Dragon Haven Read Free Page B

and beyond that a snaggled forest edge of old driftwood and brush before the real forest began. From where she stood, it looked impenetrable and forbidding. “We could try the forest,” she began.
    Leftrin gave a low laugh. There was no humor in it. “That wasn’t what I meant. I was talking about you and me.”
    Her eyes locked with his. She was startled that he had spoken so bluntly, and then decided that honesty might be the only good thing that could come from Sedric’s meddling. There was no reason now for either of them to deny the attraction they felt. She wished she had the courage to take his hand. Instead, she just looked up at him and hoped he could read her eyes. He could. He sighed heavily.
    “Alise. What are we going to do?” The question was rhetorical, but she decided she would answer it anyway.
    They walked a score of paces before she found the words she truly wanted to say. He was watching the ground as he walked;she spoke to his profile, surrendering all control of her world as she did so. “I want to do whatever you want to do.”
    She saw those words settle on him. She had thought they would be like a blessing, but he received them as a burden. His face grew very still. He lifted his eyes. His barge rested on the bank before them and he seemed to meet its sympathetic stare. When he spoke, perhaps he spoke to his ship as much as to her. “I have to do what is right,” he said regretfully. “For both of us,” he added, and there was finality in his words.
    “I won’t be packed off back to Bingtown!”
    A smile twisted half his mouth. “Oh, I’m well aware of that, my dear. No one will be packing you off to anywhere. Where you go, you’ll go of your free will or not at all.”
    “Just so you understand that,” she said and tried to soundstrong and free. She reached out and took his calloused hand in hers, gripping it tight, feeling the roughness and the strength of it. He squeezed her hand carefully in response. Then he released it.
     
    T HE DAY SEEMED DIM. Sedric closed his eyes tightly and then opened them again. It didn’t help. Vertigo spun him, and he found himself groping for the wall of his compartment. The barge seemed to rock under his feet, but he knew it to be drawn up on the riverbank. Where was the handle to the damn door? He couldn’t see. He leaned against the wall, breathing shallowly and fighting not to vomit.
    “Are you all right?” A deep voice at his elbow, one that was not unfamiliar. He fought to put his thoughts in order. Carson, the hunter. The one with the full ginger beard. That was who was talking to him.
    Sedric took a careful breath. “I’m not sure. Is the light odd? It seems so dim to me.”
    “It’s bright today, man. The kind of light where I can’t look at the water for too long.” Concern in the man’s voice. Why? He scarcely knew the hunter.
    “It seems dim to me.” Sedric tried to speak normally, but his own voice seemed far away and faint.
    “Your pupils are like pinheads. Here. Take my arm. Let’s ease you down on the deck.”
    “I don’t want to sit on the deck,” he said faintly, but if Carson heard him, he didn’t pay any attention. The big man took him by the shoulders and gently but firmly sat him down on the dirty deck. He hated to think what the rough boards would do to his trousers. Yet the world did seem to rock a little less. He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes.
    “You look like you’ve been poisoned. Or drugged. You’re pale as white river water. I’ll be right back. I’m going to get you a drink.”
    “Very well,” Sedric said faintly. The man was just a darker shadow in a dim world. He felt the man’s footsteps on the deck,and even those faint vibrations seemed sickening. Then he was gone and Sedric felt other vibrations, fainter and not as rhythmic as the footsteps had been. They weren’t even really vibrations, he thought sickly. But they were something—something bad—and they were