The Whirlwind in the Thorn Tree by S. A. Hunt Read Free Book Online Page A

and wept over what she’d done. Her tears trickled down and filled that great Void, and became the Sea of Dreams, Vur Ukasha, the ocean from where all stories flow.
    “During the battle, a nomad by the name of Ahan Lith, who was the daughter of the daughter of the son of the first woman, Chawah, happened upon a drop of this mixed, tainted blood as it hurtled from the black sky one evening in the emerald wilds. This holy droplet fell into the lake from which Ahan was filling her water-skin. Drinking of it, she was filled with the power of Oramoz and Angr’manu alike.
    “Sitting in the shade of a palm tree, Ahan achieved perfect understanding. Thus the first true enlightened came into being, blessed with the knowledge of the secret workings of the universe.
    “Ahan Lith possessed a righteous soul and bore herself with grace and charity. She was canonized by the clergymen of the religion of Oramoz and became a holywoman, rising into a status of the highest nobility. She married, and begat seven children, almost all of whom continued in their own lives and are detailed in dozens of hidden gospels long lost to time.
    “Their descendants are known as the Etudaen.
    “In time, a certain fungus began to grow by that vaunted lake, drawing life from the waters and swelling with the knowledge and power of the Wolf and of the Dragon. It still grows there, serving as a doorway into true understanding of the self, and bestows the possessor with the ability to alter both space and time. It is called the Acolouthis, and it is the sacred secret of the longevity and prowess of the warriors of Destin, the Gunslingers and the Grievers.”
     
    Jesus Christ. The lady or the tiger, right?
    I tossed it aside and picked up another notebook to be presented with the same sort of fish-eyed madness. Reams and reams of dead tree-flesh littered with the artifacts of a lost world that never existed. The sheer Lovecraftian absurdity of it all made me laugh.
    As I took up my glass of vodka again, I had a race of adrenaline that singed my heart with a tongue of flame and I kicked the box off the table, scattering its contents all over the boring green carpet.
    I got up and shut off the bathwater, and laid in the tub for a while until I had finished the Russian, savoring the feel of my skin tightening from the heat and the cold air on my face.
    When I was done, I dried off, poured another Russian over the sink, and came back to a very cold motel room. Instead of turning up the heat to combat the early autumn chill, I put on a pair of pajama bottoms and a hoodie pullover with the Harper’s Ferry flintlocks embroidered on the back of it. Thus armored, I set to the task of picking up the journals and notebooks and putting them back into the box.
    Under the final notebook was a bronzy little house key, its teeth worn from use.
     
    _______
     
    My father’s house stood back from the road, a dark-eyed sentinel almost invisible in the woods. As I pulled up in the driveway, the headlights of my ancient Mercury Topaz wheeled across the hulking shadow and transformed it into a white two-story plantation house. E. R. Brigham’s green ‘86 Chevy Nova was still sitting where we’d left it this afternoon when Bayard and I had come to fetch my father’s Fiddle material.
    The windows of the car were filmy with dust. I walked up the drive and pointed my cellphone into the backseat. To my relief, no one was sitting there.
    My cellphone’s glow washed over the unseeing eyes of the house. My father had inherited it from his father, who had inherited it from his father. Corinthian columns supported the roof like a Greek temple, screening the face of the building from the outside world like a mask. Their long, tall shadows capered west and tumbled off the end of the porch as I stepped up onto it and pulled the key from my pocket.
    My face fell when I discovered that it didn’t fit in the deadbolt or the doorknob. I used the key on my keyring to open it (given to me by