Blood of the Gods by David Mealing

Author:David Mealing
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2018-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

42

ARAK’JUR

The Mouth of a Cave

Lhakani Land

Sizzling meat filled the air with smells of home and comfort, pulling him back from the edge of sleep. Rhealla used to bring him fare from the cookfires, after a grueling hunt. She would have been proud of him, though the prospect of a guardianship had never entered into their plans together. He had aspired to be Valak’Jur, to share a hunter’s life with her, to raise their son in the Sinari tradition, to make him a good man, and to try to be one himself. He could live the rest of his life and never forget her, nor be free of the chord of sadness her death still struck, however he’d learned to live with its melody.

He gasped and lurched forward. He was seated, but his hands were held in place, suspended over his head.

A fire burned at the mouth of the cave, venting smoke into a darkening sky, and a woman sat on the opposite side, staring at him through the flames. He tried to move again and found the same resistance, his hands held in place against the cave wall. His body ached, with heaviness in his eyes when he tried to look and see what bound him.

The woman said nothing, watching him struggle.

He tried again. His muscles were raw, a deep pain when he strained his shoulder, and another in his chest. Finally he fell still. Una’re could aid him, if his body was too weak to break free.

“No.”

The woman’s voice, though she hadn’t moved from behind the fire.

He met her eyes.

Memories flooded in, of the moments leading up to his long sleep. The image of a winged creature, of talons and fangs. He’d landed a savage cut with mareh’et’s claws, ripping the sinews of her left arm free of its socket, dangling veins and gore as they fought. She’d screamed, more fury than pain, and redoubled her attack. More images came, of brutality without elegance or grace. Fire had been exchanged, and earth. Then without warning, blackness. He never saw the blow that put him down.

“Call upon the spirits and I will renew my attack,” the woman said. Ad-Shi. She said it flatly, without sign of malice or anger. “We are too close to the end to waste more time on recovery.”

His throat burned from thirst, and his arms throbbed from the exertion he’d already put them to. A lesser instinct demanded he call on una’re anyway, burst himself free of whatever prison she’d made in the stone, and run. The greater instinct won out. He was exhausted, on the barest edge of waking, where she’d had time enough to regrow the arm he’d severed, her left now a perfect mirror of the right. If she’d wanted him dead, he would have been dead long since.

When the moment had passed, she rose from beside the fire, retrieving a skewer he hadn’t noticed was there.

She approached, holding the stick to his mouth. Rabbit meat, still sizzling, giving off the scent that had awakened him.

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