The Crow by Alison Croggon

Author:Alison Croggon [Croggon, Alison]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9780143002147
Publisher: Camberwell, Vic. : Penguin Books, 2006.
Published: 2008-08-12T04:00:00+00:00

Over the next few days, Hem and Zelika spent their spare time exploring Nal-Ak-Burat. Saliman reluctantly gave them permission, but told them to stay away from the northern and southern Gates, and to be careful—it was easy to get lost, and to end up wandering for hours through a maze of stone. And some places were perilous: there were stairways that wound up great cliffs that, if they had ever had handrails, now lacked them. A careless step could mean a fall of thirty spans or more.

At first they confined their forays to the huge square and its surrounding alleys, which covered a large flat area that made up the heart of the city. It was easy to see why the Bards had chosen their current building—it had obviously been some kind of palace, where many people had lived, and was built to a human scale. The other buildings that flanked the south side of the square, some of them carved deep into the rocky walls, made the children feel like ants. They walked through rooms so high that the ceilings—if they existed at all, for there was little need for roofs underground—vanished into shadow high above their heads, while before them columns marched in unvarying rows, dwindling into the distance.

The walls were most often decorated with murals similar to those they had seen in the entrance room to the palace, and they spent hours examining them. Some, in the inner rooms, were astoundingly well preserved, with colors almost as bright as they must have been when they were first painted. They told inscrutable stories: here a king was bowing to a giant heron, offering the bird what seemed to be a platter of fruit; there a line of men were chained together, being led by the same king in a war chariot, while behind them walked a giant cat plumed with feathers. Another picture showed what seemed to be the same prisoners being killed: a figure in a robe held a long knife, with which he was cutting the throat of one, while the others stood in a row behind him, as if they were next. Hem and Zelika passed by that scene quickly. In the next picture, a man stood with his arms outspread, and leaves grew from his limbs, as if he were transforming into a tree. Fascinated, Hem and Zelika traced the outlines of the runes that interleaved the pictures, wondering what they meant.

"Perhaps that one," said Hem, indicating the tree man, "is an Elidhu. A wood Elidhu. Maerad says they can change their form."

"I thought Bards could change, if they wanted to," said Zelika, looking curiously at Hem.

"No. They can seem to change—that's easy."

"Can you do that?" asked Zelika. She had never been very interested in Bardic magery, but her experience at the Gate of Dreams had sparked her curiosity.

"Of course I can!" said Hem, slightly indignantly. Glimmer-spells were the least of enchantments, and even though he had paid small attention at the School of Turbansk, he could do illusions.

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.