Tarashana Rachel Neumeier (top 10 motivational books TXT) 📖

could speak, I was seized with a conviction—this was like taking a sword-thrust through the body—that I had to go to Aras, I had to go right now.

I could not. It was impossible. I made that thought as clear in my mind as I could. If we turned and ran, our enemies would cut us down before we went ten strides. We had to stand and hold this position. We had no choice. I could not come.

Almost as I thought this, I snapped at my brother, “Raga! Hold this position.” Whirling around, I said urgently to Arayo, “Hold here as long as you can!” Then I left them there and ran away, up the path.

It was not me. I had not said those things. I was not running. My body was running, at my best possible speed. For the first instant, I had no idea what I was doing, what had happened, what was still happening.

Then I knew.

Behind me, I heard my brother cry, “Ryo!” The horror in his voice struck my heart. That was like taking a sword-thrust. I did not turn. I sheathed my new sword so that I could run faster. My brother called again, and then only a breath later, he cried out in a different way, and I knew an enemy had struck him down. I did not turn. Arayo was shouting fiercely, and Raga was screaming, and I did not turn. I could not turn. My body did not answer me. It was not mine. It did not belong to me.

Up and around the shoulder of the mountain, up more steeply, using my hands to climb, careless of my safety, my breath tearing in my lungs, I came at last to the crest of Talal Sabero, to the high place above and below the world. The air was bright and cold, the stars burning with their vivid fire, so close to the earth that I felt I could reach up to catch them from the sky, the Moon luminous above and beyond the stars. The place here at the very peak of the mountain was not large, the sky fell away on all sides, but the peak itself was almost level, which was good because I was running straight toward enemies.

I saw many things all at once.

Before me, the high peak of the sacred mountain rose up into a long, narrow, jagged spire, with winding about this spire a broad spiraling stairway, carved into the stone as far up as I could see. The stone of both spire and stairway was white as milk and shining with moonlight. It was quite plain that the stairway rose up all the way to the sky.

Inhejeriel was walking slowly up that stairway. She was paying no attention to anything below her. She had her hands raised, palm up, in a gesture like the one by which someone may ask for mercy. But this was a different gesture. She held her hands differently, higher, and her hands were filled with the light of the stars. She did not look to me like a living woman, though she walked and moved and held up her hands. She shone with light herself, as brightly as a lantern, as though she were made of porcelain and filled with starlight. The patterns traced on the right side of her face and on her left hand and arm were deep indigo against her luminous skin.

My sister walked on Inhejeriel’s left—even at this moment, my heart leaped up to see her there—and Lalani on Inhejeriel’s right. I was glad to see Lalani as well, though I had all but forgotten sending her before me. Neither Etta nor Lalani held their hands in the same manner. They walked up the broad stairway into the sky with their hands at their sides, but starlight fell across them, across their upturned faces, so that in their own way, they seemed almost as luminous as the Tarashana woman.

At the base of the spire, before the entrance to the stairway, Aras fought alone against two shadow warriors, using a sword of shadow, pouring all his speed and skill into that battle. I had never seen him fight like that, a real fight with nothing held back. Desperation will sometimes bring out a man’s best skill. He was holding them. But two more enemies—three—were running toward him from a different direction, from the other side of the mountain peak, to which a different path had brought them.

Before Aras, not far from him, lay the body of Hokino inKera, and a little way beyond that, the body of my brother Garoyo, each dead of many wounds. The sight tore at me. I felt as though the blade were still in my heart, twisting. I knew instantly what had occurred—or some of what had occurred. My brother and Hokino must have fought hard here for a long time. But then they had fallen. That was when Aras had at last put his will upon me, either at that moment or just before, at the moment he saw it must happen.

I passed them both, one and then the other, without pausing.

I had no idea whether they had fought for Aras because they had chosen to, or because he had taken their will, stolen their bodies, and made them his slaves. My brother might have died enslaved by a sorcerer, his will and his body stolen from him. Aras might have done that to Garoyo, exactly as he had done it to me.

I could not run fast enough to take the shadow warriors by surprise, even though they were both engaged against Aras. One turned to face me. I did not slow or pause or hesitate or even choose my stroke. My body chose all those things. I moved very, very fast, with no hesitation. I blocked my enemy’s blow, whirled my sword in a tight circle to guide