B007IIXYQY EBOK by Donna Gillespie Page B

labored, not yet believing the struggle was done.
    She edged toward him and almost humbly knelt down. The huge nostrils that moments ago grabbed at air as if with a strong fist now reached for it with a slack hand.
    One fluttery breath eased out and he took no more.
    I killed. Earth will collect in an empty skull where once a mind had been. A body carefully tended all the days of his life is set by me on a course of rot. A spirit is ripped from its housing and set adrift. However commonly it is done, still it is an awesome part to take.
    The wind all day had been still, but now it rose purposefully, rushing through the boughs like swiftly running water. She sensed the nearness of Wodan, keeper of souls, and above him, all-enveloping Fria, setting the wind.
    Was this kill your gift? she asked the grove. The wind surged harder until it was a roaring torrent and she heard a whispered yes in the wild dance of green above.
    And then a passage was flung open to dreams she had had many times, of battle and the sword. In one, she stood before a grave mound by moonlight. Her head was bowed, and she touched white lips to the cold steel of a sword encrusted with mold, and she knew it was Baldemar’s. In another she stood armed as a warrior on the palisade of a fort, the enemies of all their lives arrayed before her, the remnants of her people behind her, waiting for doom. The visions unsettled her and she forced them from her mind.
    At last she rose, and set about searching for small round stones to pile on the corpse. The warrior was enemy spirit now, and she must prevent his ghost from stalking the villages. After a short struggle she removed the spear from his chest. It was family treasure and must be preserved, for with it she had taken her first enemy. Then she cut a lock of his hair for use as an amulet. Finally she set about stripping the body. She found strange things.
    She took first his hunting knife. But the belt in which it had been sheathed made her pause. It had odd signs carved into it, and they were not runes. From his tunic she took a moist sponge and a rolled sheet of something thin as a leaf with more of these strange signs written over a curious drawing of radiating weblike lines. But she had no time to puzzle over these things. From beyond the grove she heard the distant thunder of cattle driven off and women’s screams. The Hermundures were striking on every side. Athelinda would be half mad from fear for her safety. Quickly she put all she found into her gamebag.
    She heard the crackle of leaves behind her.
    She turned and saw Hylda, most ancient of the Ash Priestesses, approaching in dreamy silence. Her mouth was set in a simple line, revealing as much as a toad’s. The wind kept her silver hair in ghostly motion. Her skin was the color of a hazelnut; her eyes were like a deer’s, liquid and mournful. The wind tugged at her clothes; she was like some fragile autumn leaf no longer getting nourishment from the tree, locked in a last struggle with the wind that tried to tear it from its twig. She held a torch in one hand.
    “Let the fire cleanse!” Her voice was one Auriane would expect of a dwarf, sweet and high.
    Auriane watched numbly, unable to speak. Hylda brushed the torch so close past Auriane’s face she nearly singed her hair. Then the old priestess walked nine times round the body, humming all the while, passing the fire close over the corpse. She stopped, studying the body, and Auriane knew she saw ruptures in the world about in the angle of an arm, the contortion of the trunk.
    “He died with open eyes,” Hylda said finally, nodding knowingly. “It is great evil. It means the dead watch us.” The old woman gestured delicately. “It means an enemy rises from within.”
    She looked sharply at Auriane. “When this man broke into my grove, he became all enemies, even those who rise from within. And you, Auriane, are his slayer.”
    Hylda’s eyes seemed to stare inward as she solemnly touched her