Shadow of All Night Falling Read Free

and graying, Ridyeh came, then Valther, the youngest brother, who was quite handsome. Next came stolid, quiet Brock and his twin, Luxos. Luxos was tall and lean as a whippet; Brock was short and heavily muscled. Jerrad came last. His sole interest in life was the hunt; be it for a mountain bear or a dangerous man. Six strange men then.
    The seventh was their sister, Nepanthe, the last-born. Her hair was black and long, a family trait. She rode proudly, as befit her station, but hers was not a conquering, militant bearing. She rode not as the virgin mistress of Ravenkrak, but as a sad and lonely woman. She was uncommonly beautiful in her waning twenties, yet her heart was as cold as her mountain home. But her aloofness, here, was caused by opposition to her brothers’ plans.
    She was weary of their plots and maneuvers. A week earlier, braving eternal damnation, she had summoned the Werewind to seal the passes through which they now rode, in order to keep her brothers home. But she had failed, and now they no longer trusted her left behind.
    The party approached Iwa Skolovda’s North Gate nervously. They were dead if recognized. A feud as bitter as blood, as old as the forests, as enduring as death, existed between Ravenkrak and the city. But their entry went unchallenged. It was autumn, a time when northern trappers and traders were expected with summer pelts for Iwa Skolovda’s furriers.
    They rode to the heart of the town, through thick foreign sounds and smells, to the Inn of the Imperial Falcon, where they remained in hiding for several days. Only Turran, Valther, and Ridyeh dared the streets, and that only by night. Days they spent in their rooms, honing their plans.
    Nepanthe, alone and lonely, stayed in her room and thought about things she’d like, or things she was afraid, to do. She slept a great deal and dreamed two repeated dreams, one beautiful, one dreadful. The bad one always grew out of the good.
    In the first dream she rode out of the Kratchnodian Mountains, south, past Iwa Skolovda and Itaskia, to fabulous Dunno Scuttari, or the cradle of western culture, Hellin Daimiel, where a beautiful, intelligent woman could make herself a place in the sun. Then the dream would shift subtly till she was afoot in a city of a thousand crystal towers. She wanted one of those towers as her own. Warmth flooded her when her gaze touched one in particular-always emerald-and she was inexorably drawn. Both fear and eagerness grew as she moved nearer. Then, at twenty paces, she laughed joyously and ran forward.
    Always the same. Nightmare then came roaring from the dark dominions of her mind. Touch the spire-it was a spire no more. With a roar like a fall of jewels, the thing crumbled. From its ruins a terrible dragon rose.
    Nepanthe fled into a dreamscape that had changed. The city of crystal towers became a forest of angry spears, striking. She knew those spears meant no harm, yet she feared them too much to question the cause of her fear.
    Then she’d awaken, perspiration-wet, terrified, guilt-ridden without knowing why.
    Though her nights, because of the dreams, were anything but dull, Nepanthe was bored by day. Then all she had to occupy her mind was the dreariness of her life at Ravenkrak. She was weary of gray mountains snow-shrouded and ribboned with rivers of ice, and of continually howling arctic winds. She was tired of being alone and unsought and a tool for her brothers’ lunatic plan. She wanted to stop being a Storm King and get out in the world and just be.
    Finally, there came a night, their fifth in Iwa Skolovda, when the Storm Kings set things in motion. Under a cloudy midnight sky, with intermittent moonlight, the brothers left the inn. Armed.
    Valther and Ridyeh ran toward the North Gate. Turran and the others ambled to the Tower of the Moon, an architectural monstrosity of gray stone from which city and kingdom were ruled.
    In cellars, in dark places, rough men met and sharpened swords. This would be a