Reign of Ash Read Online Free Page A

proposed escape was preferable to remaining under siege.
    “Do you have a better way out?” Penhallow asked. They stood in the caverns beneath the fortress of mercenary general Traher Voss, on the banks of a swiftly flowing subterranean river.
    “You’re already dead. You don’t have to breathe,” Connor replied testily.
    Had Penhallow needed to draw breath, he might have sighed. Penhallow was a tall, lean-muscled man. Long brown hair framed an angular face and blue eyes. Though his features spoke of nobility, his body was as strong as an athlete’s. And although he looked to be in his late thirties, Connor knew that Penhallow had existed for hundreds of years.
    “We’ve been over this before, Bevin. The
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bond will let me put you into a deep trance. It’ll slow your breathing and heartbeat, so you won’t need much air for a short time. That’s as long as we need to let the current take us out of the fortress and past the siege. By the time the boxes surface, Traher says we’ll be in neutral territory.”
    “How does he know? Did he ever do this?”
    “Not exactly,” Traher Voss replied and cleared his throat. Voss was a portly man in his middle years, with a fringe of graying hair around his balding pate. Thick-necked and broad-shouldered, Voss looked like a career military man.
    “But we have slipped materials out of the fortress when the king’s guards were at the gate and the items were, shall we say, of questionable background,” Voss went on. “We know the river comes back aboveground a few miles downstream, in a cave. Makes it unlikely someone happening by is going to notice when you bob back to the surface. It’s far enough away that I doubt Reese’s soldiers will be wandering around.”
    Connor spotted a second coffin a few yards away. “Who’s that for?” he asked, glancing at Penhallow. “Are you going to be shut up in a box as well?”
    Penhallow shook his head. “That’s for Treven. He’s supposed to meet us here, and he’s late.” Treven Lowrey, former mage and magic scholar, largely did as he pleased.
    “How do you know it’s wide enough in the underground passage? What if the box gets stuck? What if there’s a second channel for the water and I end up gods-know-where?” Connor protested.
    “When Traher suggested the idea, I had the same concerns,” Penhallow replied. “So before I brought you down here, I navigated the course myself.” He gave a slight smile, enough that the tips of his elongated eyeteeth were barely visible. “As you point out, I don’t have to breathe.”
    “And?” Connor demanded, only slightly mollified.
    Penhallow chuckled. “The passage is wide enough in most places,” he answered. “Where it’s not, I’ll guide you. I’ll travel the channel as I did before. If there were any trouble at all, I assure you, I could get you to safety.”
    Connor eyed the coffin again. The box had been weighted with enough rocks that it would sink below the water’s surface, but it would not be heavy enough to come to rest on the bottom. It also looked as if it had been covered with pitch. “It’s not the water,” Connor muttered, and his blue eyes flashed. “I don’t like being shut up in a box when I’m not dead yet.”
    “While we stand here talking, Reese’s men are pounding the shit out of my walls,” Voss grumbled. “And your friend McFadden is out there making a target of himself.”
    Connor winced at Voss’s words. “All right,” Connor said. “Let’s do it before I have time to think about it.” He paused and pushed a strand of dark blond hair out of his eyes. With a glance, he measured the coffin, glad that he was just average in height and build so that the box would not be too tight a fit. He repressed a shudder. At just twenty-two years old, he had hoped to wait a good long time before having a coffin fitted for him. “Will I sleep through it?”
    Penhallow grimaced. “If I put you into a deep sleep and we have trouble