The Northern Approach Read Online Free Page A

and tried desperately not to scratch at his itchy skin.

Chapter Two
    “The Other Four”
     
    I lay here, feeling my heart racing in its efforts to keep me alive. I hear the servants outside speaking of my death being moments away. I watch the shadows grow and retreat as each new day is a surprise to me. Each day I assume is my last, and when another comes, it gives me hope and wonder I have not felt since childhood.
    Still, I am a young man who feels old before his time, thanks to the gift the dragon gave me. Mortality is its own curse, but knowing your death is waiting for your next breath or the one after it will destroy one’s focus on what must be said and done.
    This time, my own ending has distracted me from what I have seen in the night. I nearly forgot, and in doing so, I believe I would have been to blame for the deaths of many thousands. Every lapse extinguishes lives of those not yet born and not even imagined.
    How did I get on this topic? Oh…completion of what is set before us.
    The betrayer must find the others well after the snows end and the days become longer. He will travel, not for the first time, hoping to find the other four who he must have at his side to change the fates I have predicted. The clues for where to find them I leave to wiser minds than mine. He will know them when he finds despair and sees the fruits of our failures, recognizing them by the lives extended past fate’s intention. The misty shroud can unveil what has survived to that day.
    Lacking any of these four, the betrayer will watch as all he has waited to save dies around him. Why these people are important, even I do not know. They may matter not at all or the world may depend on them. I would hope that the betrayer does not tell them this or it may destroy them.
     
-           Excerpt from the lost prophecies of Turess
     
    Ten days and nights of walking later, Raeln was near collapse. Food was the least of his concerns as they pushed farther into the southern mountain range, moving ever deeper into the peaks. The air had thinned enough that Raeln struggled to catch his breath and his tongue felt thick from dehydration. The last clean water they had found that was not falling from the sky was a runoff river, but that had been days before. Making matters worse, his skin had not fully healed and coughs racked him every so often as his lungs—irritated by the combination of thin air and the inhalation of smoke—would tighten painfully.
    Raeln stumbled to a stop, putting a hand to a tree to steady himself. He had gotten steadily dizzier with each day of walking. He knew he could not go much farther, but he fully intended to push himself until he fell. Somehow, On’esquin looked as steady as he had the day they had left, continuing to walk with purpose no matter how long or hard they had marched.
    “Are we close?” Raeln asked in hopes of distracting On’esquin from his own weakness.
    The orc stopped alongside Raeln, looking first over the woods and slope of the mountainside ahead of them. Then he eyed Raeln the same way, evaluating him. “I wouldn’t know,” admitted On’esquin, shrugging. “I can only follow the clues and hope that they lead me to something that fits the description. Failing that…I simply guess and try to pretend I know where I’m going. We walk this way because I hope it is correct.”
    “You said what we were looking for was a week out. Where did that estimate come from?”
    On’esquin grinned. “I made it up. Longer would have discouraged you. Shorter and you would have questioned why we had not seen it in our regular patrols.”
    “Then what are we looking for?”
    On’esquin opened his mouth to answer and froze.
    Looking around, Raeln tried to find the source of the man’s unease, but he could see nothing in the woods. He could smell nothing specific beyond the scent of something burning, though he could not be sure of what type of wood might make that particular odor. Whatever