The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps (14 page)
Read The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps Online
Authors: Kai Ashante Wilson
Tags: #Fiction, #Fantasy, #Epic, #Science Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #General
Demane turns an ankle in foul grease: Some meatstuff or slick runoff, once a pig or man. He springs up and hobbles on. If delayed at all, it’s half an instant, if hurt he’s hardly slower than before: still, these charges will figure among those he tenders against himself on nights hereafter, when once more sitting up in sleepless reverie. The man you could have saved if you’d gotten him sooner under your care lies struggling in his agonies. And
now
, only at the very end, he turns to your voice and chooses to trust. There you kneel and whisper, urging him toward the one choice life still offers. He takes it. There’s a look to that, as grace suffuses a wracked visage.
Let go, Faedou. It’s all right now. Let go.
Even the best of healers come to learn this look. It steals then over the captain’s face. He quits his brilliant efforts and stops moving within easy reach of teeth and claws. The sword slips from his hand. Demane
shouts
. The distance is chancy, his throwing arm badly wounded, but still he hurls the spear.
1
Tiefer alt. A voice to sing the pale sour out of lemons, sing them luscious orange; as much the sensations of
eros
on the body as mere sound in the ears.
Kai Ashante Wilson’s stories “Super Bass” and “The Devil in America,” the latter of which was nominated for the Nebula, the Shirley Jackson, and the World Fantasy Awards, can be read online gratis at
Tor.com
. His story «
Légendaire
.» can be read in the anthology
Stories for Chip,
which celebrates the legacy of science fiction grandmaster Samuel R. Delany. Kai Ashante Wilson lives in New York City.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novella are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE SORCERER OF THE WILDEEPS
Copyright © 2015 by Kai Ashante Wilson
Cover art copyright © 2015 by Karla Ortiz
Edited by Carl Engle-Laird
All rights reserved.
A Tor.com Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
ISBN
978-1-4668-9191-3
(e-book)
ISBN
978-0-7653-8524-6
(trade paperback)
First Edition: September 2015
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