Deathless by Scott Prussing Read Free Book Online Page B

even taller than Rave, with a lean body only slightly bent from more than five hundred years of living. He wore handmade buckskin clothes, the same as he had worn when he was younger—unlike many of his folk, he had never switched to more modern garb. His long hair was dark gray, the color of lead, with streaks of the characteristic Maston copper still visible in places.
    “ Greetings, young Rave,” he said. “And Leesa, it is always a pleasure to see you, my dear.” He stepped back from the doorway. “Come in, come in.”
    Leesa still had not gotten used to hearing Rave called “young Rave,” since he was more than a century and a half old, but that’s how Balin always referred to him. Balin had been Rave’s teacher when Rave was a child, and the “young Rave” appellation had remained with him all these years.
    The inside of the cabin was Spartan. The entire place was one room, six paces wide and ten paces long, furnished with simple, handmade wooden furniture. A rectangular dining table with a split log bench on either side filled most of one end of the cabin, and a buckskin sleeping mat stuffed with straw lay upon the plank floor at the other end. In the middle of the room lay a brown bearskin rug so old the fur had worn away down to the skin in several places. Naturally, there was no television, radio, or refrigerator anywhere to be seen.
    A small fire popped and crackled in a stone fireplace built into the far wall, adding its flickering light to the illumination cast by four tallow candles high on the walls. Volkaanes did not need fireplaces for warmth—their inner fire kept them warm no matter what the temperature—but they often used fires for cooking and light. If necessary, their inner heat could even be used for cooking, but it was usually simpler and more efficient to put something over the fire. A black metal cooking pot hung over the fire right now and Leesa could smell a stew of some kind bubbling inside it. Four crude wooden chairs formed a half circle in front of the fireplace—volkaanes enjoyed watching any kind of fire flicker and burn.
    “ Sit down, please,” Balin said. “Can I get you something to drink? Water? Mead?”
    Leesa remembered how good Balin’s mead tasted, but the stuff was really strong, so she opted for water. Besides, Balin got his water from a natural spring out back and it was pretty tasty in its own right. Rave also asked for water, so Balin crossed to the table and poured two pewter mugs of water from a big ceramic jug.
    While Balin was getting their water, Leesa pulled off her hat and gloves and shoved them into the pockets of her parka, then peeled off her jacket and handed it to Rave, who hung it on a wooden peg in the wall by the door. She settled into one of the chairs in front of the fire. This close to the flames, the smell of Balin’s stew was even more delicious.
    Balin handed a mug of water to Leesa and one to Rave. Rave took the chair on her left, and Balin sat down to her right. With the fire in front of her and a volkaane on either side, Leesa could not imagine any better place to be on a cold winter evening. And what would be coming soon would warm her up even better—and she wasn’t thinking about the stew….

 
     
    7. A CLOSE CALL
     
    “ S o, what would you two like to do first?” Balin asked. “Do you want some dinner, or would you rather get right to Rave’s practice with Rammugul ?”
    Rammugul was an almost forgotten volkaane technique for temporarily extinguishing their inner fire. Balin had seen it used once when he was much younger to save the life of a pregnant volkaane when something had gone awry during childbirth . When Leesa and Rave had come to him and asked if there was some way they could safely kiss, Balin had remembered the incident. He had searched through old volkaane lore until he discovered instructions on the technique. With Balin’s help, Rave had been practicing Rammugul for more than a month now.
    Balin insisted