Free Relic (The Books of Eva I) by Heather Terrell Page B

here? And why would they take such Lex risks? Were they conspiring? Alliances arebanned—whether formed before or during the Testing—but they are not unheard of. In one particularly rampant Aerie rumor, a highly regarded Testor ensured a friend’s equally respected quest for the Archon spot in exchange for a promise; supposedly, the two now serve as the Aerie’s Chief Archon and Chief Lexor. Yes, my father and Jasper’s uncle Ian. We laugh about those rumors at home, but other alliances have been proven and incurred swift punishment.
    As I prepare my camp—digging a hole for my dogs, starting the fire, readying the water for the dogs, pitching my tent—I watch the forest. The Testors have to emerge from the evergreen thicket at some point. But no one materializes.
    The first horn of the evening will sound soon, and I can’t delay any longer. I have to reenter the Taiga to hunt. My dogs are fighting among themselves as their hunger mounts, and I can’t afford an injured husky. Weaving through trees and underbrush, I return to the area where I spotted the hare. Where one hare lives, others must, too, I figure.
    Knives,
bola
, spear, and
atlatl
, my spear, in hand, I squat behind the wide trunk of a birch tree. As I wait, I try to imagine which Testors would dare conspire. Eamon’s journal entries contain assessments of my competition. He thought well of Jasper, Jacques, Benedict, Thurstan, and William—but only in terms of physical skills. He didn’t think much of their ability to synthesize the past with the artifacts, a critical talent for the final, and most important, three Advantages. In fact, Eamon described them as “able but addled,” even though they generally did well at School. He outright dismissed Knud, Tristan, Anders, and Petr as serious competitors, believing their parents put them up tothe Tests; he believed they lacked the strength of spirit to win. The Commitment by Neils confused Eamon, who perceived Neils as a bookish type, and Eamon understood that Aleksander entered the Testing to prove something to his Ring-Guard father.
    Nothing in Eamon’s evaluations makes me think that any particular Testor is capable of forming alliances, other than Jacques and Benedict, whose ambitious fathers serve together.
    Movement in the brush interrupts my musings.
    I ready my
bola
, hoping to get at least a couple of hare. But it isn’t a hare that appears from the woodland. It’s a musk ox.
    The creature is legendary for its ability to skewer a man with a single swipe of its enormous curved horns, so I fight against every instinct to flee. This one animal could feed me and my dogs for days. Its
qiviut
, highly prized for its warmth, could help me survive the long nights on the way to the Frozen Shores. If I can only figure out how to kill him. He could easily swat away my
bola
with a shake of his huge, shaggy head, so that’s not an option. I don’t dare get close enough to use one of my knives; not anticipating that I’d run into a rare musk ox, Lukas hadn’t schooled me in the best way to slay one by hand. Even though the animal has a thick, hairy hide, my only option is my
atlatl
.
    The creature stops to nibble on some caribou moss, and I look at it closely. I decide to aim at an indentation behind its horns. I pray to the Gods for their blessings, because if I miss, the musk ox will charge and gore me. Something he might have done even if I hadn’t decided to take aim, I console myself.
    Pointing my
atlatl
to the ground, I place my spear into thehooked end of the bone stick. Then I lift the spear and
atlatl
off the ground and align them with that spot on the musk ox’s head. Then I release. I’ve practiced the
atltal
throw hundreds of times with Lukas—he thought the weapon would provide me with an advantage because it’d give me greater leverage and better aim despite my lesser strength—but I’m shocked at how far the spear goes and how powerfully it launches.
    The musk ox falls to the