DAUGHTER OF ANCIENTS by Daughter of Ancients

Author:Daughter of Ancients
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-09-13T12:49:02+00:00

* * *

Scrabbling my way out of the insistent vision, I grasped at reality—the swirl of brilliance hanging over me and the chinking inevitability of D'Sanya's hammer as it forged my prison. Even if I had been willing to gather power in the way of the Lords, D'Sanya's enchantments had left me incapable of sorcery. That I had been able to aid Sefaro's nosy daughter and plant in her the compulsion to go to my mother was only a virtue of my soul weaving. D'Sanya's constraints did not seem to affect that talent, perhaps because she did not know of it, or perhaps a talent detached from a body could not be fully bound by physical constraints. But here, wherever we were, my feeble attempts to touch another soul came up empty. And I dared not enter D'Sanya. She was too strong. Too angry. More than half mad.

"D'Sanya, wait . . ." Chinking by my left foot. What was she doing to me? Every moment that passed made it harder to think clearly. Piercing fire blossomed in my foot and washed up my leg and through my groin and my gnawing gut.

As I climbed the jagged cliffs high above the war camps of my warrior Zhid, the desert sun seared my back. I was horribly thirsty, but I could not show weakness. . . .

A stab in my right foot. Leg, back, and belly flushed with the stinging enchantment. At the same time, the lower perimeters of my limbs and torso and the flesh at the back of my neck tickled as if an army of ants milled about beneath me, burrowing into my skin.

The chinking hammer next to my ear tugged at a binding that crossed my forehead. . . .

I tightened the leather strap until it cut into the tanned flesh. We had bound the insolent warrior to four posts in the center of the encampment, where the sun could bake him DAUGHTER OF ANCIENTS

slowly over the next days. Someone pressed a whip handle into my hand.

"They writhe so charmingly when the sand spiders burrow into their open wounds, do they not, young Lord?" Pleasure prickled my spine. . . .

Gasping like one drowning, I tried to escape that voice, those sensations.

The voice that whispered in my ear so seductively was Lord Parven's, as clear as on the day of my change. Visions . . . memories ... so real . . .

"Lady!" D'Sanya had threatened to bury me alive, but terror rooted deeper than even so dread a fate exploded in my gut. My struggle drove her sharp pins deeper into my hands and feet, triggering relentless waves of fire. The Lords were five years dead, but if my soul weaving could give coherence to chaos and create the Bounded, what could it do to the memories I carried . . . and in the presence of the oculus, the very agent of my corruption? You will not escape the destiny we designed for you. You are our instrument.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.