The Scarred God by Neil Beynon

Author:Neil Beynon [Beynon, Neil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781912958054
Publisher: Hanesyn Ltd.
Published: 2019-08-25T22:00:00+00:00

The water was cold. Anya was a good swimmer, having been taught by her grandfather as a young child. He had only learned how to swim as an adult, when the thain had realised her warriors’ lack of this skill would prevent them raiding the Kurah as they moved across the rivers near the border. Like the thain, her grandfather didn’t want Anya to need the skill but wanted her to have the ability, and so they’d spent many hours practising down by the river. These were amongst her last memories of him truly sober and truly relaxed.

When she was a little older, it became her turn to teach Fin how to swim. The boy had been more at home in the water than on the battlefield. He was a gentle child; she wasn’t sure Falkirk had ever realised. She pushed thoughts of her ghosts from her mind. There was no time.

With graceful sweeps of her arms, Anya pulled herself deeper into the murk, looking for Akyar. She could barely see the creature ahead, a dark shadow, shifting in the bottom of the lake. The motion was faint at first, but as she drew closer, the violent movement became clearer. She drew her dagger without thinking. As it emerged from the darkness, the skin of the creature luminescent, Anya could see Akyar fighting for his life. He was clamped within the thing’s tentacles, being rolled over and over. This was all happening so fast.

Anya could feel her lungs starting to burn. There was no obvious shape to the creature, and so it was impossible to see where to strike. When the thing touched her leg, she nearly lost what was left of her air. She spun away, her knife blade whipping round, cutting the tentacle into the water. She grabbed at the detached piece. The tentacle looked like glowing seaweed, but instead of floating like a passive plant, the thing flipped and twisted in her hand, a lone sucker puckering towards her.

You’re afraid. The voice of her mother didn’t sound mocking, just disappointed, only now the tone was starting to merge into a version of Vedic’s voice. She felt her anger rising. She cast the piece aside. Brandishing her blade, she dived into the churn of Akyar’s fight with the weed. Her chest scorched with a molten heat that made her trunk feel as if it was slowly being crushed, and her limbs felt like the suspended silver had solidified around them and was dragging her further down. She knew she didn’t have long before she had to surface or drown. Sweeping in below Akyar’s struggle, she sliced her knife through the base of the tendrils before twisting round Akyar’s body.

Anya grabbed the first thing she found, his hair, and swam for the surface with desperate kicks. Anya felt as if they were clawing at the edge of a great void and Akyar, hands now locked on her wrist, was a dead weight that threatened to pull her into the darkness below.

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