Free The Tiger's Eye (Book 1) by Robert P. Hansen

hilts of their short swords.
    “Shift change,” the guard said to Angus. “On your way now.”
    “But—”
    “Go!” the guard ordered. “Day shift doesn’t have time to
chatter.” He paused a moment, then added, “Dillard is not known for his
patience.”
    Angus lingered for a long moment before continuing south. As
he went through the half-dark streets of the worker’s ring of the town, he
wondered why Voltari had left The Tween off his map. It sounded dangerous, and
he didn’t think Voltari would have put him in danger without reason. But there
was the road, and he could stick to it—at least long enough to find out about
The Tween from fellow travelers….

 
    12
    Two days later, the road turned sharply southwest and headed
straight for the heart of the belching volcanoes. He was still in the dark
about The Tween. He had met plenty of travelers on their way to Wyrmwood, but
they had simply greeted him and hurried on. The few who came up from behind him
were on horses, and they passed him without pausing longer than to acknowledge
his presence—if that.
    He saw the shortcuts—hard-packed paths that zig-zagged up
the hillsides—and thought about taking them, but he wasn’t in a hurry. No sense
taking risks. But they were tempting, narrow gaps carved between the thickets,
through the grass, and around the occasional rocky outcropping. Most were steep
but passable, judging by how much traffic they had had over the years, and he
wondered what the danger could be. Whatever it was, a lot of travelers were
willing to take it—at least near Wyrmwood. He’d have to wait to see what
happened when he got further away from the thriving town.
    The road was wide; it could easily allow ten horses to stand
abreast in most places. It wound around the hills and kept close to the valley
floor, where the slope was slight, making for easy walking. The cobblestones
alerted him to travelers on horseback; the clatter of horseshoes hammering
against them rang out into the valleys as they passed. At regular intervals,
the underbrush and trees next to a stream had been cleared away, and high poles
stuck up from the ground like faceless totems. The caravan camp sites the guard
had mentioned, by the look of them; there were places to tie up hundreds of
horses and ample water. But what were the poles for? Fifty feet high with
notches in them for easy climbing. He climbed one, both out of curiosity and to
look at the terrain, and there was a large ring and pulley at the top. By the
time he was on the ground again, he still didn’t know the answer; it was just
one more question to ask, once he found a traveler willing to talk with him.
    There were bridges over everything—stream, river, ravine, it
didn’t matter; there was a bridge. The base, pillars, and span were carved from
polished gray-black granite, but the bed of the bridge continued to alternate
between gray-green and reddish-brown cobblestones. All of them were touched by
earth magic, the strands knotted gracefully around them, holding the stone of
the bridge firmly together. He spent half an afternoon studying one of them,
walking over it, going under it, looking at how the knots were connected, how
they worked together to reinforce the structure of the bridge, and how the
threads were held in place against their will. But all he saw was the surface
of the bridge, and it was clear to him that the magic had been knitted together
while the bridge had been built, woven in-between and around the slabs of
granite, with the threads locked in place inside the bridge. He tried to focus
on the individual layers of the ridiculously complex spell, but it was too
dizzying and he finally had to give up. He rested for several minutes
afterward, and then continued on.
    Near the end of the second day, the terrain changed rapidly
from low, rolling, thicket-encrusted hills to steep, rocky foothills riddled
with outcroppings and jagged, bare rocks jutting out. There were still
shortcuts, but