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You're just not thinking about the world the way one of the Taken would. You
got a pretty screwed-up eye, but you still think people is people. Them Taken
don't and never did. To them people are just tools and slaves, live junk to
use and throw away. Except for the one that was so powerful she made them her
slaves. And she's riding with your buddy Croaker, far as we know. Right?"
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The idea sank in. He turned it over, looked at the sharp edges, grunting and
shaking like a dog shitting peach seeds. After a while, he said, "She's lost
her powers but she hasn't lost what she knew. And that was knowledge enough to
conquer half a world and tame the Ten Who Were Taken. She'd be one big prize
for any wizard who could lay hands on her."
"There you go." I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. It took me a while.
XXI
The old man sat quietly. When he moved at all he did so slowly and carefully.
His status was ambiguous. He had chased these people across a continent,
damned near killing himself, and for what?
For nothing, that's what. For nothing.
They were lunatics. They ought to be locked up for their own protection.
The woman watched him from about twenty feet to his left. She was a blue-eyed,
stringy-haired blonde about five feet six inches tall, in her middle twenties.
She had a square jaw, a too broad, lumpy bottom, and a goofy manner that made
you wonder if anybody was home behind those watery eyes. And for all that,
there was something strongly sensual there.
She was deaf and mute. She could communicate only via sign language.
She was in charge. She was Darling, the White Rose, the one who had put an end
to the Lady's dark dominion.
How the hell could that be? It didn't add up.
Off to his right was a man who watched him with the warmth of a snake. He was
tall, lean, dusky, hard as a stone with less sense of humor. These days he
dressed in black, which had to be a statement of some sort, but who could tell
what? He would not talk. He flat refused. Which is why they called him Silent.
He was a wizard himself. The tools of his trade lay scattered around him. As
though he expected their unwilling guest to try something.
Silent's eyes were as black as jet, hard as diamonds, and friendly as death.
Damn it! A man made one mistake and four hundred years later they still
wouldn't let him live it down.
There were three more of them around somewhere, brothers with the surname
Torque who seemed to have no given names. They went by absurdities like
Paddlefoot, Donkey Dick, and Brother Bear, except that Donkey Dick became
Stubby when Darling was in listening distance, even though she couldn't hear.
All four men worshiped her. And it was obvious to everyone but her that the
one called Silent entertained romantic ambitions. Lunatics. Every single one.
Something behind him yelled, "Seth Chalk! What treachery are you up to now?"
and exploded in giggles.
Wearily, for the thousandth time, he replied, "Call me Bomanz. I haven't used
Seth Chalk since I was a boy." He did not look around.
It had been a long, long time since he had been Seth Chalk. At least a hundred
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fifty years. He had no exact count. It was a year since he had escaped the
thrall of a sorcery that had held him in stasis most of that time. He knew the
intervening years of strife and horror-the years of the rise and growth of the
Lady's empire-only by repute, after the fact.
He, Bomanz or Seth Chalk, was a living artifact from before the fact. A fool
who had had no business surviving it, who wanted to use these last unexpected
gift years to expiate the guilt that was his for his part in the awakening and
release of the ancient evil.
These idiots were not ready to believe that, no matter that he'd damned near
gotten himself killed keeping that dragon off them during the big final throat
cutting in the Barrowland last winter.
Damned fools. He had done all the damage he could do in one lifetime.
The three brothers came from somewhere up forward, joined the watch. So it was
not one of them who had shouted. But Bomanz knew that. Two of the three could
not speak any language he understood. The third managed Forsberger so brokenly
it was not worth his trouble to try.
The fool who could understand a little of Bomanz's antiquated Forsberger could
not sign. Of course. So any communication not heard directly by Silent or
lip-read by Darling got garbled and lost.
Only the stones communicated like regular people.
He did not like talking to rocks. There was something perverse about holding
converse with rocks.
The trouble with being here was that the human beings, though lunatics, were
the sanest, most believable part of the furnishings.
For the first time in his life, if he wanted to build cloud castles he had to
go look down.
They had press-ganged him at that camp in the Windy Country. He was on the
back of one of those fabulous monsters out of the Plain of Fear, a windwhale.
The beast was a thousand feet long and nearly two hundred wide. From below it
looked like a cross between a man-o'-war jellyfish and the world's biggest
shark. From up top where Bomanz was, the broad flat back looked like something
from an opium smoker's pipe dream. Like the imaginary forests that might grow
in those vast caverns said to lie miles beneath the surface of the earth. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]