[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

mocking. He made himself the butt of his own jokes more often than anyone else. He was tall, as tall as
Frost or Doyle, but he was slender as a reed, and as graceful as a bed of reeds when the wind makes
them dance. I'd have liked him better with shoulders a little wider, but the lack of them made him seem
even taller, willowy. His hair fell straight and fine to his ankles. The hair was his most outstanding feature,
medium to dark green, with a pattern of white veins running throughout. It was only when he got closer
that you realized that his hair bore the mark of leaves as if the hair had been tattooed with ivy. As he
moved down the hall, it was as if wind blew the leaves apart, and they reformed only as his companion
grabbed his arm and held him back. I think Ivi would have kept on in the face of all those weapons;
Page 178
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
walked down that hallway with a smile on his face and laughter like darkness in his eyes. Once I'd
thought him careless, but as I grew older I tasted the sorrow in him. I began to realize that it wasn't
carelessness, but despair. Whatever had prompted him to become one of the Queen's Ravens, I don't
think he enjoyed the bargain as much as he'd hoped.
The cautious hand on his arm belonged to Hawthorne. His black hair fell in thick waves past his knees.
When he turned his head, the light gleamed rich green from those black waves. He wore a silver circlet
that held that heavy mass back from his face. The rest of him, from broad shoulders to feet, was covered
in a cloak the color of pine needles, a rich deep green, that was held closed over his shoulder by a silver
brooch.
"What is wrong, Darkness?" he called to us. "We have done nothing."
"Why are you here?" Doyle called back.
"The queen has sent us to meet the princess," Hawthorne said.
"Why only the two of you?"
Hawthorne blinked, and even from this far away I could see that strange pink shade that his inner circle
of eye had. Pink, green, and red were Hawthorne's tricolored eyes. "What do you mean, only the two of
us? What has happened?"
"They don't know," Barinthus said, quietly.
"How long have you been standing here, waiting?" Doyle asked. But he'd already relaxed his pose, the
gun in his hand beginning to lower to point at the floor.
"Hours," Ivi said, and swirled the edge of his own pale green cloak out like a skirt at a dance.
Hawthorne nodded. "Two hours, or more. Time moves oddly in the sithen."
Doyle put up his gun, and as if that were a signal, swords were sheathed, guns holstered, until they all
stood at ease, or as easy as they got.
"I ask again, Darkness, what has happened?" But no one had to explain, because some shifting among
the guards had let him see me. I'd forgotten about the blood on my face. I'd wiped some of it off with a
bit of wet cloth from one of the men, but not all of it. Only soap would get it all off. "Lord and Lady
protect us, she's hurt!"
"It is not her blood," Doyle said.
"Then whose?"
"Mine," Frost said, and he moved up through the crowd of guards, and again, as if that were a signal,
they all began to move down the hallway toward the other two guards.
Ivi wasn't smiling when he said, "What happened?"
Doyle told him, the brief outline, leaving out what happened when Barinthus touched the ring.
Page 179
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
Ivi was shaking his head. "Who would dare? Princess Meredith bears the queen's mark. To harm her is
to risk the queen's mercy. None of her Ravens would risk that." There was absolutely none of Ivi's banter
in those words. It was as if the news of the assassination attempt had frightened him out of his jokes and
into something more real.
Hawthorne's tricolored eyes were wide. "Who indeed would dare?"
Barinthus was still holding me in his arms, but there was no snow now, no cold. I touched his shoulder.
"I can walk now."
He looked at me as if he'd forgotten he was holding me, and maybe he had. He had to bend over to put
me safely on the stone floor. I shook the back of my skirt in place, smoothed it with my hands, and knew
that the pleats in back simply would not be perfect until the skirt was ironed. There was nothing I could
do about it. I just hoped that the news of my near death would distract her from my less-than-perfect
clothing. You never knew with Andais; sometimes she would direct her anger at small things if she
couldn't deal with the large.
Ivi went to one knee before me, and when he did, the cloak caught on his leg and pulled to one side,
baring his shoulder, part of his chest, and the edge of his hips. He was nude under the cloak.
"Princess Meredith, greetings from the Queen of Air and Darkness. She sends us as gifts." That lilt of
mockery was back in his voice.
Hawthorne had also dropped to his knees, but the way he held the cloak tight with only his hands
showing made me wonder if he were wearing anything more under his cloak than Ivi was.
"We are gifts for your stay if the ring doth know us," Hawthorne said, and he sounded as if he would
have been angry if he dared.
"Surely this can wait," Onilwyn said. "If the queen truly does not know of what has happened, then she
must be told."
It was Usna who answered that. "If you want to hurry off and give the queen bad news, by all means run
along. I, for one, do not want to be the first person to tell her." He was still nude, carrying his sheathed
sword in his hand. The queen had been known to shoot the messenger, as it were.
Onilwyn looked a little pale. "You may have a point." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]