The Secret Book of Paradys by Tanith Lee

Author:Tanith Lee [Lee, Tanith]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781468304886
Publisher: Overlook TP
Published: 2007-11-06T06:00:00+00:00

Retullus Vusca had the wine now, in the room under the altar of Mars Pater. He drank it slowly, longing for the warmth, which did not come.

He thought dimly of the time which followed his son’s disappearance. Was it only now that it seemed to have such a preordained progression?

How they had searched, and not found. How the screams had flickered out in the shuttered room, and the girl who was Petrus’ wife became silent and heavy and pliant like a piece of dough. The day when they knew she was with child. When he first saw the new colour of her eyes, like lotuses in a marsh.

How he heard of a demon in the woods. How a native man was killed and a native girl was raped by something among the trees. How her eyes looked, and her belly began to swell.

How Retullus Vusca began to go hunting, and when he went away in the twilight of the dawn, not after boar any longer, he saw the lotus eyes of Lavinia watching him from a window.

And when he slept in the woods, he saw the eyes in his sleep, all those eyes made from the amethyst, and waking and lifting his hunting knife he looked and saw the same eyes there, reflecting in the blade.

How he hunted over the hills, above the native hutments, in the woods, going always further and further from the town, the shadow of Rome, and reason.

He wondered if he would discover the polecat man from the hills, who had done this. He did not think he would. Barbarus had died years back of a stomach sickness. But Vusca too kept the small pain under his ribs, the scar of the battle he had not, after all, won –

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.