An Abyss of Light (The Light Trilogy) by Kathleen M. O'Neal Read Free Book Online

Yeshwah and Sinlayzan has been murdered! Here, this very day! If He ever existed.” Her heart pounded, listening to herself. Did she believe that? Had the past seventy-two hours trampled her faith to nothingness?
    Tears welled in the old man’s hard eyes. “Do you know that this torture isn’t the greatest horror to the old people who still believe?” He waved a hand at the sweltering square scented with carnage. “No, this passes. The greatest horror is the death of God in the souls of the young. I can endure holocaust, but you losing your faith breaks my heart.” He clutched the fabric over his chest.
    Rachel didn’t answer. Ten feet away, a young girl, perhaps ten, wailed, a pathetically soft and shrill sound. She stood and gripped the feet of her dead brother, trying to drag him to the growing pile of corpses in the far corner of the square. The poor child must have died sometime that morning, for his body had begun to swell miserably in the searing heat. “Move?” the girl begged a cluster of people blocking the way. “Please! I’m not very strong and I have to—”
    “Go the other way round. We’re too tired to move.” A big man waved a weak hand.
    She struggled to comply, dragging her brother three feet in the opposite direction. But no one there would move either. All paths stood closed. Finally, in defeat, she dropped back to the ground and buried her face in her brother’s dirty shirt to muffle her sobs.
    “Yis … yisgadal ve’yiskadash sh’mey rabbo,” Rachel murmured the beginning of the prayer of death. No one really knew for certain what the ancient words meant anymore. Yet still, they comforted.
    Beside her, Talo bowed his head. Tears dripped from his long nose to glisten in his gray beard. “Do you … do you say it for the boy? Or for all of us?”
    Rachel stared absently. How could he have so much water left after so many days of thirst? It didn’t seem possible. Her own tears had dried up long ago.
    “They’re going to slaughter us,” he cried. “You know it too, don’t you?”
    “Everyone knows it.”
    “We must do something. We can’t just let them kill us. What can we do?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “We have to do something!”
    “Like what? Do you want to try and climb the walls? In our weakened condition and against armed guards who can kill a hundred with a single sweep of their guns?”
    “I won’t just sit here and let them …” He blinked back his tears, clamping his jaw to steady it. “I’m going to try. It’s better to die from a rifle than endure this slow agony. We’re not …”
    His words were cut short by the hiss of a samael, one of the ships of the planetary marines. The black ovoid shape swooped out of the heavens to float ominously over the square, watching. Against the deepening blue of the sky, it seemed a gigantic hovering turtle. Hatred smothered Rachel. Such a strange contrast: The herders and their rickety carts in the streets and this monstrous device of technology. Horeb had never known such science until the coming of the Mashiah. It remained his private reserve.
    “Do you think he’s in there?” Talo asked, hope widening his eyes. “The Mashiah. Do you—”
    “What does it matter?”
    “Maybe he thinks we’ve suffered enough and will let us go. Maybe he’s come to—”
    Rachel laughed bitterly. “You think God’s sent him to save us?”
    “Yes … yes, that’s it. God has finally seen our agony and—”
    “Even God turns his head today, Talo. Even God. You’ll see.”
    “It’s not true!” he shouted angrily, leaning menacingly close. “We’re his children. He loves us!” But he sounded like he struggled to convince himself more than her.
    Rachel’s attention shifted. She squinted at the guards. They’d changed positions. Instead of walking the walls, they stood massed at the far corner. Receiving orders to do what? Behind them, the spires of the mountains shimmered in the heat, the fires of sunset turning them a