Beyond the Hell Cliffs Read Online Free Page A

“I’m going to need a bath now just to get your stink off of me.”
    She looked him over again and shut the door to the war room.  With a devious smile, she walked back to the Stone-Seer, sitting on the edge of the table in front of him as she stared him down again, hoping he would break the law by reciprocating her glare, but he was steadfast.
    “Well, I already have enough of you on me to feel slightly tainted,” she laughed.  “What’s a little more going to hurt?”
    She leaned back on the table top and hiked her long skirt up to her hips. 
    “What the fuck are you waiting for?” she asked him.  “Taint me.”

Chapter 2
     
    “What do you mean Helfrick is letting you go?” Nuallan asked her son when she came to visit him.  “Is this why I was sent here a month early?  Where are you going?”
    Raegith’s mother was shorter than him by more than a foot, but looked too young to have birthed a teenager even though she was older than the king.  Full-blooded Twileens lived longer than Sabans and Faeir and physically aged much slower.  Her orange hair was the color of Autumn leaves and hung straight about her shoulders, the sharp tips of her ears peeking out from beneath the strands on the sides of her head.  She was a very attractive woman, which allowed her to be very selective about the clients she saw at her brothel in Leafblade Village.  She downplayed her looks when she visited Raegith, wearing her hair down and dressing in green linen clothes with a brown leather vest and soft boots.  She could have been a Hunter by the way she looked and carried herself.  In another life, she might have been one of the best in Broadhead, but Hunters were more taciturn and Nuallan Cinderkind was always too much of a trouble-maker.  “They would have thrown me out on my ears,” she used to tell him about taking up the only martial occupation for a Twileen.
    “Helfrick has a mission for me,” Raegith said, nursing a headache and dry mouth from finishing the boonivarn his father left him the night before.  “I’ll be trained and learn to ride a horse and see the outside world…”
    “And he’s just going to let you do all that… all of the sudden?” his mother asked, busily tidying up the keep as she spoke.  “Why now?  That son of a bitch has kept you out here for nine years.  I could count the times I’ve been able to see you on my fingers and toes since then.  Now he feels bad about it and lets you out, but you’ve got to go on some errand for him first?”
    “Mother… I cannot tell you what I’m supposed to go do.  It’s very secret stuff.” Raegith said, helping her pick up the clothes strewn about the floor in the living quarters.  “Believe me, it’s probably best that you don’t know anyways.  It’s very important, though and above all, it’s completely safe!”
    “You’re the illegitimate child of the King that no one is supposed to ever know about, Raegith.  There’s nothing safe about that.”
    “Mother, when I get done, we can leave,” Raegith said, taking his mother by the shoulders and looking down at her.  “I’m going to go on this journey and then I’ll come back a better man… a tested man and we can both leave this place together and return to Leafblade where you will introduce me to all of your lovely co-workers…”
    “I’ll sooner put you in a Saban convent with a vow of chastity!” she laughed, shaking her head.  “I want a daughter-in-law well before a grandchild.”
    Nuallan looked him up and down and then sighed.  “If the King of Rellizbix wants you to journey out to go fix a chicken coup in some border village or whatever plan he could have for you, then I’m certainly not powerful enough to talk him down.
    “But I swear by all of the oaks in the West… if something happens to you out there, this kingdom will get its very first taste of regicide .”
    After his mother left him and he was alone with nothing but his books, he started a