Quatrain by Sharon Shinn

Author:Sharon Shinn
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.

Gold

One

Finally Orlain stopped. I looked around in disbelief.

We had been traveling for two days, first on horseback through the green countryside of Auburn, then on foot along the overgrown pathways through Faelyn Wood. I was tired, I was hungry, I was afraid, my feet hurt, and I’d spent the last half hour thinking about grabbing a fallen tree limb and hitting Orlain on the back of the head as hard as I possibly could.

There was nothing in the current scenery to make me change my mind.

“Where are we?” I demanded. I tried to make my voice regal, but even I could tell it came out whiny instead. “This looks nothing like Alora.”

In fact, it looked exactly like the last ten miles of forest we had traveled through, so dense with interlaced tree branches that the sunlight trickled through like sand between tightly squeezed fingers. Actually, even that was an exaggeration. It was close to sunset; within a half hour, we would have no light left in the woods at all.

Orlain gave me a quick grin. He was about five inches taller than I was, and so even when he wasn’t actually laughing at me, he always seemed to be looking down at me with amusement. It infuriated me even more. “You’ve never been to Alora,” he replied. “You have no idea what it looks like.”

“Well, it doesn’t look like this,” I said instantly. “There’s more to it than trees.”

“Alora’s somewhere on the other side of the Faelyn River,” he said, pointing straight ahead of us. “But we won’t make the river by nightfall, and even if we could, the Faelyn River’s a spooky place to camp. I want to cross in the morning, when we can see what’s around us.”

“But I thought we’d get to Alora tonight,” I said, my voice rising. “I thought I’d stay at Uncle Jaxon’s house tonight, and sleep on a real bed, and eat real food. You promised you’d get me there in two days.”

“I didn’t,” he answered. “I said I’d try.”

“I hate you,” I said and burst into tears.

“So you’ve told me before,” he replied, not a trace of sympathy in his voice. “I’ll gather some wood. You just sit here and cry.”

He dropped his pack, tethered both of our horses to a tree, and left me! All alone in the forest!

I sank to the ground and completely gave myself over to tears. Truth to tell, it wasn’t the first time I’d wept during the hasty, scrambling journey. I had been crying bitterly yesterday morning when we rode out from Castle Auburn. I didn’t want to go, and it had taken my father’s unyielding insistence and my mother’s unmistakable alarm to persuade me that this was the best course of action. Rebel troops from Tregonia had been only a half day’s march from the castle; my mother and father were hoping to avert war, but Dirkson of Tregonia was clearly armed for it. Just as clearly, Dirkson hoped to secure one of three things in his assault on the king’s court: the keys to the castle, my younger brother, or me.

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