Asunder: A Gathering of Chaos by Cameron Hopkin (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

eyes and saw once more the brilliant shaft of light that had speared down from the heavens and caught them on the water, changing everything. “It was the Light,” she sighed. “We got caught in the Pure Light.”

Chapter 2 What Comes Next

The sun filtered down through the forest canopy as gently as a butterfly kiss, and Kest reached out an arm to idly swipe his hand through the motes dancing in a nearby sunbeam. He shifted his bare back against the warm, pebbled expanse of rhino on which he rested, scratching the itch between his shoulder blades against her hide. The great beast rumbled out a throaty note that vibrated through him, responding to and sharing in his lazy pleasure. He patted the broad back beneath him and lifted his head to make sure they were still pointed in the right direction through the towering trees. Yes, the tribe’s summer huts were no more than twenty minutes from here. The clearing was on a rise just past a jungle-choked ravine that bisected the trail somewhere up ahead. Kest ignored the sudden twist of anxiety in his guts and laid his head back. His rhino would get him there. Everyone was expecting him. They won’t expect what I’m bringing with me, though!

Kest had been in the deep jungle for the last five days on a ritual hunt for a bond-beast. Of all the two hundred people of the Granaal tribe, only Puldaergna, the chief, was bonded to one of the great rhinos. Finding one had been the first thing Kest had done. It hadn’t been easy… but it hadn’t been that hard, either. Sneaking into Oema lands at the edge of the Scalegrass Desert was no great task for a hunter as talented as he. He’d convinced the great cow rhino to come with him by nightfall. The rest of his trial had been even more productive than that.

The massive rhino rumbled at him, and he perked up from his reverie. They were approaching the ravine. To the north and then down, he cast at the beast. She snorted and turned her head to walk parallel to the rift, searching for a pathway down that she could manage. He knew it was somewhere nearby. It was a crude kind of communication he had just done, the merest sending of direction and intent without any nuance, but most of the newly-bonded spent months at home with their beast before they could manage so much, and he’d known this one only four days. She was a sturdy one, this rhino. She bore him well. He patted her side again, washing approval over her. She ignored it, of course – she was not so weak-willed as that – but he thought her pace might have quickened just a little.

The hardest part of his trial had been to convince old Puldaergna to allow the ritual at all. The whole tribe had been shocked last year when he held back from bonding when the tribe made the pilgrimage to the Gathering at the Great Menhir. All the others his age and many even younger had stepped into the milling concourse of animals around the huge standing stone and found a willing beast to pair with. He hadn’t told anyone, not even his parents, but only his own pride had held him back at the Gathering. Everyone found their beast at the Gathering. It was so… common. Kest was going to be the next chief of the Granaal; everyone knew it. He meant to be one that was remembered.

So he’d collared old Bekkan, the shriveled, white-haired elder who knew all the old lore, and pestered him for stories of heroes and how they found their beasts. He’d had to cobble together half a dozen old tales of dubious origin, but eventually, Kest convinced Bekkan to tell the chief that in the times before the old gods left, under certain circumstances, great hunters went searching for their beasts in private rituals of bonding. The tribe had been abuzz with the old stories for the better part of a moon’s turn.

That was why, when he had gone to Puldaergna at the even-eat during the new moon, given him the ritual blow of respect, and said he was ready for his bonding ritual, the great-bellied chief had had very little choice in the matter. The mothers had started up the song for the death of a child even before Pul had given consent. It irritated the big man, who certainly could foresee Kest wearing his feathered chieftain’s horns within a span of years, but he was not so selfish as to deny the younger man the right to find a bond-beast when he was so obviously ready. Kest liked Puldaergna. He was fair and kind-hearted, but he had the temper to lead the Granaal tribe to war when it was needed. He hoped to be a chief of the same stripe as the big man when the time came. So long as they don’t tie me to a tree and leave me for the ants when they see what I’ve done. It was not an unthinkable outcome. The Granaal were fiercely traditional, and Pul moreso than most. He’d once thrown a man from the tribe when he insisted over and over that the tribe use a new spot by the river for their summer grounds instead of the time-honored location. This isn’t the same at all. That fellow was an idiot. I’m to be the next chief; they’ll listen.

Kest peered over his rhino’s head, and there it was: a wide, well-worn game trail descending into the deep ravine that would support the great lumbering beast. Down they went, and Kest sat upright, kneeling on either side of the rhino’s spine, hands out to push back the choking vines and overhanging branches of the narrow ravine. Nettles wouldn’t bother her thick hide, but she could easily get tangled in the ropy vines that hung from the trees and made a