Just to Return Home

Chapter One

Kil sat on the veranda of his country house, glaring at the stars in irritation. Night after night insomnia had tormented him — and now a vague sense of dread had joined it.

Had there been real danger, Killimdin Dargon — Kil for short, a true warrior and no lesser man than the eldest son of the clan’s head — would have felt it, and with ninety-nine percent certainty would have known where it came from. Every warrior was taught this from childhood, and the Heeding, the clan’s priest-mages, planted a great many useful things in their minds along with the gift of sensing danger.

There was no need to post sentries: no enemy, even bearing a Veil of Silence amulet, could approach unnoticed — all woke instantly, without a stretch or a yawn, in full battle readiness. So what troubled him was not danger, but something he could not name.

The feeling had begun after a young man visited his antique shop — refined in appearance, yet with the sharp, piercing gaze of a professional thief that scanned the whole room as if with an x-ray. He proved a fine connoisseur: a dirk the seller Lyokha had aged at three hundred years he identified at once as a naval officer’s of 1894, and a “Turkish” sabre he traced almost to the name of its Cossack chieftain.

Only edged weapons interested him. When the owner — here Kil went by Konstantin Aleksandrovich Dragomirov — offered something dearer, the guest agreed at once. Kil held every licence, including one to trade in edged weapons, so he expected no trouble there.

And still he could not shake the sense that Igor — for that was the young man’s name — did not merely believe what he heard, but clearly KNEW it to be so. Not a shred of doubt, only a predatory gleam at the sight of the costliest pieces. Having looked over everything and weighed the prices, he asked for a couple of days to think.

It was from that moment the unease settled in. Kil had dealt in antiques for over a hundred years and knew his buyers well: sweating collectors, hardened speculators, fools you could palm any rubbish off on. Igor fit none of them. The most valuable goods were kept not in the shop but at Kil’s house — and twice already uninvited guests had eyed that rich, near-empty home. Both times it ended badly for them.

Ahead of Kil lie a night visitor, the secret of his clan, and a road between two worlds. Read the whole story.

About the book: «Just to Return Home»

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