Read Ashes of Time (The After Cilmeri Series) for Free Online Page B

good.” Meg got her
feet under her and stood, shaking out her cloak and dress as she
did so. “What about you?”
    Anna rubbed at her forehead. “My head
hurts.” Then she swung her legs around and slid down the slope to
arrive on a level with her mother.
    “ You’ve had quite a day,”
Meg said. “How’s your neck?”
    Anna put a hand to her throat and then
removed it to look at her fingers. They came away bloody. She
tilted up her chin so Meg could see her neck. “What do you
think?”
    Meg gently touched Anna’s skin. “It isn’t
bleeding much.” She pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of her
dress and dabbed at the wound. “I think it’ll be okay, though it
would be better if we had a couple Band-Aids.”
    “ Yeah, well.” Anna took the
handkerchief and continued dabbing. “Maybe in a bit we’ll actually
be able to get some.” She looked around. “Where do you think we
are?”
    Anna was being really calm, and Meg didn’t
know if it was because coming to rest in a modern forest was less
traumatic in comparison to being knifed by Marty, or if Anna really
was this good in a crisis. Meg’s initial panic was still subsiding,
so she stalled for time before answering her daughter, chewing on
her lower lip as she took in their surroundings more fully. They
had fallen into a forest, in the snow, in the same murky
heading-towards-nightfall that they’d left in Wales.
    “ Listen!” Anna held up a
hand.
    Meg didn’t hear anything at first, and then
her heart skipped a beat as a distant engine roared overhead.
    “ I don’t believe it,” Anna
said.
    “ Given that the alternative
would be lying at the base of the tower at Rhuddlan, this is much
better,” Meg said. “Did you think it wouldn’t work?”
    Anna shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s
been so long since I did this. You and David have been back and
forth a bunch of times, but I’ve only traveled with David in Aunt
Elisa’s minivan or with you. It has occurred to me more than once
that I might not have what it takes to travel like you guys do. It
would be logical if it were just you and David who have the
genes—or whatever—for it.”
    “ You almost came here when
you went into labor with Cadell,” Meg said.
    Anna wrinkled her nose. “True. I’d forgotten
about that.” She shrugged. “I’m still not sure that really
happened.”
    Meg hadn’t seen it, but
David had been sure. Meg didn’t want to argue about it, since it
didn’t matter at the moment. She and Anna had traveled , whether because of Anna,
Meg, or both.
    Meg wiped her hands on the edge of her
cloak. “I’m really cold. We should start walking.”
    “ To where?” Anna
said.
    “ Downhill,” Meg said.
“Isn’t that what Math taught David? Follow the contours of the land
downhill and then find a river to follow downstream.”
    If Meg had traveled back in time to Cilmeri
with David and Anna, she would have had a lot to say about the
sink-or-swim nature of that early training of David’s. But she
hadn’t been there, and she could hardly complain about the man
Llywelyn had turned David into, or the little bit of knowledge Meg
herself could now relate because of what Math had taught him all
those years ago.
    “ I have spent so little
time in the woods over the last nine years it isn’t even funny.”
Anna fastened three more of the wooden toggles that kept her cloak
closed. The hall at Rhuddlan had been cold, and everyone in the
Middle Ages wore their cloaks indoors as a matter of course, a fact
for which Meg was intensely grateful now. “Could we be near Mt.
Snowdon?”
    “ The trees look wrong to me
for modern Wales,” Meg said, “though what do I know? Maybe pine
trees and Douglas firs predominate in one of those tree farms
they’ve planted.”
    “ If we can find some sign
of civilization, we’ll know.” Anna gave a half-laugh as she pulled
a leaf out of Meg’s hair. “We’d better hurry before it turns
completely dark.”
    Both women were wearing