Tarashana Rachel Neumeier (top 10 motivational books TXT) 📖

Clouds had piled up in the west, and as the Sun finally stepped out from behind the teeth of the mountains into the sky, these clouds turned deep carmine and gold. The Sun’s blazing power rolled across the whole of the land of the shades, flooding the valleys between the peaks with a streaming light that seemed to flow like liquid, like pale honey. I thought of the shadow tide. The Sun’s light rolled across the land like that, but where the Saa’arii tide had eaten up the land where it came, when the Sun’s light poured into the black tide, the emptiness burned away and revealed the land that had been taken by the emptiness. The land was still there, or else the Sun remade it as his light revealed it. The stone of the western faces of the mountains glowed luminous gold and pink with reflected sunlight; ice streaked the high jagged tips of the mountains with crystalline fire. Lower, where the slopes fell away below us, light poured into every valley, brimmed over, and flowed away into the lands below.

Aras sighed, a long breath. He had tipped his face up to the sky. Now he lifted one hand palm up, in the gesture of a man asking for mercy. His other hand, he did not try to lift. The sunlight of the new day revealed, with merciless clarity, new lines of weariness and pain at the corners of his mouth and around his eyes.

The eagle blazed his path past us, above us, along the path of the starlight bridge, light trailing from his feathers and his talons. In the sunlight, the eagle was so white and so brilliant that his passing dazzled the eye. I blinked and blinked again, light blooming behind my eyelids whenever I closed my eyes.

Tano had crossed the restored span of the bridge. He was walking toward us, not very fast. He was clearly almost too tired to walk at all.

Aras lowered his hand, breathing slowly and deeply. I got to my feet and offered him my arm—this was not my decision—and Aras took hold of my arm with his good hand and pulled himself up as well, slowly. “Tano,” he said in taksu as the young man came to us. “Ryo can’t speak just now, but we are both very pleased that you lived and came to this place. Do I gather that you have something to do with the eagle? How did that come about?”

“Ryo?” Tano said, looking anxiously at me. I met his eyes, then reached out to set my hand on his shoulder. I was not certain if I chose to do that, or if Aras made me do it because he knew I wished it.

“Ryo fought very hard for a long time,” Aras said, as though this were a sensible explanation. “He will recover soon.” He turned, drawing us both with him, so that we all began to walk slowly upward. Inhejeriel was so far away now that I could not see her. I could not even hear her voice, if she was still singing. Perhaps she had fallen silent. I could not hear Lalani. But I heard Etta clearly. My sister was singing the names of Tarashana people, her voice as high and pure and perfect now as in the beginning. The sound of those names blended one into another, making a song that was not like any Ugaro song. Behind and around my sister’s voice, I could almost make out the voices of uncountable stars, each endlessly singing one name to the world. I could almost hear the world echo back those names.

Tano said, perhaps in answer to something Aras had asked him, “I saw Iro go up the mountain, yes. I thought I should follow him, I knew he would need help, I knew I should go after him, but I also saw how the Saa’arii broke past the taiGara, not many of them, but too many. I ...” he looked at me, hesitating. I nodded to him—perhaps Aras made me nod—and he went on, hesitantly now, “I went down instead. I hope—I thought—I do not think this was cowardice, even though I did not go down to fight. I went very quietly, avoiding any kind of battle—”

Aras said, “You wanted to make sure you had a chance to speak to one of the taiGara, not die uselessly. That was certainly not cowardice, Tano. That was well done. The eagle came to you there?”

Tano nodded. “For a long time, no one would speak to me. Everyone was fighting. I saw the shades there, they were fighting courageously, but too many of our enemies were getting past them. At last I stepped out into an open place. I made the gesture—” he echoed it now, the gesture by which one asks for mercy. He went on. “I thought, if no enemy killed me when I showed myself, perhaps someone would see I was a living man and that I asked for help. In a little time, the eagle came down. He made himself into a man. I—he asked my name, and I said I was inGara—” he broke off, swallowing.

“You are inGara,” Aras said firmly. “Sinowa inGara is not in the habit of saying things he does not mean.” His tone was very much as mine would have been, if my tongue had belonged to me.

Tano nodded. After a little pause, he said, “I told this warrior about Inhejeriel, about the Saa’arii, about the black tide that came into the starlit lands. I explained that the tide here was a shadow of that tide. I explained that driving back enemies here would not be enough, that what happened in the land of the living would determine what happened here in the land of the shades. I told him what you said, your thought that the Saa’arii might take the