The Tower of Bones Read Free Page A

portal. And they have refused to meet with you, despite Milish’s protestations.’

    The Ambassador, Milish, gazed beyond the estuary to the soaring walls of Carfon, where Prince Ebrit had offered them quarters in his palace on their arrival. But courtesy in Carfon was barbed with subtle obligations – not to mention dangers. The palace, more than two thousand years old and a labyrinth of hidden passages and spy holes, offered poor protection. And so, politely, she had declined the Prince’s offer. In the meantime the new Kyra had arrived to take command of the encampment of Shee on this side of the estuary. In the six days since their arrival it had mushroomed to cover a square mile of hinterland above the beach, with sentries posted by Bétaald, the dark-skinned spiritual leader of the Shee, herself not yet fully recovered from wounds received during the battle in the Vale of Tazan.
    Milish was aware of a stiffening in the posture of the Kyra. In the Oraculum of Bree she observed a heightened flickering. At the same moment a tiny bat-like creature erupted from the beach below them, close to the walking figures.
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘A snooper,’ Milish declared.
    In a blur of movement, the dwarf mage’s arm reached back behind his left shoulder and in a flowing arc of movement the double-headed axe was in his right hand. But Alan reached out to block the dwarf mage’s purpose.
    ‘Why does the Mage Lord hold the weapon back?’ the Kyra asked.
    ‘To spy, a snooper must need a communicating brain – for it accommodates no more than a tiny mind. My guess is that he wishes to follow where that tiny mind will lead him.’
    The Kyra followed the flight of the snooper until it passed through a crevice-like window in the city walls. From there, her eyes returned to the youth, whose attention had also followed the flight of the snooper. The movements caused the thick braid of her hair to strain against the silver clasp that tied it down onto her left shoulder.
    ‘The snooper has reported to a spy in the walls opposite. From what you’ve told me about this city we can anticipate spies aplenty.’
    A frown creased the Ambassador’s patrician face. She couldn’t help but be concerned at the thought of somebody spying on them. With her striking beauty and regal manners and posture Milish would have commanded attention in any world. Her hair was a lustrous blue-black, the thick strands parted centrally over her forehead and falling down in careful bundles over her temples, with folds that hid the upper third of her fleshy lobed ears. On Earth, with her hair and coppery complexion, she might have been taken for an Oriental noblewoman.
    The Kyra pressed her: ‘Would your instincts suggest that such a spy works for the Council-in-Exile?’
    ‘It’s one possibility.’
    The Ambassador shivered as the offshore breeze blew a tuft of hair loose from her plume of ornamental silver, the liberated hair gambolling over her fine intelligent features.

A Song of Innocence
    ‘Out – Earthspawn!’
    Faltana’s figure filled the open door to Kate’s cell. The face of the chief succubus was like that of a porcelain doll, but with pallid blue eyes as cold as a snake’s. Her rosebud lips were tensed into a purse-string, drawn back over ivory fangs that had turned blue-black and hoary with age.
    ‘Your attendance is commanded!’
    Faltana was spare with her flicks of Garg-tail, but cruelly accurate. The scaly whip, as wiry as steel and barbed at its end, raised a bloody weal on Kate’s thin neck, just below the angle of her jaw. Pain seared through her, sharp and sickening. She had to clench her fists to keep the scream from her lips. Faltana fed on such expressions of pain. To scream would provoke more attention.
    ‘Dung-eating wormchild!’
    Faltana gauged the precise moment when the painhad subsided to bearable levels to lash out again, raising a second weal, after which those doll’s eyes studied the effect, as if relishing