The Broken God by David Zindell Read Free Book Online

infinitely wise.
    'Danlo, Danlo.' The owl turned his head again, and there was a shimmer of starlight off his eyes. And Danlo suddenly beheld a part of the circle of halla: the World-soul did not intend for him to join the Patwin tribe, nor any other tribe of the islands to the west. Who was he to bear the taint of shaida to his uncles and cousins? No, he would not burden his people with such unspeakable sorrows. No matter how badly he needed to hear the whole Song of Life, his future and his fate did not lie in that direction.
    I must journey east, he thought. I must go to the Unreal City alone.
    Somehow he must make the impossible journey to the city called Neverness. And someday, to the stars. If the stars really were fusion fires burning in the night, they were part of a vast, larger world that must know halla, too.
    To Ahira, he solemnly bowed his head. 'Mi alasharetha,' Danlo said, praying for that part of himself that had died. 'Shantih.'
    Then he turned his back to the wind and wept for a long time.

CHAPTER TWO
Danlo the Wild
The organism is a theory of its environment.
    – Walter Wiener, Holocaust Century Ecologist
    It took Danlo nine days to prepare for his journey. Five days he spent in his snowhut, recovering from his cutting. He begrudged every day of it because he knew that the sledding across the eastern ice would be dangerous and long. According to Soli's stories, the Unreal City lay at least forty days away – perhaps more. Since it was already 82nd day in deep winter, he couldn't hope to reach the City until the middle of midwinter spring. And midwinter spring was the worst season for travel. Who could say when a fierce sarsara, the Serpent's Breath, would blow in from the north, heralding many days of blizzard? If the storms delayed his crossing too long, he might be stranded far out on the Starnbergersee when false winter's hot sun came out and melted the sea ice. And then he and his dogs would die. No, he thought, he must find the City long before then.
    And so, when he deemed himself healed, he went out to hunt shagshay. Skiing through the valleys below Kweitkel was now very painful, since every push and glide caused his membrum to chafe against the inside of his trousers. Pissing could be an agony. The air stung the exposed red tip of his membrum whenever he paused to empty himself. Even so he hunted diligently and often because he needed a lot of meat. (Ice fishing through a hole in the stream's ice would have been an easier source of food, but he found that the fatfish were not running that year.) He cut the meat and scant blubber into rations; he sealed the rich blood into waterproof skins; he entered the cave and raided the winter barrels of baldo nuts. Into his sled went carefully measured packets of food. Into his sled, he carefully stowed his oilstone, sleeping furs, bag of flints, and bear spear. And, of course, his long, barbed whalebone harpoon. The dogs could pull only so much weight. Somewhere to the east they would finish the last of the food, and he would use the harpoon to hunt seals. On the morning of his departure he faced the first of many hard decisions: what to do with the dogs? He would need only seven dogs to pull the sled: Bodi, Luyu, Kono, Siegfried, Noe, Atal, and his best friend, Jiro. The others, the dogs of Wicent and Jaywe, and the other families of the tribe, he would have to let loose. Or kill. After he had loaded his sled, he paused to look at the dogs staked out near their snow dens at the front of the cave. There were fifty-nine of them, and they were watching him with their pale blue eyes, wagging their tales and whining. In truth, he knew it was his duty to kill them, for how would they live without men to get their food and comfort them when they were sick or lonely? The dogs would flee barking into the forest, and they would pack and try to hunt. The wolves, however, were better hunters than the dogs; the silent wolves would track and circle them, and they would