He had no idea how long he'd lain there before he became aware that a presence had entered the ship. He reached for his sidearm, but daggers shot up his arm. Gasping like a fish, he panted small, painful breaths, trying to get enough oxygen into his brain to clear the fog. He couldn't remember his own name, but if he didn't extricate himself from this wreckage, he knew he was a dead man.
Sparks crackled in the smoke, giving everything an unearthly, hellish appearance. The rod which had impaled him scraped through his chest, threatening to drown him in his own blood. Without the ability to inflate his lungs, he couldn't even scream.
Crepuscular rays of golden sunlight streamed down through a crack in the ceiling, the entrance to the dreamtime, the place he needed to go. Through that light stepped a beautiful, dark-haired spirit; the rays reflecting off of her skin and giving her an ethereal, translucent appearance as she climbed over the rubble. She kneeled next to him, choosing to assume the form of a creature of legend. The root race? A disembodied sense of awe flitted into his mind and was gone before he had time to contemplate what ‘root race’ meant.
"O-kim-olduğunu yardım etmek için beni buraya gönderdi ise,” the spirit said. “Ben sana zarar demek.”
He tried to focus, but her voice sounded very far away. Darkness clouded his vision as he struggled to get himself free. The hand which touched his cheek and sympathetic look in her tawny-beige eyes was understood. There was no surviving such a wound. This spirit had come to guide him into the dreamtime.
An overwhelming sense of relief flooded his body with warmth and dulled his pain. Not alone. His worst fear had just been alleviated. Despite his pain, he smiled as he placed his fate into the spirit's hands.
The pain was too great to endure. He slid back into the darkness.
Chapter 5
February - 3,390 BC
Earth: Crash site
Ninsianna
Ninsianna followed the scorched vegetation to the shallow valley where the sky canoe had slammed into the earth. The peculiar vessel was three times bigger than her father's house and so shiny it reflected the cloudless blue sky like the reflection off of a pool of water. Terrible black smoke poured out of an oven at the end which faced towards her, but the sky canoe itself did not burn even though it radiated more heat than a midsummer day. Had She-who-is not shown her a vision, Ninsianna might have run away in terror, but within this vessel lay the answer to her prayers. Wearing false bravado like a winter cape, she wiped the smoke out her eyes as she searched for a way inside.
At last she found a jagged tear which stretched from the ground all the way up into the rooftop. She reached to touch the reflective silver surface, but it glowed so hot she was forced to yank back her hand. It was, she hoped, not so hot inside. Squeezing gingerly through the crack so it did not burn her flesh, she groped through some rubble to gain entrance to this temple which had fallen from the stars. Sunlight shone down through the cracked roof like a golden beacon to illuminate a broken, bloody man who struggled to extricate himself from a spear which had pierced his breast.
A cry of horror escaped from Ninsianna's lips. "How can any creature sustain such injuries and still be alive?"
Sharp edges tore at her hands and knees as she scrambled over the debris. The copper stench of blood mixed with smoke filled her nostrils with the scent of impending death. Even in the dim light, she could see his chances were slim.
"How can I heal such a wound?" Ninsianna cried out to the goddess who had sent her. "Mother, I am only an apprentice healer! Even if I was close enough to the village to summon my Mama, by the time I get her back here, it will be far too late to help him!"
She placed one trembling hand upon the man's cheek, praying he didn't see the fear in her eyes. Their eyes met in the murky light, a frightened, dying creature and a stranger.
“She-who-is sent me to help," Ninsianna said. "I mean you no harm."
The man's eyes lost focus and slid shut.
Panic gripped her gut as she placed her fingers at the base of his throat. "No! Please don't die!"
She held her breath, praying the man was still alive. A weak, steady, throb fluttered against her fingertips. Oh, thank the goddess! She still had a little time. She forced her mind to recall the words to the sacred songs.
“Mother of All-That-Is,” Ninsianna chanted in a sing-song voice. “Please guide my hands."
She followed the whisper of intuition which warned her to attend to the most deadly object first. A long, slender spear had pierced his chest and pinned him to the floor. She fumbled with his strange, foreign clothing, using her obsidian blade to cut it away from the spear. She stared at his shattered ribcage with dismay. How could any man be impaled so close to his heart and still have it beat? It appeared that the spear had staunched his blood, but once removed, the man would bleed out in a matter of heartbeats.
Rummaging through her satchel, she pulled out a bone needle and hair from the tail of a wild horse, laying out the objects on the man's trembling abdomen. In her lifetime she had helped her Mama tend to many serious wounds, but never had she treated such an injury without the benefit of Mama's guiding hand. Her preparations ready, she grabbed the shaft and yanked it with all of her might. It made a horrible sucking noise as his flesh clung to the spear which staunched his blood. The stranger moaned as the shaft slid reluctantly from his chest.
Throwing it aside, she kneeled and poked at his wound. Bad. This looked really, really bad. She needed to know where, exactly, she had to stitch. Wincing as she pushed aside his clothing to expose the gaping wound, she pressed two fingers into the hole, past his ribs until she hit a hollow cavity. Ninsianna grimaced. The shaft had pierced his lungs. If she did not stitch this up, the hole would steal his breath and drown the man in his own blood.
Something pulsated against her fingertips. Ninsianna paused, awestruck as the man's heart fluttered through the delicate lung tissue to caress her fingers. No one, not even her mother, had ever touched something as sacred as a man's still-beating heart. Was this what it felt like to be a goddess?
“Thank you, Mother,” Ninsianna whispered in awe.
With each beat the man's life-blood seeped out of the wound. Ninsianna shifted closer and slid on a bloodied, feathered cloak which lay crushed beneath the man's body. Jamming her knee into the feathers, she grabbed her bone needle and rammed it through the tender tissue which covered his lung. Out, in. Out, in. Draw it closed just like the laces of her pampooties. As she stitched, the stranger reopened his eyes.
“An bhfuil tú ag seoladh isteach spiorad chun treoir a thabhairt dom an t-am aisling?” His expression was strangely calm given the precariousness with which he clung to life.
"Don't be afraid," Ninsianna said. "She-who-is sent me here to help you.” Since both of her hands were busy, he kissed his cheek, hoping he would understand the gesture of comfort.
“Ní raibh mé riamh eagla an bháis, ach amháin a chaitheamh ar an saol mar a n-aonar i ndiaidh huile gan maité mar atá mé ag éigean a chaitheamh i mo shaol. Bháis mé sásta go bhfuil spiorad álainn teacht chun gabháil mé isteach sa saol atá romhainn. Beidh mé ar turas lúcháireach le leat."
Chills tingled throughout Ninsianna's body as though she should recognize the language, even though she was certain she had never heard it uttered. The man gave her a look she could only describe as relief before he lost consciousness once again. Ninsianna resumed her stitching. Once she finished, she moved down to extricate his legs. Beneath her feet his feathered cloak caused her feet to slip and robbed her of her footing.
“Darn cloak!" Ninsianna exclaimed as she nearly fell. “How will I free you if I keep slipping on these bloody feathers?"
She yanked out several handfuls trying to move the accursed garment, noting the way they were tightly sewn into the fabric. The man groaned as she ripped out the next double-handful of feathers. She shrieked like a frightened little girl when one side of the 'cloak' suddenly twitched upwards. With a shock, she realized that not only was the garm
ent warm, but it was also attached firmly to the stranger's back.
“You have wings?"
The man opened his eyes. One of the small lightning-sparks illuminated his irises and showed her they were the color of the winter sky. The moment stretched between them as she realized she'd been sent to save a living god. She glanced at the handful of dark feathers she'd just ripped out of his living flesh and placed them back down, as if she could simply reattach them.
“Uhm … I'm sorry?” She gave him her most sheepish expression, the one she used whenever her Mama caught her doing something naughty. "We don't, uhm…"
The man did not appear to be angry at her, but rather confused, as though he wished to figure out why she would both help and hurt him. With a whispered prayer she touched his cheek to convey she hadn't meant to cause him any pain. The spirit-light she could sometimes see revealed he drifted between the world of the living and the dead. A sense of urgency pushed her to work more quickly!
Ninsianna used her hands to accentuate her words as she touched the spot where his legs disappeared beneath the wreckage. “I will pull, but you must pull out your own legs. Okay?"
She felt relieved when the stranger nodded his assent.
“Is ea."
She positioned herself behind his head and threaded her forearms through his armpits. The man groaned in agony and his one good wing trembled as she pulled using every ounce of her strength. Goddess! The man was heavy! Moving his legs of his own accord, he shifted just far enough to free himself from the wreckage before he lost consciousness once again. She rolled him onto his side to gain access to the exit wound on his back and marveled at the reality of the appendages which had gotten in her way.
“Mother! He has the wings of an eagle!"
Protruding from his back was a pair of enormous, muscular wings, blackish-brown to match his hair and streaked at the tips with darker plumage. One wing bent backwards at an ominous angle which signaled a horrific break, but the other wing appeared to be intact except for the handful of feathers she had just ripped out.
“When you sent me a vision of a man with wings," Ninsianna said to the goddess, "I thought you wished to convey this man is blessed by the gods. I had no idea you were being literal!”
Grabbing her needle and thread, she stitched the exit wound where the shaft had come out the other side, and then she moved on to attend to the next most critical injury. Just below the knee joint of his wing, the bone had snapped and part of it stuck though his skin. Ninsianna carefully slid the delicate bone back under the skin and manipulated it until it slid into place. She grabbed the spear she'd ripped earlier from his chest and used it to splint his broken wing. His left wrist was also bent at an unnatural angle, signaling another break.
“It's a good thing you're unconscious," Ninsianna said, "or I do not think you would let me do this to you!”
She braced her feet against the side of the man's chest to gain leverage and rammed his elbow between her knees, yanking his arm until his wrist made a cracking noise. She twisted it until it snapped it back into place, wincing as the bone made a horrible grinding noise.
“Not that you have a choice!"
She grabbed some of the peculiar, colored spiderwebs which hung from the ceiling to bind a splint to his wrist, yelping as one of the spiderwebs bit her fingers, and then moved on to examine the nasty gash in his skull, speaking to him the entire time as she stitched him up to anchor his spirit so he would not pass into the dreamtime. Papa swore it was the intent in a shaman's voice which mattered while Mama insisted it was touch which anchored the badly injured. Ninsianna used both gifts, speaking with no expectation of an answer, the same way she always spoke to She-who-is. At last she had done all she could. The rest was up to him.
“It's an all-day run back to my village," Ninsianna stroked his cheek, "and it will be getting dark soon. I don't wise to leave you alone with your spirit so close to crossing into the next realm. I will stay with you until you are strong.”
The man's skin felt cold and clammy. She pressed her fingers to his neck and noticed his heart beat unevenly and too light. She used a piece of debris to prop his legs up higher than his head so the blood would flow where it was needed just as Mama had taught her. To fend off the death-sleep, you must keep the injured warm. She grabbed the blanket she'd brought with her in her satchel, covered him, and curled against his side to share her warmth.
Exhausted, Ninsianna fell fast asleep.
Chapter 6
Galactic Standard Date: 152,323.02 AE
Earth Orbit: SRN ‘Jamaran’
Lieutenant Kasib
Lt. Kasib
The SRN Jamaran orbited the blue resource planet which Shay'tan (a thousand blessings upon his name) had sent this battle cruiser to secure. Sata'anic Royal Navy Lieutenant Kasib stared at ship's communications console, scanning through the reports which scrolled in from the planet's surface.
General Hudhafah's dark balsam dorsal ridge rose in irritation as he dug his claws into the captain's chair.
“Any sign of that scout ship, Kasib?”
Kasib eyed the reports with his gold-green serpentine eyes.
“There are no energy signatures discernible on the planet except for ours, Sir,” Kasib said. “The Angelic scout ship appears to have been completely destroyed."
Kasib flit out his long forked tongue to taste the air for the pheromone's indicating his commanding officer’s level of irritation. Like any low-ranking male who served in Shay'tan's armies, the lizard-man was hyper-alert to the slightest reddening of his commanding officer's dewlap.
“Good!" General Hudhafah bared his fangs. “The last thing we want is the Alliance knowing what we've found.”
With a genuflection to his forehead, his snout and his heart, Kasib relayed the general's order to resume rolling out annexation of the blue resource planet which had their Emperor so excited.
Shay'tan be praised!
Chapter 7
February - 3,390 BC
Earth: Crash site
Pain … but duller than before. Hadn’t a spirit come to guide him into the dreamtime? He found her soft, warm form nestled into his side, her cheek resting on his bicep as her chest rose and fell in the gentle rhythm of a peaceful, mortal sleep. His lungs hurt like Hades, but he took a deep breath and realized he was still alive. Who was this woman? Was she a spirit or his mate? He touched the long, dark tresses which had fallen across her face and fished a strand out of her lush, full lips, fascinated by its color and its length. He recalled she had kissed him as he had stood at the entrance to the void.
He lifted his arm and found it had been splinted with debris wrapped tightly with fallen bits of wire. Moving his legs to reassure himself he still possessed them, he turned his head to examine his broken wing. It looked bad, but at least the bone no longer stuck out through his skin. Would he ever be able to fly again? That depended upon this planet's gravity. He tried to grab the tidbit of information as it flitted through his mind, something urgent about the planet, but the image departed as fleetingly as it had appeared.
Who was he? What was his name? He couldn't remember. All he knew was that this woman had taken heroic measures to save his life and now she lay curled up beside him in a manner that felt both alien, and yet heart-yearningly familiar. His skin tingled wherever her body came into contact with his. She had covered him with a blanket, but was herself uncovered and shivering. Curling his good wing so as not to wake her, he pulled her closer, wrapping the limb around her like a blanket before allowing himself to drift back to sleep.
* * * * *
“O-kim-hayatını bağışlaması için uygun gördüm.”
He awoke to find the woman kneeling at his side. Her hands accentuated her words as she poured droplets from a water skin onto a rough cloth and dabbed blood off of his skin. He gradually came to understand that she explained to him his injuries. She was beautiful, exotic by the standards of his people with her wavy black hair, olive skin and unu
sual tawny beige eyes. Eyes that seemed … familiar.
Root race flitted through his mind along with a sensation he had just won a wager. Damantia! He grabbed the elusive thought, but it went as quickly as it had appeared. He knew things, but he just couldn't remember them!
He tried to sit up, but the woman pushed him back down, communicating with her hands that she wanted him to remain immobile. He strained to translate, but no part of her language sounded familiar. A mission clawed at his belly, screaming for him to communicate something to somebody in authority, but he couldn't remember what he felt so compelled to finish or who he was supposed to communicate that information to. The spin of the room convinced him to obey.
As the woman worked, every nuance of her behavior gnawed at his subconscious like drunken glee. Why did he find her so fascinating? Was it because he found her attractive? She wore a shapeless beige dress that appeared to be little more than a length of cloth belted around her waist and thrown over one shoulder to barely cover the lush fullness of her breasts. The fabric was crude, as were the implements she used to tend his wounds; the tools of a stone-aged culture.
By gods! How had she saved his life? His lungs hurt, but the dizziness finally subsided enough that he dared attempt to communicate with his savior.
“Who are you?"
The woman smiled. She said something unintelligible in reply.
“Who?" He crossed his hands palms-up in the sign of asking a question. “Are you?" He pointed to her chest.
“Nin-si-anna. Who … are … you?" She repeated, word for word what he'd just asked in a heavily accented voice.
He wracked his brain. Nothing came to mind. Ninsianna asked the same question again. How could he explain to someone who didn't speak his language that he couldn't remember who he was?
“I don't know." He covered his eyes and made a gesture as though something flew out of his head.
Sword of the Gods: The Chosen One (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 3
