The Very Best of Kate Elliott Read Online Free PDF Page B

best direction for a good hunt, or two female cousins or friendly co-wives unravel an obstacle tangling the weave of family life within their tents.
    Belek tried again, voice spiking as he tried to control his fear.“Kereka? Edek?”
    “Chsst!” Kereka spoke in a calming voice. She adored her brother, son of her father’s third wife, but he was the kind of person who felt each least pebble beneath him when he slept, and although he never complained—what Quman child would and not get beaten for being weak?—he would shift and scoot and brush at the ground all night to get comfortable and thus disturb any who slept next to him.“We’re here, Belek. We had to tie you down to keep you on the litter. You’d taken a wound. Now, we have been captured by foreigners.”
    “I feel a sting in my gut. Ah. Aah!” He grunted, bit back a curse, thapped his head against the litter, and yelped. These healthy noises, evidence of his return from the threshold of the spirit world, sang in her belly with joy. “I remember when I charged that dirty farmer, but nothing after it. Did I get his head?”
    “Yes. We tied it to your belt.”
    His hand groped; he found the greasy hair.“Tarkan’s blessings! But what happened to me?”
    He deserved to know the worst.“The woman is a witch. She trapped us with sorcery. I think she must have healed you.”
    “Aie! Better dead than in her debt! If it’s true, I am bound to her and she can take from me whatever she wants in payment.”
    His fretful tone irritated her. “No sense panicking! Best we get free of her, then.”
    “It’s not so simple! The binding which heals has its roots in the spirit world and can’t be so easily escaped. Her magic can follow me wherever I go—”
    “Then it’s best we get back to the tribe quickly and ask for the shamans to intercede. There’s a knife at your belt. You should be able to cut yourself loose.”
    Obedient as always to her suggestions, he writhed under the confining ropes.“Eh! Fah! Knife’s gone.”
    Night lay everywhere over them. The fattening moon grazed on its dark pastures. Kereka clenched her teeth in frustration. There must be some way to free themselves!
    Only then did she see a stockpile of weapons— their good Kirshat steel swords, iron-pointed arrows, and iron-tipped spears—heaped beyond the campfire, barely visible in the darkness. A stubborn gleam betrayed the griffin’s feather, resting atop the loot in the seat of honor.
    The foreigners ceased speaking and walked back into the fire’s aura. The witch still carried her primitive spear and she was now brandishing a knife that gleamed in black splendor, an ugly gash of obsidian chipped away to make one sharp edge. She had not even bothered to arm herself with the better weapons she had captured, although the bearded man wore a decent iron sword at his side, foreign in its heft and length.
    The woman crouched again beside Belek.
    Anything was better than pleading—that was a woman’s duty, not a man’s—but the knife’s evil gleam woke such fear in Kereka’s heart that she knew such distinctions no longer mattered.
    “I beg you, listen to my words. Belek is the honored son of the Kirshat begh ’s third wife. He has powerful magic. The shamans have said so. He has already entered the first tent of apprenticeship. To kill him would be to release his anger and his untrained power into the spirit world. You don’t want that!”
    Where there is no understanding there can be no response. And yet, the woman weighed her sorcerer’s knife and, with a flicker of a smile, sheathed it. Instead, she slid a finger’s length needle of bone from a pouch slung from her belt.
    Leather cord bit into Kereka’s skin, tightening as she wiggled her hands and only easing its bite when she stilled. She could do nothing to spare Belek whatever torture this creature meant to inflict on him. Witchcraft had bound her to the rock.
    The woman caught hold of her own tongue. With exaggerated