Watcher of the Dead Read Free Page A

seasickness
moment where movement and mind did not match, and then he was inside,
in the heart. Elk. The index finger on his right hand twitched. The
reflex to release the bowstring was strong. Enter, mark the target,
loose the arrow: that was how he hunted. Yet there were no arrows
anymore, no heart-kills, just Watcher of the Dead and beating hearts.
    The elk heart raced with fear. She was
young, a yearling separated from her dam and herd. She’d lost
their scent and was heading southeast through the forest. Blood was
rushing through her arteries at force. Raif felt her terrible
alertness. Any movement in the trees could be her death. Nothing
large enough to take her down was close, but she did not know it. She
saw shadows beneath the bloodwoods and smelled wolf scat. Raif stayed
with her as it grew colder and darker, living her fear and
exhaustion. As she moved further east his connection began to fade
and he strained to keep it intact. Slowly, she drifted from him and
he found himself back in the cage.
    It was dark and the mosquitoes were
gone, killed by the cold. His body was shivering and his fingers were
numb. Tucking his hands under his arms, he shifted his position to
ease the pressure on his butt. The motion rocked the cage, driving it
against the canopy. Raif spotted pale fires to the east. He had to
search his mind for their meaning. Sull, the word came to him.
    His knee-jerk reaction was to escape
and he refocused his attention on the forest, searching for something
to carry him away. Night brought out the predators. A gray owl was
circling above the ridge, silent as the dead. Raif touched it
briefly, felt the surprising heft and unfamiliar geography of its
heart. Again there was the reflex to release the string. He moved
away, descending beneath the canopy, questing for another heart.
    Fox. A female in her prime with a
strong and steady heartbeat. She was still, listening intently. The
instant she located her prey the great veins descending from her
lungs to her heart expanded, fueling the muscles in her haunch.
Within a second she pounced. Saliva jetted into Raif’s mouth as
she muzzled through the snow to reach the stunned mouse. As her jaws
sprung to snap its neck, she heard something. Releasing the carcass,
she listened. Raif could not understand what she heard but he
understood her reaction. Abruptly she took off, abandoning her kill
and fleeing north.
    Raif withdrew his sights and scanned
for the source of her fear.
    The Sway at night was studded with
hearts: voles, skunk, mink, winged squirrels, deer, lynx, bears. Raif
saw them as small fires in the darkness. The fox had headed north so
he patrolled south.
    Something large was on the move. Raif’s
fingers hooked the walls of the cage as he perceived the creature’s
heart. Muscular, cool and alien, it had a rhythm he did not
recognize. Pushing away his misgivings, he entered.
    An inkling of awareness, like the
partial opening of an eye, acknowledged his presence. It knew he was
there. As quickly as Raif received the sensation it was gone, and he
was left with the strange tows and suctions of a reptilian heart.
Three chambers instead of four pumped blood around the body, and
there was a place where fresh blood and stale blood mixed, a delta of
dark currents that flowed both ways. The creature was moving at speed
across old, hackled ground-snow, sidewinding in perfect silence,
white upon the white.
    Moon snake. Its name cast a spell,
conjuring dread in its purest form, smoking with old myths.
Generations of hunters had murmured its name around campfires. At
night—always at night—after long bloody days spent
butchering their kills, with the stench of organ meat weighing their
shirtsleeves and malt liquor concentrating in their veins, hunters
spoke in hushed voices about moon snakes. Someone in the party would
know someone who had lost a sheep, a calf, a mare. The stories, like
elk, migrated east. Raif had listened to Dagro