Dragon's Run Page 27
Instead, she snatched the journal back from Gama’s hands. She wrote:
Everyone get in the iron-tithing skiff!
Chapter Forty-Two
A death does not always mean the stopping of your heart and the rotting of your flesh.
Seek Fire, Chief of the Turtle Clan of the Low Rivers Tribe, Lorekeeper
The All woke Hawk from her blissful slumber, a simple acknowledgment that she had to be awake now. Pain flooded in from limbs that were no longer there, and she flexed her remaining hand to remind herself what was real.
As she stared into the darkness that was her room, she reflected on the dream she had had. The sisters had reunited but were still moving apart, Yaki shedding her humanity while Ishe flirted with the forces that had ended an Age.
In the dark, something moved, and Hawk made out a shape at the foot of her bed.
“Don’t you have more important places to be?” Hawk asked the cat made of darkness that perched at the foot of her bed.
“No. This is where I choose to be,” Death Panther said, looking at Hawk’s bandaged body.
“Take me,” Hawk asked, her voice flat, knowing the answer.
“No.” Death Panther said, her voice deep and rich as the sky. She stalked up the length of the Hawk’s body, the touch of her paws lighter than a feather. “The Seven gave you a place, warrior, provided gifts in abundance to accomplish your tasks. And you rejected them. Ran away from an honored place in history.”
“As a butcher, a shatterer of peace.” Hawk coughed. “The Golden Hills would never have fallen to Low Rivers. No matter how the gods howled for the Steward’s blood.”
“You do not see the arc of the future, dear Hawk.” Yet she delivered the rebuff with a touch of admiration in her voice.
“Your Seven only see the history of the destiny they desire. And your meddling with Yaki isn’t part of it either.” Hawk looked into the panther’s pale eyes. They shone with the light of a moon that had been shattered nearly two thousand years gone.
“The Seven are gods. They protected humanity from the Ending despite the memories of war and blood. So many peoples are buried in the ground. Is it not their right to direct people as they will? Are not their words perfect, their will sacred?”
“If I believed that, I would not be in this bed. My husband would not be alive, and the peace between Low Rivers and the Golden Hills would be replaced by fear and distrust,” Hawk said, the goddess of Death drawing the words out as if she were Sparrow.
“Low Rivers shifts from the ways of the Seven. You see it here as well. They are bigger than this land should support. The gardens they string between their trees cannot alone feed High Tree. Dependence. The Golden Hills feed many tribes now. Trade only baubles, feed themselves. Never again shall the threads of human empires strangle the world.”
“I suppose the Great Wyrm didn’t count?” Hawk smiled.
The Death Panther made no comment, although her eyes shone all the brighter.
“It is the will of the Seven that I am not to take you this night or any night. It is their will that you, in rejecting their good death, will not have it until the age has turned. They would prefer you to share Dipping Eagle’s fate. To reside in a dead body, aware of the maggots that wriggle through your eyes.”
A cold, dark fear stole through Hawk’s laboring heart, and she clung to its hastened beat.
“But I swore never to do that again, my Swooping Hawk. But you are mine this night. Even more than Yaki of Madria, who bears my mark and will receive my gifts.” Pinpricks of claws pierced the blankets and bandages; Hawk felt their sensation even in places that were burned and still dead. “Listen carefully, for we will never speak again.”
“I am the death who gives and takes. Death that give birth to life. Part of the harmonious whole. I come for all things, and even the Seven fear my passage. Yet another death comes on the wings of the iron dragon. He does not see it, for he is deaf to the songs of the world. This is a greater death than the death of the Grief, broader than the death of the Great Wyrm’s Empire.”
“What death is this?” Hawk whispered.
“That is what you will see. Your task is to witness and, if things go very badly, yours alone to survive.” Death Panther pulled something out of herself and set it to the side. “This will always be at your side. Witness the tide of death and change. Let there be a history recorded by one who cannot be claimed by it. Do this and I will release you at the dawn of the next age.” With that, the pale silver eyes closed and Death Panther left without another whisper.
Glowstones shimmered into life and Hawk picked up the rectangular object the Death Panther had left behind: a black leather-bound book, its texture so smooth that Hawk knew it had been bound in human skin. Stitched to its spine, a rod of white bone proved to be a pen that had no inkwell. Hawk’s hand folded around it almost instinctively. She could read Golden Hills, Low River, and Lyndon—Sparrow had seen to that last one—but she had not picked up a pen in the last two decades. Yet she found herself flipping the book open to its first page. It stood blank, hungry.
Hawk began writing in large blocky letters:
“Tonight, I have been visited by the one who brings both curses and blessing in equal measure. She told me much more than I wanted to know.”
Yaki & Ishe’s Adventures Conclude in Dragon’s Siege!
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