The Iron Palace Read Free

and the impulse to read them quickly became irresistible. With trembling fingers, he reached out and brushed the archaic letters that transcribed an ancient language.
    With so much time having passed since Daven had last read such a text, he struggled to decipher it. It didn’t read like a narrative, for the Seers who made such marks wrote puzzles for which life provided the missing pieces. Their guidance wasn’t meant for the Sarf but for his Bearer, and Daven felt like a sneak thief rummaging through another’s most private possessions. He rummaged nevertheless, enthralled by what he discovered.
    It was nearly dawn when Daven tore himself away from the runes. He dressed the stranger in a clean tunic and laid him on the mat that served as his bed. By then, he was convinced that Karm had sent the Sarf, not to slay him but to redeem him. His eyes teared at the notion of it.
Karm’s truly the Goddess of Compassion
, he thought. However, thewonder of his redemption paled compared to a greater marvel. The runes had only hinted at it, yet those hints had stirred Daven to the core. He felt both energized and profoundly anxious.
Light and darkness will soon contend over the world’s fate
. The outcome was far from certain, but the runes said that he had a role in the struggle. Daven resolved to do his utmost to fulfill it. He worried that he might fail, for there was much he didn’t understand, despite numerous readings of the text.
    Daven peered outside. The rain had stopped. The day promised to be a fair one, and he strolled out his door to witness its dawn. As Daven watched the eastern sky brighten and turn rosy, his thoughts returned to the enigmatic text on the Sarf’s back. One name was woven throughout, and he didn’t even know if it was that of a man or a woman. His only certainty was that much depended on someone named Yim.

THREE
    W HILE D AVEN waited for the sun to rise, Roarc poled his reed boat along a narrow waterway that lay far to the north. The channel’s tea-colored water was hemmed by reeds so tall they could have served as walls in a maze. Having lived his entire life in the Grey Fens, Roarc had spent nearly fifty winters navigating its tangled waters; yet even he got lost sometimes. He was in no danger of that at the moment, for his destination was his home. It was a limestone outcropping that fensfolk call a “hite.” It jutted like a tiny mountaintop from the bog. Though in plain sight, reachingit by boat required threading a complicated course, which the fensman did with the assurance of long familiarity.
    By Roarc’s bare feet lay the night’s takings from the traps, several dozen small fish. Additionally, there was a pair of traps that needed repair. Woven from reeds, they resembled spherical baskets with openings in the shape of inverted cones. Mending and making fish traps was a task for his wife, Rappali. She was skilled at reedwork, while Roarc—who was fifteen winters her senior—had stiffened fingers.
    The waterway ended a fair distance from the hite. Roarc pulled his craft onto a sodden bank, took his catch and the fish traps, and followed a path to his home. The well-worn trail was easy to follow, but like the waterway, its route was irregular, for firm ground was rare in the fens. Much of the bog’s lush plant life grew on floating mats of decayed vegetation that gave way when trod upon. A careless step could get one soaked or worse, so Roarc stuck to the path. When he reached the hite, the ground became stony and solid. Soon he was ascending the steep-sided outcropping to reach his home.
    From the pathway he had a commanding view of the fens, and Roarc paused to observe the sunrise. To the north, about half a morning’s journey by boat, lay the wide Turgen River. It invaded the fens by a maze of narrow waterways that petered out near Tararc Hite, the home of Roarc and his nearest kin. To the south were the fens proper. From where the fensman stood, it seemed a vast and lush