Free 10: His Holy Bones by Ginn Hale Page A

guess, I would say that the hatred between the two of you has the potential to escalate to the vision I saw. But it seemed far in the future. If you could make amends with Fikiri, you could probably avoid it completely.”
    “And you think this all could happen years from now?”
    “If I had to guess I’d say Fikiri looked like he was fifty.”
    John relaxed a little. He guessed that even he and Fikiri could make their peace given thirty years.
    “All right,” John said. “When I see Fikiri I’ll try to make amends with him.”
    “That would be a good thing to do, no matter what. He’s just a boy, you know,” Ji said.
    “I know.”
    “Good. Take care, Jahn.” Ji turned down the cracked street. She glanced back over her shoulder. “Don’t worry too much. Things will work out. We only need to give them the chance to do so.”
    “I’ll give them the chance,” John assured her.
    Ji nodded and then padded away.
    John continued down out of the fortress and into the valley. There were signs of spring’s approach here as well, but they were not all pleasant. The snow he’d called down the day before had melted completely away. The new warmth sped the decay of thousands of bodies; the odor rising off them exceeded revolting. This time John’s scarf offered him no refuge from the sickening stench of putrid flesh.
     Clouds of iridescent flies swarmed over carcasses and scattered into the air as John passed. They swept over him in dark, glittering masses and then settled again amidst the rotting remains. Where the sun shone directly, snowmelt had coalesced into puddles, turned tracts of soil to mud.
    John spent the morning ripping open deep furrows of dark earth, allowing the land to swallow the bloated bodies of men and tahldi in mass graves.
    The greenish black bodies of young men tumbled into trenches at his feet. John tried not to look at them. He studied the shore of his newly created lake or he watched the distant forests.
    Across the lake, packs of feral dogs watched John warily as they scavenged their meals. He wondered, briefly, what one of those animals would have made of Ji. Would they have found her scent strange and ominous, or merely mistaken her for another dog?
    By midafternoon John felt sapped of strength, though he knew it was only guilt that weighed him down. As he continued working he tried to think himself away from the knowledge of how many lives he had taken. Of how right Tanash had been to stare at him in horror.
    He comforted himself, wondering if Ravishan was still sleeping. Probably. Though most likely, he’d wake up in another hour or so. It wasn’t like him to sleep through an entire day. Perhaps they would make love properly then.
    John studied the vast expanse of the valley. There wasn’t much left for him to do. The land nearest Vundomu was black and looked as though it had been plowed by a band of drunken farm hands. Still, the stench had been buried along with the dead. Carcasses still littered a few fields farther north as well as some of those on the west bank of the lake. John continued along the shore of the lake, burying the dead.
     The sun shone down directly overhead, melting away the last few pockets of snow. As the frost receded, John noticed a fine green fringe carpeting the banks of the lake where he’d walked. Dozens of delicate mosses basked at the edge of the water. Among them, the dark emerald shoots of frostgrass nudged up through the soil.
    John stared at the little plants in amazement. He had nearly destroyed this land. He had torn it asunder and scorched it in cascades of lightning and fire. And yet, with just a little sun and water, life returned. John gently touched the soft mosses, admiring their resilience. The mosses seemed to curl against John’s hands, as if they somehow returned his affection.
    A wrenching screech tore through the air as an arc of flames burned at the edges of the torn Gray Space. Only a few feet ahead of John, Fikiri stepped out of