Outcast

Outcast

Sacred Amulet, Part One

Kiru Taye

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and

incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are

used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any

resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or

persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Outcast

Smashwords Edition

ISBN: 9781370120369

Copyright© 2013 Kiru Taye

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used

or reproduced electronically or in print without written

permission, except in the case of brief quotations

embodied in reviews.

KT Press

www.kirutaye.com

Blurb

Ugo’ji is an outcast, an untouchable. She lives on the fringe of society as the lowest of the low, a living sacrifice to the gods. The only person she interacts with is her aged grandmother Nne who nurtures her powerful gift of healing. Until the day she meets Ebube a strange warrior to their lands. He ignites a yearning within her she's unable to ignore.

Ebube is drawn to the young maiden with the emerald green eyes who possesses the body of a goddess and the healing touch of an angel. But he is forbidden from mating with a human and the consequence is the wrath of the gods.

Moreover he is on a mission. If he fails, the gates of hell will be opened and the earth plunged into darkness. He cannot stay and she cannot go with him.

Chapter One

Do whatever it takes...Keep the gates of Alammuo sealed.

Darkness tugged, threatened to pull him into its murky depths. Ebube hauled his body off the pallet and landed in a crouch on the cool, smooth floor, awake, ready to fight, all at once.

Danger seeped from the nightmare he couldn’t remember into the air, stifling, leaden and oppressive. His breath heaved as he choked, his throat clogged with the fetid stench of death. The rapid thumping of his heart echoed, loud and acute in his receptive ears.

On reflex, the fingers on his left hand wrapped around the amulet hanging on his neck, while the other hand grabbed the sheathed knife he kept under the wooden bed frame.

Spiky claws dug into his palm. He ignored the sting as his gaze swept the space, the shadows proving no hindrance to his sharp eyesight. His beast came to the fore, growling to take over, an instinctive response to potential threats.

Muscles tensed, he fought the shift that would give his spirit animal dominance in this realm. Sweat streaked down his back. The wild creature residing in him was created to hunt and destroy. To maim and kill.

Ebube couldn’t release it until he’d assessed the situation. The large, airy chamber of his sparsely-decorated home showed no visible evidence of the danger setting off his internal alarm.

Apart from the raised bamboo sleeping platform covered in supple goatskin and the wooden trunk that stored his personal belongings, the only other items were his tools of warfare – his spears, shields, machetes and scabbards. They hung on the single-rung mantel against the burnt-umber rock wall, gleaming with polish and sharpness, ready for use. Undisturbed.

A tingle ran up his spinal column, the way it always did when he sensed something out of place. Something terribly wrong. He swung his legs around. Cool unglazed stone flooring met his bare feet. The muscles on his back tensed, primed for action. Slowly, he stood to his full height and walked through the room.

His home consisted of two chambers, one for sleeping and the other for entertaining guests. Though as a guardian, a special warrior of the gods, he could live as luxuriously as the gods did, they had agreed communally to live as simply as humans of the era so as not to draw attention to themselves as supernatural beings.

Nothing was out of place in his rooms, no stray, malevolent being in the vicinity. Yet the tingling in his bones didn't dissipate. When he found nothing inside, he grabbed the wooden knob, opened the door and walked onto the corridor linking his residence to the rest of his family's. Their homes were hewn out of Amauwa rocks, a mountain range in the middle of the rain forest.

He stopped in front of the last house, the tension on his shoulders increasing. Nothing lurked inside it, living or inanimate. Yet the memory of the previous occupant flooded his mind, hitting him low in the abdomen, spreading pain through his body. Gritting his teeth, he shook his head and turned his back to the building and its unwelcome memories.

Outside the tunnel, a tenebrous cloud obscured the moon. The dark grey eastern horizon indicated the approaching dawn.

He tilted his head backward and sniffed the air. The scent of morning dew—cut grass, upturned earth and ripe fruits—drifted in the light breeze.

A patch of clearing formed a courtyard, the wind ruffling the leaves of the ugu plants on his mother's vegetable garden to the left. Tall palm and coconut trees lined the end of the glade.

The prickling sensation increased. Around him nothing stirred for a moment. Not a leaf in the trees or grass on the earth. In the tomblike stillness, cold shivers travelled down his spine.

Death had visited someone tonight. Strange. Impossible.

Shaking his head, he dispelled the sense of gloom washing over him.

All Ure guardians were part-human, part-god; the seeds of liaisons between gods and humans when the deities walked the earth, before the separation of realms. So while they all had some powers of gods, they were limited by the susceptibilities of humans.

As demi-gods, the guardians had been granted immortality by the Celestia god council. They could live on the earth realm forever, provided the sacred amulet remained intact. The talisman bore the key to the gateway of the realms and every Ure guardian here lived to protect this dominion. They considered life to be sacred and crossing over was only allowed after permission had been granted and a special ritual performed.

Ebube walked the outer perimeter of the settlement. He wouldn’t be able to sleep again if he returned indoor. He had to check out his suspicion in case something had gone wrong.

They lived peacefully, for the most part. Crime was a rarity, the punishment for an offense harsh and instantaneous. No one wanted to be locked away in Alammuo for eternity. Without parole.

In recent weeks there'd been a spate of unusual incidents–unruly children fighting, things going missing, someone getting stabbed accidently.

Ikenga, their leader, had seen all the events as an omen of something dire on the way. He’d instructed everyone to become extra vigilant, to be on the alert for more bizarre occurrences and he'd ordered extra patrols at night.

A single widened lane ran through the centre of the settlement, joining the smaller footpaths leading to more homes carved out of the mountain. His ability to perceive auras indicated their occupants slept peacefully.

The branches and leaves of the trees swayed in the pre-dawn breeze. He smelled rain in the air. It would pour down before the sun climbed high in the sky.

At the square, a clearing used for gatherings as well as on market days, he met Onorue, a fellow warrior and chief sentinel, striding towards him from the opposite end.

They greeted each other.

I didn’t realize you were also on duty this morning, Onorue said as they grasped each other’s arms. The best of friends, they'd grown up and trained together. Onorue was only slightly shorter than Ebube. While Ebube was known for his speed and agility in battle, Onorue was reputed for his strength and ferocity.

The closest person to a brother Ebube had given that his own blood sibling had turned rogue.

Rogue. Of all things. Hot fury sliced through him, the hair on his skin standing on end.

No.