Obsidian: Retribution (Book 2)

Thirty-Eight: Numbed

'...better to die with a dice in your hand than in someone else's.'

Lasura jolted awake at the sound of thunder that shook the rocks above him. A quick glance at the surroundings pulled him out of the dream and reminded him where he was. White rocks, cold floor, freezing wind that whistled as it passed through dagger-edged cracks and crevices of the mountain. Powdery white sand stained with the promise of death that clung to his face, his hands. A breeze that carried the scent of the ocean from somewhere south, along with a hint of spice and rotting dead animals from the harbor.

The White Desert, near the Samarran border.

Not, to his disappointment, the lush, green highlands of Cakora in his dream just now. Not that time when his father was allegedly alive, well, and still Salar. Not that day when he had said those words.

The dream had been a fragment of his memory, a revisit to a hunting trip gone wrong with his father. It wasn't the first time what happened that afternoon replayed itself in his dream. You didn't forget a day like that easily, not even as a story told in taverns, not, especially, if you'd lived it.

It sure made an exciting story––the Salar going after a bear three times his size empty-handed. People loved that tale about their Salar, and Jarem had insisted he wore the pelt often to public ceremonies as a reminder. The truth was, he hadn't really gone after the bear. What happened was a combination of chance and bad calls that had them trapped between the beast and a cliff at their backs that day. The bear itself was also only twice their size, not three times, and his father did have several blades on him, if small.

No one had tried to set the record straight, however. No one had bothered. It was beside the point.

The point, if you weren't trying to be pedantic, was that he had chosen to fight, not flee.

Lasura could still recall his father's face as he went for the beast, the snarl he'd made as he pulled out the dagger strapped to his boot, the firm, deliberate placement of his foot that made a territorial animal back up a step. He remembered his own cowardice and indecision too, how his weight had nailed him to the ground the whole time, how the possibility of his father being mauled to death had numbed his hands and feet, rendering them useless when they could have done something. He also remembered the discovery of what he was made of, how far that was from the man he called father, and the lesson given afterward.

'It's always better to die with a dice in your hand than in someone else's,' the Salar had said later that evening, eyes fixed on the bear he was skinning as attentively, as respectfully, as when he was trying to kill it. 'If you think you can't win in any case, at the very least try to choose your own death and take the son of a bitch with you.'

A painful memory for all the wisdoms it offered. Painful, because he was certain his hands would still freeze the same way should that day repeat itself in the future.

In the future? He stopped himself at that thought. Would have laughed at it if he could.

Was he not, after all, being trapped once more between a beast and a death sentence? He had come to the White Desert on a whim, had taken Djari out of camp and delivered her conveniently––willingly even––right into the beast's jaw out of nothing but boredom, and now his only choices were to wait for her Khagan to find and kill him for losing her, or to track down the possessed Sparrow for...

For what? To save her out of obligation and principle? To save himself from being stranded in hostile territory by rescuing the only person who could keep him alive? To prove himself, somehow, that there was another purpose to his life other than what his parents had wanted to use him for?