Consorts of Heaven Read Online Free PDF Page B

need, which he communicated to Kerin only after some embarrassment and misunderstanding. Kerin said he was not strong enough to stand and produced a shallow bowl. He felt his face redden. It continued to burn while she helped him use the bowl to relieve himself. She worked with impersonal efficiency. Despite her care, piss splashed onto his leg, but there was nothing he could do about that - nothing he could do about any of this, except try not to panic while he waited for his strength to return and his memory to come back to him.
    Though the awkward intimacy of the situation was unpleasant, it dispelled any remaining distrust in Kerin. Any woman willing to help a man go to the toilet was unlikely to mean him harm.
    After that he wanted to sleep. For a while he fought the urge, scared of returning to his nightmares. In the end, his body decided for him. He closed his eyes.

CHAPTER FOUR
    Even asleep, the stranger’s presence filled the hut - no, not ‘the stranger’, Sais. An odd choice of name, but she would respect it.
    She found herself reacting to his needs as she did with Damaru, then catching herself when she remembered that this was not her sky-touched child but an adult stranger.
    Though Sais had been confused and afraid when he had awakened, he obviously did not lack sense. He would be relying on her to help him get back the knowledge he had lost. Conversations with Damaru were often a fight to get meaning across, and everyone else spoke to her with the knowledge of her heritage behind their words. This man, though, knew only that she was happy to help him. She looked forward to answering his questions, and getting to know him better.
     
    He woke from dark dreams of pursuit and pain, sweating into the rank covers. Fragments of half-remembered horrors receded when he blinked open his eyes.
    For a moment he thought he wasn’t in Kerin’s hut any more: the place looked different. Then he saw that he was still in her bed, only now it was night. He expelled a relieved breath.
    The lamps hanging from the roof-beams gave more light than the open door had. Other items hung from the beams too: bunches of leaves, cloth-wrapped bundles, skin pouches and woven bags. He saw several larger objects around the whitewashed walls, including a wooden frame with a triangle of dark cloth stretched over it. Stones hung from the bottom of the cloth.
    Damaru sat on the floor, playing with carved wooden figures, lining them up and then moving them around like game pieces. It seemed an odd pastime for a boy in his mid-teens.
    Kerin stood by the table, dangling a wooden object from a length of dark thread, teasing the thread through her fingers with firm, even strokes. She looked up and saw him watching her. ‘How do you feel?’ she asked.
    ‘Much better, thanks.’ He added, ‘I’m sorry if I scared you when I first woke up.’
    She blinked. ‘Oh no, you did not frighten me. There is no need to apologise.’ She wound the thread around her bit of wood, then put it on a shelf. ‘I will make food.’
    While she worked, he asked, ‘Are you the village doctor?’ That was the word that came to mind when he thought of being cared for in this way, though the concept didn’t quite fit the primitive surroundings.
    She gave him a puzzled look. ‘I am sorry, Sais; I do not know that word.’
    That made a change: he knew a word she didn’t. ‘All right, perhaps . . . a healer?’
    She looked embarrassed, then defiant. ‘My husband, Neithion, was the healer. He taught me what he could.’
    ‘Your husband?’ He hadn’t considered who, or where, Damaru’s father was.
    She drew a sharp breath and said, ‘He died two years ago.’ Then she went back to her preparations.
    Sais shut up; he didn’t want to accidentally offend or embarrass her.
    Dinner was a meaty stew, rich-tasting, if rather chewy. After they’d eaten, Kerin whispered to Damaru and the boy got down a triangular bundle from a peg and unwrapped it to reveal a stringed