Free The Book of Silence by Lawrence Watt-Evans

he closed both thumbs over it. “Thank you,” he said as he dropped it in his purse.
    â€œTake good care of it,” the man said. “It’s one of my finer pieces.”
    â€œIt is indeed,” Garth agreed, gazing at the gleaming clockwork gull. “But not your finest,” he added, with a nod to the west.
    The toymaker smiled. “No, it’s not my finest, but my very best is not for sale.” He watched as Garth seated himself in the saddle, the copper bird perched before him, and gave a command to his mount.
    Koros turned and headed back through the village, its smooth, silent progress carrying it and its master quickly northward out of Orgûl.
    That steady stride seemed effortless, and the warbeast could keep it up for hours on end, perhaps days on end; Garth was continually impressed by the creature’s incredible power and stamina.
    It took them the remainder of that day and the following night to reach the northern edge of the Barony of Sland, moving along the foothills east of the mountains that formed Eramma’s western border. Garth made camp atop a ridge overlooking the desolate site of a moderately recent battle.
    His brief stay in Orgûl had put him in a state of mild euphoria. He had not fought and slain a monster, but instead had found that his real task, that of freeing people from the menace that beset them, had been accomplished long before by the threatened people themselves. That was heartening; only rarely in his long life had he seen much evidence of human competence. Even among his own species, it often seemed that the average mortal had no more ambition or wit than a lower animal had. Too many people were willing to suffer under various forms of oppression, rather than make the effort necessary to improve their lot.
    No one among the overmen of the Northern Waste had attempted to come south overland for any purpose during the three centuries of relative peace that had followed the Racial Wars; they had been told that the border with Eramma was guarded night and day by ferocious human warriors and they had believed it until Garth made the journey to Skelleth himself, for reasons of his own, and discovered the pitiful state of the human defenses.
    No overman had troubled himself to explore other kingdoms until Garth, on an errand for the Forgotten King, ventured into Nekutta and learned that there were other overmen still in the world, living on the Yprian Coast. And no attempt had been made to establish trade until Garth began it.
    Among humans, the people of Skelleth had tolerated an insane baron without serious complaint, ignoring his bizarre behavior and occasional arbitrary executions, until Garth murdered him. In the Nekuttan city of Dûsarra the populace had made no protest against the domination of the cults of the dark gods, nor had it tried to halt the kidnappings and human sacrifices of the more vicious cults.
    In Orgûl, though, when heroes had failed to kill the dragon, ordinary farmers had managed to poison it, and common village craftsmen had built and maintained a replacement to ward off other predators, more human but no less vicious.
    That fact cheered Garth considerably.
    His own behavior pleased him as well. For the first time he had ventured out into human lands beyond Skelleth, accomplished as much of his purpose as he saw fit, and headed homeward without killing a single person.
    He was, he had been told, the chosen avatar of Bheleu, doomed to symbolize the Fourteenth Age, the Age of Destruction. Heretofore it had seemed that he was destined to bring chaos and disaster wherever he went; he had led the sacking of Skelleth, been responsible for bringing the White Death to Dûsarra, been involved in the death of the wizard who had ruled Mormoreth and killed its population, and, he suspected, somehow contributed to the collapse of the Kingdom of Eramma.
    On this particular journey, however, he had not destroyed anything, nor killed