Dreams of the Dark Sky by Tina Le Count Myers

Author:Tina Le Count Myers
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781597809559
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Published: 2019-01-22T00:00:00+00:00

It took Marnej a moment to realize that Dárja had stopped talking because all he heard was her saying that she was sorry that he would never meet his father. And she looked as if she truly believed she was to blame—the one who’d struck the blow that had killed his father.

Marnej scrambled to his feet, leaving a startled Dárja in his wake. He needed to move. If he didn’t, he felt he would rip wide open, unable to contain his anger at Dárja, at the gods, or fate or whatever had cursed him. He took a step in one direction, but it felt like running away. He turned back only to confront Dárja. The sympathy in her eyes burned right through him. He wouldn’t suffer pity. Pity was for the weak—for the powerless. He’d been a Piijkij. He’d been trained to kill. Marnej swung around in a circle, overwhelmed by his need to regain what had just been stripped from him with one tearful look.

Out of the corner of his eye, beyond Dárja’s profile, a trio of deer emerged at the clearing’s edge. Their heads bent to graze on the thawing ground.

“Where’s your bow?” he hissed.

Dárja shrank from him, pointing behind her.

Marnej dropped low and ran as quietly as possible. He picked up the bow and quiver as he moved forward, intent on the deer. He judged the wind direction, then shifted to stay downwind of the trio.

Behind him, he heard Dárja’s breath catch.

He took pleasure in ignoring her whispered protests. He had no need for someone to always remind him that he was something less than his father. He crouched as he glided forward, nocking an arrow into place as he’d done hundreds of times to make perfect his technique. Thank the Brethren for their thoroughness.

“Marnej, don’t,” Dárja said somewhere far behind him, her alarm just another sound.

The deer tensed, their ears up, alert.

Marnej straightened, adjusting his aim.

The trio leapt away, the larger two bolting into the forest, and the smallest skirting the far side of the clearing.

“Stay out of this Dárja,” he warned, racing forward, sighting along the arrow’s shaft as he chased after the lone deer.

Dárja’s shouts to stop made him all the more determined. Every step he took it seemed that someone, or something, stood in his way. But not here. Nothing stood between him and his quarry. He was a skilled hunter. Maybe not as renowned as his father, but he’d prove Irjan’s equal in the end. He released the arrow.

The arrow flew true. The bow’s twang echoed in his ear.

In the instant before the arrow hit its target, he heard Dárja’s plaintive cry, “What have you done?”

Marnej’s triumphant response fell away like a hewn tree as pain exploded in his mind and then in his body. He cradled his head, pleading for the cries within to stop. Time stretched out in an endless, agonizing screech, as he shrank further into himself, praying for the torment to cease, promising anything if only it would. And then it did.

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