Infinity Blade: Awakening Read Free

simplest wool. His mother, Myan.
    His mother would know what to do. Myan was solid , in the same way that an ancient tree stump was solid, or the balanced boulder outside of town was solid. He’d tried to push that over as a child. Though it seemed delicate, he hadn’t been able to shove it an inch.
    “Mother,” he said, lowering the axe. She hadn’t been in the hut when he’d arrived a half hour ago. Fetching water. He should have known. That task he’d always done for her, as the jog to the river and back fit well with his training.
    “Siris!” she said, putting down the bucket. She hurried to him, stepping with a limp from her fall ten years back. She took his arm tenderly. “You saw reason, then? You actually refused to go to the God King’s castle? Oh, lights in the heavens, boy! I never thought you’d come to your senses. Now we . . .”
    She trailed off as she saw the object that Siris had set down beside the woodpile. The Infinity Blade. It almost seemed to glow in the sunlight.
    “Hell take me,” Myan whispered, raising her hand to her mouth. “By the seven lords who rule in terror. You actually did it? You killed him?”
    Siris swung the axe down again on the log. He hit it off-center again. It’s the grain, he thought. I’m trying to hit it across the grain, instead of with the grain.
    Strange. He could kill a man seventeen ways with this axe. He could imagine each one in perfect order, could feel his body moving through those motions. Yet he couldn’t chop wood. He’d never had a chance to try.
    “So you didn’t see reason,” Myan said.
    “No,” Siris replied.
    His mother had never wanted him to go. Oh, she hadn’t been overt about her displeasure. She hadn’t wanted to undermine what the rest of the town—the rest of the land itself—saw as his destiny and her privilege. Perhaps she’d sensed, in some way, that it had been his destiny. He’d never given serious thought to fleeing. That would have been like . . . like climbing the tallest mountain in the world, then turning back ten steps from the summit.
    No, she hadn’t tried to undermine his training. But what mother would want her son to go off to certain death? She’d tried to talk him out of it the night before the Feast of the Sacrifice, the most forward of her attempts. By then, it had been too late. For both of them.
    “We have to take you to town,” she exclaimed. “Talk to the elders. There will be celebrations! Parties! Dancing and . . . and . . . And what is that look on your face, my son?”
    “I’ve been to town,” he said, pulling his arm from her grip. “There will be no celebrations, Mother. They sent me away.”
    “Sent you away . . . Why would they . . .” She paused, studying him. “Those small-minded fools. They’re afraid, aren’t they?”
    “I guess they have reason to be,” Siris said, putting the axe aside and sitting down on the stump. “They’re right. People will come looking for me.”
    “That’s nonsense,” she said, crouching down beside him. “Son, I’m not sending you away again. I’m not going through that again.”
    He looked up, but said nothing. Perhaps with the support of the town, he’d have stayed. But with just his mother . . . No. He wouldn’t endanger her.
    Why had he even come to her, then? Because I wanted her to know, he thought. Because I needed to show her that I’m alive. Perhaps a greater kindness would have been to stay away.
    “You’re not going to let me choose, are you?” she said.
    He hesitated, then shook his head.
    Her hand tightened on his arm. “Ever the warrior,” she whispered. “Well, at least let me feed you a good meal. Then perhaps we can talk further.”
    H E FELT immeasurably better with a good meal in his stomach. His mother hadn’t had any everberries for a pie, unfortunately, but she’d fixed him some peach cobbler. He carefully noted in his logbook:
    I like peach cobbler. Definitely like peach cobbler.
    “How