Deepwood: Karavans # 2 Read Online Free PDF Page B

instinct: as much a need to kindle flame against the memories of the terrible storm as anything else. Light. Heat. Warmth. But also a shield against fear, a method to restore familiarity with, and faith in, the world.
     
    Anger stirred anew, tinged with a brittle chill. “Nothing you do will make it the same. It’s gone, Beth.”
     
    She stared at him. “What’s gone?”
     
    “The world you knew.”
     
    It surprised him when she didn’t protest, but merely nodded. “Yes. It won’t—it
can’t
—ever be the same. But we can rebuild.” A sweeping gesture encompassed the remains of the grove, the wagons, the detritus of what had been a settlement. “There’s enough here to make a beginning.”
     
    He took a step closer. Inside him, there was pain and a sense of futility. His eyes hazed red briefly; it took all his will to force the nictitating membrane back beneath his eyelids. “Do you even realize what has happened?” He flung out an arm. “Alisanos has
moved
, Bethid. It’s now but a half a mile away in that direction, not days away. Can you risk that? Any of you?”
     
    Her blue eyes, which had followed his arm, now flicked back to his face. “We have to.”
     
    Inexplicably, he wanted to cry. Too many emotions, too much frustration, filled his chest. His throat ached with the impulse, with the conflict in his soul. He was weak, he knew, to walk so close to the edge of a loss of self-control, particularly before a human. And that fanned his anger, refined it, aimed it at the woman who knelt before him. “You’re fools. All of you. You put blind trust in gods you don’t know, in rituals and prayers and petitions. You wear charms around your necks and hang them from tent poles and invoke the Mother’s mercy.” He spat aside. “You
waste your time
. And mine.”
     
    Bethid’s expression was startled for a moment, then closed. She bent her attention to striking steel against flint in an attempt to light the shredded cloth and rune sticks. “This has nothing to do with you, Brodhi.”
     
    His lips drew back from his teeth. “So long as I am in this world, it has everything to do with me!”
     
    She merely shook her head, not bothering to answer. She had raised a shield against him, was now dismissive of anything he said. And that further infuriated him.
     
    “Do you think you can withstand Alisanos? You can’t even light a fire!”
     
    Bethid did not look at him, though her jaw was clenched.
     
    The wild, burning rage threatened to burst out of him. Once again he needed physical release. Brodhi reached blindly to the elderling oak next to him andemployed a sharp flick of his wrist to yank a tattered branch from the trunk. With quick, vicious economy, he broke the branch into pieces. One step forward placed him looming over Bethid and her fire ring. He bent and quickly laid out the lengths of broken branches atop the rune sticks.
     
    Bethid’s tone was crafted as if she spoke to a child. “That wood is green, Brodhi. And wet. It probably won’t catch fire, and even if it does, it won’t burn clean. It will only smoke.”
     
    He knew that
she
knew that he knew that. She was patronizing him. It set his teeth on edge.
     
    “Leave it,” he said sharply as she reached to remove the sticks. He leaned down abruptly, grasped her shoulder, and without gentleness shoved her from a kneeling position onto her buttocks in the mud. “I said,
leave it
.” He drew his knife, cut into the heel of his left hand, and, as it bled, held it over the fire ring. Smoke curled up as droplets struck the branches and rune sticks, followed by a flicker of clean, pure flame. He glared at her. “If you want to petition the Mother or any number of other gods, you might as well petition me. After all, I’m not in Alisanos. I am very much
here
.”
     
    Bethid, still sitting sprawled with gaitered legs spread and elbows holding her torso up, stared at him in a mixture of shock, concern, and disbelief. “What