Read Easy Betrayals for Free Online

stinging gale of hard-driven sand, catching their cloaks with ghostly talons. Driven dust and sand obscured the square in the space of moments, blinding and disorienting paladin and pirate both. The temperature of the air dropped abruptly, as if they’d waded into a stream of icy water. And the watchful, mournful presence Belgin had sensed earlier suddenly seemed tangible and malevolent, a cold and hateful thing that closed on them with the fall of darkness. “Miltiades!” he shrieked, though his words were torn away by the wind.
    The paladin stumbled on the steps. Belgin scuttled toward him, keeping low to the ground. He turned once to shout encouragement to Jacob and Rings, but the return of the storm plunged the Netherese temple into impenetrable gloom. The fighter and the dwarf were nowhere in sight—but the more he looked, the more certain he became that something was moving towards him in the roiling murk. Coughing, he drew a silken scarf from his collar and pulled it up over his nose and mouth.
    “Do you feel it, paladin?” he called to Miltiades, a few feet away.
    “I feel it, Belgin,” Miltiades answered. His voice was distant and faint, even though he shouted to raise his voice above the storm. “The evil of this place sleeps no longer!”
    “What is it?”
    “I know not!” The paladin scrambled to his feet, spinning to search the ruins with an arm raised to shield his eyes. “Where are Jacob and Rings?”
    They were thirty or forty yards behind me, in the middle of the square. They can’t be far!”
    They must have gotten turned around in the dust,” Miltiades said. He stood, buffeted by the vicious wind. Sand hissed from his armor like the sound of rain falling on a hot skillet. For the first time, Belgin saw human hesitation, human frailty, in the paladin’s face. He glanced toward the empty storm behind them, up to the dark doorway at the top of the steps, then toward the square again. “Jacob!” he cried. “Rings! Are you out there?”
    They’ll never hear you in this,” Belgin said. “Do we look for them, or do we stay put?”
    “We’re all blind in this Tyr-cursed dust storm. We could spend the whole night blundering around looking for each other.”
    “Split up, then? You pursue the doppelganger, while I wait here for the others?”
    “No, that’s too dangerous. You said yourself that we can’t be caught alone by her, and there’s something else here, Belgin, something that awoke when the sun vanished below the sands. I can feel it seeking us. If I left you here alone, I don’t think I’d ever see you again.”
    Then let’s leave Eidola to whatever it is that watches this place, find our comrades, and get out of here,” Belgin said, raising his voice to carry over the wind. “We can return at sunrise to see if the doppelganger’s still alive.”
    “No,” said Miltiades. “No monster, no fiend, no force in this world will sway me from my course.” He turned back to the crumbling palace and battled up the steps, “Come on; Eidola is somewhere within. Jacob and Rings know our quest. They must fend for themselves.”

Chapter 3
Dark Designs
    Night and chaos descended like the fall of a titan’s maul. Trotting across the ancient square a few feet behind Jacob, Rings could see Miltiades and Belgin racing up the broken steps of an old palace, darting toward a gaping, shadowed archway. Then the sight was erased by a gust of wind powerful enough to spin him half around and blind him with an eyeful of grit. His world narrowed to a dimensionless sphere of dust, sand, and the old flagstones under his feet. “What now?” he growled aloud, even though the wind stole his words away.
    He caught a glimpse of a dim, metallic gleam off to his left and moved toward it. He bared his teeth in anger and drove his stocky frame through the storm, until a tall, ragged shape appeared suddenly from the mist. Jacob whirled to face him, greatsword at the ready. “Who goes there?” the human