Free Blade Kin by David Farland Page B

he could almost make out the planets that circled them, he thought, if only he could lean a little closer.
    Tull realized that Chaa was touching him above the navel, but below the sternum, stroking him gently in an arc only two inches wide. He found the sensation very soothing, the way a cat must feel lulled when you rub between its ears, and Tull closed his eyes, relished the sensation of touch.
    “I will tell you a story,” Chaa said, stroking Tull above the stomach, “about a man who lived long ago, and even though you close your eyes, I want you to watch the ceiling, the hole in the ceiling, where only darkness streams through.”
    Chaa’s voice seemed to have become muted, as if he were in a forest. Tull’s tongue was thick in his mouth, and he idly wished that he could pull it out, lay it beside him in the dirt until they were done, and then put it back.
    “Long ago,” Chaa said, “before the wind learned how to breathe or before the sun learned how to laugh, or before the first human was trained at the hands of a Neanderthal how to throw a spear, there was a vast plain where bison roamed beneath blue skies, and a man lived upon this plain.”
    Tull had to force himself to concentrate as Chaa spoke, and he found that his eyelids had grown heavy. He tried to open them, but they were so heavy, and he wondered if Chaa had set stones upon his eyes to keep them closed.
    Tull could not rouse the strength to open his eyes, but he looked to the darkness streaming in from the ceiling. He saw it now, a hole with darkness streaming through, only it had moved to the side. He let his head flop to his right, and he stared at the hole.
    “The man who lived on this plain found a bear’s den one day, a den so large that he could not walk around it to guard it, and he feared any bear that could dig such a hole—he feared that the bear would come running out at any moment, and he decided to guard that hole, the hollow of his soul, and slay any bear that tried to leave. The man’s name was Man of Peace, and he had twenty-one children, and all of them were like him, made of lightning, and they danced around the great hole, keeping the bear inside.”
    Tull could hear something in his head, trudging about. He opened his mouth, and lights came streaming out in ribbons of canary and vermilion.
    Chaa kept stroking Tull’s stomach, and he said roughly, “These twenty-one children are called the Lightnings of the Soul, and they dance over the surface of the hollow of your soul, and keep the darkness from streaming out.”
    Tull looked at the dark hole. Lightning danced across the surface on tiny feet. The threads of lightning were blue and thin as a willow switch, but incredibly long. They did a slow melodic dance, waving, weaving patterns over the darkness.
    “One day, Man of Peace had a dream,” Chaa said. “He dreamed that he needed help, he dreamed that he wanted something desperately, and do you know what it was?”
    “Help,” Tull said. He could feel his body sinking, sinking into the floor. I am only made of mud, he thought, and that is why I must sink down into the mud of the earth.
    Chaa kept stroking above Tull’s navel, digging his fingernails into the hollow just beneath his ribs, and Tull suddenly understood that he had not been stroking at all, but that Chaa had really wanted to dig something out of there. Something stuck under the flesh, and Chaa was digging a hole with his fingernail.
    “Yes, Man of Peace wanted help,” Chaa whispered. “For Man of Peace feared the Slave Lords of Craal. He had gone into their country to hunt for sea serpents, and while he was there he had killed some soldiers and a sorcerer. So, what do you think he did?”
    Tull wondered for a moment before he answered, “Gah.”
    “Man of Peace planted the seed of a tree on a black hill, and in only moments the tree began to grow.”
    Tull felt something enter him, a sharp pain in his abdomen. He looked down, and just above his abdomen on