Stormwarden by Janny Wurts

Author:Janny Wurts [Wurts, Janny]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, Epic, Science Fiction, General, Fantasy Fiction
ISBN: 9780246134141
Publisher: Grafton
Published: 1984-12-01T08:00:00+00:00

* * *

The Sathid spread swiftly through Taen's body. Triggered by warmth and the presence of life, it germinated and groped, instinctively as a newborn child, for awareness of its new host. Impressed by Taen's own character, the Sathid began patterning itself to mesh with her mind. The sensitive psychic empathy of her gift opened like a gateway to her innermost self. Guided by the Sathid's need to explore, Taen began to dream of her past.

Time meant nothing to the matrix. From the moment of birth to the first acquisition of language, it experienced the girl's memories, analyzing even the most trifling details. Through her memories, it learned to walk, to speak and to reason. Sharing a stolen tart in the alley behind the bakeshop it discovered duplicity, and from her first lie it gained cunning. Taen dreamed on, at first unaware a foreign entity inhabited her awareness.

Carried back to the age of two, she sat in her mother's lap, playing with shells, while the gusts of an afternoon squall battered the windowpanes and rain fell in hissing sheets down the chimney. Taen concentrated singlemindedly on her game, uneasy in the strange surroundings of her cousins' house. But Uncle Evertt tossed in his cot, sick with a fever. Her mother tended him while Emien and their father were off fishing in the sloop.

Thunder rumbled overhead, shaking the floor with its violence. The girl cowered against her mother's breast, small fists clenched around her shells. Suddenly, horribly, she had difficulty breathing. Taen choked, red-faced, and struggled not to cry; she had promised to be quiet, and let Uncle Evertt sleep. But the air seemed thick as syrup in her lungs. A sharp, tearing pain gripped her chest. Taen felt dizzy. Tears traced silently down her cheeks and soaked into the neck of her wool shift. And alerted by the quiver in her daughter's body, her mother lifted her up.

"Child, what in Kor's Fires ails you?" She peered anxiously at her daughter's face.

Yet Taen knew no words to explain what her mind envisioned, that her father struggled for his life, entangled in a net under the sloop's dark keel. Too young to comprehend his death, she laid her head against her mother's shoulder and wept. And the Sathid, sensing discord in her life, probed deeper.

Three days later, the townsfolk brought Emien home. Taen heard the scrape of boots on the brick sill of the kitchen door. Men spoke in hushed voices in the next room, and suddenly her mother cried aloud in anguish. Alarmed, Taen peeked around the door, her rag doll forgotten in her arms. She saw Emien standing among strangers, still clad in his oilskins. Her brother's clothing dripped seawater, and he stared with unresponsive eyes at the floor while the men talked.

"We found him adrift beyond the reef," said the tall man to her mother. "The sloop took some damage in the storm, but repairs can be made. The shipwright offered his services for nothing."

Taen saw her mother straighten in her chair.

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