Page 31 of Sun Warrior

“Unless you’re not strong enough?” Sora said, her lips lifting.

“I’m strong enough,” O’Bryan said quickly.

“That’s exactly what I thought.” Sora tossed O’Bryan the end of Jaxom’s rope and called back to the group, “We’re almost home. Let’s get out of this rain!”

CHAPTER 8

Dead Eye had been pacing back and forth across the God’s balcony since Dove awakened him just after dawn. She’d felt a shift in the air and detected a subtle scent of smoke. As always, he had been her eyes. As usual, she had been correct—something was happening.

Their world was changing forever.

The city in the clouds that held the Tribe of the Trees was ablaze.

Dead Eye wanted to call together the youngest, healthiest of the Harvesters and race for the burning city to claim it for himself and the People.

A portentous shiver skittered down his spine and Dead Eye looked behind him and up.

The enormous copper statue that was the Reaper God, She Whom the People worshipped, loomed over him. If She stood, the Reaper would tower fifty feet above the ground. Here on Her balcony, She knelt, one hand extended down, beckoning to Her People—the other was raised, holding Her skin-reaping tool, the triple-pointed trident.

She appeared to be everything a God should be: powerful, frightening, and able to mete out justice swiftly and terribly.

Dead Eye met Her lifeless gaze and the strange, portentous feeling subsided.

“Someday they will know the truth—that you are no God but aresimply a statue created by people who have been dust for centuries. You are as dead as they are, as dead as this City.” He turned his back to the statue and continued gazing out at the distant ridge and the ominous clouds that undulated up from the forest as if lifting in time to the beat of sinister drums.

He remained there all day, watching the distant destruction of the city that had filled his dreams for as long as he could remember, listening to the thunder grow ever closer and planning… always planning for his future, Dove’s future, and the future of the People. In spite of their superstitious attachment to a statue, he and Dove would lead them from this spoiled and poisoned City to the beauty and safety of the untainted trees.

But first they must be rid of the Others.

The rain began to fall in earnest several hours before dusk, and as it pelted against the dead metal of the statue he knew that he could be patient no longer. As if Dove could read his mind, the moment Dead Eye made his decision her voice drifted from inside the God’s chamber to wash around him, as welcome and cleansing as the rain.

“Beloved, the God has spoken to me. She commands that I share Her words with Her Champion, so that you may speak them to the People.”

Dead Eye turned from the balcony to the entrance to the Temple and the Chamber of the God, to take in the lovely sight before him.

Dove stood in the center of the chamber, surrounded by the young women she called Attendants, the healthy girls she had recruited to take the place of the God’s Watchers—sick, selfish old women who had tainted the Temple and pretended for generations to be the voice of the God.

Dead Eye had culled the Watchers from the Temple, sparing only young Dove, who had lived her entire sixteen winters pretending to be the God’s Oracle. After the culling, he and Dove were the only People who knew the truth—thattheycontrolled their own fate, because the Reaper God was as dead as the crones he had thrown from Her balcony.

Now Dove stood in the center of her Attendants looking radiant. Like them, she was dressed traditionally: her young, full breasts bared, her skin painted with ornate patterns, always grouped in threes, like the God’s trident. The decoration was both intimidating and pleasing, as Dove had intended. She wore only a long skirt trimmed with human hair of sacrificed Others. He noted with pleasure that Dove’s skirt was also intricately decorated with bright bits of shining things, making her stand out from the others who were more plainly dressed.

She deserves to be swathed in ritual decorations, but my Dove would stand out with or without such luxuries,Dead Eye thought, well satisfied at the sight of his lover.

“Beloved? What is it?” she asked, her smooth brow wrinkling in concern.

“All is well, my Oracle,” Dead Eye assured her. He motioned abruptly, freeing her Attendants from the deep, respectful curtseys they had knelt in the moment he’d appeared at the entrance to the chamber. “Though I would ask that you send Attendants to bring to me the best and strongest of our Hunters and Harvesters. I call for Iron Fist, Stalker, Thunder, Eagle Eye, Digger, Rebel, Steel Heart, Bones, Joker, and Midnight.” Dead Eye ticked off the list he had so carefully compiled during his sleepless night and watchful day.

“Lily, choose a helper and do as your Champion commands.” Dove spoke to the young Attendant who seemed the most eager to please. “Seek out the men and tell them that they are summoned to the Temple.” She clapped her hands together twice and the Attendants scurried from the chamber.

Dead Eye came to her then, taking her elbow in his hand and guiding her through the cavernous room to the section of the God’s chamber they had claimed as their own, using vines, braziers, and stretched hides to separate their living area from the rest of the Temple and to provide the young couple much-needed privacy.

More Attendants curtseyed low to them as they passed, showing Dove the respect she deserved as the God’s Oracle and Dead Eye the deference he required as the God’s Champion. But they straightenedquickly, returning to their work restoring the God’s chamber to its former glory.

Dead Eye acknowledged the women with only a slight nod. They were of no importance to him, except that they made Dove’s life easier—and anything that brought Dove pleasure pleased him as well. But today he had little time even for that, which amused Dove.

“You’re going to the forest and the City in the Trees, aren’t you?”

Dove had turned to him the moment they’d reached the sanctuary of their bedroom, tilting her lovely face up to him. Dead Eye didn’t answer her for a moment. Instead, he drank in her beauty. She wore her nut-brown hair long and free, so that it fell past her slim waist in a soft, shining curtain that did nothing to hide her high, full breasts. Dove’s skin was miraculously smooth, free of pustules or the taint of cracking and shedding. Her full lips curved up in the familiar smile Dead Eye was coming to crave as much as the taste of those lips. Her only flaw was that her eyes were completely missing. Where they should have been there were only two dark, empty pits.