The Island House Read Online Free Page A

Please, Laenna. Don’t go!”
    “I have to see what’s happened. If they’ve gone, we can go home. Be quiet and lie still. I’ll come back for you.”
    Signy tried to stop her sister, but Laenna pushed her down. She was gone before Signy could sit up.
    The child closed her eyes and shivered. She should pray for help, but who would hear her? Her own Gods were at home in their parents’ house, and Cruach had left the world for today. She could not call on the new God of this island either, the one the strangers worshipped—she did not know His name, and He would not know her. Anyway, He wouldn’t help, why would He, when He’d just allowed his own followers to be murdered? Had He punished them for taking Findnar from her people?
    Signy shivered. Her father always said Gods were dangerous if you crossed them. He was a shaman and knew such things. Maybe she should pray to Tarannis in the sky. He wasn’t one of their usual Gods, but she knew he looked down on everyone; he was the fire God, too, and the God of thunder. The fires lit by the raiders had roared like a storm at their height and, even if the ring stones weren’t his home, Tarannis might approve of the sacrifice she’d made, since Cruach, who lived there, was his brother. Yes, when this was over she would hurry to the stones to thank them both for the hiding place—it might be fetid, but the rushes were thick and had hidden them well.
    Them. Where was Laenna?
    Flat on her belly, Signy moved like a worm, knees and elbows propelling her through the ooze. Beneath the rot there was a hint of apples and mushrooms; if the marsh ever dried, this would be good soil. The strangers had come here for the same reasons her people always had; Findnar was a summerland of plenty.
    Smoke hung, curtain high, above the smudge of Signy’s face as she peered out. There was clear air close to the ground, but three handspans higher and the world was blanket-cloaked, smoke hiding the stars.
    That, above all else, broke Signy’s courage. If she could not seethe sky, Tarannis would not see her. She would never get home, never; neither of them would. Tears fell, clean lines on her dirty face.
    An owl came out of the smoke, pale as ash. It landed close, so close Signy could touch its feathers. It turned to look at her, gold eyes unblinking. A sign!
    She whispered, “In the name of Tarannis, show me how to leave this place.”
    Soft as it had come, the owl left, swallowed by the dusk and the smoke. The child screamed out, “No! Don’t go!”
    A man’s hand descended from the smoke-blanket. He caught Signy by the throat, and she was jerked into the air, flailing and coughing. Desperation turned fingers to talons. Signy slashed at the man’s face, and she was lucky—long nails found flesh and gouged.
    Blood filled the man’s eyes. Bellowing, he nearly dropped her.
    She wriggled and howled. A lucky kick did the rest as one of Signy’s hard little feet found her attacker’s balls. He staggered, yelping.
    That was enough. Signy fled, fast as a hind, swallowed by smoke as the owl had been.
    Breathless, choking, she thought she was running toward the cliff path, but she stumbled and fell. She’d tumbled over something. A body, facedown in the grass. A sudden gust of wind tore the smoke.
    Signy stuffed her hand in her mouth.
    Oblivious to danger, oblivious to pursuit, she knelt. The back of the skull was a bloody mess, broken like an egg. Without words, without tears, she laid her face against the unmoving back, the dirty homespun cloth. Laenna. This was all that was left of her sister.
    The smoke thinned, and through it she saw the man. He was blundering toward her, an ax in his hand—a red ax.
    When Signy fled this time, it was purely from instinct, nothought in her mind but running and breathing. She ran from the light of the fires, ran and ran, and when she cried, the tears dried in the heat of that night—the heat of destruction.
    Down the cliff path, down to the beach, down