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Back Bleak Seasons Save as PDF
Chapters (102)
  1. Title page
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Soon after I wolfed down one of Mother Gotas sinkers I felt my strength returning. Lets get you cinched up good and tight, I told my companion. Wouldnt want you wandering off and getting hurt.

He stared at me in silence while I fixed him up. He didnt need to speak to let me know what was on his mind. I told him, This is the risk you took when you signed on with the bad guys.

He would not argue but he refused to agree. I was confused.

I was the bad guy because I wasnt blazing hot on the effort to bring Kina back into the world. I patted his head. You could be right, brother. But I hope not. Here. I snatched up the cloth and drew it back over him, where it belonged. Then I drank some more water and ate part of a roll and when I got to feeling frisky I decided to return to my apartment. It was subjective as hell but it was an age since I had seen my wife. In reality it could not have been more than a few hours. I got lost.

51

51

Of course I got lost. It was inevitable. The future me within me did not recall anything else but it did remember that I was going to get lost, then find my way to someplace I was not trying to go. That much came to me just after I realized that I did not have a clue how to get back to any familiar part of the Palace. I stopped to take stock.

At that moment I had enough near-current memories of other Murgens from other times that I was ready to trust any memory from any time, though it came with no supporting context whatsoever.

This memory of getting lost carried flavors of the excitement of unexpected discovery and powerful overtones of pain. An echo told me I did not want to find my way again.

Somewhere, while still stubbornly trying to get out, I came upon a gloomy hallway that seemed to smell of old magic. A few yards away a shattered door hung precariously upon a single hinge.

Discovery beckoned. I went forward unafraid.

One look inside told me I had found Smokes secret library the place where the only surviving copies of the first several Annals had been gathered and sealed away so there would be no chance we Black Company types would ever chance upon them. I wanted to read them so badly. But I had not come to read. I did not have time to sort the wheat from the chaff of a hundred other books. I had to get back to my family.