It Dreams in Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

picture will begin to coalesce. I think, someday, you will be whole.”
    Her eyes went hollow, her gaze looking inward at something terrifying. Tears beaded her lashes.
    “What is it?” he asked. “Do you need me?”
    She closed her eyes, and he sensed that she longed to tell him how very much she needed him, but she would not. Could not. She was the high chieftess of the Black Falcon Nation. He was an enemy priest.
    She said, “Will you stay with me? Help me to find the pieces?”
    “Sora, please look at me.”
    She opened her eyes and swallowed hard before she turned to face him. The reflected light of the pond shimmered over her beautiful face.
    “I’ll stay,” he said softly, “but I want you to know that I’m afraid.”

    “Of me?” Her voice shook. “I don’t blame you, I—”
    “No, Sora. I’m not afraid of you. I’ve never feared you.”
    Their gazes held, and she looked at him with more longing than any woman ever had.
    He lifted a hand to comfortingly brush the hair away from her face. “The time is coming, very soon, when the Midnight Fox will seek me out. I pray that my heart is not too small to understand what he tells me.”
    A single tear ran down her right cheek. She did not blink, just stared at him.
    Finally, she said, “I pray you survive.”
    “I will.”
    She stepped forward and before he realized what was happening, she hugged him hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs. “Don’t be so certain,” she whispered. “There’s only one person who’s looked into the Fox’s eyes and lived.”
    “I know, but Flint didn’t realize what he was dealing with. I do.” He wrapped his arms around her, and she seemed to melt against him.
    The experience of looking into his wife’s eyes and seeing a malignant Spirit staring back had almost torn Flint apart. The next day, he’d divorced her and run home to Oak leaf Village.
    Sora gently pushed away from Strongheart, gave him a heartrending look, and walked back to their camp, where Flint still sat finishing his soup. Flint said something to her and she responded, but their voices were too faint for Strongheart to make out the words.
    He turned and watched the sparkflies glitter over the pond.

7

    “WAR CHIEF?” THE GUARD OUTSIDE HIS DOOR CALLED.
    Feather Dancer sat up in his blankets and blinked the sleep from his eyes. “What is it, Clearwing?”
    “Someone is coming.”
    Feather Dancer threw back his blankets and reached for his brown shirt. As he slipped it over his head, he looked around. His house was small in comparison to the other elite buildings in Blackbird Town, fifteen paces square, but the roof soared four times the height of a man, giving it the appearance of being much larger. The coals in the fire hearth still gleamed, casting a reddish glow over the log walls.
    It had to be two or three hands of time before dawn.
    He strapped his war belt around his waist and adjusted the weapons tied to it: a deer-bone stiletto, war club, and red chert knife.
    “War Chief, it’s the high matron. She’s walking fast, and she’s alone .”
    Feather Dancer grabbed his sandals and quickly laced them
up. When he ducked beneath the door curtain, he saw her. She wore a black cape with the hood up, but moonlight shone from her round face and narrow nose. Even if it hadn’t, he would recognize her walk anywhere.
    “Hurry,” he told Clearwing. “Get down there and escort her.”
    Clearwing rushed down the stairs that adorned the front of the War Chief’s Mound and ran out into the plaza to meet the high matron.
    Feather Dancer’s gaze scanned the town. Even in the dim light, he could see the seven pyramid-shaped mounds that framed the plaza. Massive log buildings with peaked roofs adorned the mound tops. His gaze drifted down to the lake, where hundreds of tiny thatched houses lined the shore. An assassin would most likely secret himself among the commoners where it would be harder to spot him.
    The high matron came up the