[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.The sloop'scrude, hand-hewn timbers smoothed under his fists, transformed to the slimlines of Crow's pinnace.Emien leaned over one thwart, nails gouged deep intovanished spruce.Showered by blown spray, he strained to reach a brandy caskwhich bobbed just out of reach in a trough.He licked salty lips, shouted."Taen!"The cask and his sister's fate were somehow entangled.But Emien's need was notgreat enough to abandon the pinnace and follow her.In the desperation of hisdream, he snatched up an oar and stretched outward, trying to hook the cask anddraw it to the boat.But a white tern appeared out of the mist.Ringed by theharsh aura of a sorcerer's craft, the bird dove at his face.Blinding light burstupon Emien's retinas.Then someone gripped his shoulders and shook himpainfully.The brilliance vanished, muffled in darkness."Emien?"The boy woke with a start.He blinked, momentarily disoriented.Tathagres bentover him, her white hair enhanced by the pearly glow of dawn."You must get up," urged his mistress."We travel at daybreak."Emien braced himself awkwardly on one elbow."I dreamed." He paused tosteady the shake in his voice."I saw my sister Taen floating in a brandy cask afterthe wreck of the Crow.She was under a spell by Anskiere.Could this be so, Lady?Should she be alive I-""No," Tathagres interrupted."You saw nothing but a nightmare."She released the boy and turned her face away."Rise at once, Emien.If we're tocross the heights of Skane's Edge before nightfall, we'll require an early start.AndI would prefer dinner and a bed in a tavern."Emien clambered stiffly to his feet, too preoccupied to observe the glint ofspeculation in his mistress's eyes.He banished all memory of the dream,forgetting in his grief his island heritage, that any vision he had experiencedcould hold more truth than any word of Tathagres'.Far south of Skane's Edge and well beyond the farthest archipelago under theAlliance's charter, the cask which had sheltered Taen since the wreck of theKing's war fleet at last neared its destination.It rolled gently, unmolested by thesurf which broke and creamed whitely over the coast of an islet never marked onany chart.Drawn safely to the shallows by Anskiere's geas, the cask groundedwith scarcely a bump.The tern perched on the rim stretched slender wings, and awavelet arose, curling under its tail feathers.The cask lifted on the crest, and waspropelled shoreward, and the water receded, chuckling over dampened sand, itsburden delivered to firm soil.None came to greet the Stormwarden's protege upon her arrival.Breezes rustledaaTTnnssFFffooDDrrPPmmYYeeYYrrBB22.BBAAClick here to buyClick here to buywwmmwwoowwcc.AAYYBBYYBB r rthrough serried tufts of dune grass, and tossed the boughs of cedars whosemajestic growth had never known the bite of an axeblade, nor any other abuse ofman's invention.The tern hopped to the sand, head cocked to one side.It peckedat the barnacles which crusted the side of the cask.Taen stirred within, rousedfrom her enchanted sleep.The Stormwarden's spell released her gradually.Protective as a mother'sembrace, the warmth which cradled her limbs faded gently away.Wakened by thelight which leaked through the bunghole in the top of the barrel, Taen stretched.Though she recalled taking refuge in the cask while Tathagres held her captive inCrow's dank hold, she felt no fear.She heard the boom of surf muffled by thestaves, and the solid stillness of the land beneath reassured her.Taen shifted into a crouch.The bunghole let in a cloud-flecked view of sky, andthe smells of tide wrack and cedar.Intently she listened, yet heard no sound butwaves and the shrill cries of sand swallows; as far as she could tell, the beachoutside was deserted.The girl hammered her fists against the top of the barrel.Barnacles grated, then yielded their grip on the seams.Sunlight flared through acrack and the weathered boards loosened and fell aside.Blinking against the glare, Taen stood upright and clung to the rim of the barrel.Except that her shift was speckled with mildew, she seemed little the worse forher journey by sea.Anskiere had delivered her from Tathagres' hands, she wascertain; her acceptance of his stewardship went deeper than childish faith.In amanner which had disturbed the villagers on Imrill Kand, Taen often perceivedthings no youngster should have known.She was fey, her peers had accused inwhispers.Their taunts had quickly taught her to value silence.Graced byrecognition that the Stormwarden had not taken her destiny in hand withoutreason, Taen braced her elbows against the raw ends of the staves and gazedabout.A tern pecked the sand in the barrel's shadow, but there all sense of the ordinaryended.The islet was as beautiful as a dreamer's paradise, uncanny in itsperfection.Daylight shone with transcendent clarity upon beaches bejeweled withcrystal reflections.Taen raised her eyes to the spear-tipped ranks of the cedarsbeyond and felt her skin prickle with uneasiness.She had landed on a northeastshore.Raised where life was tyrannized by the moods of weather and sea, sheknew the fury of storms from that quarter.Yet if the trees on this shoreline hadever known the brunt of a winter gale, they suffered no damage.Their symmetrywas faultless.The place where they grew seemed possessed by a presence olderthan man's origins, brooding, silent, and eerily sentient.Taen's fingers tightened on the barrel staves.She intruded upon territorytenanted by powers which resented mortal trespass; this she understood by thesame intuition which had shown her Anskiere's innocence the day Imrill Kandhad betrayed him.Now as then she did not strangle her gift with logic as herbrother would have done.Though to set foot on this beach was to challenge theisle's strange guardians, Taen swung her good leg over the rim of the barrel andleaped down.The Stormwarden had chosen this site.Confident of his wisdom,Taen was unafraid.Her movement startled the tern into flight.Light exploded from its wingtips,blue-white and blinding.The energy which bound its form unravelled, whiningaaTTnnssFFffooDDrrPPmmYYeeYYrrBB22.BBAAClick here to buyClick here to buywwmmwwoowwcc.AAYYBBYYBB r rlike a dead man's shade as it fled into the air.Overhead the sand swallowswheeled and dove for cover.Taen landed, stumbling to her knees in warm sand.A feather drifted where thetern had vanished.Sorry the creature had left, the girl caught the quill in herfingers as it fell.Someone had crumpled it once,; the delicate spine was creasedagain and again along its snowy length.The resonant violence of the act tingledthrough Taen's awareness; pressured by a sudden urge to weep, she buried herface in her hands.Imrill Kand lay uncounted leagues distant.Reft of all security,the girl longed to be released from the fate Anskiere had bequeathed her.Yettears were a useless indulgence.Inured to hardship, Taen drew upon theresilience of spirit which had seen her through Tathagres' threats and the horrorsof the Crow's pestilent hold.On Imrill Kand, she had felt inadequate, a clumsy child with a lame leg unfit forwork on a fishing boat's deck.Forced to remain ashore, she had resented herplace with the pregnant women, the arthritic and the elderly.Here at least shecould escape the widows in their musty wool skirts who had scolded her often forhasty stitches and girlish pranks; here she did not have to sit silent and straighton a hard wooden chair, knotting tedious acres of netting.No longer must sheendure while the gossip of her elders veiled sorrows which Taen sensed but darednever to mention
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]