Her
thoughts lingered on the vision of the nest of monsters being incubated in the
nursery somewhere beneath them. She had
listened intently to the report Leitho and the King had given in the council
and had picked up on the horror and revulsion in their words and
demeanors. They had spoken of King
Meldh's experience with similar inhuman beasts in his time and she thought of
the nightmare reality that these monsters were here already, here in her time
and in her world - in truth just miles away.
Fear
and loathing started to inch their way into her thoughts and unconsciously she
stopped repeating the Queen's chant while she remembered what the King had said
and in her imagination she pictured the reptilian-like offspring of human mothers. She shuddered in revulsion at the vision of
beasts with human intelligence, all under the control of the Nameless
Ones. They were creatures born of human
mothers but designed to destroy humanity.
Her
thoughts drifted to the stories she'd heard about the altar and the hideous
rites of darkness and violence the Valkea had orchestrated there. If something went wrong with their plans and
if the wild throngs of the enemy overwhelmed her escort, she might find herself
facing the bite of a sacrificial blade and the ultimate profanity of
cannibalism after her death!
Carra's
fear grew and she could no longer see the beauty in the landscape. Instead, the rugged geometry of the
mountainous country became wild and dangerous.
The high ground to the right seemed to grow steeper, rockier and nearer
until it crowded the road so they were now enveloped in menacing shadows. The cliff face seemed to squeeze them toward
the river, which ran ten to fifteen feet below the level of the road in this
place and coursed dangerously over jagged rocks. Here in the shade of the cliff, there was ice
beneath the snow and she worried about Badger falling and crushing her beneath
his weight while the riders behind her struggled to avoid trampling her.
The
Nameless Ones hadn't been successful in deceiving animals so far, but was that
due to inability and limits to their powers or merely due to the fact that they
had not used this tactic before? This
was a possibility they hadn't even discussed in the council! What kind of fools had they been? This was an obvious oversight on all their
parts. She suddenly wondered what
terrible things could happen if the Valkea turned her fell will to the horses
and drove them mad with fear. A stampede
of frenzied horses on the icy ground could prove disastrous.
A
dribble of nervous sweat rolled down her back and she shivered, not from the
cold but from nervous panic as a vision worse than the horse falling seeped
into her thoughts. The possibility of
Badger grabbing the bit between his teeth and plunging insanely into the depths
of the river beside her was a thought that filled her mind with dread and her
heart with fear. She had never felt
comfortable standing on the lip above a steep slope and the idea of meeting her
death by crashing into jagged rocks was particularly alarming to her. She was an accomplished horsewoman but what
hope had she to stop a panicked horse on slippery ground?
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