Tales of Arilland Read Online Free PDF

thickest part of the deep Wood, the dreams returned. Some days he would wake without clothing, his skin covered in angry red scratches. Some days he awoke with blood caked on his lips that was not his own and a full belly. Sometimes he awoke so far from where he fell asleep that he spent the rest of the day following the scent of his blanket back to his fiddle. The smell of his wife was fading; Bane feared that one day he would awake and not be able to find his way back to it. To her.
    Still every night he played, the calluses on his fingers growing thick as his limbs grew thin. He played songs of long ago and songs of yesterday. He played songs of adventure and songs of loss. He played teaching songs and drinking songs, songs of life and songs of death, songs for family and enemies. When he had played them all he made up new songs, songs for Harvest and their unborn child, and as he sang he wept tears onto the wood of his fiddle. But he always sang the sun down and up with a variation of that same old tune his mother had taught him.
    I dream as I wander
    And wandering dream
    Through a wild and dark Wood where
    I’m not what I seem
    I’m lost and I’m lonely
    And so with this tune
    I call to the wolves
    By the light of the moon
    At last, on the first night of the full moon, Bane’s song was answered by howling. He thought it was his imagination at first—he had imagined many things in his dream-wracked wanderings: the sound of Harvest calling his name, the smell of her skin, the warmth of her breath on the back of his neck. Invigorated, Bane ran up the nearest hill, climbed atop the largest rock there, and started the song again. Beneath his rough beard his smile grew with every howl and his golden heart ached to be so very near the end of his torment, to be so close again to the peaceful life he had before it was rudely interrupted by dreams of a life he didn’t want.
    The wolves poured down through the trees, their sleek bodies undulating in a neat, dangerous wave. They bound up the hill with predatory speed and encircled the rock on which he stood. Each wolf moved with preternatural grace in a dance as old as the hills themselves, ears perked up, mottled hair bristling, sharp teeth flashing, and for the first time it occurred to Bane to be afraid. He simply poured that fear into his song and used it to fuel his playing as the wolves settled in around him.
    In the glow of the moonlight he could hear their breath, taste their scent, smell their fur, feel their hearts beating as one. In the glow of the moonlight his golden heart warred against itself—the half that yearned for freedom and his place in this pack, and the half that yearned for home and the rest of his soul. The circle of wolves parted and, in the glow of the moonlight, the alpha pair stepped forward and became human.
    The male grew tall and lean. A thin coating of dark gray hair still covered his body, little enough for Bane to tell that every muscle was tensed and ready to strike if any of his suspicions were confirmed. The female was similarly wiry yet petite. The fuzz that coated her breasts and belly was mottled gray and russet; the rest of the hair that had covered her lupine form now cascaded down her back. There was something not quite right about her face, as if the human mouth she now wore couldn’t accommodate all of her tearing, bone crunching teeth. But she pinned him with a yellow stare, and when she spoke, her words were clear.
    “Come,” she said, “come run with us, cousin.”
    His blood roared through his veins, pumped wildly through a heart as golden as her eyes in a mad rush of acquiescence. But her invitation had sounded too much like another plea his mind replayed every night when he collapsed in exhaustion and every morning when the sun nudged him awake: Sweetheart, come back to me. Come back to me before the baby is born.
    “I cannot,” he said, and there was far more regret in his voice than he intended. “Please,” he