Heights of the Depths Read Free Page B

brushed me aside as if I was nothing. So can you imagine what they will do to you if you actually try to pick a fight with them? No. No, I don’t think you are imagining it, because if you were, you’d realize that you have no business doing something so monumentally stupid. They will kill you, Karsen. They will kill you and whatever is left of you will be food for carrion eaters, and I will never see you again.
    And he thought grimly, Good. That would probably be for the best.
    It was at that moment that he realized he had lost the scent again.
    He fought down panic once more as he methodically began to check around some more.
    The shadows lengthened as the sun moved relentlessly across the sky, underscoring the passage of time, and still Karsen could find nothing.
    Finally he backtracked, trying to pick up the scent yet again. Still nothing. It was as if they had vanished off the face of the planet.
    Had they, in fact, done so? These were, after all, Travelers that he was trying to track down. The full extent of their powers was unknown. Could they have simply disappeared into some sort of hole in reality?
    Or perhaps they had boarded a vehicle that had gone off in a completely different direction.
    Or perhaps they had gone straight up…
    He looked skyward, scanning the heavens. It was possible. He had never beheld a Zeffer at anything more than a great distance, but he knew they existed and knew what they were capable of. And even the Zeffers, or at least as they were commanded by their masters, the Serabim, would be as obliged to follow the dictates and demands of the Travelers as anyone else. So if the Travelers had issued commands—by what means they would convey their desires to the high flying Zeffers, Karsen could not even guess—then the Zeffers might well have airlifted them from their current path. Why? Had they detected Karsen’s following them? No. No, that made no sense. If they wanted to discourage pursuit, they would likely have just turned back upon him and attempted to run their draquons right over him. The act of going airborne, courtesy of the Zeffers, would simply have meant that they were attempting to reach someplace that the draquons couldn’t take them. Some high mountainous point, perhaps, or maybe over the vast ocean.
    Karsen didn’t even realize his legs were buckling until suddenly he was on the ground. A long, ululating scream ripped from his throat and he pounded the ground in impotent fury with his fists.
    It couldn’t end like this. It simply could not. What the hell kind of quest was this, to come up so miserably short? What was he supposed to do now? Return to the Bottom Feeders as a complete failure? After he had set off with such high-flown words and certainty that nothing in the world would stop him from finding Jepp and rescuing her from her captors? There was no question in his mind that they would welcome him back, but he would feel small, diminished. Puny and pathetic.
    He lost track of how long he expended energy in the pointless pursuit of venting his frustration. Eventually, though, he flopped on his back, gasping for air, his throat raw from bellowing his fury. Karsen was relieved that his mother couldn’t see him now. She would chortle at his relative helplessness and the absurdity of his predicament.
    Karsen stared up at the blue-tinged skies. Thick clouds were crawling across them, not threatening with rain but covering the skies nevertheless. Then, for a moment, some of the clouds parted, and a stream of sunlight filtered through. In Karsen’s imagination, it was as if one of the gods was staring down from on high, the light issuing not from the sun but from the deity’s own orb.
    He had never been much for praying. Karsen was reasonably certain that as far as the gods were concerned, everyone down there was on his or her or its own.
    Yet now, frustrated, hungry, thirsty, and convinced that short of divine intervention, he would never see Jepp again…Karsen