The Very Best of Kate Elliott Read Online Free PDF

seemed to her only an instant while she had swum out of the spirit world.
    Pebbles ground uncomfortably into her buttocks. A stalk of grass tickled the underside of one wrist. Tiny feet tracked on her forehead, then vanished as the creature flew. She sat propped against the rough wall of standing stones, wrists and ankles bound. How had this happened? She could not remember.
    The scene before her lay in sullen colorless tones, lit by a grazing moon and by the blazing stars. Each point of light marked a burning arrow shot into the heavens by the warrior Tarkan, he who had bred with a female griffin and fathered the Quman people.
    The flaring light of a campfire stung her eyes. The man crouched before it, raking red coals to one side. He had a thick beard, like the northern farmers, and skin pale enough that it was easy to follow his gestures as he efficiently scalded and plucked her grouse and roasted them over coals. Grease dripped and sizzled, the smell so sweet it was an insult thrown in her face.
    Where were the others?
    Edek lay well out of her reach, slumped against one of the giant stones. The horses stood hobbled just beyond the nimbus of light; she saw them only as shapes. Belek’s litter lay at the edge of the harsh and restless flare of the fire. Still strapped to the litter, he moaned and shuddered. The woman appeared out of the darkness as abruptly as a shaman’s evil dream. She crouched beside him with both hands extended. Lips moving but without sound, she sprinkled grains of dirt or flakes of herbs over his body.
    Fear came on Kereka in the same way a spirit sickness does, penetrating the eyes first and sinking down to lodge in the throat and, at last, to grasp hold of her belly like an ailment. There are ways to animate dead flesh with sorcery. She had to stop the working, or Belek would be trapped by this creature’s magic and never able to find his way past the spirit-lands to the ancient home of First Grandfather along the path lit by Tarkan’s flaming arrows. But she could not move, not even to push her foot along the ground to kick the corpse and dislodge Belek’s spirit.
    Mist and darkness writhed between dying youth and foreign woman. With a powerful inhalation, the woman sucked in the cloud. Belek thrashed as foam speckled his lips. The witch rocked forward to balance so lightly on her toes that Kereka was sure she would fall forward onto Belek’s unprotected chest. Instead, the woman exhaled, her breath loud in the silence; the air glittered with sparks expelled from her mouth. They dissolved into the youth’s flesh as the witch settled smoothly back on her heels. She lifted her gaze to look directly at Kereka.
    No matter how vulnerable she appeared, indecently clothed and armed only with a stone-pointed spear in the midst of the grasslands, she had power. As the begh Bulkezu, ancestor of Kereka’s ancestors, had wrapped himself in an impenetrable coat of armor in his triumphant war against the westerners, this woman was armed with something more dangerous than a physical weapon. She was not the bearded man’s wife or slave, but his master.
    She nodded to mark Kereka’s gaze, and spoke curtly in a language unlike any of those muttered by the tribe’s slaves.
    Kereka shook her head, understanding nothing. It would be better to kill the witch, but in the event, she had no choice except to negotiate from a position of weakness.“What do you want from us? My father will pay a ransom—”
    As if her voice awakened him, Belek murmured as in a daze.“Kereka? Are you there?” Rope creaked as he fought with unexpected strength against his bonds. He looked up at the woman crouched above him. “Who are you? Where is my sister—?”
    The witch rose easily to her feet and moved away into the gloom. The bearded man stood up and followed her. Kereka heard them speaking, voices trading back and forth in the manner of equals, not master and slave. Two warriors might converse in such tones, debating the