Read Black Halo for Free Online

Don’t ,’ the voice warned.
    Lenk felt the chill envelop his muscles, something straining to keep him seated, keep him listening. But he gritted his teeth, pulled himself from the ship’s edge.
    Before he knew what was happening, he was crawling over Kataria as though she weren’t even there, not heeding the glare she shot him. She didn’t matter now. No one else did. Now, he only needed to get the book, to silence the voice. He could worry about everything else later. There would be time enough later.
    ‘ Fine ,’ the voice muttered in response to his thoughts. ‘ We speak later, then .’
    Ignore it , he told himself. You can ignore it now. You don’t need it now. All you need is …
    That thought drifted off into the fog of ecstasy that clouded his mind as he reached under the deck, fingers quivering. It wasn’t until he felt his shoulder brush against something hard that he noticed the two massive red legs at either side of his head.
    Coughing a bit too fervently to appear nonchalant, he rose up, peering over the leather kilt the appendages grew from. A pair of black eyes stared back at him down a red, leathery snout. Ear-frills fanned out in unambiguous displeasure beneath a pair of menacing curving horns. Gariath’s lips peeled backwards to expose twin rows of teeth.
    ‘Oh … there you are,’ Lenk said sheepishly. ‘I was … just …’
    ‘Tell me,’ the dragonman grunted. ‘Do you suppose there’s anything you could say while looking up a Rhega ’s kilt that would make him not shove a spike of timber up your nose?’
    Lenk blinked.
    ‘I … uh … suppose not.’
    ‘Glad we agree.’
    Gariath’s arm, while thick as a timber spike, was not nearly as fatal and only slightly less painful as the back of his clawed hand swung up to catch Lenk at the jaw. The young man collapsed backward, granted reprieve from the voice by the sudden violent ringing in his head. He sprawled out on the deck, looking up through swimming vision into a skinny face that regarded him with momentary concern.
    ‘Do I really want to know what might have driven you to go sticking your head between a dragonman’s legs?’ Dreadaeleon asked, cocking a black eyebrow.
    ‘Are you the sort of gentleman who is open-minded?’ Lenk groaned, rubbing his jaw.
    ‘Not to that degree, no,’ he replied, burying his boyish face back into a book that looked positively massive against his scrawny, coat-clad form.
    From the deck, Lenk’s eyes drifted from his companion to the boat’s limp sail. He blinked, dispelling the bleariness clinging to his vision.
    ‘It may just be the concussion talking,’ he said to his companion, ‘but why is it we’re still bobbing in the water like chum?’
    ‘The laws of nature are harsh,’ Dreadaeleon replied, turning a page. ‘If you’d like that translated into some metaphor involving fickle, fictional gods, I’m afraid you’d have to consult someone else.’
    ‘What I mean to say,’ Lenk said, pulling himself up, ‘is that you can just wind us out of here, can’t you?’
    The boy looked up from his book, blinked.
    ‘“Wind us out of here.”’
    ‘Yeah, you know, use your magic to—’
    ‘I’m aware of your implication, yes. You want me to artificially inflate the sails and send us on our way.’
    ‘Right.’
    ‘And I want you to leave me alone.’ He tucked his face back in the pages. ‘Looks like we’re all unhappy today.’
    ‘You’ve done it before,’ Lenk muttered.
    ‘Magic isn’t an inexhaustible resource. All energy needs something to burn, and I’m little more than kindling.’ The boy tilted his nose up in a vague pretext of scholarly thought.
    ‘Then what the hell did you take that stone for?’ Lenk thrust a finger at the chipped red gem hanging from the boy’s neck. ‘You said the netherlings used it to avoid the physical cost of magic back at Irontide, right?’
    ‘I did. And that’s why I’m not using it,’ Dreadaeleon said. ‘All magic has a cost. If