[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
head and his features in shadow. "You'd have lost him to Anskiere, had I not.
The falcon's return fore-stalled any chance to involve you."
"What!"Tathagres stiffened. She struck the seat with her fist, and gold
jangled through the rush of the gale. "Do you tell me Anskiere sent a
summoning aboard
Crow, and you saw fit not to inform me?
Koridan's Fires!
I'd like to see you flayed.
Because of your misjudgment, that foolish little girl will
prob-ably survive." She stared crossly over waters wracked by spume. "We won't
recover her now, that's certain."
Hearvin said nothing. What he thought could not be guessed as Tathagres spun
back to face him, her wet hair twisted into snake locks.
"It a stay-spell?" She paused only for Hearvin's affir-mation. "Then release
him. I want the boy aware is his sister's death was caused by that
cloud-shifter's stormfalcon. Convince him, if he asks, that Taen perished in
the hold of the galleass."
Hearvin obediently traced a pass in the air before the boy. A symbol glimmered
red, framed briefly by the black surge of a wave before the sorcerer snapped
his fingers. The glyph faded. Emien blinked, started, and his blankly
disoriented expression transformed into a desperate survey of the pinnace's
passengers.
Tathagres awaited her opening. With narrowed, predator's eyes, she absorbed
every nuance of the boy's expression as he realized his sister was absent. He
did not speak. But his body convulsed with a savage flare of rage.
Plotting for the future, Tathagres sought a way to exploit that anger; and in
the seawater sloshing under her knees, found inspiration. She yanked a bucket
from the pinnace's locker and thrust it between the boy's hands. "Bail," she
urged softly. "Your life, and mine, depends upon keeping this craft
sea-worthy."
Emien seized the handles with a grip that blanched his knuckles, his eyes
already hardened. He would live, Tathagres saw, expressly to avenge his
sister. She smiled in the darkness. The boy was tough as sword steel and
charged like a thunder-head with passion. Under her guidance he would become a
magnificent weapon. Settled by the thought, Tathagres leaned against a thwart
and shut her eyes.
Of the survivors of the pinnace, Emien alone searched astern for a glimpse of
the vessel left behind.
Crow reeled in her death throes. Thrashed like flotsam, she listed in the
spume, the corpses of her slaves streaming from the oar-ports. As Emien
watched, rain alone wet his cheeks. Once, he would have wept for the sister he
had lost. Now his grief was eclipsed by hatred so pure it burned his very
soul. If he lived, Anskiere would die. Mechanically, Emien continued to bail.
The abandoned galleass settled slowly to her deep water grave. No living man
remained to observe as, tickled by a trail of bubbles from the hold, a brandy
Page 34
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
cask rose like a cork to the surface. Perched precariously on the rim, a tern
spread wings haloed by the blaze of an enchanter's craft. Though gusts
ham-mered the surrounding waves into a churning millrace of foam, the cask
bobbed gently, girdled by calm only one sorcerer could command. Dry inside,
Taen slept. Anskiere's ward drew her scathelessly through the gale-ravaged
wreckage of Kisburn's fleet and westward into the open sea.
Ivain's Heir
In the close heat of evening Jaric lay limp on his cot in the loft above
Morbrith Keep's smithy. Although more than one healer plied him with remedies,
he had not regained conscious-ness since he had fallen senseless in the
apothecary's herb garden two days past. Sightless as an icon beneath his
blankets, he did
not respond to the flare of light beneath the dormer by his head; nor did he
stir as the tramp of booted feet shook the ladder which led to the loft. Far
beyond reach of physical senses, the scribe's apprentice remained unaware his
illness had earned him the attention of the Master Healer, and oddly, the Earl
of
Morbrith himself.
A liveried servant raised a lantern over the cot, revealing a profile now
sharp-edged and sunken.
Flamelight accentuated the boy's bloodless lips, and the fingers splayed on
the coverlet seemed as fragile as the fluted shells washed in by the tide.
"He seems dead," said the Earl. Emeralds flashed as he bent and lifted Jaric's
wrist. The limb was icy, and slender as a maid's in the man's callused grip.
The Earl swallowed, moved to pity for the boy. Raised by the Smith's Guild,
Jaric had proved too slight for the forges; he had been forced to repay the
cost of his fostering on a copyist's wages. The Earl chafed the boy's skin,
startled to discover blisters. He turned the hand he held to the light. "Did
you see this?"
The Master Healer clicked his tongue. "Severe sunburn," he said gruffly. "The
boy lay unprotected for several hours before anyone noticed him. The other
side of his face is marked also. Except for that, he shows no trace of injury.
I found no bruises, and if he's sick, his symptoms match no affliction I have
ever known. I tell you, Lord, I believe him stricken by sorcery."
The Earl smoothed Jaric's arm on the blanket. He settled on his heels,
remembering Kerain, the smith's son, who had hung for murdering his betrothed.
Under oath at his trial, Kerain had sworn he had done nothing except prevent
the girl from slaughtering her newborn child. The young man claimed to have
snatched the infant from under her knife, and she had promptly turned the
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
