Read Online Spider Wars: Book Three of the Black Bead Chronicles by J.D. Lakey - Free Book Online Page B

asked pointedly.
    “ That’s not fair…”
    “ What’s that? How many?
One? Exactly right. You win the prize,” Connor crowed softly,
careful to keep his doubts out of Ramhorn’s ears. “She didn’t
predict the first one, the one that wiped out the herds in the high
meadows and killed Brathum and his patrol,” he pointed out.
Cheobawn flinched at the reminder and looked away to stare up at the
snow-covered Dragon’s Spine.
    She missed Brathum. She
missed his flute in the evening symphonies and his voice in the
Temple choir. His patrol had not returned that day, nor for any of
the days that followed. When the winds finally eased, a second patrol
had gone searching. They had returned with a half dozen omehs tied to
the saddle of the Alpha who led them, the bodies left where they had
fallen as was fitting for a warrior of the domes. What the mountain
took, it kept, the saying went. Brathum’s omeh hung in the Hall of
Heroes along with a thousand other honor necklaces, a grim reminder
to any who had the courage to brave the ghosts that haunted that
corner of the Temple that life was not a gift freely given by the
goddesses.
    Cheobawn shook those morbid
thoughts out of her brain. Truth be told, she had shoved the memory
of those hard times into a dark corner of her mind and had no desire
to bring them back out into the light.
    Yet doubt plagued her.
Cheobawn tried to think back. When had Herd Mother begun to complain
about the ice demons? Locked in the heart of winter, autumn seemed so
long ago. Before the despair of Megan and Tam going into the Temple.
Before the first snow, certainly, but how soon before? Fall had
started out mild, days packed with hunting forays and harvest
celebrations, the crisp night skies clear and full of stars, the
frenetic activity of the dome winding down with the last of the
harvests almost in sight. It was so hard to remember the chain of
events; the shifting, treacherous winds, the ragged wisps of clouds
that were the first innocent harbingers of the coming storm, the
panic in the Elders as the storm seemed to rise out of nowhere and
turn the world into white chaos.
    Sitting on the top of the
stairs of the sleep level in the Coven’s apartments, she had
watched the continuous parade of Elders down Mora’s hall, all of
them bearing news of one disaster after the other. Animals lost.
People lost trying to save them. Had she known it was coming and
refused to hear the warnings? Was it her own ignorance that had
killed Brathum?
    “ Cheobawn.” Connor's
voice broke into her thoughts. “You didn’t know, right?”
    “ I, uh,” she tried to
find the words that were the closest to the truth. “It was so ….”
The words got stuck in her throat.
    “ By all that is holy!”
Connor hissed, leaning in close, alarm in his voice. “Tell me you
did not know about the first storm, I beg you.” She looked at him,
feeling sick. He paled, horror dawning behind his eyes. She started
to feel cross with him. Now? Now he asked, after it was too late? If
he could think this about her then so too could a dozen other people
who knew the true extent of her psi abilities. Would they all come to
hate her for this lapse?
    “ I don’t know, OK?”
she snapped, glaring at him. “Maybe. It didn’t make any sense,
then. It wasn’t like Herd Mother said Ooh , look out, here
comes the worst storm ever in all the recorded history of the domes, ”
Cheobawn hissed through clenched teeth. “She was saying crazy
things about demons in the sky and I didn’t know what that meant. I
still don’t. Not really.”
    “ Is that why you stopped
using the map?” Connor asked, the question a damning accusation.
“You screwed up so you just stopped trying?”
    He couldn’t have hurt her
more than if he had stabbed her in the heart. Just for moment, she
forgot to shield her thoughts from the ambient. It was a stupid
mistake. One that added weight to Connor’s assertion that she might
be losing control of her gift.