The Diamond of Darkhold - 4 Read Online Free Page A

murmured to each other about flocks and fences. Lina turned to Kenny. “Are wolves big birds?” she asked him.
    “Nope,” he said. “They’re dogs, sort of, only more fierce. They howl. It’s like they sing together. In hard winters, they come in closer to where people live and they kill animals. People, too, sometimes. Then the birds come in later to pick over what’s left.”
    With a shiver, Lina added wolves to her ever-growing list of the world’s dangers.
    “Second thing is,” the roamer was saying, jabbing a finger at the sky, “a new star is up there. It moves, is the odd thing about it. I’ve seen it myself.”
    The villagers murmured a bit about this. Lina heard a couple of people saying they’d seen the same thing. “It’s not right,” someone said. “Stars shouldn’t move.”
    The roamer started putting her things back into their bags and boxes.
    “I know how to make a wolf-scaring whistle,” Kenny said to Doon. “Want me to show you?”
    But Doon didn’t answer. Lina saw that he was staring at something the roamer hadn’t offered for sale. It lay near the rear wheel of her wagon. It looked to her like a flopped-open book lying on its face.
    The rest of the crowd left, and Kenny wandered off, too. Doon beckoned Lina to come with him and stepped up to the roamer. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing to the book.
    She glanced back. “Oh, that,” she said. “I use it for my fires.”
    “What are you asking for it?” Doon said.
    She turned from her task of bundling and boxing. “You want it?” A gleam appeared in her eye. “Of course, it might be very valuable,” she said. “Ancient as it is. Discovered high up in the mountains, under unusual circumstances.”
    “Oh, I don’t think it’s valuable,” said Doon. “I just happen to be a book collector. I could pay . . . um . . . let me see. I don’t have anything with me right now,” he said. “But I could get . . . I could get some . . .” He hesitated, thinking, eyeing the tattered book longingly.
    Lina could see that he wanted it. The book was a mess, falling apart. But she knew how Doon felt about books.
    She had an idea. “I’ll buy it for you,” she said to him. She turned to the roamer. “I’ll give you a match for it.”
    “A what?” said the roamer.
    “A match,” said Lina. “You know, to make fire.” She happened to have three of them in her pocket. She carried them around with her because she so often needed one—to light a candle, to light the fire in the stove, to lend to a neighbor whose fire had gone out. All the matches in Sparks had been brought there by the people from Ember; to the villagers, they were wonderful things. The plan had been to save them for trading, to help buy food and supplies now that the town’s population had grown; but when the cold weather came, people couldn’t resist using matches to start their fires. It was so much easier than using the flint-stones. Probably, Lina thought, the matches were nearly gone by now.
    The shepherd’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? I’ve heard of those match things, but I’ve never—” Then quickly she put on her cagey expression again. “I mean, really? You’re offering me just one? For this extremely ancient and important book? I think three would be more like it.”
    Lina glanced at Doon.
    “Never mind, then,” he said.
    “All right, all right,” the roamer said quickly. “Two.”
    “One,” Lina said. “That book is in terrible shape.” She took a match from her pocket and offered it. The roamer shrugged and gave Doon the book, smirking, clearly thinking she had gotten the better deal.
    Doon picked up the book. Lina saw right away that it was in ruins—the roamer had torn out so many of its pages that the cover’s edges clapped together. Some torn strips still remained near the book’s spine, where the roamer had ripped pages out unevenly, but there seemed to be only a very few pages left whole, and even those were stained