Read The Ring of Winter for Free Online Page A

Chult,” he murmured. “Bearers dropping like coins into a collection plate on a high holy day. You sweat so badly the clothes rot off your back.” He looked almost wistful for an instant. “I’d suffer it again to get rid of this awful chill.”
    “Maybe if you added my cloak to the blankets,” Artus offered, reaching for the heavy wool garment.
    “No, no,” Theron said, then paused. “What was I—oh yes. The goblins …” The haunted look swept over his face again as he renewed his tale. “It was five days out of the station at Port Castighar, on Refuge Bay. We were searching for the ruins of a lost Tabaxi city—”
    “Mezro?” Artus asked.
    Theron nodded. “The heat had claimed a few of the bearers, and Sigerth, the only one from the club brave enough—or foolish enough—to go with me, died from fever. I’m afraid that’s what’s got me now,” he noted without self-pity.
    “The goblins came at night. My guide warned me about them—Batiri, he called the monsters—but we were supposed to be well away from their usual hunting territory.” Theron shook his head. “Maybe he wasn’t such a good guide after all. Anyway, they ate him first, so he got what was coming to him. The bearers went next.”
    Now it was Artus’s turn to shudder. “Cannibals? Gods, Theron, I’ve never heard of an entire goblin tribe … not unless they’re realty desperate. Starving, I mean.”
    “Not in Cormyr or the rest of the Heartlands, but Chult might as well be another world.” He nodded. “Yes, that’s it. Chult was like another world. Kwee, you might as well give up on that. The fire’s not doing me any good.”
    Kwee finished dumping an armload of wood into the huge fireplace. It was tall enough for a man to stand in without ducking and twice that in width. The blaze contained in this gaping maw cast a monstrously large shadow of the slight-framed man throughout the room. The darkness fluttered across a mummy stretched out in its glass sarcophagus, the dozens of shields and polearms hung upon the walls, the thick, embroidered drapes covering the glass doors, and the stunning self-portrait Theron had painted. The jewel-encrusted statue of a beautiful, fanged woman crouching opposite the fireplace was never touched by shadow. A light shone upon it no matter how dark the study became. No one knew exactly who the statue depicted—some ancient and long-ago abandoned demigod was the most common hypothesis. Theron liked the woman’s looks, so he refused to sell it to any of the collectors or museum curators who bid for it.
    Kwee Chan Sen was right at home in the unusual surroundings of Theron Silvermace’s study. He was a native of the eastern nation of Shou Lung and had the rounded features, almond-shaped eyes, and night-black hair of those highly cultured people. He wore a silk patch to hide the eye made blind and milk-white by a barbarian arrow. His hair hung in a warrior’s topknot, an honor he had gained from five successful campaigns. Kwee had left Shou Lung four years earlier, when his uncle, the former minister of war, was executed for treason. He had joined up with Theron during a trek across the Hordelands; now he lived in the explorer’s sprawling home, a setting he found conducive to contemplation of his family’s disgrace.
    “I am going to make myself some tea,” Kwee said softly as he crossed the room. There was a strange, frightened look on his usually serene face. “You should take some, Theron. Perhaps it will expel the fever.”
    “Tea,” Theron scoffed. “Better bring me some brandy instead. How about you, Artus?” When the younger man shook his head, Theron said, “Bring him one anyway.”
    After Kwee was gone, Theron pushed himself up on the daybed. “Odd, but he doesn’t like to hear about the goblins,” he said. “He’s fought barbarians and orcs, and all sorts of weird Shou beasts, but these stories really unnerve him.”
    Artus was certain it was the effect the goblins had wrought