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.”“Not 'meant to do' but.it's hard to put into words.”“I understand,” Pehr said, and Tasha glanced at him, an expression of disbelief on her face.Pehr laughed.“Well, I understand that you believe there is a difference.Tasha, I will help you if I can, but if your council of elders decides this winter to sequester me with another family or send me out on my own to look for a wife, I will return to my people.I don’t belong here.”“None of us do,” Tasha said, and then was silent, and no matter how hard Pehr pressed, she would not speak further of it that night.Soon they returned to the tent, and Tasha went to help Ehela, who was sewing pants for Ketrahm; the boy seemed to outgrow his existing clothing by the end of each month.Pehr resolved not to worry about what she had meant.As always, Tasha would tell him when the time was right.In the interim, there was always more to be done, and so the night passed, and the day that followed, and then weeks more after that.Spring had long since become summer when the dreams returned.Chapter 16Pehr didn’t even realize at first that he had fallen asleep, so seamless was the transition from the waking world to the dream.He was out amidst the grasses, on the plains, standing on a hill and looking out to the west.This was not the sort of fuzzy, indistinct dream that he usually had, shifting and tenuous as the webs that spiders sometimes spun under the jesuva trees, invisible most often until he stumbled into them.This dream was clear and crystalline, as when he’d dreamed of Tasha on the eve of the Lagos attack.It was distinguishable from reality only because the colors were somehow overbright and oversaturated.The very air itself seemed thick with color, and Pehr found himself struggling to breathe it in.The girl with the purple eyes was standing beside him this time, looking east down into the valley, the setting sun at her back.Her eyes were wide and distant, staring, her lips slightly parted in an expression of awe.What little color she possessed had drained from her face, and there were dark circles under her eyes.The sky above them was dark and angry, filled with clouds of intense purple tinted black at their edges.Pehr had only seen the plains look like this one or twice before, and he knew that clouds like this heralded a storm of apocalyptic proportions.Men died in storms like these, and he thought it unwise to be standing at the top of a hill, unprotected, but they could not go forward.The valley below them was filled with roiling black water, and as Pehr watched, it began to rise inexorably toward them, seething and boiling, a deadly flood two hundred feet tall – and growing – from which there was no hope of escape.“It has come at last,” Tasha murmured, and Pehr wanted to ask her what she meant by this, but he couldn't seem to speak.The sight of the huge, black sea flooding toward him had torn the words from his mouth.He thought that if he looked at these swiftly advancing waters any longer he would go mad with fear, and so he turned to the west and looked out across the plains below him.What he saw there was so strange that for a moment he couldn't understand what he was seeing.The shifting, writhing mass that stretched out before him was as bizarre and confusing and terrifying as the rising sea to his back.In a moment more he realized what it was, but the comprehension brought no comfort.If anything, it only intensified the fear that throbbed within him, and Pehr felt a sudden, powerful wave of nausea run through him, as if his very body wished to revolt at the sight before it.He fought it down, clenching his teeth, and made himself look out over the plains at what was coming for them.He understood at last what was making the throbbing, rumbling noise that he was hearing.Just below him, only a few hundred strides away at the base of the hill, a great host was advancing upon them, and their footfalls shook the very earth.Pehr knew these creatures, had seen them before, and understood that the worst had happened: the guardian had fallen.The god that kept the creatures of the jungle from advancing to the plains was no longer there, and the Lagos had descended upon them.Their clawed feet tore and shredded the ground, kicked up red dust that filled the air with what looked like a mist of blood.There were thousands of them.When the Lagos had come to loot his village, there had been many of them, but this was some exponentially greater force.This was an army, a thing built to wipe whatever came before it off the face of the earth.The Lagos had come to the plains not to burn and pillage, not to disfigure their enemies, but to eradicate all those who lived there completely.“Oh, what have we done?” Pehr heard himself ask, and Tasha gave a small laugh, but she did not answer him.She too had turned and was looking out at the advancing army, yet there was no fear in her sunken eyes, only that sort of dreamlike intensity, as if she was seeing things that no one else could see.Pehr did not want to die, but he understood that flight from the Lagos army would be a pointless endeavor.The army was going to catch them – it was inevitable.He and Tasha had chosen this hill upon which to make their final stand.There would be no capture this time, no shameful march to the metal thing’s circle of bone or to anywhere else.In mere moments, the Lagos would overwhelm them, tear them to shreds, and leave their bodies for the carrion birds.That would be the end of it, or so it seemed to Pehr.“I am frightened,” Tasha told him, but Pehr wouldn’t have known it from her voice, which was calm and steady, betraying no nerves by trembling or breaking.The look on her face had not changed.Pehr reached out and took her hand
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Tematy
IndexChristine Amsden [Cassie Scot Cassie Scot ParaNormal Detecti
Christie Craig [Divorced, Des Divorced, Desperate
Moore Christopher Ssij, mała, ssij (II)
Stasheff, Christopher Wizard in Rhyme 6 Haunted Wizard
Christine Feehan Mroczna Seri Mroczny Demon
Cidney Swanson [Saving Mars Saving Mars (epub)
Stasheff, Christopher Rogue Wizard 04 A Wizard in Peace
Feehan Christine Mroczna Seria 01 Mroczny Ksišże
Stasheff, Christopher Warlock 01 The Warlock in Spite of Himself
Christine Feehan Mroczna Seria 13 Mroczne Przeznaczenie