The Tales of the Wanderer Volume One: A Book of Underrealm (The Underrealm Volumes 4) by Garrett Robinson (elon musk reading list TXT) 📕

The rider who followed us through the Sunmane Pass had lost our trail some time ago. Now she wandered from town to town, chasing every lead from barkeeps and constables. The growing spring had given fresh rainfall, and she could not keep it entirely out of her boots. She shook her feet every so often to keep the water from growing too cold with stillness.

Something had changed. When the rider passed others on the road, she met untrusting looks that soon darted away. Some suspicion might be understandable—she wore a hood and a mask, after all. But this was something more. Something must have happened in the area, but she had not had time to stop off and find out what.

Suddenly she spied a troop on foot, making its way west along the road. The rider sighed and set her shoulders as she recognized Dorsean uniforms.

Stay calm, she thought. And say nothing if you can help it.

But it did not seem that the sky had blessed her with fortune that day. As soon as the soldiers spotted the horse coming, they fanned out across the road to block its path. The rider pulled up in front of the troop, glaring at them from beneath a dark brown hood.

“Hail,” said a soldier, wiping melted snow from her hair. “What is your business in these parts?”

“What business of yours is business of mine?” said the rider.

That seemed to stump the woman for a moment, and she glared at the rider while trying to work out an answer. “I serve the king,” she said at last. “The true king. I keep his peace. Who do you serve?”

True king? An odd word for a soldier to use. But the rider put that thought from her mind. She could not answer it now, and it was thus only a distraction.

“I serve no one any longer,” she said, voice muffled by the mask. “I am only looking for two friends in a strange land.”

“A strange land?” said the soldier, eyes sharpening at once. “And what land is that?”

The rider cursed inwardly. “I only mean that I come from western Dorsea. I have never crossed the Greatrocks before.”

The soldiers edged forwards, some of them reaching for their weapons. The woman who led them drew her sword halfway out.

“A quick reply, if not an honest one,” she said. “I think we have a spy on our hands.”

“I am no spy,” growled the rider.

“Oh?” said the soldier in mock surprise. “I am sure a spy would never lie about such a thing. Search her belongings.”

The rider gave a great sigh, her shoulders drooping as if in defeat. Two guards saw the movement and relaxed, straightening as they came forwards. Their hands neared the horse’s reins.

With a great shout, the rider kicked at the horse’s flanks. It sprang forwards as though stung, and the rider drove one booted foot into the face of each soldier. They fell back with cries and broken noses. The other soldiers scattered as the horse threatened to trample them. They shouted for her to halt, but their cries were impotent, for they had no steeds of their own. Quickly they faded into the distance.

Dark take it, thought the rider. A fugitive, now. Another thing to blame the wanderers for, when I find them again.

But what under the sky had happened in Dorsea, when the king’s soldiers were accosting lone travelers on the road?

“The answer, of course,” said Albern, “is that there had been a coup in the Dorsean capital of Danfon.”

Sun stared at him in wonder. They had stopped for the midday meal, and a bite of dried meat hung in her almost-limp fingers, her mouth half-open.

“You were here in Dorsea when the war broke out?” she said.

Albern smiled at her. “You might have guessed that. I do not doubt you learned the dates of it in your tutoring.”

“I did not count the days of your story in my mind.”

“I will not dwell overlong on that tale,” said Albern with a sigh. “Others have told it elsewhere, and better than I could. I do not doubt that you have already learned something of it from your instructors in history. Suffice it to say that Wojin of the family Fei, uncle and chief councilor of the king, overthrew his liege and took the throne. His efforts went to waste in the end, thanks to the Nightblade—but of course, we did not know that at the time.”

Sun shook her head. “What was it like in the kingdom? They taught me it was a horrid, bloody affair, and I cannot imagine that you escaped the fighting.”

“No, we did not,” said Albern. “The war threw the whole kingdom into chaos. Indeed, it rocked the foundations of Underrealm itself. And word was not long in reaching us—nor was it long before we found ourselves drawn into the conflict.”

After Taitou, we spent two eternal weeks in northeastern Dorsea, riding from town to village to hamlet and back again. But nowhere could we find anything to tell us where to go next. Our mood darkened. Winter, at last, began to give way to spring, which should have helped. But instead of good and gentle weather, the sky started to rain almost constantly. It drove into our faces and down the backs of our necks, no matter how we bundled up against it. And yet it was still too cold for the snow to melt away. It turned into a thick and horrible slush upon the ground, mixing into the dirt to turn it into a dark and sucking mud. Mag and I began to grow snappish with each other, and even with Dryleaf, though in his case we at least tried to restrain ourselves.

It was in the town of Huzen, not too far from the coast of the Great Bay, that we began to rethink our