Share
16
Related chapters
Reapers Of Suffering 17
Leaf a day - the average month of autumn - this year stood out with severe frosts. Standing on the outskirts of the old buoy, Tamir absentmindedly watched the voracious waxwings feast on frozen mountain ash. Shrugging his shoulders, he looked down at his feet. There, at the bottom of the freshly dug grave, Donatos was preparing for the ceremony. Here he took out a knife from his belt and began to draw a continuous line on the turf walls, pronouncing the words of the spell. When the line converged and the circle closed, the sorcerer cut his left palm with the same blade soiled in the ground, sprinkled the pit with blood and quietly began to read a conspiracy that closed the path to the world of the living for the dead. The words of repose sounded measuredly, the birds quarreling over a large bunch of berries shouted, a pregnant woman sobbed muffledly in the distance, covering her face swollen with tears with a corner of the cover. On the sides of the mother huddled two sobbing boys in
Reapers Of Suffering 18
One night, Donatos brought Tamir to the casemates of the Citadel. I must say that as the fortress itself ascended, so did its dungeons - the lower tiers - go down. The basement was closest to the surface, where there were soapboxes and Nurlisa lived. There were also stocks of canvases, old, worn clothes, which were boiled, boiled and used for bandages or other needs. Under the cellars there was an underground - mortuary and mortuary. At first, Tamir was confused, but then he realized that the corpses of those walking were kept in the dead. In the mortuary - dead people, whose bodies were first of all needed for the study of healers. But already under the dead and dead were casemates. The lowest tier of the Citadel was deaf and cold. Silence always reigned here, there was a smell of stone and prel, and the realization that there were dozens of cubits of earth and stone above your head made it difficult to speak loudly. The casemate was nothing more than a long, long corridor with du
Reapers Of Suffering 19
This year 's morning did live up to its name, because it settled down dank and gray due to the incessant winds and rains. This morning, too, the siverko rushed at the windows, trying to tear off the wooden shutters. The shutters with their wrought-iron hinges didn't budge, they only creaked with strain. And the reckless reckless man from anger threw handfuls of icy drizzle at them. Eilisha woke up with a bone-chilling chill. I desperately wanted to warm up. Alas, the hearth burned out long ago, the wind blew out all the heat, so much so that the floor was covered with ashes. To go to the soap-house, to stand by the hot stove! But for this it is necessary to get out from under the blanket, pull on cold, wavy clothes and go down to the cellars along the icy corridors. The girl shuddered. For several days now, she had felt overwhelmed and weak. It was like some kind of ghoul drank strength from her. Pulling the skinny blanket up, the young healer curled up in a ball, trying to keep war
Reapers Of Suffering 20
- I give them all a tincture! the healer barked, fed up with the unfair onslaught. - And this snot and the colors are still not really getting better - that is, it is not! What her tincture? To bleed out? And then, last month there were paints! I checked. Who has grown her belly, I do not know. I can’t put her to sleep with me in order to save me from stupidity! - Kill the bastard ... - sighed the voice of Ichthor. Why didn't you ask permission? Birga quipped. - Because she is here, without memory. And this bastard - neither ear nor snout! Kref answered bitterly. - Fool! The sorcerer's teacher shook her head. “If she had been squeezed against her will, Mairiko would have known, you can’t hide traces.” Here is something else. They got it all out of love. Look yourself. The man approached the barely breathing novice, ran his hand over her stomach, and again a barely noticeable blue radiance streamed from his fingers, it seeped into the thin body and ran through it with hoar-frost l
Reapers Of Suffering 21
Eilisha came to her senses because she was swimming somewhere. The body weakened, and the eyelids became heavy, heavy. It seemed to the girl that she was swinging in a cramped boat on the waves of the unhurried river Pereksha, which meandered in the meadows near her native village. But you can’t hear the splashing of the waves, you can’t smell the water ... When the novice opened her eyelids, she saw a disfigured face with an empty eye socket. Close, close. Ichthor! - What are you shaking? – black-haired healer carried her so easily, as if the girl weighed nothing. - Don't like it? “I... I...” she stammered incoherently. - You fell. I got a cold, apparently. Yes, and the colors have come, ”the cool voice of the mentor came from somewhere on the side. - Well, I found you in the corridor, otherwise I would have frosted over on the floor. Fell? Ah, yes... Eilisha remembered how dizzy she was, how she was tormented by chills. “I was going to the lesson…” the novice weakly tried to
Reapers Of Suffering 22
On one of the blizzard days of a student in the first month of winter, fate prepared a new test for her. As soon as the doctor ran into the tower, shaking off the snow from the casing and breathing on her chilled palms, Ichthor stunned her with the news: – Today, we will learn to deprive a person of life. From these terrible words, spoken with ordinary indifference, Eilisha froze. Naughty lips whispered of themselves: - I'm a healer. Not a killer. - And what will you do, healer, with those who cannot be saved, and you will not leave alive? the kref asked dryly. - How do you give an easy death? And to instant, without torment. Will you sing a lullaby?- I do not know. At home, every time I ran away from the yard when a bird or cattle was slaughtered. I was sick for a week afterwards, I could not see the meat. I… I… can't,” the girl backed away. “Everyone was laughing at me. They called it blessed. “They talked about it,” said the guard. But this is not a house. And, pushing the s
Reapers Of Suffering 23
“Well, quietly, quietly, why are you like a wild animal ...” the man grumbled, handing out vicious cuffs to the children pushing on a blanket that was spread over the frozen trunk of a fallen tree. “Look, you’ll start snatching bowls from each other. Well, calm down everyone! This commanding cry made the seven children quiet down. Even the smaller ones stopped making offended noises. They sat down, folding their cold hands in shabby mittens on their sharp knees. Worn beggarly skins, red noses and eyes shining with hunger and anticipation. Seven pairs of eyes. And everyone, without stopping, is watching how an emaciated woman with an exorbitantly large belly pours hot steaming out into old bowls ... Food! - Take it. Yes, don’t choke, don’t choke, that’s enough here, - and the woman with a sad smile looked at how the little boy of two springs greedily dipped her face into a spacious bowl. The man sat down on a hummock sticking out of a snowdrift. “Diven…” the woman began, but the p
Reapers Of Suffering 24
- What are you, what are you? – tightly hugging his beloved, the young man asked. She wanted to tell him about her fears, to ask him to be by his side, but inappropriately she completely remembered the animal eyes on a human face, remembered the predatory claws and death rattle, and escaped from her lips:“Tamir, if I were reborn as a walker, would you… be able to… kill me?” He looked surprised, but then laughed. “Stupid, you will never walk, I won’t let you,” he kissed the curly top of her head and began to cradle the girl like a child. This was not the answer Eilish was expecting. And I realized with bitterness: if something goes wrong - like Lesana, Tamir's hand will not tremble ... * * *Since that time, the healer apprentice seemed to have been replaced. The daughter of the Medenich family froze. With cold indifference, she did everything that the mentors ordered. There were no more refusals, questions, tears. They confidently cut the girl's hands of the body, washed the ab
Latest chapter
