Tarashana Rachel Neumeier (top 10 motivational books TXT) 📖

“Gold or blood would be considered appropriate offerings at an important Lau temple,” he suggested.

I looked at Etta.

“Gold,” she decided. “Blood would not be right. Blood is important to the living, not to the dead. Gold is a peculiar thing to offer, but for the people of the Sun, it does not seem wrong.”

Aras took a small gold ring from his smallest finger. “I’ll offer this for both Geras and myself, if that’s acceptable, Ryo.” He added to Geras in darau, “Don’t object, Trooper; it’s my responsibility and I’m perfectly happy to meet it.”

Geras, who had drawn breath to speak, paused and then said, “Yes, my lord.”

Etta took the ring, held it up, then nodded and gave it to me. I said, relieved, “Good.” Taking the ring, I slipped it over the strand of my hair, up to the top, close to the column of stone, and knotted it there.

Then the rest of us all stepped back while Etta went into the tomb.

“We will wait,” I explained. “She will speak to the taiGara, asking for their leave to pass through their tomb into the paths of the dead. Any inGara could ask, but it is better for a singer to do it.”

“I see,” Aras said. “Do the, ah, taiGara actually answer?”

“I just bet they do,” Geras muttered.

I smiled at them both. I was apprehensive and eager both at once—the land of the shades lay only steps before us now, and what man of courage and daring would not both long to see that land and fear to be lost there? I tried not to let any of this show in my manner or my voice. “On this side of the tomb, not in a way warriors are likely to hear. On the other side, those we meet may speak to us plainly if they wish.”

Geras started to answer me, but then Etta came out again. She nodded to me, her expression solemn and yet exhilarated.

“Good,” I said. “We will go in now. Hold wrist to wrist, one to the next. Etta will go in first, and then Inhejeriel. Then Iro and Aras, then I, and Geras last. That way everyone who is not Ugaro will be holding to one of us. Any Ugaro who took this path would come to the Ugaro part of the land of the shades. I think you will all come with us, but call out if you feel you might slip away from our hold.”

I looked from Inhejeriel to Geras and then to Aras. The Lau nodded; Inhejeriel only gazed up at me, mute as ever, her eyes wide, pale as the sky of a winter dawn. But I only asked them all, “Are you ready?”

Geras took a deep breath and let it out. “Who would have thought of something like this?” he said. But he wrapped his long fingers around my wrist. I gripped his wrist in return.

Aras smiled at him. “I confess to a certain astonishment at this situation myself, Geras. Ryo, would it not be better to tie ourselves together?” But he offered one hand to me and the other to Iro.

“Rope is nothing,” I told him, taking the same wrist-to-wrist hold with him as with Geras, as Iro was doing on his other side. I went on. “A living grip holds where anything else will fail. That is what tales say.”

Inhejeriel’s silent voice whispered, Sije-Aras cannot be lost. No one of us can be lost to his sight.

“I admit I find that a most comforting thought,” Aras commented.

I was very certain everyone found that a comforting thought. I hoped it would prove true. “Etta?” I said. “Are you ready?”

“Breathe deeply and hold tight!” she said. She smiled at Inhejeriel. “How amazing it will be, to pass through the gate of the dead and see the land of the shades! May the gods be kind and permit us to go and to return!” She patted Inhejeriel’s hand with her own free hand, turned, and stepped through the high opening of the tomb into the darkness within. One by one, we all followed.

The tomb was a deep one, many times deeper than the one where we had rested. Little daylight came through the entrance and that did not reach far into the tomb, but Inhejeriel’s luminance showed us the skulls resting in their niches to either side. I saw one broken skull, the pieces laid carefully in order in that niche. There must be a tale explaining the death that had come to that person, but I did not know that tale.

Every sound came loudly to my ears. I could hear everyone breathing; my own breaths seemed loud to me. I seemed to feel stone pressing down above and from either side. I did not know how deeply this tomb ran back into the mountain, but it seemed to me we had been walking for a long time. But we continued to walk forward. I drew a long breath of cool air. It smelled of stone and old bone and something else, something uneasy and violent, like the air before a storm—like the scent of the air that comes before the shiral winds.

Before me, Aras stumbled. His grip tightened on my wrist, and I tightened my hold as well. I probably gripped him hard enough to bruise, but even after I realized that, I did not loosen my grip. I held Geras the same way, and heard his quiet exhalation. He brought his other hand up to hold my arm, and I drew him close beside me and stepped forward—

— the air changed. It was not like air. It was not like anything. Perhaps I could not breathe; I was not even certain whether that might be so. Darkness closed upon us, upon me, a darkness that Tarashana luminescence could not illuminate. It was