The Stair Of Time (Book 2) Read Free Page B

been through.  This can’t be how things end.  I won’t let it be.”   
    “Have you sent word to Sokerra?” Gaven asked from behind, his voice low and somber.  “The more minds the better.  Something might occur to Trilla that hasn’t to us.  It definitely wouldn’t be the first time.”
    Andaris cleared his throat, palming back the tears that had begun brimming in his eyes.  “I sent a letter the day before yesterday,” he eventually managed.  “If nothing else, she needs to know what’s happening.”
    “W ord is Sokerra has a new wizard,” said Gaven.  “A bumbling fool of a jester compared to Ashel, a gangly fellow with thick spectacles and a constantly running nose.  But who knows?  Sometimes fools see things the wise do not.  And if she and the wizard—Joven I think is his name—can’t come up with somethin’, maybe the confounded ‘Brothers of the Light’ can.  After all, they saved you.”

 
     
     
    Keeping Watch
     
     
    A hooded figure stood in the center of a dark room, stooped over a stone bowl, peering into the viscous fluid it contained.  Few of these bowls had survived the cataclysm.  Indeed, of the hundreds the Lenoy had wrought, only three remained, thumbing their noses, so to speak, at the relentless press of time.
    Like me, he thought.
    The Watcher kept them in what he called “The Seeing Room.”  He was the last surviving Lenoy in this time, this now, which made the bowls his by birthright.  His ancestors had fled this now long ago, leaving behind twelve guardians.  Of the twelve, only he remained—doomed to keep watch over the lesser races for all time.
     
    How weary he’d grown over the centuries, watching them flail and flounder, building and destroying, loving and killing—a seemingly endless cycle of triumph, tragedy, and pain, the breadth and depth of which they seemed wholly unaware. So many wars had been fought, leaving behind naught but blood and ash and bone. And for what?  To defend made-up boundaries and fill great halls with great stores of gold?  He would never understand their love of these shiny bits of metal and rock, of these trinkets and baubles that glint in the sun. 
    How like crows they are, he thought.
     
    Of the three seeing bowls, the one he used now was the last to survive intact.  How grand it was.  How perfect.  Refinement and reverence wedded to an intricately worked pedestal.  On said pedestal he had placed it, and on said pedestal it belonged, twining stone vines straining to embrace the inexplicable.
    Because of this bowl, he was not alone.  Because of this bowl, he could catch glimpses of his boyhood during Laotswend’s prime—the capital city of the once-great Lenoy race.  Millennia ago, before the age of crows, when the world was vibrant and civilized, before he was known as The Guardian, The Watcher, The Keeper, or even Rodan, he was just a wizard.  An exceptional wizard amongst a race of exceptional wizards, but just a wizard nonetheless.
    He smiled sadly.  It had been a simpler time full of promise, and he’d had a name all his own.  Shandrael of the Ninth Circle he’d been called.  And even amongst the Lenoy, his beauty and strength were renowned, combining to swell his head and shrivel his heart.  How arrogant he’d been in those days, a flesh and blood monument representing all that made Laotswend great.
    But time had humbled him.  More than humbled him.  In fact, if not for his frequent visits to his own distant past, Shandrael of the Ninth Circle would have ended his life long ago.
    The faint scarlet glow emanating from the water revealed only the dim outline of Shandrael’s features—severe, angular skull framing fixed, smoldering eyes.  Nightmare eyes they were, peering from deep within the confines of his hood.  Most children would recognize them for what they sometimes were—the eyes of a monster in a cave, haunting the forbidding dreamscape of countless young minds, watching, waiting,