Red Proxy Box Set: Books 1-3 by Keith Ward

Author:Keith Ward [Ward, Keith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wardwords
Published: 2017-11-27T07:00:00+00:00

3. Hidden Things

Xinlas stared at the sundragon scale in his hand. It was warm, and its glow lit up the lower half of their faces. Wrowen and Imbis were in his room, and the glow from below gave them all a slightly sinister look as they sat on a bearhound rug on the floor. The room was dark, the night air stuffy and humid.

“Remember when we used to light up our faces like this with candles and tell scary stories?” Wrowen said.

Imbis laughed. “My favorite was the time I told Xinlas that the Blood King was in his closet, and that he’d better not go to sleep.”

Xinlas nodded his head and chuckled. “It was three days before I could sleep in there. That was probably the meanest thing you’ve ever done to me, Imbis; and that’s really saying something, given the stuff you’ve pulled over the years.”

“You got your revenge, though, as I recall,” Wrowen said with a wicked grin. “It was beautiful, when Imbis came to get you in your room, and you pretended you had Spanfail. You’d curled up your arms and legs and gone all stiff. She screamed and cried for an hour, until mom and dad got home. Imbis thought you had a day to live.”

All three of them howled at the memory, although Xinlas noticed that Imbis didn’t laugh quite as hard. Well, too bad, he thought. Three days is a long time to go without sleep.

They were comparing their inheritances while their parents slept. Wrowen’s was an ancient, rare copy of the Vestuvier, the sacred book of Omonu’s followers, called Reachers. It didn’t have the monetary value of a sundragon scale, but Xinlas knew that to Wrowen, it was worth the world. A thick book with a faded leather cover and yellowing pages, it was one of the more valuable books in existence.

Imbis got a specially-made necklace of black diamonds. Attached to the necklace was a pure gold dragon pendant, with another black diamond for the dragon’s eye. Danak said they’d gotten it made by a craftsman in Hestal, on the other side of the Knife Mountains. Hestal was Danak’s home village, in Walkland, and the craftsman was renowned throughout the continent. The pendant glowed in the light of the sundragon scale. Xinlas noticed Imbis tracing the pendant with her finger as it sat on her neck.

Xinlas was thrilled with his inheritance; he thought he made out significantly better than Imbis and Wrowen, and that gave him satisfaction. But the thought of his “maybe” 71-year Span continued to eat at him, as it had for the several days since he’d found out. It wasn’t all darkness, though; at worst, he had something he could trade for a Transfer. For a sundragon scale, he could easily get a 99-Day Proxy, the most potent and effective kind. He thought he might even be able to get two or three 99-Dayers, and increase his Span to more than a hundred years.

He almost hated himself for these thoughts, but they kept popping up in his mind.

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