Kingdom of Storms: A Reverse Harem Fantasy (The Legend of Tariel Book 1) by Jasmine Walt

Author:Jasmine Walt [Walt, Jasmine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dynamo Press
Published: 2018-02-02T06:00:00+00:00

17

They pushed the horses as hard as they dared, alternating between trotting and galloping, and managed to put quite a few miles between them and Castle Tyrook. The three of them passed several villages on their way, but Riann did not stop—he wanted to travel as much as possible during the night. Besides, these villages were too small for them to hide.

As daylight crested the horizon, gilding everything in shades of pink and gold, they came through a hilly region with scattered forests—a good place to abandon the road and go cross country. Riann led them to a shallow brook, and they rode in it for a while to confuse the trackers and throw off any dogs from their scent. Eventually, they emerged on the other side into a forest, and Riann began looking around for a safe place where they could tie up the horses and camp.

“Look,” Tariel said, pointing through the trees. “I think there’s a village on the other side.”

“We can’t—” Riann began, but Tariel was already riding ahead. He could feel her curiosity very clearly—there was something about this place that intrigued her. Cursing, he followed, hoping she wasn’t about to expose them all. For Roisen’s sake, they weren’t even disguised!

But as they emerged on the other side of the trees, on the outskirts of the village, Riann’s annoyance faded away. There was no smoke rising from the village, as there usually would be from inhabitants cooking meals over the fire. Riann’s skin prickled with nerves at the complete lack of sound—even at this hour there should have been villagers about, drawing water from the well or harvesting eggs from clucking chickens.

“This place is completely abandoned,” Calrain whispered as they guided their horses through.

The animals whinnied, and Riann stroked a soothing hand over the side of his horse’s neck, feeling the animal’s fear. “There is something not right about this place,” he said.

They dismounted, leaving the horses tied up in the village square, and investigated on foot. As Riann suspected, there was no one inside the houses—but these places did not look as though the inhabitants had packed up and fled. There was still furniture and toys in many of them, and they gagged more than once at the stench of rotting food from abandoned larders.

“This must be one of the villages struck by the plague,” Calrain said. His eyes were wide with trepidation, and Riann could not blame him—this entire village was eerie, and he would not be surprised to learn that it was haunted.

“How terrible,” Tariel said, and Riann could feel her sadness through the bond. For the past ten years, random towns and villages across Fjordland had been struck by plagues. Very few survived the fevers and bloody coughing fits, and most succumbed within three days. Most villages were usually razed and rebuilt after an outbreak, but for some reason, this one had been left intact.

But their inspection of the village found no bodies. This village had already been cleared out, and had stood empty for quite some time now.

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.