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cut would have gone to the core. The half wounds were half as dire. She almost
laughed aloud, if blackly, imagining the dismay of
Arhys's assailant, knowing from the shock of contact, the jerk of blade from
the bone, the ringing up his arm, how hard he'd struck, yet seeing that wound
close up again before his eyes . . . Indeed, the wild wail that echoed up now
from the grove might well be the very man.
You thought you'd dropped all the horrors of nightmare down upon Porifors,
while you sat safe. Now, watch Porifors return the favor. We hold, we hold.
For a very little while longer.
She turned again to try to peer beneath the trees. She could mark Arhys's
striding progress across the camp by the sounds of terror, she thought, as his
enemies flew screaming before his pale face and deadly blade. And by the
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streams of white fire rising in his wake. He was unhorsed; she was uncertain
when that had happened. She hoped he was not yet alone, without one comrade
left to guard his back.
I think he is alone now.
A weird wet thunk sounded behind her. She glanced back to see her helpers
rushing to press pads to
Illvin's and Cattilara's stomachs.
That was a crossbow bolt.
She wondered if Arhys had plucked it out to throw back at his dazed enemies,
or left it in place like a badge. It would have been a killing strike, on any
other man, at any other time.
Soon there will be more. By the gods, a dy Lutez does know how to die three
times, and three times three if needed.
She fell to her knees behind the parapet, clinging to the stone.
It seemed to her that some great black glacier, some ice dam in her soul, was
melting, as if a hundred
summers' heat had fallen on it in an hour. Cracking, coming apart. And that in
the mile-deep, mile-long lake of icy green water backing it up, an expectant
surge rippled from bank to bank, from the surface to the uttermost depths,
troubling the waters.
I passed blessing to you in the forecourt. But you passed blessing back to me,
too. Trading rescues. Five gods watch us ride out together in this breaking
dawn.
You Five may awe us. But I think we must awe You, too.
"Seven," she whispered aloud.
Then something went wrong. A hesitation, a turning away. Too many, far too
many, soul-sparks swirled around that gray flame.
Now he is surrounded, cut off. Dozens who ran away now run toward, encouraged
by their own numbers, daring to take him down.
In the midst of your enemies, your Father has prepared a feast for you, on a
table your father set long ago. Here it comes . . .
Another thunk, and another. From behind her, Liss's sharp voice cried, "Lady,
there are too many wounds splitting open! You must stop this!"
Dy Cabon's strained rumble, "Royina, remember you promised Arhys that Lady
Cattilara would live !"
And a certain fat white god has promised Illvin to me, if I did not mistake
Him. If we both live. A
god-given lover, importunate and bold as a scarred stray cat, rubbing past my
guard into my good graces. If I can keep him fed.
She glanced over her shoulder. Illvin's body jerked upward with the
transferred force of some massive blow to Arhys's back, and Goram, his face
frantic, rolled him over to reach the red rent. Cattilara's white hand half
split from its wrist, and Liss pounced to staunch the spurting.
Now. Oh yes, now.
Ista clenched her hand about the torrent of white fire running past her
shoulder. The flow stopped abruptly. Wild shocks pulsed back in both
directions from her grip. The violet channel shattered. The white fire, the
constant companion of her inner eye for days, winked out.
A hushed hesitation: then, in the shadowed grove, a grotesque roar of
hysteria-tinged triumph went up from half a hundred Jokonan throats.
The ice dam exploded. A wall of water towered, bent, and broke, thundering
forward, bursting its banks, blasting her soul wide, wider, scouring and
flushing a lifetime of stones, rubble, rotted and clotted trash before it.
Boiling, roaring outward. Ista spread her arms wide, and opened her mouth, and
let it go.
The gray thread, almost lost to view in the violent blazes, stiffened to a
taut rope. It began to move back through her new dilation, faster and faster,
until it seemed to smoke with the heat of its passage, like an overstrained
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fiber rope about to char and burst into flame. For an instant, Arhys's
astonished, agonized, ecstatic soul moved through hers.
Yes. We are all, every living one of us, doorways between the two realms, that
of matter that gives us birth, and that of spirit into which we are born in
death. Arhys was sundered from his own gate, and lost the way back to it
forever. So it was given to me to lend him mine, for a little time. But so
great a soul does need a wide portal; so knock down my gates and breach my
walls and burst them wide, and pour through freely, by my leave. And farewell.
"Yes," Ista whispered.
"Yes."
He did not look back. Given what he must be looking on toward, Ista was not in
the least surprised.
It is done, Sire. I hope You find it was done well.
She heard no voice, saw no radiant figure. But it seemed to her she felt a
caress upon her brow, and the ache there, which had throbbed for hours as
though her head were bound in a tight iron band, stopped.
The end of the pain was like a morning birdsong.
There was a real morning birdsong, she realized muzzily, here in matter's
lovely realm, a cheery, brainless warble from the bushes below the castle
walls. The gray cloud-feathers among the fading stars were just beginning to
blush a faint, fiery pink, color creeping from east to west. A little thread
of lemon light lined the eastern horizon.
Illvin groaned. Ista turned to find him sitting up in dy Cabon's grip, pulling
blood-soaked bandages from his unmarked body. His lips parted with dismay as
he took in the extent of the mess, starting to glow scarlet as color seeped
back into the world. "Five gods." He swallowed against a surge of bile. "That
was bad, at the end. Wasn't it." It was no question. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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