The Korellian Odyssey: Requiem Read Free

crime. Have none of you any other word to say on the matter?"
    But the brothers kept their silence. And in this silence Korel was led toward a new fate filled with prison bars and the sounds of keys turning the tumblers of locks, his brothers watching from a distance behind . . .
    Suddenly, Korel came awake. The valley was absolutely quiet, absent of voices or breeze, the wane light of the cold, distant stars showing only vague shadows barely discernable on the edge of sight.
    There was a sudden movement in the sand beneath him. He felt the sand shift again as the earth began to fall, a small part of the hillside giving way to form an underground hollow. Immediately the sandy earth fell in torrents as Korel grabbed the leather cords binding the meat in its shallow grave and started to run. But the grave did not wish to yield up its prize, and as Korel pulled with all his might, a vortex opened to form a silicon whirlpool that inhaled dust, rocks, and the precious meat itself into its black, hungry center. Korel gave a mighty pull upon the leather, putting all the strength of his hands into the effort. The leather cords frayed with the strain, a sound like popping ligaments thrumming from their length, as the meat suddenly came free. Then he ran, bursting from the boulder field in a blind panic, keeping a blistering pace until his adrenaline-fueled flight began to sputter, replaced by an acidic ache that descended over his entire body. Stopping upon a small ridge, he looked back. Several of the boulders near his sleeping place had disappeared as the currents of sand still shifted back and forth along the far hillside searching for that which would appease their terrible appetites. At length the currents stopped, the earth finding nothing more than rock-sand flesh, returning to a watchful waiting, a perpetual silence that would last until another taste of innocence stirred its hunger once again.
    Korel held the bundles of meat up before his eyes, their leaf-wrapped weight swinging from their leather cords, and saw that one bundle had been lost, leaving only a bare femur bone dangling limply from its tattered thong. The earth had been hungry indeed, and he knew he had been extremely lucky. But whether there was a curse upon the ground itself or another being of extreme malice or avarice bending the valley to its will, he could not guess. Though spent, he took up a slow walk, heading eastward as the sun rose before him. The underlying and ever-present appetite of the valley, always restless and seeking, now seemed quiet, soothed somewhat by the coming of the light.
    As he traveled east, Korel could see the mountains gradually drawing nearer, the sand giving way to more barren, hard pack. Dust devils danced ahead, purposeless yet frantic in their meandering. As he walked, he began to lapse into a kind of ruthless fatigue defined by a punishing, pitiless insistence that drove him to a low-grade exhaustion, pushing in slow, ceaseless pulses that allowed for only brief stops at night to rest and eat. Then he would rise again to trudge through the apathy that filled the dim dusk and rode the currents of the cool, dusty winds as they blew in vapid perpetuity. On the afternoon of his third day across the plain, he began to near the foot of the mountains. He would be there before nightfall.
    The low-hanging sun began to set behind him as Korel neared the mountain foot, winds rising in the ritual chaos of night, gusting frantically and driven by relentless voices that renewed their call, howling on the edge of hearing, their song touched with a biting sense of urgency. The need within them rose higher and higher with a mindless agitation that threatened to flow out across the plain and consume everything in it—mountain, sky, and even the plain itself. At the peak of this frenzy, the world fractured, a crystal goblet shattering into a million pieces, as a deafening silence suddenly reigned, the wind dying instantly, the sun touching the