Free 1633880583 (F) by Chris Willrich Page A

will not accept the damage you will wreak within Sølvlyss! If you must escape down this path, escape you will! But you may find captivity was far more pleasant, young fool!”
    There was a sensation as of wrestling with a fierce opponent who suddenly quits the match.
    Innocence plunged into a strange darkness. Disorientation snuffed his consciousness.
    When he came to, he lay soaked in his uldra-given garb beside a gigantic gray boulder, a solitary feature upon a wide brown plain of scrubland that looked nothing like either Sølvlyss or Fiskegard. Hills gave way to mountains in the distance, palomino with white snow and dark rock. A deep blue sky was similarly divided by swirls of white cloud. The wind moaned. He rose. All the feeling of power had fled him, and he leaned against the boulder, shivering, spent. He did not know where he was, when it was, or even what size he was. He could be sure of only two things.
    He was his own master. And if he could not find shelter soon, he would shortly freeze to death.

CHAPTER 3
    RUNEMARK
    At first Al-Saqr raced over the lands tributary to Amberhorn and beyond into woodland borderlands of walled towns and chieftains, neither commanded by the mighty Eldshore nor the nomads of the Wheelgreen. Even with the need to zig and zag to avoid mountains and pursuit, progress was far swifter than a similar journey on foot. Yet to Gaunt it felt as though all the world crowded between them and Innocence.
    On the evening of the first full day after Amberhorn, when it was clear they’d evaded the city’s wrath, Gaunt joined Bone in entering the world of the Scroll of Years. Gaunt took the scroll from Snow Pine and put her hand upon Bone’s.
    “Say hello for me,” A-Girl-Is-A-Joy said.
    “You only emerged this morning,” Gaunt said.
    “But it’s not the same morning for them.”
    Gaunt let the painting’s power pull them inside, and the gondola of Al-Saqr vanished.
    In the world of the scroll it was a misty daytime, not a clear rosy evening. Spindly mountains rose out of a sea of white cloud, and amid the gnarled trees of one such mountain stood the pagoda of a nameless monastery of the philosophy—or religion, or society—called the Forest. Gaunt and Bone drifted hand in hand, like two falling leaves whose stems were accidentally intertwined, until they settled onto a wide ledge beside a mountain path. A trio of leaning trees, stretching their branches into the abyss, protected them from falling into the fog. Trees on nearby mountains stretched similarly, as though beckoning.
    “He is waiting,” said a voice.
    The speaker appeared to be a big, gray-haired man from Qiangguo dressed in a birch bark hat; a stained, tattered robe; and wooden shoes. He had the look of someone who spent many days out of doors, and probably some nights as well. As ever he looked familiar and not. While his body looked much as Gaunt had known it, his eyes always looked as though they’d seen lifetimes pass between visits.
    “Hello, Sage Painter,” Gaunt said. Bone waved.
    “Ah, that title belongs to one long dead,” came the rumbling voice, speaking as though repeating music heard from a far-off peak. “What is the use of it? I am but his self-portrait.”
    “You are welcome company, friend,” Bone said, “whatever you are.”
    “Indeed, it’s good to see you,” Gaunt said.
    “Strange. You are each so shaped by the other. Yet until now I don’t think I’ve ever encountered you on the same path.”
    Bone looked at Gaunt; she took his hand and smiled. It occurred to her he’d spent considerable time within the scroll while it lay lost in a mountain valley. “We do keep busy,” Bone said. “So Walking Stick’s expecting us, eh?”
    “Every life has its know-it-alls, and you go now to meet one. You will find him at the top of the pagoda. Everything is up and down, right and wrong, with that one. Meantime my way lies rambling in the woods and shadows, far from trouble.”
    Gaunt said, “You will