The Inheritance by Nancy Varian Berberick

Author:Nancy Varian Berberick [Berberick, Nancy Varian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7869-1861-4
Publisher: Fanversion Publishing
Published: 2016-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Today the way was up, the passage narrow, and the floor rough. In the womb of Krynn, the change of days was judged to fall on the far side of the longest sleep. Elansa had been counting, and she counted three days passing since she and Tianna had seen the ogres and found the dead goatherd.

The outlaw band went along passages and tunnels she recognized. In these months she had threaded many of the underground ways and had learned to see landmarks here as she would in the forest. In some ways, the picking of landmarks was little different. A grouping of stalactites was like a grove of birches. One recognized a shape, a configuration, and strove to remember it. In some ways, it might have been easier. Sooner will a grove of trees change than a grove of stone.

She knew the way they took on the first day. She even knew it was an easterly way. They were walking toward a weapons cache.

"Not for a take," said Brand when the boy Chaser asked about that. "It’s on the way, and outside of there is some good hunting."

That word, hunting, ran back along the line of outlaws in whisper and echo. There would be a day or two of existing on jerked meat, smoked lengths of juiceless hare so tough that nigh-toothless Kerin would be gumming it for an hour to be able to swallow it. No one was happy about that, and Elansa would have imagined Kerin the least of all of them. The loudest in his complaint, though, was Arawn, who said to Bruin and Swain and anyone who would heed that he would have set out hunting sooner than Brand had roused himself to do. If the thing had been up to him, when they'd had to move out, they'd have had better to eat on the way.

This he said, and other things, and Elansa heard it all, slipping careful looks at Brand as she walked. She thought of Kethrenan and his warriors. She thought that such talk as this would have gotten a Qualinesti soldier so severely disciplined he'd be wondering whether he needed to find another profession. Brand, however, let the talk go, though it wasn't to be imagined he didn't hear it. So close to him did she walk that Elansa saw the muscles tighten in his neck when Arawn questioned him. She saw the bristling of his beard as his jaw clenched.

Walking and taking great care not to stumble so she would not be kicked back to her feet, she wondered why Brand held his peace.

"It’s not a weakness," Char said quietly when they’d stopped to rest. The day had not passed, only some hours, and this moment to be still would not last long. "It's not that. It’s a kind of strength. Arawn knows that. Or so far, he does."

Elansa eyed him keenly, the dwarf who seemed to know all these men and their various tales: Chaser the orphan, Kerin who lost

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