Total pages in book: 204
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 193124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 966(@200wpm)___ 772(@250wpm)___ 644(@300wpm)
A small door beneath the screen opens and a tiny pouch is passed through. “You will know what it is for and when to use it. Remember, the reason for it all is yours.”
The light is extinguished as a plate is slid into place.
After I take what is given to me, I stumble out of the audience box, and the first thing I do is open the neck of the little bag. What rolls out into my hand is a gray pebble, of absolutely no remark whatsoever. I put it back and start walking, my limbs numb and sloppy.
I don’t remember anything of my careening path back through the woods. My body knows the way, however, and presently I arrive at the pond, at the beach where Lavante stands in the sunlight, looking over the water as if enjoying the reflection of the puffy clouds. Next to him, Snooze is … well, snoozing.
And for an instant, the temporary peace is a temptation to believe in. But I know better.
I stop next to a modest bundle of clothes and a big pile of weapons that sit next to the sapling around which both sets of reins have been wound.
Merc is in the water up to his neck, but not far out from the shore, as if he has taken a seat on the sandy bottom. He’s facing away from me, toward the sun, which is even lower now. With idle strokes, he waves his arms back and forth at the surface of the pond, the waves he makes catching the beautiful golden light, creating coins that spill out for lengths in all directions.
When I consider what I was told, I’m loath to ruin his moment.
It may well be the last quiet solitude he has for a very, very long time.
The start of the War of All Souls? The first battle … tonight. And we are in the midst of it.
This is what’s going through my mind when he dips his head back and then sluices the water out of his hair. After that, he rises up, emerging naked—
Whereupon I see his bare, scarred back for the first time.
At first my eyes reject what I’m looking at. And then the moan that comes out of my mouth emanates from deep, deep inside me.
And even though he turns to me, all my eyes know … all that I can see …
… is the symbol that is etched into his flesh, so deeply the edges are raised like ropes.
The S and the P, intertwined.
Ninety-One
My Heart Breaks Further.
As Merc faces me, he does not duck his eyes. He knows exactly what I’ve seen. Maybe he planned this exhibition of something he’s undoubtedly kept hidden in ways that did not get my attention. I wonder if he’s aware of what answers I have just received.
I think he is, and it’s why he’s had to come clean.
When he starts walking forward, his body is revealed in all its power and raw beauty—without any wound at all on his chest. The bandage that was there when we made love last night, the wound that I assumed was beneath it, are gone as if they had never been. My mind instantly fractures at this, splitting into a denial of what I’m seeing and a terror at all that it reveals.
I back away from him—and angle the retreat so that I get to his weapons. I grab the first thing I find that isn’t his broadsword because I can’t wield it with any reliability—
A dirk. I have his dirk in both my hands and I stick it straight out in front of me.
“Stop,” I command. “Or I will—”
“I’m just getting dressed.”
His voice is flat, and as I continue to back away, he does indeed merely go over to the pile of clothes. As he pulls on his britches, he’s efficient about their fastening, and after that, he’s the one retreating from his weapons and our horses: He goes over and stands in the footsteps that he made as he walked into the water.
“What are you,” I say in a cracked voice. Even though I know. So I answer myself: “You were sent to kill me. I’m your target.”
In devastating succession, I recast everything, all the way back to when this started. “It was you … who killed the cows outside our wall. You fed on them as you cased my village, knowing I was there, planning your attack. And that night I sensed something coming after me as I went along the lane … it was you.”
He doesn’t deny any of it. Because he can’t.
“When we were at the Outpost.” I cover my face with my hands, in an attempt to block the thoughts, the conclusions, that are as inescapable as fate. “What they found the morning after you left … the dead sheeplings by the body of the cook? That was you, too, the whole of it. You killed the man and then made it look like it was all done by a demon … except that wasn’t a staging.” My voice catches in horror. “That’s what actually happened … oh, fates, what are you…”