Bloodwalk by James P. Davis Read Free Book Online

trembled as she placed one sandaled foot within its rings.
    She had no chance to pray or meditate, or even to draw breath before she screamed in shock and pain. Sameska was thrown to the center of the circle as power flared around her, pulling her down and squeezing her mind. Torn free of her weak skull, her consciousness was sent beyond the temple, beyond her pain-wracked body. She fought feebly, attempting to wrest control by mere reflex, before giving in to the invisible thread of magic that wrapped itself about her spectral form.
    Never had Savras been so forceful. He had been silent so long, had withheld his guidance and voice. Sameska had been as blind as the common people who looked to her for protection and truth.
    I’m being tested, she thought. This is a test and I must pass, I must be vigilant.
    Again she was thrust into the Qurth, flying through its perversions of nature, cursed so long ago by a Calishite sorcerer. His magic had survived centuries, winding its way into the soil and the roots, corrupting those that fed there. His curse was drawn into the forest’s green embrace time and again to leave its lasting taint.
    Miles sped by in moments, and as they did, she saw flashes of other places. Visions blurry and clear at once entered her traveling mind. The forest speeding by her was her present, but the fleeting images that appeared were the past. That same awareness one has in dreams told her she was seeing places and events that were already written in recent history. At one time, long ago, she might have been comforted by those things that were done and unchangeable, but the horror and fear she felt as she watched the unfolding scenes in her unblinking sight made her brutally aware of her mistakes and helplessness.
    Dark ships gathered on a reddened sea. The gentle shores near the peaceful town of Logfell suffered a tide of plague and terror. Sameska felt a distant connection to her screaming body, but could hear nothing and saw only the blood, felt the press of bodies against her invisible form as she became part of what was shown to her. Though she could not touch what was no longer physical, the emotions in that place were a tangible mesh of accusation and betrayal. An aching stress infected her, catching her up in its urgent rush and soundless clawing.
    She watched lives fade away, replaced with something else, something driven by passionless need. Something dark that pulsed and burned, leaving her numb and disoriented. Her vision moved and she stood on the edge of a clearing, looking into a bowl-like depression in the forest.
    The ground was covered in fragments of worked stone, the ruins of an ancient place that she knew without knowing as dim familiarity blended with vague memory. The once-large city existed here as an outline of fallen walls, grown over with thick vines and the old roots of trees. Its only significant feature was a single tower untouched by time or weather. Sameska knew she saw a place of legend and myth, a tale she’d been told as a child and a story some said was as old as the Qurth itself.
    The ruins of Jhareat and the tower that survived its fall.
    At its base was a woman in red, a stark contrast to the dark greens and heavy grays around her. Sameska was mesmerized by the woman’s stare, though she felt naked and humbled under its scrutiny. Then she realized the woman was looking directly at her, or at least seemed to be. Something else was moving in the forest behind Sameska’s hovering, spiritlike form.
    A muted pulse hummed in the air around her, followed by palpable heat that she knew could only be a construct of her mind. She imagined her body, chilled on the cold stone floor in the rune circle. The pulse grew stronger and closer, pushing through the undergrowth, heedless of thorns and razor vines. Sameska could not see them, yet in great numbers they arrived, out of sight, unbreathing, joining her in the long gaze of the woman in red.
    The heat became nearly unbearable,