Moon Called Read Online Free PDF Page B

craved, having taken the powder as a man dying of thirst might have gorged himself on water.
    Her eyes had lost their bright glow. The lids drooped as if she were so satiated that she was on the verge of sleep, as would be true of some hunting beast who had gorged his fill. Thora ventured to draw out one of the tubes for herself, snap off the cap, sniff at the contents. There was a faint odor but one she could not place.
    Malkin roused again, to spread out the cloak and lift out not only the rest of the vials, but also that protecting padding which had been placed around them, stacking them on the folds of cloth, plainly planning to take them with her. She moved more swiftly, favored her foot less. It was as if she had found a sustenance, healing and energy-renewing, in those tubes.
    Kort had trotted on a few paces. Now he looked back and whined. With an inward sigh, Thora shouldered her pack, waited for Malkinto take the belt hold. But the furred one moved out on her own after the dog with a much-lessened limp.
    There was no night nor day here. That dusky, grayish light (of which Thora never discovered the source) remained constant. Only her tired body let her know that they had, some time later, come to the end of a day's travel. She had dropped behind, was looking for a camping place, when once more Kort's summoning bark rang out loudly enough to make her hurry on.
    He had reached the other side of this huge storehouse at last. Before was another wall—with no doorway. Thora saw Kort, nose to the floor as if he now trailed with a clear scent, again turn left, padding along the open stretch by the wall. There was no dust in which any footprint might be marked, yet the hound appeared certain of his way.
    Thora and Malkin hurried after. The furred one's eyes began to glow once more. There was an eagerness and purpose which matched Kort's in her progress. Thora was tired and longed to call a halt. However Kort had ranged far ahead, only his impatient barks kept them in touch.
    Thus he brought them into a true battlefield, where death had walked long since. Once more they saw a barricade of tumbled boxes and containers. Many bodies sprawled here. Yet all lay on the other side of the barrier andhere there were no signs of any defenders—Nor did these dead wear the ageless clothing of the sentinel they had found earlier.
    Rather their limbs were covered with rags, stained, tattered, a travesty of clothing, such as might serve as body covering for the survivors of some great disaster, people who had been driven back into a feral existence. Uncovered heads were turned up—to make Thora shudder. For, long dead though these were, they wore the marks of madness and terror. The weapons which lay among them were knives bound to branches of decaying wood to serve as crude spears, clubs with rusty spikes protruding from them, even rudely shaped stones bound to hafts, like axes.
    They lay without dignity, in no order. Thora had a mind picture of mad creatures coming in a wave of assault—to whom death had been a blessing.
    Only among them was a single body, well to the rear of those who had faced so fatally the defenders of that barrier. Unlike the others in that company it was not clad in rags. Rather lying over it, to conceal most of what lay beneath, was a cloak—the edge of that spreading out like the wings of a bird across the floor.
    The cloak was bright red—a screaming scarlet which might have come from being dipped in the free flowing blood of those about it. It was also richly glowing—the fabric from which it had been fashioned the finest ofweaving.
    Thora stood looking upon this battle site Nothing of compassion moved in her, as it had upon sighting that other they had come upon. There was no stir of kinship here—rather was born a horror which grew even as she looked, something which denied the cleanliness and finality of death.
    Malkin threaded a path among the fallen to the side of that cloaked body. With a quick