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right, as she looks through the darkness, is a luminous glow, against which
she can see the regular outlines of other trees and of a line of bushes,
presumably bordering a walk or path that leads. . . where?
She wants to bury her face in her arms and cry, but she should not. She is too
important for that, she knows. She knows not why, but she feels it
nonetheless. One moment she is alone. The next she is not.
 It's time for me to take you to your home, says the man. A figure in black,
he is no taller than she is, but well muscled, despite the swirling black
cloak.
How can she tell what she cannot see? She does not know, but accepts it all
the same, as she accepts the kindness in the stranger's voice. Perhaps,
perhaps he is not a stranger. She stands.
He offers his arm, and they head down the path, which turns out to have a dim
light of its own and leads in a sinuous fashion toward the glow she had
noticed earlier.  Terwhit. '
She jumps, knowing she should not.  The tercels are the only nightbirds the
Regent permits in the Park of Summer.
 Why?
 One would have to ask the Regent, I suppose. The path winds up a gentle
incline. The glow in the sky ahead increases, and the girl can see that the
path is a pale yellow and that the border shrubs have small yellow flowers
with white centers and are evenly spaced.
She knows that the man in black will be gone before long, and even as she
trusts him she fears him. Even as she fears him she knows only he can answer
the questions she has and cannot ask.
 Who. . - ? she stutters as they approach the top of the hill.
 Am I? he asks. He chuckles, as if he finds it amusing, but she hears the
bitterness behind the sound.  Who am I? I could tell you who I really am, but
that wouldn't mean anything. If I gave you a name you'd recognize, then I
would have to take that, too. She shivers, starts to pull away.
His grip is like iron, and she finds her feet marching in step with his.
 Let us say. Lady-to-be, that I am your penance and hope to be your reward,
and you mine. But that lies a long time from here and now. . . if either of us
survives. And you will not remember this in any case.
The path widens as they come down the hill. The two take a narrower offshoot
that leads to a small gate. The main path continues toward a series of towers
outlined in ghostly, pervading light. She cannot turn her head toward the
towers of light, but understands they are there.
At the smaller gate stands a sentry in dark blue. His eyes are blank as the
man in black leads his charge past.
 You are Lady Kryn Kirsten, the only daughter and child of the Duke of
Kirsten, first loyalist behind the Prince Regent. You have suffered an
accident in your return to Karnak.
The dark man smiles at her, then wipes his expression blank.
 You will find it has all happened this way, though some has yet to happen
that already has. Remember, Lady-to-be, do not marry.
She stands in the courtyard, sinking to her knees, head swimming as the alarms
explode around her, clutching at the memories of the man in black that fade as
her thoughts lose their hold on them, finding herself left with memories of a
long black tunnel and with new memories, recollections of a tall man, a
forbidding woman, and towers. The last words, words someone else has spoken,
remain.  Do not marry.
LVII
From within the tunnel he has wrapped around himself, Martel can sense a
spark, a familiar flame separated from him by the thinnest of margins. He
knows what the spark represents, and wills his course away from it. Too close
to that spark, and the energy he controls will short-circuit across more than
a millennium. Without the focus he embodies . . . he pushes away the thoughts,
locks his mind on the place and the time where he is heading, and the tunnel
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of energy trails him.
Martel pushes himself away from the spark, thoughts lashing against time, most
of his energy devoted merely to keeping his links with his starting point
open.
 Can't go where you haven't been, is that it? he mutters, though he neither
speaks nor is heard in the nontime nexus where he finds himself suspended, but
his thoughts form as though he had spoken.
He lets himself drift forward with the tide, though that motion is an
illusion, because there is no tide to time, and casts his thoughts into the
real time outside his energy tunnel for an anchor. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]