Free The Essence Gate War: Book 01 - Adept by Michael Arnquist Page B

audible clink that echoed through the great hall. He did not move otherwise, but his gaze sifted through the corner shadows as he waited. Remembering Amric’s words, he quelled a spark of unease that the warrior’s Sil’ath friend might have stayed behind after all, might have evaded all the searching patrols and come here for him. He had sent all his guards from the room, as his next guests were peculiar, and the common soldiers found them unnerving. They always made his flesh crawl, despite their devotion to him, but now he felt too vulnerable alone and just found himself hoping they would arrive before some faceless intruder found him instead.
    When they appeared, it was from the opposite direction he was facing . It always was, he thought, irritated; but then, that’s what made them so good at what they did. He spun around at the low sound of their laughter. Twin shocks of white hair above pale, mocking faces seemed to hang disembodied in the air, and then dark leather-clad forms formed beneath them. Nyar and Nylien, the twin Elvaren assassins, stepped from the shadows.
    “I do not like to be kept waiting,” Morland snapped.
    The Elvaren said nothing, and Morland felt a chill. He relied on their speech patterns to know when their ever volatile natures were turning against a target, and he did not want to inadvertently become one. He tried a different tact.
    “You heard everything, I trust?” he said.
    “We did, lord,” one replied . Nyar or Nylien, he could never tell them apart. “You were very tolerant of its boorish behavior.”
    “Then you heard our arrangement as well . They are to complete a task for me, and then they will be yours once more. They must live for now.”
    “We understand, lord .” There was a petulant quality to his voice.
    “You need not worry, my boys,” Morland soothed . “I will find targets for you until they return.”
    “ As you command, lord,” one of the Elvaren said, mollified. They turned, faded back into the shadows and were gone.
    Morland began to sift through the papers on the table, paused at a thought, and spoke into the air . “The guard who was struck down tonight and failed me, I have no further use for his service.”
    The reply was a whisper, directionless . “Thank you, lord.”
    Morland sipped from the goblet and resumed reading.

CHAPTER 4
     
     
    Gormin wiped the sweat from his brow, surveying his crops in the failing light . He was down to just two of his largest fields, all he could manage alone, but they were thriving and he felt a fierce exultation. He had finished harvesting the oats today, and could start on the barley with the morrow. It would take several days by himself, but then he could load his wagon and commence bringing loads to the city, and both vindication and profit would be his. Then his gaze slid over his other fields, all lying fallow, and his mood soured.
    He beat the day’s dust from his wide-brimmed hat and cast a look back at the barn he had just finished locking up for the night . It was difficult to recognize as a barn any longer, with all the fortifications he had added: boarded windows, reinforced doors, buttressed walls and a ring of outward facing stakes. His early years in the Marovian infantry had served him well, though he had never expected his experience defending military camps and forts to be used later on his own farm.
    From inside the barn came a coughing grunt and the protesting creak of wood . Gormin paused to listen, but it was not repeated. The graffas, short-tempered beasts at the best of times, had been worked hard today and should be quick to slumber this night. Great, bullish draft animals, they were more costly than oxen but Gormin had never regretted the expense; their prodigious strength and constitution more than compensated for the additional cost and their irascible natures.
    He turned and trudged toward his house. It bore many of the same defenses as the barn, and just past the edge of its roof he