A Gathering of Crones by Lydia M. Hawke

Author:Lydia M. Hawke [Hawke, Lydia M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Michem Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

I don’t know what I expected ley travel to be like, but if I’d taken the time to imagine it, I would never have dreamed—could never have dreamed—that it would feel as if I had been ripped limb from limb, shredded into a thousand pieces, and then dissolved in acid.

The agony was so complete that I couldn’t even scream. It sucked every molecule of air from my lungs and all coherent thought from my brain. It stole my capacity to feel anything but it in my every fiber, my every pore, my very soul. Until I didn’t just feel it, I became it.

And then it became more.

If I could have formed the idea, I would have wished for death. If I could have found the words, I would have begged for death. But I couldn’t, and so I endured. For how long, I had no idea. Seconds, perhaps. An eternity, maybe. When you become your own agony, time doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Nothing until a tiny, distant part of you notices you’re still alive—and then you begin to surface, reliving the entire process in reverse.

There was a sudden tug sideways, like the pull of a rope, and then the ribbon spat me out at last onto a cold stone floor in the pitch dark. I landed on my hands and knees with a grunt, staff clutched in frozen fingers so that my knuckles struck first—and hard. My knees didn’t fare much better, but for a moment, I stayed where I was, remembering how to breathe and almost reveling in my discomfort. The entirely bearable, not brain-melting discomfort. Bruised knees and skinned knuckles? Pshaw.

A semi-hysterical giggle rose in my chest. I swallowed it, for two reasons: first, I didn’t think it wise to announce my presence until I knew where I’d landed and who else might be in the vicinity; and second, I was pretty sure there was someone else in the vicinity.

Or something.

A scrape of metal against metal grated through the dark, and the threatening giggle turned to a hard lump lodged at the base of my throat. I froze, all my senses on high alert—or at least the functional ones, because try as I might, sight was useless in the inky blackness. I did, however, hear the rasp of breathing and the rustle of movement. And I could smell something. A lot of something.

I focused on my olfactory system, sifting through what it brought me. Mildew. The stench of urine. A rot I didn’t want to identify. And underlying it all, so faint I almost missed it, the woodsy, musky scent that had brought me here. The metallic scrape came again, and I scrambled to my feet, using my staff to support me as I swayed, unable to find my sense of place in the dark.

Lucan. It had to be. But was he alone? Still here? Alive? Or ...

There was only one way to find out.

While I still hadn’t managed to produce more than a ball of flame

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