Read I Know Not (The Story of Fox Crow) for Free Online

itself on your chest, I daresay you would be distracted as well. At this point I could not tell you what was in the tent, other than myself, a cat, and the bird of Death. I could not tear my eyes away even to look at the newcomer that gasped. It seemed days before two pairs of heavily wrinkled hands gently moved the scavenger onto an offered arm.
          A voice, soft and yet rough like a summer rain sifting through sand, spoke. “Great Lord of the Dead, if it is your intention to take this one, please do; I know I could not stop you. My Patron, however, bids that I help this man. I seek not to defy You, only to do as my Mistress commands.”
          The tent flap opened, spilling undiffused light across the floor. The raven seemed to consider her words, studying her with his far eye while his near one was still stapling me to my cot. Then, entirely without preamble or glorious miracle, he took wing out of the tent and out of my life.
          The old woman left behind was wrinkled and plump, her pear shape accentuating her grandmotherly bearing. Her face, staring out after our visitor, was fixed in such a state of rapture I dared not speak. Truth be told, though, I was becoming less impressed with the raven the further away he went. The cat howled again.
          The old woman, coweled in a habit of white, turned to expose a red circle inset with a golden flame picked out in thread on her right breast. Against all odds, I had found a healer in the middle of the forest. Far better than any chiurgeon with his scalpels and books, their gifts were near miraculous in making broken men whole. I pasted a charming smile beneath my nose and tuned the perfect level of weakened gratitude into the chords of my voice, “My thanks for my care reverend sister…”
          I simply trailed off. Her eyes had latched on to me and her face had gone from rapture to disgust. I had imagined I would have to be a corpse, maggot ridden and cold, before eliciting such a response from a woman, any woman. I tried to smile ingratiatingly, but I don’t think I quite succeeded as her countenance only deepened in its righteous fury. The cleric of life and mercy stalked—Stalked! —across the tent to hover far above me like a statue of cold, uncaring Amsar over a gallows.
          She knelt down, craning a finger into my face and whispered in a rage–bathed hiss. “Now you listen, blood–shedder, I care for your body because both my oath to the Goddess Ethryal,” like most clerics she spoke the name of a Goddess boldly, “and my oath to my mistress call me to. The thought sickens me, but I am trapped in between letting Death take you and letting the Justice of Amsar send you to him. Do not take too much comfort; I know your secret and if you make any move to harm that girl I will let the guards at you like a pack of wolves.”
          As you might have noticed, my friends, I am prodigious in my verbosity, however my mouth failed me. I simply gaped like an air – drowning fish as she rose and turned to the entrance.
          I glanced about and saw the Phantom/Angel leaning in the south–west corner, near the tent flap and far away from my bed in the north east portion. I knew why too. It would have been an unconscionable insult to deprive a soldier of the weapon he had used to save your life; however, I know the Cleric had moved it from my grasp. If it had been in reach, this very moment I would have slain her from behind as I had the brigands.
          I didn’t know why, but more importantly, she did.
          I guess I was still looking like a plate of raw meat that had been dipped in the midden when the princess came in. She stopped in the entry, gazing at my bandage–clothed chest with some amount of flush in her cheeks, as the priestess of peered in over her shoulder like a demon of retribution, I decided to pull the sheets up to cover my partial nakedness. If there was anything I did not need, it was