Page 37 of Mattox
Gradually, he managed to turn his head about thirty degrees. The darkness didn’t end. There were no stars. The moon was gone. Neither were there any torch lights. No lights, on top of no wind, no sound. Not a damn thing.
He turned inward, using his Mutah senses to find something he could mentally connect with. He sought that true connection with his mother, the only person he could contact, but…nothing. There was nothing there. Nothing but a big black hole, as if she or he had fallen into the deepest pit in the earth, severing all ties with each other.
Nothing. It was impossible. She was always there. She was always within reach.
He tried again, harder. The vast emptiness nearly swallowed him.
“Where are you, Mother? Why can’t I reach you?”
If she was no longer in reach…
Memory of the wind storm, of being tossed and thrown about as if he weighed nothing, replayed in his mind’s eye.The roofs lifting off the buildings and being sent skyward. A guard flying past him.The guard suddenly morphed into his mother, screaming, arms and legs flaying helplessly against the power of the naydo.
He had no sense of her. Which could only mean…
Tears burned in his eyes. They didn’t blur his vision because there was nothing to see in the first place, but a hard and heavy weight pressed against his chest, forcing him to gasp for breath.
“Mo-om.”
He felt nothing from her because he knew she was dead. It was a reality he’d been dreading every day of his life for as long as he could remember. The day when that thread between them finally snapped. Broke. Dissolved. Evaporated. Never to return.
Throwing back his head, he cried out from the torment rising inside him. “Mooom!”
He had no knowledge of how long he lay there, or how many tears he shed. All the while, the darkness remained constant and solid. In a way, it was almost comforting, because it meant others weren’t around to watch his weakness. His emotional agony.
There’d been times in the past when he’d cried, and he’d hidden in a dark place so others wouldn’t make fun of him, or think of him as being less than a real man. Yet his mother always found him. When she did, she’d sit next to him, put her arms around him, and let him rest his head against her shoulder. She’d stroke his hair and his face, all the while telling him how proud she was of him. How proud she was to be his mother. How proud she was of the way he helped protect and take care of his little sister, and later, his little brother. She was proud of how quickly he was learning the responsibilities of taking care of the compound and its people. Because one day he’d be the new battle lord, and everyone would look to him for help, for guidance, and for solutions to the problems they’d be facing one day.
Then she’d leave him where she’d found him until he was ready to emerge on his own. Without condemnation and without guilt.
He hadn’t asked to be born. He hadn’t asked to be the way he was, half Mutah and the son of a battle lord. He hadn’t ask to be burdened with his unique eyesight, his strength, his abilities, and his status in life. But he had because fate needed him to be.
He had to get back to the compound as quickly as possible. His father…
“Oh, God. Dad.”
If his mother’s death was devastating for him, it would crush his father.
Ifhis father was still alive.
“NO!”
He tried to roll over, only to discover he couldn’t. His legs wouldn’t move. Everything from his waist down throbbed with muted pain. The best he could manage was a twist of his body at the hip.
Bracing his hands on the ground, he was able to sit up, when one hand slid away from him and dangled in mid-air. Mattox froze in place, the fingers of his other hand gripping what he determined to be something smooth. Maybe metallic.
Carefully, he brought his other hand back to his hip and tried searching again for a solid handhold. He encountered a roughness, but this time it was one he recognized. Roofing tile. The kind that they used in Alta Novis.
“Or in every other Normal compound.” He briefly wondered if Mutah compounds also used the same kind of roofing tiles.
“If I feel tiles, what are the chances I’m lying on top of a roof?” Recalling the way the naydo had lifted him off his feet, it was plausible it had thrown him on top of a building. Only question was, was the building in Alta Novis, or somewhere else? “Or maybe I’ve landed on top of a piece of roof that ended up someplace else.”
He twisted his body in the direction of the smooth piece of metal. It didn’t feel like something he—
Wait. Yes, he could.
“A shield. It’s someone’s shield.” Mattox frowned. “Whose shield? Our guards don’t use shields.”
But Mutah do.
