Wings of Wrath by C S Friedman

Author:C S Friedman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: DAW
Published: 2011-11-17T23:56:34+00:00

Reckoning

Cry sorrow, mothers, for brave sons devoured! Cry sorrow, fallen kings, for glory lost! And when you tell the tale, a hundred lifetimes hence, Say that you failed your god, and paid the cost.

Book of Penitence Lamentations 24:13

CHAPTER l8

NYUKUREMEMBERS: From his vantage point high above the plains, Nyuku could see the place where the world ended.

Shimmering in the air above the snowbound landscape was the hateful spell that divided his universe, a wall of eerie iridescence that was visible to his mind's eye but not to his human vision. To see it he had to close his eyes and let the ikati's senses pour into him, along with all the primitive emotions they inspired. He could taste the wind under his belly then, could feel the thin northern sunlight play along his broad wings, heating his blood (but never enough!). He could feel currents of air shift beneath him as he passed over an expanse of naked granite, then over snow once more, and somewhere in another world his human thighs tightened around the great beast as his powerful wings beat against the cold arctic air, striving to maintain his height. But most of all he could taste the ikati's rage, his bestial fury as he approached the sorcerous barrier that kept him from entering the warm lands to the south. An obscene creation that kept him from chasing the sun southward, as all of his animal instincts cried out for him to do.

The rage filled Nyuku as well, which is why he made no protest as the ikati suddenly canted in midair and headed directly for the barrier.

Crouching down low against his consort's back, his legs pressing into natural hollows just behind the rear wings, he was one with the ikati and with his rage. When he howled in fury, Nyuku did so as well, as loudly as he could, until the whole of the sky seemed to shake from the force of their defiance.

But the mystical barrier remained unmoved. It stretched across the land as far as he could see, and extended upward into the sky, a glimmering supernatural curtain without visible end or flaw. Or hope.

Soon the sun would set beyond the world's edge for the last time that season and the Long Night would come once again. The air would grow cold and inhospitable and the ikati would be forced to crawl into narrow caverns, where the heat of the buried Sun Stone would keep them alive until spring. It went against every instinct that the great creatures had to be bound up in a confined space for so long, near enough to others of their kind that they could smell the scent of rivals seeping through cracks in the rock, maddening them with territorial fury. By the time the Sun returned every year the ikati were half mad from their confinement, and the first few flights of the season would often devolve into terrible duels as they vented all their pent-up frustration on one another.

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