Wild Blood (Book 7) by Anne Logston Read Free Book Online Page A

shouldn’t do that,” he whispered.
    “No tradition says you must be left to suffer,” Lahti whispered back. “Rest now until Dusk returns.”
    Val sighed and relaxed, his head cradled on Lahti’s lap, for the moment as at peace from his desire as he was from his dizziness and nausea. So skilled already, her gift, although—or perhaps because—she still ran with the child-pack. There were always plenty of bruises, scrapes, and even broken bones for her to practice on, plus the occasional more seriously wounded animal. Her gift of healing had shown itself so early that Dusk had perforce been training her in its use for years. Now he was teaching her the use of herbs and other materials to supplement her natural gift.
    Healing—the most welcome of all the old gifts. Nobody saw in Lahti’s gift, in her very flesh, an unpleasant reminder of the devastation of their world. But even the children had run, at first, from Val’s gift of fire.
    And some of his own people—or as much his own people as they could ever be—argued even now to deny him his most fundamental right, his passage into adulthood. Would he be more acceptable, more harmless to them if he could somehow be frozen in childhood? But there was no holding back the change of seasons of his body; the Mother Forest had come months ago in a dream of Lahti to waken his flesh, as She came to all children in their time. Only the doubts of some of the elders in Inner Heart—surely it could not be his true waking dream, not when he was hardly more than a decade and a half old!—had prevented his passage ritual from being conducted immediately. But his body knew beyond any doubt that he was done with childhood.
    And just as he’d always felt the need to run twice as fast, climb twice as high, shoot twice as far as any of the rest of the child-pack, he’d been doubly painstaking in his observance of the preparations for his passage. Most young hunters made the bowl for their passage potion from the skull of a deer killed in an ordinary hunt; Val had set out alone with only spear and dagger to kill one of the fierce boars that roamed the Heartwood, and he’d succeeded. He’d prepared the bowl with his own hands, and the meat was likely even now roasting over fires in Inner Heart. He’d traded dearly for the finest, sweetest oil for his purification and had bathed with sweet-smelling herbs twice each day during his passage instead of the required once. Despite her station as the Eldest of the clan, his heart-mother Rowan had chosen the finest, softest hides and taken the time to tan, dye, and bead his ceremonial jerkin and trousers herself, and Val had brought his finest bow and one of the boar’s great curled tusks to leave as his offering to the Mother Forest. Val had fasted for four days instead of the required three, foregoing even the permitted herbal teas. None of the clan elders could fault his preparation, at least. What more could they possibly ask of him? How could they dream of denying him? The sudden surge of anger at that thought surprised Val with its intensity.
    Perhaps a frown furrowed his brow. Lahti smoothed her hand gently over his forehead, and Val opened his eyes to her smile.
    “Dusk is returning,” she said. “He must have spoken successfully on your behalf. I can smell your dreaming potion in the bowl he carries.”
    Val sat up, too fast; his head swam again and he sank back to the furs. Mysteriously Lahti had vanished; this time it was Dusk whose arm supported him. The Gifted One’s face was drawn with concern.
    “Come,” he said. “Can you walk? We should hurry. The sun is setting.”
    “What?” The world swam around Val again. Dusk’s smooth shoulders were strong under his arm, the scent of the potion strange and heady. Then the scattered stone slabs of the Forest Altars were around them, and Val could feel the sun-warmed hardness of stone under the fur on which he lay like an offering.
    Suddenly, despite the Forest Altars