Arrows Of Change (Book 1) Read Free

rather than later. Cloud’s Rest
was becoming more dangerous for them than the bandit-infested woods.
    That wasn’t to say that Estole would be safer, though.
    She looked again at her wizard-employer. Wizard Ashtian
Fallbright was famous, even all the way out here. The king he served, one
Edvard Knolton, had just this year declared his separation from Iysh. The
country of Iysh had been facing civil wars and internal conflicts for the past
two generations, but no one had expected someone to have the guts to split off
from it entirely. The whole world had waited with bated breath to see what
would happen next. Bets were made on how long Edvard Knolton would get by with
his declaration.
    The Iyshian king had immediately sent out his troops to
subdue the rebel. Only, it hadn’t worked. Edvard Knolton had won in an
astoundingly short amount of time, decimating the army sent to defeat him. Iysh
sent another—and that army was defeated as well. A third army hadn’t been sent,
although no one was quite sure why. There was speculation of all sorts going
around, though, which ranged from the Iyshian king giving up on the small part
of land Knolton owned, to him not having enough troops to challenge the rebel
again.
    Personally, Riana bet it was the lack of troops.
    But all the rumors agreed on one thing: Knolton had won largely
because of two very strong wizards that had fought with him. And one of those wizards
was none other than Ashtian Fallbright.
    Strange, he didn’t look that intimidating cutting down
trees.
    She glanced at her da. “Why be ye on me branch?”
    “It be a nice branch.” He grinned but didn’t look at her.
    “And how do ye know it can support both our weights?”
Broden Ravenscroft was many things, but light wasn’t one of them.
    Broden shot her a grin. “Now, daughter, I do no’ hear
creaking noises. It be safe enough.”
    “The last time ye said that, it creaked right afore we fell.
Six feet. Onto no’ nice ground.”
    He just chuckled, a low, rumbling sound.
    Riana tossed a hand into the air, giving up. Fine, he could
stay, but she wasn’t risking that again. As it happened, both of them had
nearly broken bones because of that poor decision. With a slight huff, she
strapped her arrows firmly into the belt quiver at her waist before she sprang
off that branch and onto another, her gloved hands easily finding purchase on
the rough bark. With a flex of the shoulders, she swung herself on top of it. Ancient
trees in a virgin forest really did offer the best perches.
    They’d been guarding for an hour now, eyes peeled for
trouble. In that time, the wizard had felled nearly three dozen trees, all of
them stacked neatly in piles.
    “How much lumber did he say he wanted?” she asked slowly.
Surely that was enough for whatever project the man had in mind. These weren’t
normal trees, after all. One trunk could build three cottages without strain.
    “I do no’ think he mentioned an amount. Man knows how to
work; I give him that.”
    She could see the patches of sweat under his arms and down
his back from here. “But how does he plan to move all of that? He did no’ bring
wagons or any teams to pull them with.”
    “Man’s beat two armies we know of. I do no’ doubt he will
win against trees, too.”
    Good point.
    Riana turned her head in a smooth, slow motion, eyes
drinking in her surroundings, ears searching for anything out of place. Her da
had trained her from the time she was knee-high how to read the moods around
her. The way the branches swayed, the amount of sounds a body should hear while
walking, the scents of the forest and what they meant—it all told a tale. Often,
it wasn’t a noise that told her something was wrong; it was the absence of it
altogether. The animals that lived here hid when there were strangers or
trouble, taking all their chattering along with them.
    The forest here was thick, trees so massive they could crush
houses, their branches interweaved to block most of