Shadow Tree Read Free

Alfonso was waking up.

Chapter 3: Kiril’s Decision
    About a dozen miles away, an ordinary rowboat glided through the icy waters of the Sea of Clouds. Two men sat in the boat, but only one of them rowed. This man was blind, and the second man in the bow was staring at his blind companion with a mixture of concern and contemplation. Thanks to the blind man, the rowboat had become a vessel capable of speed and grace. The man’s thickly muscled arms maneuvered the boat skillfully and the boat sang as it pushed through the water. Despite his obvious skill, however, the blind man’s face was a mask of sullen resignation; clearly he was in the boat against his will.
    Sitting at the rowboat’s bow, Kiril stared at the blind man and wondered again why he had saved his life so impulsively. He could find only one reason: instinct. It was the instinct of someone who had lived many centuries, and who had seen all manner of what humans could do to each other, and this very instinct told him that Bilblox, the blind longshoreman, might be useful in the future. After all, wasn’t he proving his worth at this very moment? They had made it across the terrifying Sea of Clouds in record time, and even though Kiril was at the peak of his strength and ability, there was no way he could have matched Bilblox’s easy mastery of the rowboat.
    Kiril glanced up and scanned the horizon. Land was close – just a few hundred yards off the starboard bow. Good. They were making excellent time. Kiril returned his attention to a scrap of paper on which he was currently scrawling a brief note. He wrote hastily. As soon as he finished writing, Kiril leaned forward and removed his right boot. He fidgeted with the heel of his boot for a moment, until it came loose, revealing a hollowed-out space that served as a secret compartment. From this compartment he pulled out a silver ring that bulged in the middle with a fat ruby. He squeezed the ruby on two sides and simultaneously pushed down on the face. The ruby turned out to
be false – it opened to reveal a small opening, just big enough for the note that he had written. He placed the note inside, snapped the ruby closed and placed the ring deep in his inside coat pocket. Kiril then returned his gaze to the coast. There was a pebble beach just ahead; it was a perfect place to land.
    Bilblox could feel the water change as they approached the shore. The waves rose up to engulf them and abruptly died away in the shallows. Then the hull of the boat grated against the bottom. He looked up.
    â€œExcellent work,” Kiril said in a conversational tone. “Rowing across the Sea of Clouds can be terrible, but it didn’t seem to affect you. Of course, we didn’t have much ice to contend with – that helped.”
    The rowboat came to rest in knee-high water. Kiril easily leapt out of the boat, gripped it from the bow, and pushed it high onto the pebbly, ice-encrusted beach. He looked around. It was absolute wilderness – a shoreline of rocks slick with ice, driftwood and pockets of tidal algae, stunted trees rising up from the sea, and everywhere a covering of gray-white snow.
    Bilblox just sat there.
    â€œLet’s go,” said Kiril, his tone more demanding than before. “We have a long journey ahead of us.”
    Us
. Kiril’s casual use of that word startled Bilblox and reminded him of the strange journey he had begun ever since Kiril had saved him in the river surrounding Jasber.
    â€œYou can go to whatever hell is drawing you, but you’re going alone,” replied Bilblox finally.
    Kiril noiselessly drew a curved dagger from its scabbard around his waist. It was a masterpiece of metal-working. Ancient hieroglyphs ran up and down the blade, and the mother-of-pearl handle shone like bleached bone. Kiril had stolen it from the armory in Jasber. He had taken it from that monk, the one that pleaded with him to take anything – anything at all