Free Souls of Aredyrah 2 - The Search for the Unnamed One by Tracy A. Akers Page A

take? He went weak with the
realization that he had no power whatsoever, no hope for happiness
at all.
    He was helped from the floor and guided out
the door, no longer able to resist them, no longer caring enough to
try. He did not recall saying goodbye to Alicine or Dayn, nor was
he aware of anything during the silent walk through the back
streets with Torin and Jensa. Although he managed to put one foot
in front of the other, that was all he was able to do.
    When they reached the outskirts of the city,
the Shell Seekers had packed and were already making their way down
the road leading from Pobu. Kerrik ran up to Reiv, but even he said
nothing.
    Kerrik took Reiv’s hand in his and held it
tight, but Reiv did not pull away as he usually did. There was no
feeling left inside of him now, just the overwhelming weight of
weariness. He could only stare with indifference at the tiny hand
now holding his.
     
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Chapter 9: The Crooked Child
     
    T enzy clutched her
shawl around her thin shoulders, but it did little to stave off the
cold of her cell. Cold: For years now, it had been her only waking
companion, wrapping her like a cruel lover, owning her body and
soul. She no longer knew what it meant to be warm, just as she no
longer knew what it meant to be loved. She had never felt the
embrace of a man, nor the feel of a child growing in her belly,
something she had once longed for but steadfastly refused to bear.
There could be no flowering of a child without seed, and the
thought of a man pressed against her had always been abhorrent. Her
mother had died at the hands of men, many men, swarming over her
like flies. And Tenzy and her younger sister had been forced to
watch. The cold that wrapped Tenzy’s body had been her only mate
for nigh on sixty years now.
    She shuffled over to the table that dominated
the center of her dismal cell. It was stacked high with parchments
and ancient tomes, their leather covers tooled with the markings of
many races, some familiar, some not. Her eyes swept over them. They
should have brought her comfort, should have been her companion in
the lonely hours of her life. But they were only the shackles of
her miserable existence.
    Her gaze rested on the tome that had recently
been slammed onto her table. “You will interpret it,” the Priestess
had ordered, “and you have three days time in which to do it.”
    Tenzy had yet to open the book. She knew what
it contained, just as she knew by whose hand the pages had been
written. It was not the tome, however, that had her insides twisted
into a knot. It was something else the Priestess had said: Perhaps a crooked child would sway you.
    “You’ll not have him,” Tenzy said with
determination.
    But how to protect him?
    She surveyed the book, her hand hovering over
it. The crooked child was within those pages, as were the players
in so many other prophecies, some true, others false, but all very
powerful. It was the prophecy of the child, however, that held the
greatest power of all.
    The crooked child had visited Tenzy’s dreams
many times, so many that she had come to think of him as her own.
But he was not. He belonged to everyone, though she had become
selfish in her attempts to claim him. He came to her when she
slept, and so she slept often, but he did not come with the purpose
of bringing her joy; he came to remind her that he was waiting.
    She lifted the cover and slowly turned back
the pages, her emotions fluctuating from fear to comfort and back
again. So many beautiful words were contained within, words of hope
and optimism, but also words of foreboding. The pages fell open to
the stanzas of a song. The Song of Hope. She smiled in spite
of herself. She no longer felt hope, that had long since been
drained from her, but she remembered her mother writing the words
of this song onto the page now opened before her, and realized it
was probably the last time she had felt the very emotion it
celebrated.
    Tenzy paused and gazed at the