Janny Wurts The Cycle of Fire1 Stormwarden

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evaded during the night. The island rose from the sea like a behemoth, ribbed
with cliffs and terraced ledges and shadowed by crags which seemed to comb the
roof of heaven. Waterfalls unreeled down rocks flecked like ice with flocks of
perched gulls. Below, where crescent beaches met the incoming tide, all image
of serenity was spoiled. The sea between pinnace and shoreline was slashed
into spray by the jagged knuckles of a reef.
Emien rummaged in the stern locker for a ship's glass. He surveyed the boiling
rush of breakers, horrified to discover how closely the pinnace had skirted
disaster in the dark. Carefully as he searched, he saw no safe route to land.
He turned and studied the seaward horizon with the glass. The mist had
dispersed, leaving the humped blue outlines of several surrounding islands
visible to the southwest. Emien checked his charts, snapped the glass closed,
and rose to consult Tathagres.
He found her propped against the mainmast. Her hair was snarled from water and
wind, and beneath the
tattered shoulders of her blouse the fine skin he had once admired was
sun-blistered and cracked. Even closed, her eyes were hollowed with dark
circles of exhaustion. Emien hesitated, reluctant to rouse her.
A moment later he was grateful for his temerity.
Tathagres spoke without moving. "Boy? If you have some-thing to tell me,
speak."
Emien flinched, too startled to note her derisive tone. "Lady, we are anchored
off the northeast shore of
Skane's Edge. Innishari lies seventeen leagues due north, against an
unfa-vorable wind."
Tathagres' lids flicked open, violet eyes narrowed with an-noyance. She said
nothing, but her silence struck the boy like a breath of cold.
Emien stiffened, knuckles balanced against the brass bands of the ship's
glass. No longer the simple fisherman's boy who had left Imrill Kand, he did
not tremble, nor did his uncertainty show. "Lady, I
would not trouble you without reason. The casks are empty. Badly as the
crewmen need water, I hesitate to consider a landing here. If you would step
aft, you'll see the risks."
He offered his hand and helped her rise. Weather and star-vation had not
robbed Tathagres of grace.
She moved like a panther, the slender lines of muscle and bone accentuated all
the more by her leanness.
Embarrassed to discover he could not repress a thrill of desire, Emien let her
go ahead. The deckhands also followed her with eyes like hungry dogs. The boy
felt a hot stab of jealousy. That moment, he wished Tath-agres would command
him to sail to Innishari with the casks still empty. Let the sailors row until
they shriveled in the heat, Emien thought, unaware that a scant week past he
would never have dared to regard his mistress possessively.
Tathagres paused in the stern, a hand posed on the backstay for balance. She
regarded the shores of
Skane's Edge with a strange and ruthless intensity. Emien chose a place at her
side. Absorbed by the tumble of waves over the reefs, he soon forgot his
quarrel with the deckhands. The breeze had freshened out of the north, and
sunlight jeweled the spume like sequined lace. Yet to a sailor such beauty
clothed murderous hazard; between wind and rocks, no safe landing was possible
on this beach. Emien knew he had no choice but to sail on and seek a more
favorable harbor. The weight of that conclusion oppressed him. That the
oarsmen must suffer fresh hardship now filled him with revulsion; the risk of
losing even a single life became not sacrifice but intolerable waste.
Disturbed by his conscience, Emien stared at his hands as if the cracked and
blistered skin held answer to the dilemma of command. "Lady," he began.
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Tathagres turned her face toward him, and he looked up, at first unable to
believe what he saw.
His mistress wore an expression of joy. Her eyes glittered with a challenge
fiercer than any lust. "You will land the pin-nace at once," she said firmly.
Emien's jaw dropped. Fear choked the breath in his throat.
"You heard." Tathagres leaned close and spoke directly into his ear. Though
she wore no scent, her proximity unnerved him. "Are you fit to command, or do
you yield your will like a nursemaid for the lives of the scum who serve you?"
Emien's jaw clenched. Tathagres mocked him; after An-skiere's storm, she
viewed his handling of the pinnace as noth-ing more than sport to amuse her.
Now, like a cat grown bored with teasing a mouse, she sought to slaughter the
pride he had gained at the cost of his own sister's life. The jest, at such a
price, was too bitter to contemplate.
Emien drew breath, heated by deadly anger. "Lady," he said tersely, "you shall
have your landing." And consumed by bitterness which admitted neither regret
nor compassion, he yanked the knotted cord from his waist. He strode forward,
oblivious to the fact another observed his actions even more keenly than his
mistress.
Hunched like a great scavenger bird in the bow, Hearvin sat with his hood
thrown back, bald head exposed to the sky. In stiff-lipped silence, he watched
Emien drive the sailhands to the benches with the lash. Wind eddied the sound,
landing the crack of the cord across flesh an unreal quality, distant and
dreamlike as the spool pictures the sorcerer had viewed long ago during
Koridan's Grand Ceremony at
Landfast. To compel the deckhands' obedience, the boy inspired them to fear
him more than death by drowning; the result was disturbingly brutal. Hearvin [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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