The Broken God Read Online Free PDF Page B

the centre of his deepest self was just sheer joy at being alive. In some sense, he would always be alive, no matter the killing coldness of the wind or fatal illnesses or any of a thousand other fates that he might suffer.
    'Danlo!' the Beast howled out. 'Your blood is red and flows like a man's!'
    Danlo listened to his deep breathing as other cuts were carved into his flesh, tiny cuts up and down the length of his membrum. He realized that it was Soli making these cuts and rubbing various coloured powders into them. The cuts would fester and then heal, and soon his membrum would be like that of any other Alaloi man: long and thick, and decorated with dozens of green and ochre scars.
    'Danlo, are you ready now?'
    He felt something soft being wrapped around his membrum; it felt like feather moss held in place with a newl skin.
    'Danlo, you must gather your strength for the journey.' a voice called out of the darkness. Then the Beast stood above him, gripping a gobbet of flesh between its bloody claws. 'This piece of meat will sustain you. Open your mouth and swallow it without chewing.'
    Danlo did as he was told. Like a baby bird, he opened his mouth and waited. Suddenly, he felt the raw bit of meat pressed into his mouth, back against his tongue. He swallowed once, convulsively, and he tasted fresh warm blood.
    'Danlo, this is the skin of your childhood. It will impregnate you like a seed. From the child grows the man. Are you ready to be a man, now?'
    Again Danlo swallowed against the hot salty slickness of his own blood.
    'Danlo, wi Ieldra sena! Ti ur-alashareth. The ancestors are coming! It is time for you to go over now.'
    His eyes were now calm and clear, and he looked up at the stars to see a million points of light streaming toward him.
    'Danlo, you may turn your head.'
    Danlo blinked his eyes slowly. He turned and there was Soli standing over him. He was dressed as usual, in his winter furs; the terrible Beast was gone. 'You have done well,' he said.
    He helped Danlo sit up and wrapped him in a fresh shagshay skin. There was blood everywhere, dark red soaking into the white furs. Danlo looked through the flickering red fires up at the circle of skulls. He must find the one animal who was his doffel. Soli would help him if his vision faltered, but it would be better if he came to his other-self unaided and alone.
    'Danlo, can you see?'
    'Yes.'
    He was six thousand feet above men and time. He turned his head in a half-circle, and he could see many things. Below him were the dark forest and the starlit hills of his childhood, and farther out where the island's ragged shore came up against the ocean, he beheld the faint, silvery shimmer of sea ice falling off to infinity. There were nearer sights. Soli's face was drawn out ghastly and pale; he looked at once fey and ill, as if he were ready to die. Pain is the awareness of life, Danlo thought. His body still burned with pain, but his spirit had begun the journey through pain into a deeper world. He was beginning to see himself as he really was. Every act of his passage had been designed to bring him to this moment. His childish picture of himself, his old ways of thinking – shattered, like ice crystals beneath a hammer stone. There was a sudden clarity, an intensity of colour, shape, and meaning. Far above him, in the sky, the stars burned with a pale blue fire, and nearer, spread over his thighs and belly, was his deep red blood. Again, he looked up at the circle of skulls, at the bits of ivory gleaming in the blackness. Each skull was his skull; life was connected to life in ways he was just beginning to see. One skull, though, seemed to shimmer under the watchful eyes of the Old Ones. One skull called out to him. It was the skull of Ahira, the snowy owl. Ahira, the wisest and wildest of the animals. No other animal was so alive and free. And no other animal was so perilous to one's spirit. In truth, he dreaded discovering that Ahira was his doffel, his other-self,