Free The Legend of Asahiel: Book 03 - The Divine Talisman by Eldon Thompson Page B

through the mud, sweat, and tears that stung his eyes. He leaned heavily upon his shovel, its haft smeared with the blood from his hands, and gazed at the floor of the pit in which he stood. It was finished. He had nothing more to give. A hollow ache remained, a hole within that he would carry to his own grave. But the time had come to bury the worst of his feelings and be done with his grieving.
    As Marisha had told him, life must go on.
    He took a deep breath, a refreshing taste of the early spring season, and looked to the heavens. The sun shone high in the sky, almost directly overhead. Midday already, and his task was only half finished.
    As he climbed from the pit, however, and looked to Torin’s bundled form, Marisha’s other concern became paramount once more. How could he be sure that Torin was truly being laid to rest? There was a chance, after all, that the king was already being possessed, suffering through the three-day incubation period that all Illysp faced—during which the host’s original soul was torn from the Olirian afterlife and shackled once more to its physical coil. Assuming, of course, that what they had learned of their enemy from Darinor was true, Allion might merely be burying his friend as an Illychar—a creature that would not perish from hunger or lack of breath—leaving him imprisoned in an earthen grave for eternity.
    And yet, waiting around to see if his friend would revive—so that he could kill him again—only increased the time in which an Illysp spirit might take possession. For all Allion knew, he carried a host of the fleshless spirits with him. He might mutilate the body in some fashion, but he could not bring himself to do so. If even a headless corpse might rise again, as Darinor had claimed, then what good would it do for Allion to desecrate the body byhacking it into pieces, only to have those pieces somehow retain Torin’s living awareness? What sort of torment might that be?
    No, he reassured himself, short of cremation, which he still refused to consider, the best he could do was to bury his friend quickly and trust to the mercy of the Ceilhigh that the young king had not already been poisoned. Perhaps, when this war was finished and the world rid of Illysp, he might return and dig up the grave to make sure Torin’s remains were truly at peace. Until then, he had done all he could.
    The rest went faster than expected. Cut from the litter, Torin’s body was interred in the earth that had nourished it in life. Though he was no priest, Allion took it upon himself to bestow all rites customary to his people, as he had seen them delivered. Torin’s life in the hereafter, he assured himself, would be better than this one.
    As he tamped the last of the soil back into place, Allion looked to the grave’s marker. A dozen years after its planting, Torin’s tree had grown tall and strong. And it would continue to do so, the hunter reminded himself, though the human life it represented had moved on.
    He set aside the shovel and again lowered himself to his knees. Time to beseech the final blessing of the Ceilhigh, and to offer his own apologies for the wrongs he had committed against his friend. The latter, he thought sullenly, could take some time.
    He had accomplished the first, but had only barely begun the last, when one of his horses gave a cry. Allion froze. He heard voices, and the thrashing of bodies through the brush. It seemed his time was up.
    His bow and arrows lay beside the empty litter. Allion moved quickly to retrieve them, slinging the quiver over his shoulder and locating a thick trunk behind which to hide. By the time the intruders reached his clearing, leading their own mounts afoot, the hunter peered at them through the foliage with an arrow drawn.
    There were only two of them—human, they appeared—dressed in the royal livery of Alson. Marked as messengers by the sash each wore. Neither had yet drawn a weapon.
    “He was here all right,” one of them