The Changing of the Sun by Lesley Smith

Author:Lesley Smith [Smith, Lesley]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781500317089
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 23014394
Publisher: Tenth Muse Publishing
Published: 2014-09-14T04:00:00+00:00

Darus moved through the halls and all those he passed gave way, sensing only misery would follow if they didn’t. The ceremony for the passing of Keiue and Geetha had tempered the mood of the temple, allowing each and every soul bound in Jashri’s unhappiness to give voice to their pain and suffering. They were not weeping for the loss of two almost-nameless oracles, two unknown women in a sea of souls dedicated to the gods, but for themselves, and it sickened him.

Jashri herself hadn’t even attended. She refused to leave her rooms, not even for services, and she had refused food. Rumours said the death of her beloved handmaid had broken her, and if Darus ever found out who was the source of this gossip, he intended to see them silenced too.

Silencing people was not something he liked doing, but after the first time, after he had filleted Lyse’s ieshiya from her back like you would take the spine from a fish, he discovered that if you projected the person you hated most onto the person you were hurting, it turned the experience into something cleansing. Flaying the skin from Vashi’s bones, that had been a transcendent experience which was not mortal but divine. He was the giver of death and taker of life.

He hated Jashri. He hated her with every bone in his body, ever fibre in the void left by his soul. This revelation was worn and tired but still gnawed at him, even after so long. He had been young when the Feium Asun had brought a blind foundling girl to the temple, named by their leader for some obscure saint few but the Edoi had ever heard of.

Eirian had known, of course, and she had asked for an attendant. He had been chosen, by fate or the whims of Aia. He had never thought when he rebuffed the advances of the male trainees that his personal preferences would see him scarred and broken by a frightened girl terrified of anyone who dared to come too close.

The scars from where her nails had scraped were so deep he was sure his skull would bear the marks long after the flesh had been burned away. They had healed cleanly over the months after Jashri’s frenzied attack, but they lingered in the words and memories of the temple whose collective memory was longer than that of any slave or oracle. Halom Davos might have been a sexist dolt, but he knew the healing arts, except his own sickness, of course, but then healers always made for the worst patients.

Those four gouges, and the fifth, as delicately shaped as the thumb nail which created it, should have taken his right eye. Instinct had saved it, but the jagged scratch travelled the full length of his face, stopping at his lip and resuming on his chin. They still burned now and again, a phantom agony which woke him in the depths of the night with the dreams and nightmares of the day Jashri had struck out at him.

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.