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a cupboard and rummaged in it, taking out something wrapped in a length of
the insulating silk. Before her on the table she placed a small wicker-wood
frame, then carefully untwisting the silks, she laid something in the frame. It
was a small matrix; smaller than his own, but considerably larger than the
one Ragan had showed him. Small lights played in it; Kerwin, looking at
them, felt sick and nauseated. The woman looked into her own matrix, then
into Kerwin s, rose, stirred the brazier again so that clouds of the choking
smoke rose, and Kerwin s head.began to swim. The smoke seemed to contain
some potent drug, for the woman, inhaling it deeply, stared at him with a
sudden live glitter in her eyes.
 You, she said,  you are not what you seem. Her words slurred strangely.
 You will find what you seek, but you will destroy it too. You were a trap that
missed its firing, they sent you away to safety, from the blizzard to feed the
banshee& You will find the thing you desire, you will destroy it but you will
save it, too& 
Kerwin said rudely,  I didn t come here to have my fortune told.
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She seemed not to hear, muttering almost incoherently. It was dark in the
room, except for the dim glow of the brazier, and very cold. Impatient,
Kerwin stirred; she made an imperative gesture and he sank back, surprised
at the authority of the movement. Muttering, drugged old witch! What the hell
was she doing now?
The crystal on the table, his own crystal, glowed and shimmered; the crystal
in the wicker frame, between the woman s slender hands, began slowly to
glow with blue fire.
 The Golden Bell, the woman muttered thickly, slurring the words and
making them one, Cleindori.  Oh, yes, Cleindori was beautiful, long, long they
sought her in the hills across the river, but she had gone where they could not
pursue, the proud superstitious fools preaching the Way of Arilinn& 
All the light in the room, now, was focused on the woman s face, the light that
seemed to pour from the blue center of the crystal. Kerwin sat there a long,
long time, while the woman stared into the crystal and muttered something to
herself. Finally he wondered if she had gone into a trance, if she were a
clairvoyant who could answer his questions.
 Who am I?
 You are the one they managed to send away, the brand snatched from the
burning, she said thickly.  There were others, but you were the most likely.
They didn t know, the proud Comyn, that you had been snatched away from
them. That they had hidden the prey inside the hunter s door, hidden the leaf
inside the forest. All of them, Cleindori, Cassilde, the Terranan, the Ridenow
boy& 
The lights in the crystal seemed to coagulate into a brilliant flash of flame.
Kerwin flinched as it knifed through his eyes, but he could not move.
And then a scene rose before his eyes, clear and distinct, as if imprinted on
the inside of his eyelids:
Two men and two women, all of them in Darkovan clothing, all seated around
a table on which lay a matrix crystal in a cradle; and one of the women, very
frail, very fair, was bending over it, gripping the cradle so tightly that he could
see the knuckles of her hands whitened by that desperate grip. Her face,
framed in paling reddish hair, seemed eerily familiar& The men watched,
intent, unmovmg. One of them had dark hair and dark eyes, animal eyes, and
Kerwin heard himself thinking, The Terran, and knew at the back of his mind
that he looked on the face of the man whose name he would bear, and they all
watched spellbound while the cold lights played on the woman s face like
some strange aurora; and then the tall redheaded man suddenly wrenched
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the woman s hands from the cradle; the blue fires died and the woman sank
back senseless in the dark man s arms&
The scene swept away; Kerwin saw moving clouds, cold drenching rain falling
in a courtyard. A man strode through a high-pillared corridor, a man in a
jeweled cloak fastened high at the neck; a tall arrogant man, and Kerwin
gasped, recognizing the dream-face of his earliest memories. The scene
narrowed again to a high-walled chamber. The women were there, and one of
the men. Kerwin seemed to see the scene from a strange perspective, as if he
were either up very high or down very low, and he realized that he was there,
horror and sudden dread making him tremble. He seemed to look away from
the four grouped around the matrix, at a closed door, a turning door-handle
that moved slowly, very slowly, then was suddenly flung back, blotted out by
dark forms that filled the doorway and blotted out the light, rushing
forward&
Kerwin screamed. It was not his own voice, but the voice of a child, thin and
terrible and terrifying, a shriek of utter despair and panic. He slumped
forward across the table, the scene darkening before his eyes, remembered
screams ringing and ringing on and on in his ears long after his cry had jolted
him up to consciousness again.
Dazed, he straightened and passed his hand slowly across his eyes. His hand
came away wet with clammy sweat or tears? Confused, he shook his head.
He was not in that high-walled room filled with vague shapes of terror. He [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]