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from this hulion of a man, he did so, his fingers uncupping my hips
regrefully. I stepped back and found myself against Khys, who put his own hand
to the nape of my neck. The dark man s eyes seemed to cloud, as if a curtain
blew over them. His mouth tightened; his hand found the point of his shoulder,
rubbed there.
 I thought, he said to Khys after a long time examining me,  Sereth spoke
allegory, part-truths, born of his distress. I see now that such was not the
case. He kneaded that place upon his shoulder, looked about his feet, eyes
darting. Then he raised them.
 I am appalled, he said, not softly, to the dharen, his censure snapping like
a whip, making a circle of silence and attention around us. I shivered, my
skin crawling under the many-eyed stare of the curious crowd. I sighted the
tiny woman, her breasts and hands pressed against the arm of the arrar whose
back was toward us, her body straining. She was shaking her veiled head to and
fro. I tossed my confined hair forward, over my left shoulder, that it might
obscure from the dark man s eyes my mark. Khys s fingers tightened upon my
neck, reminding me of the band that pulsed there.
I quivered under the dark one s stare, from those oddly filmed eyes.
 Appalled, are you? said Khys softly to him.  Or perhaps it is another
emotion you feel, birthed out of your own inadequacies? Could you, Cahndor,
have done such a thing? Is it not your fear that appalls you, your own
vulnerability that causes you such unease?
The cahndor of Nemar shifted upon his feet, his fists wrapped in his
many-stranded chald.  Doubtless, he growled,  that is the case. At least,
partly.
Khys brushed my hair off my shoulder. His device twinkled at the cahndor, who
could not take his gaze from it.
 I would not have Liuma so degraded, the cahndor said in a lowered tone,
running his dark talons through tight-curled hair. Upon his arm, so displayed,
was a winged slitsa, wound around a recurved blade, drawn upon the skin in
umbers and ochers. It slithered and writhed with the movements of his bicep.
 She is yours. We will do with her only what you wish. If you want her not at
all improved, do not leave her with us. It matters not to me. It is the child
who should concern both of us. And he let go of my neck, pushing me gently
from him.  As with her, it was the child that gave her value. I stood frozen
between them, like a hapless moon eclipsed, wishing I might at that moment
cease to live within flesh.
The cahndor of Nemar extended his hand. Hesitantly I surrendered my own,
watched as his grasp engulfed it. By that grip, inexorable as gravity, he drew
me nearer. I saw, briefly, the woman, still held by the arrar. Her huge eyes
were luminous, fearful. My own, I was sure, showed no more composure. The
darkling prince enfolded my trembling frame, and I understood the filming of
his eyes: nictitating membranes, snapping forth and retreating, cloud-glitter
on an obsidian void.
 Speak my name, growled this savage to whom Khys was obligated.
 I will, Cahndor, if you would but inform me of it, I breathed, compliant as
any obligation about to be discharged, beseeching his patience. His grip
tightened. He spoke a number of sentences in some unfamiliar tongue. Then he
turned his head and barked an order in that same guttural speech. He intoned
his full name gently. I repeated it, fascinated by that gaze that immobilized
me as surely as Khys s flesh lock.
 She knows nothing? he demanded of Khys, loosing his grasp.
 She knows a great deal. She remembers nothing of her life before she came to
the lake. We have deemed it safer not to remind her of what she herself will
not recall.
 As you predicted, said Chayin rendi Inekte harshly.
 As I contrived it, amended Khys, his well-modulated voice silky, in contrast
to the desert monarch s imperious growls. My knees grew infirm. Both of them,
then, knew my history. Khys had never before admitted it. And the other thing
he had said ... I faced him, not wanting to believe what his veiled threat to
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
the cahndor implied.
His lucent gaze stayed me, my questions, my hurt. My tears dried in my eyes
unshed before the cold breath of his hauteur. I turned once more to the
cahndor.
The diminutive dark woman, upon the arm of the arrar Sereth, had come up
beside her couch-mate. She eyed me with terror unrestrained. Her lips were
dried with it; her tiny limbs trembled like a sapling in the path of a
northern gale. She leaned heavily upon Sereth s robed arm, her finger
clawlike. I had no doubt that she was in need of his support. And that one
regarded me impassively from under his thick brown mane, as if we had never
couched.
 Sereth, I whispered. He did not answer, but only regarded me, his attention
upon my left breast. Stung that he would not even acknowledge me, I turned my
head away, staring at the floor, for I knew not where else to look. My fingers
found Khys s strand of couchbond at my waist and tangled themselves in it. I
could feel my palms weeping, the moistness they imparted to the web-cloth upon
my belly.
Khys introduced me to the cahndor s couch-mate by her first name only, an
insult that was not lost upon her, she who was Nemarchan, forereader and
highest among the tiasks of that desert land, Nemar.
He took her resentment from her mind, surely, for he told her courteously that
while at the Lake of Horns she might not use titles, for here no such
accounting of rank was kept; even her hide name, and her mother s and
father s, mattered not at this place, only what she was and what she might
come to be. I watched Khys weave his spell upon that tiny woman in a matter of
moments.
 Let me see her, Khys ordered of Chayin. She made no objection when her
couch-mate stripped off her veils, and, spinning her, unwrapped her miniature
beauty that Khys might assess it. In the puddle of her diaphanous, gold-beaded [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]