Page 50 of Daughter of the Dark Sun
“What is that? Do you seek to beg, to shatter under my hand only to be pieced together again?”
The woman’s cold laugh fills the space between hunter and prey. He does not move. Cannot move. A muffled grunt so easily missed penetrates the night.
“Good boy,”the woman purrs in his ear. A gentle touch recalls the shadows, and they sink back into their mistress. The man’s eyes close. A soft smile pulls at the corner of his mouth. “Yes, my loyal dog. That’s what you like to be, isn’t it?”The woman leans forward and bites his lip again, releasing him before the pain crescendos. “Mine. Owned. Used. A weapon when I need, a plaything when I want.”
His eyes flash open. Something strange hides behind them, an emotion the woman cannot read. It fades; tears of pain and pleasure flood his eyes with a single touch.
“Yes,”the gray-eyed man breathes into her mouth, hot breath flooding her senses. “I would kill a thousand, and a thousand more, to kneel before you. My heart is yours. To take as you wish, use as you wish. I have nothing to live for, nothing but your words. I live for you, Mireithren.”
The dream lingered inApattar’s mind for days, the nameMireithrenplaying over and over again. It seemed familiar, somehow. She told herself the dreams came as a corruption of the confused feelings she harbored for Therat. He could yet be transformed, the Shadow-weave brought under control and turned into a weapon for the coming war. But the rest did not make sense.
Could not make sense.
Apattar told herself for years that love was a distraction. She meant to keep it that way, though it became harder as the days pressed on. Diversions from feelings and urges rather left unexplored were few and far between in the desert.
At first, Apattar meant to head for the southern city of Gisamir on the coast to gather supplies and, if she was lucky, a camel. But when she first arrived in the desert at the tiny oasis of acacias, Therat’s soulsong hummed in the background noise of the lonely land. Luck found her for a change. Seizing the opportunity, she followed him into the southwestern dunes stretching on for hundreds of miles. For fifteen days she tracked Therat, closing in on her quarry but always a step behind.
Morning arrived with a cool breeze. Apattar set out walking before the sun cleared the eastern horizon, desperate to makeheadway against the man who rested little the last three days. She would draw him out from hiding like sucking poison from a wound. Eithranren was quiet, Laisha nowhere to be found. He had to be the way forward. Apattar grumbled at the thought.
Sometime after walking, a few hours at most, the remnants of an abandoned campsite built against a lone crumbling wall came into view.
This must be his.
The winds had not yet scattered the fire’s remains from the crude ring of rocks. It seemed fresh enough to Apattar’s eyes, though she knew little of these things. Instinct and a will to live kept her alive in the desert, not wits or the ability to hunt. There was little to observe—some bloody bandages and a lock of honey-blonde hair. Apattar wondered what injured Therat, or if this blood was even his. Why was he here, hundreds of miles from the nearest settlement? On a hunt of his own? The bandages could be those of his quarry, caught for what purpose Apattar dared not think.
The Goddess Eithranren warned Apattar years ago of the darkest threads of Shadow-weave grown wild with her death. How her screams of terror and betrayal remained forever trapped in the Song of the Night. Those who let the tainted music into their souls often found themselves crawling toward inevitable insanity. Corrupted from such a young age, there was no guarantee Therat controlled his mind. A boy once sacrificed, now a shell struggling to contain the horde within.
By the time Apattar left the campsite, the sun started its long descent into the night. The darkening skies did not stop the hunt. The anticipation of finding Therat bubbled over into every thought and drove her on until exhaustion sent the maiden tumbling into a fitful sleep.
Therat’s hands caressed her frail and withered body, drawing whimpers from the restless dreamer. When she woke, allmemory of the night faded to the sun, and Apattar continued to tell herself the gray-eyed man could not love a broken woman.
As the sun set, Therat’s soulsong erupted in Apattar’s mind. She gasped from the intensity of his presence, heart pummeled by the suddenness. Eyes closed, the music vibrated through her bones, eerily intimate, as if they had embraced once as lovers long ago.
“I found you at last,” she breathed, shivers running down her spine.
Hunching forward, Apattar used all her strength to climb the tall dune looming ahead of her. The sand gave way with every step as if trying to keep the hunter from her quarry. After a long hour of climbing—sometimes on hands and knees—Apattar crested the sandy giant.
The dune sloped down to a valley, a narrow path marked with burning torches snaking through a gap in the western dunes. In the center of the flat land sat a large wayside shrine. A tall, headless statue of Myrniar the Sunmaiden holding the Sun in her hands overlooked a courtyard of black and white stones. Four tall columns stood at the corners of the shrine, each wrapped with a red wyrm, head held high to the sky. Once, the endless Flame of Myrniar burnt from their mouths; such a time was long forgotten on Eás now.
The afternoon sun bathed the shrine in an amber glow. In the center of the courtyard knelt a man with warm brown skin and a tangle of black curls, a desecrated body in front of him. Apattar did not need to see the man’s face to know it was Therat. She smiled as a flash of heat ran the length of her body; she closed her eyes and wondered if Therat’s touch would feel the same. With a hiss, she chased the thought away and set her gaze back on the man.
Tendrils of inky black Shadow-weave writhed in the air around Therat. A shimmering thread of blue and silver lightwavered between one of his blood-stained hands and the corpse before slowly fading. A cry pierced the air, though Apattar could not make out the words.
The music—now a symphony across the land—compelled Apattar forward, but her feet stood firm. Therat sat studying the corpse, a dead woman, with morbid intensity.
What is he doing?
Apattar thought he must have killed the woman, but why try and bring her life back? She stepped back and lowered herself to the warm sands. Settling into a comfortable position, Apattar observed the man below like a cat watching its prey.
Therat seemed lost in thought. The winds shifted, and the contented sigh of a woman floated past.
“Lady Eithranren,” Apattar whispered with a smile.
Therat’s head whipped around at Apattar’s words, curls bouncing around his dark visage framed with a shaggy beard. He rose and stared at her. Threads of Shadow-weave danced around him as he took a step forward. Apattar slid the black dagger from the sheath around her thigh and held it close, her own Shadow-weave wrapping around the woman. Therat raced toward the sloping dune with ease.
Though the trap set and the bait taken, an odd hesitation took hold of Apattar’s heart. Once she had Therat in her grasp, it would be impossible to stray from the path of destiny. It was hard to embrace the idea of fate when confronted with the realities of what the Shadow-weave did to people who took too much.
She wanted to free her Goddess and restore the world, but what if it meant sacrificing those who deserved a better life? Could she still do it—would she? The man was beyond redemption, even he knew this. Therat’s descent into madness and unending sorrow made it hard to see reason. Overcome withanxiety, Apattar opened a portal to the abandoned camp not far from the shrine.
