Wizard's Heir (A Bard Without a Star, Book 1) by Michael A. Hooten Read Free Book Online Page B

especially had explained the need
to understand a situation thoroughly before you could affect the outcome. And
this time the goal was crystal clear: beat his rival and win the doe.
    He saw it in a flash that felt
almost like the instinct driving him to battle in the first place: the buck
always used his greater antlers to force Gwydion’s down. In the next round,
Gwydion managed to time it so that he caught the buck’s antlers beneath his,
and found that he was in control. With a twist of his neck, he forced the
great animal to take his own step back.
    The buck bellowed his rage, but
he couldn’t regain dominance. Gwydion timed his hits for maximum force and
control, forcing the other deer back further and further. The buck made one
last rally, trying to regain his superiority, but Gwydion saw it coming, and
instead of simply forcing the buck backwards, he forced the buck’s head down,
twisted his shoulders and flipped the stag onto its back.
    The buck flailed for a moment
before regaining his feet. He looked like he wanted to continue the challenge,
but when Gwydion took a step forward and lowered his head, the buck turned and
walked out of the field, head held high except for the times he turned to make
sure Gwydion wasn’t following him.
    Gwydion thought about it for
just a moment, but then the doe passed upwind from him, and all his battle rage
turned to lust in an instant. He ran to the doe, who turned her tail to him,
and mounted her with glee. The mating was rough and frantic, and just as
suddenly as the lust had filled him, it was gone. He felt himself sliding off
her, feeling almost confused by the suddenness of the last few minutes. Lust,
battle, victory, lust, and then he was just standing there, watching the doe
walk away. He looked for tenderness and found none; a growing hunger made him move
a few feet to a particularly green patch of grass which he munched with
contentment.
    He spent the night and most of
the next day wandering bemusedly, feeling his human mind slipping into a trance
like state while his deer body functioned efficiently and smoothly. He ate
when needed, drank when he found water, and slept when he felt tired. He
encountered no other does, in heat or otherwise, and he was not challenged by
any other animal. He would have felt like a king of the forest, but he was
feeling little at all in the way of emotion. There was only hunger and
exhaustion and fear.
    The sun was descending in the
west, and Gwydion’s senses were heightened for the transition from day to
night, a particularly dangerous time for any animal. He had been trotting
through a thin wood, but a glow to one side caught his eye, and he turned to
see the image of a man floating in a meadow. His deer instincts almost made
him run, but the human part of him shaped the name, Math .
    He trotted to his uncle
timidly, and stood waiting. Math examined him for many long minutes, while
memory and thought returned to Gwydion. Finally Math nodded, and he said, “You
may now return to me, nephew.”
    The woods dissolved, as did his
antlers and hide. He found himself in Math’s throne room, on all fours, trying
to understand his lack of hearing and smell. He shook himself several times,
trying to come to grips not just with his humanity, but also with the lingering
feelings from the last couple of days.
    “Well nephew?” Math asked. “What
did you learn?”
    Gwydion cleared his throat a
few times, and stood up to look his uncle in the face. “Deer are creatures
without thought,” he said. “They live for the moment, and never think about
what is coming except as it relates to their next meal.”
    “And how did you fare?”
    Gwydion thought for a moment. “At
first it was easy to assert my humanity, and to think as a man. But as time
went on, I could not keep that consciousness going, and allowed the instinctive
nature of the beast to overwhelm the rational nature of the man.”
    Math nodded. “Very good. We
are quite different from