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thinking he was about to die -he'd grown quite used to that - was the shock of
realising that this creature had intelligence.
Her thoughts were cold and proud; she had no sentiment, no sympathy with
humans; but she did have a sense of justice. A knowledge of what needed to be
done that was like prescience.
Something Rouna had taught him. Tried to teach him, at least; he hadn't wanted
anyone's lessons at the time, but something of it must have seeped in. To make
his mind go absolutely quiet, to open himself to whatever images came. He made
himself do it.
The dra'a'k drew back her head and made a rumbling noise, almost a purr, deep
in her chest. He saw a shower of falling stones, but they made a specific
sound. A-ka-ra-ta.
Con said, 'Her name is Akarata.'
Rufryd turned on him. 'How did you know that?'
Con frowned. 'I don't know! She showed it to me.'
'So you're seeing this too, right?'
The dra'a'k rose on her legs and flapped her wings, making a violent draught.
Forks of yellow lightning
danced behind her. Then she settled again, and seemed to be waiting for Rufryd
to speak.
'Did you save Con?'
He knew at once that she didn't understand speech. He made an effort to
concentrate, to show her a mental picture. Her answer came at once.
She'd taken Con for meat, yes. But she had seen something in him, more
important than mere food.
Decided to spare him.
Rufryd sent the image back to her, as a question. 'Why?'
An image of Con as a shepherd; but his herd contained all kinds of animals,
goats and lynxes and foxes and birds.
Con will help to save the animals.
That immediately made him think of Lynden, and he felt a stab of pain. 'How
touching. he muttered, but Akarata hadn't finished. She showed him a shocking
image of Bhahdradomen flesh animals.
These we cannot eat. In the chaos that is to come. Con will help to save the
animals. Our prey. Your prey?
Your prey, also. All that lives, preys on others.
'She has a point. Rufryd said. 'Con is special?' He didn't know how to show
her 'special'; he began to imagine Con with a sword in his hand, fighting. No,
that could merely imply 'violent'. Instead he showed her Con standing out in a
crowd, colourful where they were drab.
Yes.
She added Rufryd to the image.
You also.
He felt uneasy, rather than flattered.
How?
He'd got it wrong again. It was a question. She was asking him how he would be
special, what he intended to do. He was stumped for a moment; then he showed
himself going into Vexor. Only he couldn't picture it, so it was only a vague
plain with a few Bhahdradomen and flesh-cattle on it; but she understood.
Balancing on one scaly leg, Akarata reached out with the other and closed her
huge black claws on his shoulder.
Rufryd froze; he was convinced she was about to attack him and he daren't
move. The reek of blood and meat on her was overpowering, yet she was
magnificent, fiery bronze against the sky, like some fantastical feathered
serpent from one of Tanthe's books come to life.
Her claws, though, were gentle. She was telling him something. She wanted him
to go with her.
Rufryd looked round at Con, who said, 'Where's she taking you?'
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He lifted his hands in bemusement. 'I don't know. I'll come back as quick as I
can.'
Akarata walked with a ponderous, swaying gait that teetered between dignified
and comical. Rufryd followed her, over steep curved shoulders of rock,
clinging on with his hands and feet and trying not to look down. They were
climbing higher, with the summit of Q'enartre's Throne soaring directly above
them. There was a disturbing noise that grew louder, a crackling and tearing
of the atmosphere. He saw webs of light shimmering against the sky, red like
watered blood against the fungal green of the clouds, and his skin burned with
its power. Akarata brought him to a hollow in the mountainside and he found
himself staring into a whirling vortex of green and blue light that seemed to
be more than a hole in the mountain. It was a tornado raging in another world.
He couldn't reconcile the sight; it made his eyes hurt and his head spin.
A portal?
He asked, though he'd never seen one.
No more. None pass through, though some have fallen in and died.
She showed him a couple of young people passing into the wild storm; spat out
again with great force like arrows into the clouds, and falling to their
deaths. Rufryd clung to the rock, teetering towards the vortex as if being
drawn in. He was fighting for breath. This was the seat of the disturbance.
She showed him flares of energy spewing from the vortex, passing as waves of
coloured light across the sky, pushing great surges of heat into the
atmosphere to cause wild storms. The vortex was comparatively quiet now, but
if it should flare again . . .
He knew he had to get Con off the mountain, and quickly.
He asked, where is it coming from?
Akarata lanced him with red eyes. A series of powerful images slammed into his
mind. Aelyr, fighting
each other. The landscape around them rising and falling like an intensely
blue-green sea. Scene after scene of battle, hopeless, pointless . . .
When she paused, he had no strength to send any pictures back to her. His
brain felt bruised, drained.
'Gods.
The Aelyr are at war? Is that what Tanthe's gone into?'
More visions came, flowing across ever-greater canvases, spanning tracts of
time.
The war will spread to this land - all the land will rise in chaos like the
sea under the three moons. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]