The Wild Road by Jennifer Roberson

Author:Jennifer Roberson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2012-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

AUDRUN SAW HER children settled upon the cots, each sitting on the edge. On each, a packed straw pallet covered by bright bedding rested on tight-woven ropes, making the cots more bearable than a bed upon the floor. Gillan, tentatively stretching out on his back, was clearly exhausted and in some pain; Ellica, yet again, was distracted by her tree. Torvic and Meggie shared a cot for the moment, hunched against one another as their legs hooked over the edge.

Audrun, too, was exhausted. So much of her had been spent in accelerated childbirth, in confronting the primaries, in recovering her children. But it was not time to rest just yet, no matter how much she longed to. First, there was a task.

“Meggie,” she said in a quiet voice tempered by a delicate patience. “Meggie, would you come over here? I would like to give you a hug.”

Megritte sat stiffly upon the cot’s edge, staring speechlessly at her mother. Her eyes seemed strangely fixed, lids stretched too wide. Audrun, who had briefly lived in the horrific vision conjured by the primary, Karadath, could well understand Megritte’s consuming fear. Instinctively, she knew better than to force a close physical presence on her youngest daughter just yet. Maintaining control of her voice, carefully avoiding a command, she asked, “Meggie, could you come give me a hug? Could you come over here and climb into my lap?”

Torvic, seated so close to his younger sister, said, “She won’t talk.”

Audrun blinked as her brows rose. But Torvic had been with Meggie since the storm. He was the one to whom Audrun addressed her question. “Has she injured her throat?”

“No,” he answered. “But she won’t talk.”

Audrun looked at Meggie. The child’s face was gray, smears of dark circles below her eyes. Hair straggled from braids, her clothing was soiled and torn, the marks of trees and vines crisscrossed her lower legs, which, because her skirt was tattered, had not been shielded against the depredations of the deepwood.

Audrun kept her tone even, inflections carefully doled out. “Meggie . . . you don’t need to talk just yet. Just come to me and let me wrap you up in my arms the way you’ve always liked.”

“She won’t,” Torvic said.

Gillan, stretched out on a cot, sounded cross and impatient. “Let her be, for now,” he said. “She needs a nap. When she wakes up, she’ll be better.”

Pain could do that, could bring about such a tone of voice Audrun knew, and his exposed leg showed scarring as well as scales with fiery margins.

With confidence and a trace of annoyance in his voice, Torvic said, “No. She won’t.”

Gillan shifted, resettling himself. Pain was reflected in his eyes, in the lines of his face. He seemed to have aged, Audrun saw, over a matter of days.

“You can’t know what she will do or not do,” she said to Torvic.

“She told me.” Torvic looked away from Gillan to his mother. “Meggie told me.” He touched his head. “In here.”

“Don’t be foolish,” Ellica snapped, looking up from the infant tree in her lap.

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.