First Rider's Call - Green Rider 2 by Kristen Britain

Author:Kristen Britain [Britain, Kristen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-12-29T01:06:25+00:00

Over his own harsh breaths, he heard the miraculous voices of the wall calling to him, as they once used to. They were unclear, stuttered as though a barrier prevented them from fully reaching him, but all that mattered was that he heard them, and they gave him a sense of direction.

His lungs burned as he lunged through the forest, adjusting his direction toward the voices. He leaped a downed log and rushed through hip-high brambles. He howled as thorns ripped through his trousers and flesh.

He stumbled from the brambles and fell to the ground, air forced from his lungs. Slowly he looked up and found himself nose to nose with a huge feline, its glimmering gold eyes embodying intelligence and all the menace and evil the forest represented.

The feline was much like a catamount in shape and coloring, but it was at least twice as large as the average catamount male, and there were other not-so-subtle differences. Its whiskers were thick, barbed spines. Its extended claws, the color of blood, were like curved knives. Alton thought he saw venom sacs at the base of each claw.

The feline's back was arched, the hair along its spine standing on end. When it growled, Alton thought, I'm going to die.

They stared at one another, eyes locked, one assessing the other.

The very human regard of the feline fascinated Alton. It looked to be turning something over in its mind, struggling over baser instincts and emotions. "What are you?" he murmured.

The creature cocked its ears forward in surprise. It paused, Alton was sure, to consider his words. It narrowed its eyes to slits, then turned tail and bounded silently off into the undergrowth and disappeared.

The malevolence still surrounded him, but the power of the forest held it at bay once again. He rose on shaking legs. His trousers were shredded and blotched with blood. He hoped the thorns weren't poisonous, but it might be too much to expect from Blackveil.

The feline was gone, and so were the voices. Still, Alton had his life, and he had a direction in which to travel. He picked through the forest, judiciously avoiding brambles.

After a long time of walking, it became clear he traveled upon an open path that was not an accident of nature. He bent down and ripped moss off the ground, and found sea-rounded cobbles beneath that must have once served as the paving of a road.

Long time ago, he thought.

He had never considered people once living here, but then again, Mornhavon had made this place his stronghold. He might have constructed the road, or perhaps the people who lived here before him had. Blackveil hadn't always been an evil place, but what it was before Mornhavon arrived, Alton could only guess.

As he walked, a human face peering out at him from the foliage along the road took several years off his life. Heart throbbing, he threw a rock at the figure. Rock clacked on rock. Statue.

He drew closer, and saw better the texture of carved stone.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.