Book 4 - Soldiers Live Read Free Page B

than Uncle Doj. Willow Swan invited
himself inside. “Shut it quick!” I snapped. “That
moonlight shining off the top of your head is blinding me.” I
could not resist. I recalled him when he was a young man with
beautiful long blond hair, a pretty face and a poorly disguised
lust for my woman.
    Swan said, “Sleepy sent me. There’re
rumors.”
    “Stay with One-Eye. I’ll deliver the news
myself.”
    Swan bent forward. “He breathing?”
    With his eye shut One-Eye looked dead. Which meant he was laying
back in the weeds hoping to get somebody with his cane. He would
remain a vicious little shit till the moment he did stop
breathing.
    “He’s fine. For now. Just stay with him. And holler
if anything changes.” I put my things back in my bag. My
knees creaked as I rose. I could not manage that without putting
some of my weight on One-Eye’s chair. The gods are cruel.
They should let the flesh age at the rate the spirit does. Sure,
some people would die of old age in a week. But the keepers would
hang around forever. And I would not have all these aches and
pains. Either way.
    I limped as I left One-Eye’s house. My feet hurt.
    Things scurried everywhere but where I was looking. Moonlight
did not help a bit.
     
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4

The Grove of Doom:
Night Songs
    T he drums had
begun at sunset, softly, a dark whispering promise of a shadow of
all night falling. Now they roared boldly. True night had come.
There was not even a sliver of moon. The flickering light of a
hundred fires set shadows dancing. It appeared that the trees had
pulled up their roots to participate. A hundred frenzied disciples
of the Mother of Night capered with them, their passion
building.
    A hundred bound prisoners shivered and wept and fouled
themselves, fear unmanning some who had believed themselves heroic.
Their pleas fell upon unhearing ears.
    A looming darkness emerged from the night, dragged by prisoners
straining at cables in the hopeless hope that by pleasing their
captors they might yet survive. Twenty feet tall, the shape proved
to be a statue of a woman as black and glistening as polished
ebony. It had four arms. It had rubies for eyes and crystal fangs
for teeth. It wore a necklace of skulls. It wore another necklace
of severed penises. Each taloned hand clutched a symbol of her
power over humanity. The prisoners saw only the noose.
    The beat of the drums grew more swift. Their volume rose. The
Children of Kina began to sing a dark hymn. Those prisoners who
were devout began to pray to their own favored gods.
    A skinny old man watched from the steps of the temple at the
heart of the Grove of Doom. He was seated. He no longer stood
unless he had to. His right leg had been broken and the bone
improperly set. Walking was difficult and painful. Even standing
was a chore.
    A tangle of scaffolding rose behind him. The temple was
undergoing restoration. Again.
    Standing over him, unable to remain still, was a beautiful young
woman. The old man feared her excitement was sensual, almost
sexual. That should not be. She was the Daughter of Night. She did
not exist to serve her own senses.
    “I feel it, Narayan!” she enthused. “The
imminence is there. This is going to reconnect me with my
mother.”
    “Perhaps.” The old man was not convinced. There had
been no connection with the Goddess for four years. He was
troubled. His faith was being tested. Again. And this child had
grown up far too headstrong and independent. “Or it may just
bring the wrath of the Protector down on our heads.” He went
no farther. The argument had been running from the moment that she
had used some of her raw, completely untrained magical talent to
blind their keepers for the moments they had needed to escape the
Protector’s custody three years ago.
    The girl’s face hardened. For a moment it took on the
dread implacability apparent on the face of the idol. As she always
did when the matter of the Protector came up, she said,
“She’ll regret mistreating