Storms of Destiny by A. C. Crispin Read Free Book Online Page A

more entered, half supporting a swaying figure between them. The novice recognized the young woman …
    Narda, a first-year priestess. She’d been a year ahead of Thia throughout their postulancy and novitiate.
    Narda was a pretty young woman with dark eyes, hair the color of winter snow-roses, and a full, womanly figure. Thia did not know her well, but she remembered what an expert cook she’d been while they’d served together in the kitchen.
    Now Narda’s dark eyes looked twice their normal size.
    She was smiling, an ecstatic, wide smile of complete bliss.
    Drugged, Thia realized.
    One of the High Ones threw a handful of dust onto a brazier that was burning near the collapsed bodies of the children, and coils of reddish smoke began eddying up from the coals. Thia pressed herself against the floor, trying to breathe shallowly, lest she lose consciousness from the intoxicating fumes.
    Narda’s Mentor, a High One whose name Thia didn’t know, approached the young priestess, and her smile widened even further as she gazed at his familiar features.
    The chanting, which had subsided to a throbbing back-ground murmur, picked up tempo and grew louder, increasing in intensity until it made Thia’s head pound even worse than the fumes from the smoldering brazier.
    Waves of something began to fill the air. Thia could not see it, could only sense its presence. It was like sensing the place where lightning had struck only moments before … a prickling of the downy hairs on her body, as though some unseen hand had tipped a sacrificial bowl filled with cold, congealed blood and allowed it to engulf her spirit. The novice struggled not to scream aloud in protest against that unseen presence.
    When she glanced through the hole in the parapet again, she saw that the High Ones were stretching Narda out on the huge block of black stone, securing her wrists and ankles to rings embedded in the rock. Narda’s Mentor bent over her and with one fluid motion, tore the priestess’s white robe from neck to ankles, rending it in two. For the first time, Narda’s smile faded; her expression of dreamy contentment vanished.
    The priestess shook her head, her gaze focusing on her Mentor as he stood at her feet, his voice rising above the others in the chant. She shook her head again, then cried out in fear.
    Thia could not see the Mentor’s face, but she was aware, suddenly, that he was Changing.
    Changing …
    At first it was as though his shadow had gathered around
    the outlines of his body, gathered and rippled in the torchlight. The shape of his head altered, grew broader, more domed. His hands … they curled, and ridges of scaled flesh sprouted upward from the backs. The fingers were engulfed, turning to talons like those of a lizard.
    By all that is holy—he is becoming Incarnate!
    Thia knew that Boq’urak could transform Himself into the bodies of his High Priests for brief periods of time, there to work miracles. She knew that from her illicit reading. But to even reveal that she knew of the Incarnation Rite, Master Varn had warned her, would mean her death. To actually see it … she stifled a whimper of utter despair.
    The chanting intensified, but all of the priests had fallen back against the walls, as though they did not want to be too close to the god when He became Incarnate.
    With a muttered growl, the transforming Mentor threw off his robe. He had nearly doubled in size, and was half again as tall as his human height. Tentacles sprouted from his sides, two on each side, flexible tentacles tipped with a sucker at each end. In the depths of each sucker was a viciously curved claw or tooth. His skin darkened, darkened … It was now a smoky violet, now a brownish purple …
    Scales erupted from beneath his skin. A ridge of frilled flesh poked up from his back, ran down to a tail that suddenly extruded, whip-thin. His body seemed to constantly crawl and shift, as though it were somehow fluid, mutable.
    Thia felt her mind reel,