Two Shades Darker Than The Sky
by
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It was her eyes which had always enchanted Chath. The eyes he would do anything for. They were the most remarkable blue; two shades darker than the sky.
She ran into his arms and hugged the breath out of him. "It's good to see you," she said. Chath closed his eyes and held on, and didn't allow the slightest bit of pain to show on his face.
Ariana stepped back and looked at him. He was completely different from the boy she had known. He had changed, grown up, and had been gone a very long time. He should be a stranger to me now, she thought, but
"I've missed you Chath," she hugged him again.
A thousand words sped in a jumbled rush through his mind but he found himself unable to say a single thing.
"You have grown up well," she poked him in the stomach. "Filled out. Become a man. I would hardly have recognized you."
"And you are beautiful enough to put the Goddess to shame," he managed in a daze.
"Am I now?" her brow knit.
"Are you sure you're the same Chath I knew," she asked, "who never spoke more than a mumble, and hardly ever looked me straight in the eye?"
Chath snapped back to the moment and fell into character again. "Perhaps I was looking . . . elsewhere, milady."
She looked down at herself. "Not then you wouldn't have been."
Chath grinned at her. Happy. Greedily, insatiably, happy.
"But that idiotic smile reveals you. No one does an idiotic smile quite like you. The last time I saw it was when Eef cut the seat out of Arcas' pants while we were all swimming."
Chath laughed, "And Arcas didn't notice, and chose that day to march us right down the middle of the Worm like a damned parade, rather than take the side streets."
"Missed you Ree," he said.
Ariana looked momentarily irritated. "Nobody else ever called me that. I never thought I'd hear it again."
Then she smiled. "I almost missed it.
He remembered their last conversation. Remembered as if it had only been thirteen years ago. He hoped with all his heart that she had forgotten it.
SO THAT'S HER.
Yes.
THE ONE YOU
Yes!
THIS IS HURTING YOU MORE THAN YOU THOUGHT IT WOULD. CHATH, YOU'RE AFRAID TOO!
A longer pause.
Yes.
IS THAT ALL YOU'RE GOING TO SAY?
"Well, it appears I'll be traveling with you for a while," Chath winked at the Captain. "Consider me at your service until we part." He bowed, and reached out to her.
She laughed and offered him her hand to kiss. "I've never had my own personal bandit before,” she said. “What does one do with one?"
"Skin them," the Captain suggested. "Slowly. With dull knives."
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About the Book
The goddess Chythiis needed an instrument, a
Champion, so she chose the boy Chath.
Chath had lived alone on the streets of Willowshire until the day he
wandered into the forest and received a Visitation, a Heritage, and a
Sword. He became Cheytheyn...last of the
Shee...and wielding the Gravesword Haylerbane was dispatched to the past to save
the fledgling world from itself. To
ensure that the future...his present...happened.
To the handful of friends he had, that was only
thirteen years ago.
Cheytheyn...under a host of other identities...had
always tripped over other people’s troubles and stumbled into their lives. Many times he would aid them in their
struggles, many times he’d fail.
Sometimes he would die, only
to wash up on someone else’s shore years later. But after centuries of battling terrors whose names have been
forgotten, and countering the evil schemes of the beast Chihled before recorded
history, he faces his most terrifying challenge of all.
Now, the people into whose lives he falls are those
same friends from childhood and the woman he could never forget.
Because now, after nineteen-hundred years, he has
finally caught up with . . .
Himself.
About the Author
Scott was born in San Jose, California and has lived in the Bay Area ever since. He married his High-School sweetheart, and worked at a brokerage firm for 22 years where he wrote programs in obsolete computer languages on a mainframe that wasn’t supposed to exist anymore.
Scott is now taking time off to write, either during the day or at 3 AM when the characters in his head just won't shut up, and has published a number of science-fiction and fantasy short-stories in a variety of magazines. He began his first novel in his teens and harbors an irrational fear that someone will someday find it, and worse, read it! He is currently working on the sequel to this book, Where the Worm Leads.