Godbond Read Online Free PDF

led us. It was a hard, two days’ journey over rough, craggy mountainside, and my winsome mount took every step of it with her ears flattened back in ill humor. Perhaps the beauty of the deer annoyed her.
    The pathless way led southward and westward, into a fold of some nameless mountain’s flank, a fold that led on and inward, bend upon bend and crag after crag, until I was well out of any demesne I had ever explored, in unknown land somewhere near the headwaters of the Otter River. The second day we climbed a dry gorge so steep and rough that I had to leave Talu and go afoot, though the deer folk leaped up nimbly enough. And I was glad that I had been eating their foul seedcakes all the way, for I would never have found strength to manage it otherwise. Sometimes when the sunset had turned sky and snowpeaks blood red, when I was streaming sweat despite the chill air crawling down from the icefields, I looked up and saw what made me forget any weariness, any hunger except the hunger for Sakeema.
    The crevice, pointing skyward. The very cave I had seen more than once in a dream.
    Birc and the damsels, still in deer form, awaited me near the threshold as I came panting up. They looked at me with eyes that seemed ready to weep—but then, the great dark eyes of deer seemed always like pools of deep water, or jewels made of tears. I walked past them and stood at the entry, quieting my breathing, trying to center myself, trying to calm my heart’s wild clamoring, Sakeema, Sakeema, Sakeema.… Be still, the god had said to me once in a vision, and if you feel even so much as the flying of a midge in the night, I am yet with you. I stood until I found the stillness of Sakeema, the quiet made of leaf rustle and insect voice and breath of—
    Breath of my god. Someone breathing, inside the cave.
    Awed, trembling, with slow steps I entered.
    I could see—shape, shadow, in the dim indeeps of that place a man’s form. Not asleep, but erect, silent, awaiting me. I stood shaking and gawking like a dolt. I could not—I could not see his face. Sakeema, my god, if only I could see your face, I would remember, I would know you.…
    He moved a step toward me, into the dying light from the doorway, and raised his spear in his hand, and grinned.
    My demon-possessed brother Ytan.
    â€œScum of Mahela!” I roared at him, and he laughed aloud.
    He expected surprise and fear to freeze me a moment so that he could gloat—for Ytan must gloat, always, or he could featly have killed me from the shadows. He deemed he would kill me now, within a breathspan. His strong hand drew back the spear—
    I had been so much in hope that the sight of him drove me wild. I had not even sense enough to be afraid. I bellowed, and Alar leaped to my hand, and I charged him, slashing with the sword. He let fly his spear at the moment I moved—its blackstone head parted my loose hair, then chimed against the wall. Facing me good as weaponless—for no stone knife can withstand Alar—Ytan hissed in breath between his grinning teeth and ducked away from in front of me, dodging back into the shadows.
    â€œWhere is Sakeema?” I bawled out, my voice echoing around my ears in that closed space, so that I sounded like a hundred wounded bison. Nor did I give Ytan time to answer, but charged him as if he might somehow be hiding the god behind his back. I attacked him furiously with the sword. If I had not been too distraught for any proper skill, I am sure I would have killed him without a second thought. But I swung as if hewing trees, and never struck him. He slipped under my crazed blows and darted out the entry. I blundered around the walls of the cave, snatching at the shreds of my hope, thinking vaguely, frantically, that there might be some passageway, some recess, some cranny where the god had lodged like a windblown seed. There was none. The place was small, and quite empty. If ever Sakeema had been there, he