Doomstalker by Glen Cook Read Free Book Online Page B

surely were. While she did not feel the prisoner’s pain, she did catch the psychic scent of his fear and distress, the leak-over from his scrambled mind. She did not know how to push it away.
    Kublin seemed to be feeling all that, too.
    Pohsit looked up at them. Her lips pulled back over her teeth in a silent, promising snarl. Kublin inched closer. Marika felt his frightened shiver.
    She did not need to touch the sagan’s mind to know what she was thinking.
    Probuda, Skiljan’s second, beckoned. “Down, pups. There is work to do.” A massive rock of a female, she stood unmoved as pups tumbled about her, eager to be entrusted with something important. For that was what her tone and phrasing had implied. She had spoken as huntress to huntress.
    “Marika. Kublin. You go see Horvat.”
    “Horvat? But —”
    Pobuda’s paw bounced off Marika’s ear. Marika scooted around the prisoner and his tormentors. He was unconscious. She and Kublin awaited recognition at the edge of Wise territory. Receiving a nod from Saettle, they crossed over to the males’ firepit, where Horvat was supervising some sort of expansion project. He was snarling because the hide umbrella, which gathered smoke to send it up a thin pottery flue, was cooked and smoked hard and brittle, and wanted to break rather than bend.
    Marika said, “Horvat, Pobuda told us —”
    “See Bhlase.”
    They found the young male, who had come to the pack only two years earlier. “Ah. Good,” he said. “Come.” He led them to the storage room. “Too dark in there. Kublin. Get a lamp.”
    Marika waited nervously. She had not visited this end of the loghouse since she was too small to know better. All the usual rules were falling...
    Kublin arrived with an oil lamp. Bhlase took it and pushed through the doorskins. It was cold and dark in the storage room. It was more crowded than the loft.
    But it was neat — obsessively neat, reflecting Horvat’s personality. Bhlase moved about, studying this and that. Marika gawked. The male handed the lamp back to Kublin. Then he started piling leather bags and sealed pottery jars into Marika’s arms. “Those go to the firepit.”
    Though irked by his tone, Marika did as she was told. Bhlase followed with a load of his own. He ordered their plunder neatly, set the pups down, gave Kublin and Marika each a mortar and pestle. He settled between them with his legs surrounding a kettle. He drew a knife.
    Marika was astonished. The kettle was copper, the knife iron.
    Bhlase opened one leather bag and used a ceramic spoon to ladle dried, crushed leaves into Marika’s mortar bowl. “Grind that into powder. I’ll need ten more like that.”
    Marika began the dull task. Bhlase turned to Kublin. More, but different, dried, crushed leaves went into his mortar bowl. These gave off a pungent odor immediately. “Ten from you, too, Kublin.”
    Marika recalled that Bhlase had been accepted by Skiljan because of his knowledge of herbs and such, which exceeded that of Pohsit.
    But what were they doing?
    Bhlase had brought several items Marika connected only with cooking. A sieve. A cutting board. A grater. The grater he set into the kettle. He cut the wax seal off one of the jars and removed several wrinkled, almost meth-shaped roots. He grated them into the bowl. A bitter scent rose.
    “That is good enough, Marika.” He took her mortar bowl, dumped it into the sieve, flung the bigger remains into the firepit. They flashed and added a grassy aroma to the thousands of smells haunting the loghouse. “Nine more will do it. How is yours coming, Kublin? Yes. That is fine. Dump it here. Good. Nine more for you.”
    “Are you not scared, Bhlase?” Marika asked. He seemed unreasonably calm.
    “I have been through this before. When I was a pup, nomads besieged our packstead. They are ferocious but not very smart. Kill a few and they will run away till they have eaten their dead.”
    “That is awful.”
    “They are awful.” Bhlase