fantasy – Page 10 – Joan Spilman

This Textured Darkness, #26

He was being branded; the air smelled as it did when they marked the wild horses in the spring.

“My source tells me the bark is odd. Flesh colored with specks of red. The shoots spring up, only to die.”

“What if the child is already dead?”
“He is alive. Else why would Jah demand that he be rescued?”

“Here is the message you must take. Read it before it is waxed.”

He knew nothing about her, save that she was young and clothed in what appeared to be an old-fashioned night rail.

The Seer had caught him coming from Nadia’s tent before he’d relieved himself.

“Wolves from the Nevers,” the boy broke his silence. “Father told me to run.”

The scepter was held by a dying man.

“I’ll send a feather dyed blue, its color changed from beyond. When you receive it, know that King Rand has been granted a path in the Deep.”

“As well as any knocking against the void. He suffers. He yearns.”