Her Reaper's Arms, Charlotte Boyett-Compo [world best books to read .TXT] 📗

Abyss!”

Smoke rose up in spiraling columns to burn his eyes. It clogged his nostrils, was

sucked down his throat to gag and choke him. Long before the first lick of the flames

touched his body, his lungs were seared and he was gasping for breath. The pain leapt

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

up his legs—the fabric of his robe going up with a whump of sound. He tried not to

scream as the agony ate at him but he was not that strong a man.

He writhed in the flames as the burning torment moved up his chest and flicked at

the underside of his chin. The reverberation of his howls echoed over the courtyard as

he struggled wildly and in vain to break free of the chains binding him to the upright.

But as the flames fanned across his face, the sunlit day grew dark, forbidding as

gunmetal gray clouds came out of nowhere to block the sun. The air grew chill. The

wind whipped the flames, helping them to consume him. A mighty rhythmic whomping

began and vaguely he heard the people screaming. He could no longer see for the fire

had taken his vision but in the periphery of his anguish, he thought he heard the

thunder of running feet. Lightning zinged across the heavens and rain began cascading

down in thick sheets, putting out the flames, turning the ground beneath his ruined

body to a smoldering pile of steaming ashes.

He felt his arms falling away from the chains, felt his body being lifted. Cold wind

flowed over and around him.

In the arms of the Gatherer, he thought as he soared through the air to the

accompaniment of mighty flapping wings.

Pain engulfed him from head to toe. It was an agony that not even the chill streams

of air could assuage. He felt the agony all the way to his bones and when he took his

last breath, he drew that fierce torment down into his very soul.

If he had thought the pain of his death had been bad, the pain of his rebirth was a

thousand times worse. That pain would last him through eternity.

In his nightmares he would remember the feel of rough ground beneath him as he

was lain down, his ravaged body screaming in protest though he no longer had vocal

cords with which to make sound. He would remember the taste of something thick and

cloying trickling down his gullet, remember swallowing convulsively as a scaly hand

massaged the charred flesh of his throat. He would remember being turned to his belly

and the godawful agony that had come after his back had been slit open.

Overwhelming anguish, staggering agony had invaded his body and what had come

from that invasion of his being would forever be his rebirthright.

Though he would not remember what had happened to him after the Transference

of the Revenant Worm—the parasite that would give him the strength and longevity of

ten men and heretical abilities beyond his ability to imagine—he would remember the

face of the white-haired hag who had gazed down at him with a snaggle-toothed grin

when he could see once more.

“You have given me your seed, now reap the benefits I will bestow upon you!”

He could not move as She pressed Her odorous mouth to his. The feel of Her slimy

tongue thrusting past his lips had sickened him as Her hands had roamed over his

body, touching him in places he found repellent.

“You are Mine, boy and you always will be! I will have you as I desire you to be!”

She had stated and then he was once more flying through the air. Looking up, he had

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Her Reaper’s Arms

seen a huge creature with bright copper scales that glistened under the glow of the

moon, its wings rising and lowering with a soft, pounding sound.

He would never know where She had taken him or how long She had held him

there. When next he was fully aware, he was lying in a strange room on a strange world

with three unknown men hovering over him. His burned flesh was whole again except

for the myriad scars that were testament to his torture.

“Welcome to the Citadel, milord,” the tallest man said. “We are pleased you have

joined us.”

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Chapter One

Armistenky Territory, 3473

Reaper 2-I-C Bevyn Coure hated remembering how he’d been introduced into

death. For days afterward he would be moody and bleak, his eyes filled with

alternating strata of rage and despair. When he could sleep, his dreams would be filled

with swirling smoke, the odor of burning flesh, the residual pain still carried deep

within his consciousness. He would wake sweating profusely—as though still trapped

in the heat of the conflagration—and his throat would be parched, his lungs feeling

seared. When he was forced to relive that horrendous day, his flesh crawled, his body

shuddered, his belly ached, and today was such a day.

The Cherchocreechi medicine man raised his buckskin-clad arms skyward, the

fringe on his sleeves waving in the wind, and called out to the Great Spirit to look with

favor upon the warrior who had passed from this world into the Land of the Ghosts.

Chanting the merits of the deceased warrior, the didanawisgi bid He Who Listens and

She Who Waits to take into account the good things the dead man had accomplished

and to overlook that which did not please Those Who Judge.

Beneath the scaffolding upon which the warrior had been laid, his family and

friends piled oak branches and bundles of sweet grass as the didanawisgi continued his

recitation of the warrior’s glories. As the People worked, they softly sang the burial

song that would hasten their loved one on his way. Wrapped securely in a gaily

decorated blanket tied with rope, the feet of the warrior faced south where his journey

would begin. Around him were his most prized possessions, which would accompany

him into the afterlife.

Standing apart from the mourners, Bevyn marveled at the mix of religious beliefs

that had been incorporated into the Cherchocreechi tribe’s rituals. He knew at one time

there had been four distinct tribes but the Burning War, disease and myriad other

calamities had struck to devastate the People until only a hundred or