily forehead. Dark bags framed her tired eyes.
    “What do you want?” she said. Her voice was brick-on-brick.
    “I’m looking for a room,” Garrick said.
    “Five copper.”
    “And dinner?”
    “Do I look like a cook?”
    Garrick sighed. “I guess not.”
    He placed coins on the counter, and waited while she struggled to stand. The woman was twisted oddly at the waist, and her russet shift bunched over her back. Garrick followed her as she hauled herself up the stairs with slow, painstaking movements.
    Sjesko’s energy rose again. It wanted to touch her pain. It wanted to make a difference. The villagers’ essence felt good inside him. It made him happy. As long as he carried them within, he could pretend their nobility was his own.
    He found himself feeling things about the old woman, understanding them, reading them as if they were actually a part of him.
    She once had a husband and children, but they were all gone now. At one point she had run this grungy inn well, but the woman was older now, her body too frail to handle the day-to-day chores it took to manage the place.
    The wild energy stirred further. Warmth rolled over Garrick. The hair on his arms rose as the strong taste of honey grew over his tongue. An extraordinary sense of anticipation came over him.
    The woman came to the top of the stairs and opened a closet.
    She reached to pull down a blanket.
    As she moved, Garrick touched the tip of her shoulder blade. The villagers moved inside him. Energy flowed. The woman’s spine cracked audibly, and she jumped with a startled cry.
    “Are you all right?” Garrick said.
    The woman straightened and placed her hand along her hip as she stretched and twisted. An expression of wonder came over her face.
    “Yes,” she said, bending farther. “Yes, I think so. I haven’t been able to move like this since before Kallie was born.”
    “That’s wonderful,” Garrick replied, grinning.
    The joy of Sjesko’s villagers was like a sip of mead.
    He stood up straighter, feeling a proprietary sense about the woman that he hadn’t felt before. He looked at her, and he thought also of the peddler on the street with his bucket of apples.
    Braxidane’s magic was a strange mix.
    The woman rubbed the small of her back as she led him around a corner and down a long hallway with windows open and sheer drapes blowing in the cross breeze at both ends. Their footsteps echoed on the wooden floor. Tarnished