Free Blood of Mystery by Mark Anthony Page B

colonies—Georgia, the Carolinas, New England—as well as from the states that had made up the country’s first western frontiers: Kentucky and Ohio, Kansas and Missouri. Others sailed over the Atlantic, from England, France, Prussia, and Sweden. There were Russians by way of Alaska, and Mexicans who had not so long before held claim to this land. Most of the Indians had been forced south and west to the ever-shrinking reservations; still, a few remained. And there were people of African descent, many freed from slavery not twenty years earlier.
    You’ll have to tell Lirith about that, Travis.
Only he wasn’t certain how he could explain that, not so very long ago, people like her had been held in bondage against their wills in his country. He would have to find a way.
    Just like he would find a way to help the others manage in this time. He took out the silver half-coin, turning it over in his hand. If he only he had three more of them.
    Then why not make more, Travis? After all, you only have
half of the coin, and its magic works fine. What’s to say smaller
pieces won’t work as well?
    There was only one way to find out. He closed his fist around the coin, and with his other hand reached into the pocket of his jeans, brushing the smooth surface of the Stone of Twilight.
    “Reth,”
he murmured. He felt a surge of power and a sharp tingling in both hands.
    Lirith gave him a sharp look. “What did you just do?” Travis held out his hand and opened his fist. On it lay four small pieces of silver.
    It didn’t take long to verify the slivers of coin were working. Travis was able to understand Sareth when he swore in Mournish after his peg leg caught in a rut in the road.
    “By the bloody milk of Mahonadra’s teat!” he said in the hot, lilting tongue of the Mournish. By the looks on their faces, Durge and Lirith understood as well.
    “Sorry,” Sareth said, noticing their stares. “That’s one of those oaths that’s better when others can’t understand it.”
    Lirith raised an eyebrow. “Indeed. And just who is Mahonadra?”
    “She was the god-king Orú’s mother. And believe me, I’m not going to tell you anything more.”
    As Travis hoped, the miners paid them little heed as they started down the road toward town, although a few of them grinned and doffed greasy hats in Lirith’s direction, some seemingly out of politeness, others with leering looks on their smudged faces. Lirith kept her gaze fixed ahead.
    The crowd thinned as they passed the last few miners who straggled to their work, eyes still red from too much whiskey the night before. However, the road soon grew busy again—as well as broader, straighter, and dustier—when they reached the end of a long line of false-fronted buildings.
    Travis was astonished how little things had changed in his time. There was the Silver Palace Hotel, a long brick edifice three stories high, and McKay’s General Store, neither looking significantly different than he remembered. Just beyond was the Castle City Opera House, with its stately Greek Revival columns, and the assay office—although it was not abandoned as Travis had always seen it, but instead had men lined up at the door, each holding a small sack of ore to be tested. Travis knew what his sharp eyes would see if he gazed a little farther up the street, but he forced himself not to look. Not just yet.
    You won’t own the saloon for more than a hundred years,
Travis. So don’t even think about it.
    He took a step forward, then stopped, dust swirling around his feet. A nervous breath fluttered out of his lungs.
    Lirith gave him a concerned look. “What’s wrong, Travis? Isn’t this your home?”
    “I suppose so. Only this is how it was a hundred years before I was born.”
    Durge let out a grunt. “I’m sure Stonebreak Manor has altered little in a century’s time, save for the trees’ growing taller. What could be so different in just a hundred years?”
    As if to punctuate the knight’s