charming, if very small, lake.
With his eyes still tightly closed, Baanraak began to shape. A night breeze.
The rustling of tall grass. The lapping of a lake at its shores. The sound of
ceyrji little night insects buzzing and chuckling. The low hoots and grunts of
a herd of felka, his preferred prey. The scents of lizards and birds and
little saurids, the chitters and rustlings. And beneath his four feet, the
wonderful rightness of the land as it spread away from him in all directions,
transforming.
The place felt right right in a way that nothing had since his world died.
But he was not done yet.
He pressed his body flat to the ground and breathed in the magic once more,
paying close attention this time to where it came from. It bubbled up from
deep within the earth, its source hidden from even his closest study. Very
well, then. If he could not find the source, he would create a scavenger to
sweep up the magic as it was released. He wouldn t need the source that way.
He didn t feel like doing maintenance work to keep this little pocket of his
alive. If he was going for illusion, he decided he would have the whole
illusion, and be able to spend this time in his world simply basking on his
rock and eating tasty things. He had no wish to be reminded of the
artificiality of his little hideaway by its constant need for upkeep. So he
set his scavenger to funnel all the magic he could get from Lauren s siphon
into his little domain, and set that magic to maintain the place in working
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condition.
When he was done, he lay for a while on his belly, waiting for the searing
pain caused by handling live magic to subside. The stillness felt good, and
the sounds of the place were like being held by his mother in the nest, when
she had wrapped herself around him and they had wound necks and tails in
loving embrace.
Warmth touched his right wing tip, and he raised his head and looked. The sun
was coming up over the eastern horizon, between the rocks from his family s
outcropping, reflected in his family s lake. The grass waved, a herd of felka
strolled in front of him, as yet unhunted and unwary, and just overhead, a
pair of mating black-drops looped and rolled.
The air smelled right, the sky looked right, the land felt right, and suddenly
it was all too much for him.
This was what he and the rest of the dark gods had lost. Had given up
voluntarily. No, not even that. Had destroyed willfully. This little pocket of
home brought back to him the spire cities of the rrôn carved from whole
mountains, and the great vast plains filled with game husbanded, cherished,
and harvested with care and reverence. The halls of records, in which were
kept tablets of the epic song cycles of the rrôn. The holy caverns that wound
deep into the belly of the earth.
Tears again filled his eyes, but he blinked them back. Instead, he stood up,
launched himself into the air, and flew to the top of his rock.
That proved to be a mistake. Flat on his belly on the ground, his little world
looked and felt complete. But from the high vantage of the rocks, he could see
its edges, carved out of sheets of snow and airless rock. And it only showed
him that he was not home. It only dug truth s talons deeper into him, that he
would never be home again.
He took a deep breath, and the air that filled his lungs smelled so sweet, but
it burned of her. Of Lauren, the sister.
Baanraak wondered if any of the surviving live rrôn those that had eschewed
the immortality of dark godhood for life and parenthood and the continuation
of the species remembered any of the song cycles. He didn t imagine that they
did. Why would they? The world they celebrated was millennia dead, along with
everything on it.
He remembered, though.
He dug his talons into the rock, anchoring himself, and began booming his
wings, remembering the rhythms of the Cycle of the Hunt. He began chanting
softly the list of the sacred game.
Felka, khroga, grorvash, rrogvall,
Magwe, muurrhag, droovna, harrnak,
Durgakar, goforhar, togi,
Rradernak, formino, baghak&
Closing his eyes, he could make it all feel real again. He could recall the
voices of the chanters, the crooners, and the murmurers, all winding together
in and out of each other to the beat of the steady booming of the wings of the
hundred rrôn crouched upon their singing rocks as the sun rose, and again as
the sun set, with necks upraised and eyes closed, lost in the hypnotic bliss
of the chant. Gripping that rock, chanting the old chants, the dust of lost
worlds and the stains of alien places and alien civilizations and alien people
fell away from him, and he was, for a moment, wild again. Rrôn without taint
and without compromise. The living hunter of live food, the hot-blooded drake
rrôn lusting after the lithe young broodies.
He chanted through the dozen lines of the List of Choice Herd Beasts and the
three dozen lines of the List of Choice Solitary Game Beasts, and because no
one had sung the full Cycle of the Hunt in long ages, and it would be
disrespectful to sing only the short Choice lists once known simply as the
Daily Devotion he continued with the full cycle: the List of Game Fishes; the
List of Flying Game; the tedious but necessary List of Inedibles; and the
sometimes whimsical List of Lesser Creatures, with its staccato beat and its
famed Insults to the Parasites stanzas. The Cycle of the Hunt was both prayer
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and celebration, and he performed it with full reverence, though he longed for
the backup of the full chorus the crooners carrying the cycle s ancient
melody, the murmurers providing commentary on the best way to hunt each
category of beasts, with asides on famous hunting accidents and blunders.
When he was finished, he opened his eyes and bowed to the sun, for this was
tradition, and the final reverence of the morning. And then he launched from
his rocky perch like an arrow and plummeted into the heart of the herd, and
killed the first felka in time out of memory.
He ate it with gratitude and reverence, right where he d dropped it,
surrounded by the ghosts of his ancestors and his world, and full of guilt at
his role in their demise.
When he was finished, he flew to the edge of the little oasis he d created and
pushed through the shield that held it together, into the harsh and
unprotected glare of Kerras.
I m sorry, he told the world. I m sorry for what we did to you. We were wrong.
I was wrong.
He did not feel forgiveness. All he felt was the screaming of the dead, frozen
into the bleak, airless terrain.
Night Watch Control Hub, Barâd Island, Oria Baanraak of Master s Gold
First light of dawn. Someone had redesigned the Hub. Baanraak, circling high [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]