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What the sands foretold?"
A muscle twitched in her jaw.
"You saw," I said.
"No."
It stopped me. "No?"
"No, Tiger. It was a private thing."
I frowned. "Are you saying you saw nothing? Or that by saying nothing about
it, you create that privacy?"
"I saw nothing." She tucked hair behind an ear. "Nothing but sand, Tiger.
Little drifts of wind-
blown sand."
"Then--you didn't see...?" But I let it go. As I unclenched my fists, another
fingernail peeled off.
"Then if no one else saw, maybe it won't happen. Maybe I can make it not
happen."
Del's face was pale in starlight. Her voice was a thready whisper. "Was it so
very bad?"
I frowned into darkness. "I'm not sure."
She thrust herself upright, sitting atop her blanket. "Then if you're not
sure, how can it be so bad?"
I stared into the night.
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"Tiger?"
I twitched. Traced the sandtiger scars. "I'm not sure," I repeated. Then I
looked at her. "We have to go to Julah."
Del frowned. "You said something of that before. You gave no reason, just said
we had to go.
Why? That is Sabra's domain. She won't remain in Iskandar forever. It is not
the destination
I
would choose."
"If you had a choice."
Del narrowed blue eyes. "Have you no choice?"
"We."
"We?"
"Have we no choice."
Pale brows hooked together. "What are you saying?"
"That of all the futures I saw, yours was the most potent."
"My future!" Del's spine snapped straight. "You saw my future in the casting?"
I reached out and caught a lock of white-silk hair.
Wound it around a callused finger, wishing I could feel it. Then slipped the
hand behind her neck and pulled her close, so very close, holding her very
tightly against my left shoulder. Losing the threefold future in the curtain
of her hair.
Wanting to hold her so hard I cracked all her bones.
Before Chosa Dei did it for me.
Twenty-three
My eyes snapped open. I roused instantly and without fanfare: one moment
asleep, the next completely awake, with no residual grogginess, or a desire to
curse the inner sense that jerked
me out of oblivion.
I lay perfectly still in my blanket, rolled up in a sausage casing of
Southron-loomed, nubby weaving dyed gray and bloody and brown. Del slept
beside me, pale hair hooded by blanket, except where one stray lock had
escaped the others and ribboned across the skyward shoulder.
Something crawled from the pit of my belly. Trembling beset my limbs.
Fear? No. Just--trembling.
Tingling.
A quake of bone and muscle no longer willing to be quiescent.
I gritted teeth. Squeezed shut eyes. Willed myself back to sleep. But the
tingling increased.
Feet twitched. A knee jumped. A palsy swallowed my hands, then spat them out
again. From head to toe, my skin itched.
But scratching didn't help.
I peeled back the blanket. Thrust myself up. Gathered scabbarded sword and
walked deliberately away from Del, danjacs, wagons, aketni. But not away from
the stud. I went straight to him, untied hempen hobbles, threw reins onto his
neck. I didn't take time for saddle or pad, just swung up bareback, clamping
legs around silk-smooth barrel; hooking bare heels into the hollows behind the
border of shoulder and foreleg.
He snorted. Pawed. Stomped twice, raising dust. And then settled, waiting
alertly.
"Toward the sun," I told him, doing nothing to give him guidance.
He turned at once, eastward, and walked away from the wagons. No saddle,
stirrups, pad. Just the suede dhoti between us, allowing flesh and muscle to
speak in the language of horse and rider.
He walked until I stopped him, speaking a single word. I swung a leg across
sloping withers, dropped off, walked four steps away. Unsheathed the
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discolored jivatma and let the dawn inspect its taint.
A question occurred:
Why am I here?
Was washed away in a shudder, I set the tip into the sand and drew a perfect
circle, slicing through the top layer of dust and sand to the lifeblood
beneath, glinting with crystallized ice.
Yet another question:
What am I doing?
A twitch of shoulders dismissed it.
When the circle was finished, I stepped across it, entered, sat down. Set the
sword across my lap, resting blade and hilt on crossed legs. Steel was cool
and sweet against the Southron
(Southron?) flesh too light in color for many tribes, too dark for a
Northerner-born.
Something in between. Something not of either. Something that didn't fit.
Something--someone--
different. Shaped by an alien song he didn't know how to hear.
I placed my palms across the blade. Shut my eyes to shut out the day. Shut out
everything save the bonedeep, irritant itch that set muscles and flesh to
twitching.
And a third:
What is happen
--
Unfinished.
The inner eye opened. It Saw far too much.
Would he unmake me? I wondered. Or did he need me too much?
The blade grew warm in my palms.
Eyes snapped open. I lurched up, spilling sword, staggered two steps toward
the perimeter of the circle, then fell to my knees. Belly writhed as gorge
rose. But there was nothing to spew.
I gagged. Coughed. Poured sweat.
Hoolies, what have I--Limbs abruptly buckled. I sprawled facedown in the sand,
laboring to breathe.
Digging fruitlessly with fingers that had shed each blackened nail. And was
now replaced with new.
The urge that had brought me here died away into nothingness. The inner eye
closed.
I rolled over onto my back, arms and legs awry. Breathed air unclogged with
sand. Stared up at the changing sky as stars were swallowed by light. Heard
the stud whicker softly, unsettled by the workings of a power he didn't know,
and couldn't understand.
He hates magic as much as I do.
But he doesn't know the need seeping out of the darkened places into the light
of day, lapping at a soul. He doesn't know what it can do. He doesn't know
what it is.
He doesn't know what know: there is bliss in ignorance.
I
I stared at the sky and laughed, because laughing is better than crying.
Hoolies, but I'm a fool. Hoolies, but I'm scared.
Danjacs were hitched to wagons. The aketni sat on the seats. Del waited
quietly atop her bay mare. Her face was taut and pale.
I halted, slid off, bent to gather gear and saddled the stud quickly,
arranging botas and pouches.
Grabbed one squirt of water, then remounted the stud. The language now was [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]