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[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
need to touch you, she said, as though Zanja s heart were not still beating
eagerly against the palm of her hand, and as though her callused fingers did
not scratch Zanja s bare breast every time she shifted her weight. The shock
of heat again, and Karis lifted and turned Zanja as easily as if she were an
infant, so that she faced the ice-clad wall. Karis stroked a hand firmly down
the weeping sores of Zanja s back. Zanja expected pain, but she felt
something else: the startling warmth of Karis touch, and an eerie, crawling
sensation as her ruined flesh hastily knit itself together.
Then, in the place where her back had been broken, below which she had
felt only dead weight for months, pain blossomed. Her entire body began to
spasm. Hold fast, said Karis hoarsely, and pinned Zanja down with her
weight.
When the fit had passed, Zanja tasted blood from her bitten tongue, and the
sharp salt of sweat. The weight of Karis body lifted. She was gasping for
breath, as though she had run a long way at a desperate pace.
Zanja had been long enough removed from the lower half of her own body
that her legs felt foreign to her: ungainly contraptions of sinew and bone;
but at least she felt them, and even could make them move, however
reluctantly, with the lever of her will.
She breathed something in her own language, stupefied.
Hush, Karis said absently. She had moved the rush light, and-so Zanja
watched by its light as those big hands delicately kneaded her feet,
straightening the clenched muscles and stretching and moving the flesh
with her long fingers to form new, perfect toes, one by one. Karis frowned as
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FIRE LOGIC - ELEMENTAL LOGIC BOOK 1 - LAURIE MARKS
she worked, like a potter at the wheel, with her eyes half closed, seeming to
feel her way with her fingers. Her sweat shimmered in faint light as it fell,
drop by drop, from her chin.
Half drowned in the tingling, burning, cramping sensations of her repaired
flesh, Zanja felt the pressure of those fingers only remotely, but as new toes
budded and grew upon her disfigured feet, the feeling of it was so bizarre
that it was all she could do to keep from snatching her foot from the witch s
grasp.
When Karis laid Zanja s foot down, she rested her head in her hand for a
moment as though exhausted or overwhelmed by her labor.
Serrain, Zanja said again. Even her voice trembled shamefully. Having
given Karis this title of great respect, she could not think of what to say, or
what to ask, or even what words might begin to be adequate.
Karis lumbered to her feet, a great, graceless woman who seemed suddenly
weary to the bone. She did not speak, but dressed Zanja in gigantic clothing,
and then tied her onto her back with rope, where she could neither aid nor
impede her.
The fugitive journey felt like a fever dream. Karis strode rapidly down dark
ways where dawn s faint light had not yet penetrated, bent over in a crouch
to avoid the rough-hewn beams of the low ceiling. From behind the steel-
clad doors where other prisoners stared or froze in terrible solitude, there
was no sound. Karis turned, and turned again, unhesitating. And then they
were mounting a narrow, twisting stairway that pressed in on both sides
and clawed at Zanja s knees. They climbed into light that wormed its way
through narrow slits of windows and dispersed like dust through the
darkness. Karis stopped short, and her rapid, shallow breaths swelled and
receded within Zanja s tightly bound embrace.
. . . this cursed country! said a voice harshly in Sainnese. Boots rasped
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FIRE LOGIC - ELEMENTAL LOGIC BOOK 1 - LAURIE MARKS
upon stone.
Remember the grape arbors of Sainna. In winter they dropped their leaves,
that was how we knew the season. And the wind came in from the north,
bringing rain. The speaker paused, perhaps overcome by his own poetry.
And we sat indoors drinking warm wine. The guard spat. I d rather
almost have been killed than be exiled in this barbaric country.
Our hearts are turned to stone in this land of stone, said the poet.
The angry man snorted. A land of ice, more like.
Have another swig.
Zanja smelled the harsh fumes of distilled liquor. The echoes of stone made
the sound tricky, but by the smell she realized that the two men stood very
close by. She took a deep breath and smelled the rancid tallow with which
they had waterproofed their cuirasses. All Sainnite soldiers smell the same
because of that tallow; she had sometimes been able to track them through
the woods by smell alone.
Well, it s not getting warmer, said the angry man. I might as well go feed
the beasts. They ll whine like dogs today.
The poet only grunted. His poetry he reserved for speaking of his native
country. Like Zanja, it seemed he was a refugee. The two men separated,
and for a moment, a shadow blocked the dim light at the top of the stairs,
then passed. Zanja felt Karis begin to breathe again. I wonder what they
were talking about, she murmured.
The weather, said Zanja.
Do you speak their language, or are you just guessing?
I do speak it, though with a terrible accent.
You speak this language with an accent too, though I d not call it terrible.
Karis stepped out into the wide corridor, into which opened double doors
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FIRE LOGIC - ELEMENTAL LOGIC BOOK 1 - LAURIE MARKS
wide enough to admit a wagon such as the one that had carried Zanja to this
place. Karis ignored these massive doors, and went out through a nearby
postern door, around which mud and slush brought in by the guards boots
puddled.
At first, all Zanja could see was snow. Then the walls took shape, a solid
gray against the white sky. The low stone buildings to the right looked like
stables; those to the left the guards quarters. One set of buildings looked no
different from the other except that one had chimneys and smaller doors.
The wind picked up and for a moment the entire scene disappeared behind
blowing snow. Karis started boldly across the yard. The snow on Zanja s face
felt like sparks from a fire.
They reached the wall. Karis lifted a hand to the rough stone, and for a
giddy moment Zanja thought she would simply push her way through, like a
mole through earth. But she was testing a gray, snow-speckled rope that lay
nearly invisible against the stone.
Already shivering, Zanja felt as though she were drowning in snow. The
prison building was nearly invisible. Karis took hold of the rope, dug her
toes into the thin cracks between the stones, and began to climb. She did it
gracelessly, hastily, almost carelessly. Zanja hung upon her back, helpless as
a bundle of laundry. When she turned her head, she could see portions of
the compound, made ghostly and distant by the gray light and the falling
snow.
The snow cleared suddenly, and the central building appeared, squatting
sullenly under its dusting of snow. On each corner of the square enclosure
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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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