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Duke's brown hands, their jeweled rings flashing fire, were closed over the
knobs on the chair-arms. His feet were firmly planted. His jaw was set. Only
his eyes showed any uneasiness or vulnerability. They kept shifting from side
to side -- rapidly, regularly, like the pivoted ones of a doll.
"My daughter should be here," he heard the Duke say abruptly in a flat voice.
"Hasten her. She is not to be permitted to delay."
One of the men hurried away.
Then the twinges of pain commenced, striking at random in the forearm, the
back, the knee, the shoulder. With an effort Mouse composed his features.
He fixed his attention on the faces around him, surveying them in detail as if
they formed a picture, noting the highlights on the cheeks and eyes and beards
and the shadows, wavering with the torchflames, that their figures cast upon
the low walls.
Then those low walls melted and, as if distance were no longer real, he saw
the whole wide world he'd never visited beyond them: great reaches of forest,
bright amber desert, and turquoise sea; the Lake of Monsters, the City of
Ghouls, magnificent Lankhmar, the Land of the Eight Cities, the Trollstep
Mountains, the fabulous Cold Waste and by some chance striding there an open-
faced, hulking red-haired youth he'd glimpsed among the pirates and later
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spoken with -- all places and persons he'd never now encounter, but showing in
wondrous fine detail, as if carved and tinted by a master miniaturist.
With startling suddenness the pain returned and increased. The twinges became
needle stabs -- a cunning prying at his insides -- fingers of force crawling
up his arms and legs toward his spine -- an unsettling at the hips.
He desperately tensed his muscles against them.
Then he heard the Duke's voice, "Not so fast. Stop a while." Mouse thought he
recognized the overtones of panic in the voice. He twisted his head despite
the pangs it cost him and watched the uneasy eyes. They swung to and fro, like
little pendulums.
Suddenly then, as if time were no longer real, Mouse saw another scene in this
chamber. The Duke was there and his eyes swinging from side to side, but he
was younger and there was open panic and horror in his face. Close beside him
was a boldly handsome woman in a dark red dress cut low in the bosom and with
slashes inset with yellow silk. Stretched upon the rack itself in Mouse's
place was a strappingly beautiful but now pitifully whimpering maid, whom the
woman in red was questioning, with great coldness and insistence on detail,
about her amorous encounters with the Duke and her attempt on the life of
herself, the Duke's wife, by poison.
Footsteps broke that scene, as stones destroy a reflection in water,
and brought the present back. Then a voice: "Your daughter comes, oh Duke."
Mouse steeled himself. He had not realized how much he dreaded this meeting,
even in his pain. He felt bitterly certain that Ivrian would not have heeded
his words. She was not evil, he knew, and she had not meant to betray him, but
by the same token she was without courage. She would come whimpering, and her
anguish would eat at what little self-control he could muster and doom his
last wild wishful schemings.
Lighter footsteps were approaching now -- hers. There was something curiously
measured about them.
It meant added pain for him to turn his head so he could see the doorway; yet
he did so, watching her figure define itself as it entered the region of ruddy
light cast by the torches.
Then he saw the eyes. They were wide and staring. They were fixed straight on
him. And they did not turn away. The face was pale, calm with a deadly
serenity.
He saw she was dressed in a gown of dark red, cut low in the bosom and with
slashes inset with yellow silk.
And then the soul of Mouse exulted, for he knew that she had done what he had
bidden her. Glavas Rho had said, "The sufferer can hurl his suffering back
upon his oppressor, if only his oppressor can be tempted to open a channel for
his hate." Now there was a channel open for him, leading to
Janarrl's inmost being.
Hungrily, Mouse fastened his gaze on Ivrian's unblinking eyes, as if they were
pools of black magic in a cold moon. Those eyes, he knew, could receive what
he could give.
He saw her seat herself by the Duke. He saw the Duke peer sidewise at his
daughter and start up as if she were a ghost. But Ivrian did not look toward
him, only her hand stole out and fastened on his wrist, and the Duke sank
shuddering back into his chair.
"Proceed!" he heard the Duke call out to the torturers, and this time the
panic in the Duke's voice was very close to the surface.
The wheel turned. Mouse heard himself groan piteously. But there was something
in him now that could ride on top of the pain and that had no part in the
groan. He felt that there was a path between his eyes and Ivrian's -- a
rock-walled channel through which the forces of human spirit and of more than
human spirit could be sent roaring like a mountain torrent. And still she did
not turn away. No expression crossed her face when he groaned, only her eyes
seemed to darken as she grew still more pale. Mouse sensed a shifting of
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zanotowane.pldoc.pisz.plpdf.pisz.plkwiatpolny.htw.pl
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Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
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