The God of the Hive - Laurie R. King [4]
Snatched from him, at the very peak of the Preparation. The sacrifice had turned and summoned fire—the lamp, that was it. Damian had managed to fling out his arm and smashed the lamp. But what followed was unclear: noise and confusion and hot billows of flame, and … others? The impression of others—two of them?—and then a boom and a giant’s fist smashing his chest, and nothing until he had wakened to the smell of sea and smoke.
Who could they have been? Enemies? Demons? Figments of his imagination? Not that it mattered: They had robbed him of Transformation. The Great Work lay shattered. A waste of years. His hand twitched with the urge to strangle someone.
And the child? She who was to have been his acolyte, his student, the daughter of his soul? Had the two demons stolen her? Or was she still in that burnt-out place where he had taken refuge?
Mid-day: She would be awake. Sooner or later, she would find her way out, and be seen. He had to get away before they came looking for him.
“Gunderson?” he whispered.
“He’ll be here tomorrow morning.” This was a man’s gravelly voice.
“MacAuliffe.”
“That’s right, Reverend Brothers. You know what happened to you?”
With an effort, Brothers got his eyes open, squinting into the smokey light. “Shot?”
“Aye.” The man grinned and reached down to whittle a slice from the sausage on the table, popping it between his yellow teeth and chewing, open-mouthed. “Only thing that kept you from the pearly gates was that book in your chest pocket. Weren’t for that, the lead would’ve gone straight into your heart. As it is, we dug the thing out of your shoulder. Can you move your fingers?”
The wounded man looked down and saw a hand arranged atop a thick gauze pad covering his chest. The fingers slowly closed, then opened.
“There you go,” MacAuliffe said, whittling off another slab of meat. “You’ll be right as rain in no time.”
“Is that my knife?”
The hired man held up the curved blade. “This yours? Wicked thing, nearly cut my thumb off with it.”
“Give it!” The command came out weak, but MacAuliffe obeyed, wiping the grease on his trousers, then turning it so his sometime employer could take the ivory haft.
“I found it on the ground next to that altar thing, nearly stepped on it before I saw the handle. Didn’t know for sure it was yours, but I didn’t want to leave it behind.”
Brothers’ good hand slipped around the familiar object, his thumb smoothing its blade, the cool metal that had been given him on the very hour of his birth. He felt a pulse of temptation, to plunge the Tool into MacAuliffe’s hateful belly, but he was not strong enough to do without assistance. Not yet. Not until he could summon The Friend.
Instead, he tucked the knife under his weak hand, as if the Tool’s strength might transfer to flesh. “I need you to send a telegram to London.”
Chapter 4
When we reached the coastal track and turned towards Kirkwall, the light strengthened with every step. Earlier, I had been forced to choose between the dangers of blind speed and the threat of being seen. Now I hitched the child up on my hips and leant forward into a near-jog. Her light body rocked against mine, and her own arms had to be getting tired, but she did not complain.
Half a mile down the road, I spotted a farmer coming out of a shed, to climb onto a high-sided cart. A tangle of shrubs marked where the farmyard lane entered the road; I let Estelle slip to the ground behind them, stifling a groan as my shoulders returned to their proper angle. I hunkered beside her (my knees, too, having aged a couple of decades in the past hours) and said in a low voice, “We have to wait until this man has gone by, and I don’t want him to notice us. We need to be very quiet, all right?”
“Can we ask him for a ride?” she said in her loud, hoarse, child’s whisper.
“No, we can’t,” I