Shadows on the Stars Read Online Free Page B

far away. But he seemed to sense, somehow, that it came from his son—his only child, whom he’d never had the chance to know. His face creased in the very first hint of a smile.
    “It’s me,” cried Tamwyn, his throat suddenly tight. “It’s me, your—”
    Just then Krystallus faltered. He clutched his chest, as though he’d been pierced by an arrow, and fell to his knees on the rocky ridge. The half-smile vanished, replaced by an agonizing look of pain. And something more, as well: a look of having found something precious, at last, before losing it for all time.
    “Father!” screamed Tamwyn, trying to stretch out his arms. But his arms couldn’t reach far enough. He could only watch helplessly as his father crumpled. The torch, still blazing despite the fierce wind, dropped to the ground beside him—then went out.
    •  •  •
    “Don’t die!” shouted Tamwyn, sitting up. “Don’t—”
    Someone shook him by the shoulders, while a pair of pink eyes stared down at his face. “There now, Tamwyn me laddy. Wakes up! Even with me oldsy ears, I’d have heard you ten leagues away.”
    Tamwyn wiped his brow, wet with perspiration, then blinked his eyes. They felt strangely swollen. “I’m fine, Shim, just fine.”
    “Must dine? You is waking up hungrily?”
    The young man grimaced. And then, to make sure that Shim heard him clearly, he shouted, “Just fine!”
    Shim frowned, adding several more wrinkles to a face that was more than a thousand years old. “No, no, you isn’t. I is maybily just a smallsy and midgetly giant, but I knows a bad dream when I hears one.”
    Tamwyn simply shook his head, making his hair swish against his shoulders.
    The pink eyes narrowed. “Nobody who dreams so shoutingly is just fine! I is surely of that, as surely as I am of me own little sniffer.” For emphasis, he patted the tip of his large, potato-shaped nose.
    Because it was so difficult to talk with his hard-of-hearing companion, Tamwyn just waved him away. He looked around, trying to remember exactly where he was. But his dream was still so vivid, so real, he felt disoriented. His father—and that torch—had seemed almost near enough to touch.
    He gazed above his head at an overhanging slab of rock, coated so thickly with mosses and dwarf ferns that almost none of the rock itself could be seen. More moss lay beneath him, thicker than a black bear’s fur. Steam, rising from the hot spring that bubbled near his feet, made the air moist and warm—much warmer, he felt sure, than out there beyond the overhang, on that snow-covered summit.
    Hallia’s Peak! All at once, he remembered where he was. And everything that had happened to him before he trudged over here to the hot spring, where he’d fallen asleep. He remembered the Stargazing Stone. The terrifying vision of dark shapes in the sky, White Hands, and Rhita Gawr. And, on top of that, what he’d done to Elli.
    Now she hates me , he thought angrily. What an ogre’s lair he’d made of everything! At least none of their companions on the summit—especially Henni, that crazy hoolah who just loved to ridicule him—had seen what he’d done.
    But his problems with Elli, painful as they were, didn’t compare to the problems facing Avalon. Across his mind flashed the images of that vision—images of such peril and terror that he couldn’t even fully comprehend them, let alone hope to prevent them from coming true.
    Why had such a vision, concerning the very survival of Avalon, come to him of all people? He was still, at heart, just a bumbling wilderness guide—as far away from being the true heir of Merlin as Shim was from being a true giant.
    Sure, he’d shown some flashes of magical power in the past few weeks, but most of that had been unintended—as well as destructive. What little good he’d done had been the work of the staff, not himself. And no matter how hard he’d tried to direct his growing powers with his thoughts, he’d always failed. The