Maeve Read Online Free

it’ll start tearing up the kaffa and let you get out of sight behind the first rock you can reach. Then you’ve got maybe a chance in fifty getting away alive.”
    â€œWhy not shoot it? You’re armed.”
    â€œHoly Maeve! No, Aleytys.” His face was a study in consternation. “A wounded peithwyr? It wouldn’t stop till the ground itself was shredded. In small pieces.”
    â€œEven if you killed it?”
    â€œPeithwyrn are hard to kill. You’d have to be lucky. Make good an eye shot.” She could feel tension mounting in him. “Where eryr are, the peithwyr haunts.”
    Aleytys shuddered and shifted uneasily in the saddle. “I’ve been able to mind-control predators before.”
    â€œDon’t waste your time.”
    The afternoon deepened slowly. Aleytys dropped into a tired, half-dozing state, lulled into carelessness by the uneventful passage of hours. The flat stone surface stretched away to the horizon with scraggly plants here and there that were a dusty gray-green, hard to separate from the stone. Occasional reptiles scurried away from the feet of the kaffon but no eryr broke the sterile silence of the sky.
    â€œHit the ground!” Gwynnor’s shriek sent her tumbling off the kaffa, diving for a tumbled pile of rocks, disregarding the frantic scrabble of the beast’s feet. A sudden foul stench wafted past on a surge of air driven by great wings. Blackness flowed over her. The kaffa screamed, then silence filled with tearing sounds. She scrambled away. A boulder. She slammed into it. Crawled around it. Peered cautiously back.
    The kaffa was down in a boneless heap, throat torn, blood gouting in a steamy diminishing arc. Stench again. Something struck her shoulder, a numbing blow. Was gone. A scream. Cut off.
    Keeping low, moving with fear-born caution, she peered around the boulder briefly. The other kaffa was down and spouting blood. The peithwyr beat its leathery wings with tremendous strokes, driving its huge hollow-boned body into the air again. It circled over the butchered animals then came plummeting at her, bloody talons reaching.
    She scrambled backwards hastily, pulling at the hem of her tunic to get at her gun.
    The peithwyr dropped like a bomb. Desperately, she drove her body away, still trying to get the gun free.
    The peithwyr dropped, talons glittering in the russet light.
    Pain. Not her throat. Her shoulder. Pain. It thrust her toward the comforting blackness pooling beneath the agony. Her shoulder was on fire. Fire spread outward from the white-hot center where a pumping artery spurted away her strength. Scarcely noticed, wings beat over her then veered off. As she faded, she heard a crunching of bones. The peithwyr crouched dark and ominous, tearing at the kaffa. Her sight blurred. Blackness was warm, the pain distant, a great grinding agony distant … her life spurted away through the torn artery.
    Something prodded at her.
    Amber eyes opened inside her head. “Aleytys!” The contralto voice was familiar … familiar … she didn’t want to know …
    Memory was a flood of agony She wanted to deny it but she had no strength. “Harskari.” Aleyty’s lips moved with the name. “Why?” A cone of red licking out. Killing. Killing my love. Why?
    Black eyes opened. “Freyka!”
    Go away. I don’t want you. I won’t let you … I won’t acknowledge you … I won’t …
    Delicate chimes whispered around her head, delightful butterfly notes singing around the sounds from the gorging peithwyr. The amber eyes altered. A thin, dark face framed in shimmering silver hair formed around them. “Aleytys! Heal yourself. Now, girl. You can rest later.”
    â€œNo.” The word was harsh in her mind through her trembling lips moved with only a breath of sound. She tried to reject the presence, feeling a pain that went far deeper than the simple physical hurt from