[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
campfires in the ruins of Minos's palace at
Knossos. He foresaw distant Egypt convulsed in revolution, so entire subject
peoples would pack up
their querns and looms, and flee into the desert.
Minho sent couriers throughout his brother's kingdom with promises of gold and
steady work, and gathered the best of every trade potters, bronze, silver, and
goldsmiths, masons, farmers, poets, and dancers. All others warriors, taxmen,
and trolls who made black weapons from red rocks, he turned away, and all
lesser scholars and magicians also. When the fires below would no longer
remain pent within the rock, he uttered a great spell.
Plunging his hand into his magical sphere, he plucked his chosen land this
very kingdom from the face of the earth, and floated it in a pool left behind
by the receding tide. When the cataclysm was past he returned it to its place,
but its ties to the bed of the sea were broken, and thereafter, with a nudge
of his finger, he could move it first here, then there, at his will.
"And so it is today," concluded the poet. "Here, all is perfect, for all that
is evil was left behind.
"Sing praise to Minho," he cried, "who preserves us always in our perfection."
Voices arose, as one, in a song all knew well. Pierrette remained silent, for
she knew neither the words nor the tune, and she was not as impressed as they
were with Minho's great feat, or indeed with their own complaisant perfection.
She slipped away from the gathering. Because she often ate the lovely but
tasteless fruits of their labor, which they merely sniffed and admired, her
requirements differed from theirs. Because her boat and the cedar bucket were
not nearby, she performed her necessities in a secluded willow copse. When she
Page 135
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
looked back, from afar and above, the copse was already leafless amid a
spreading circle of black devastation. Was this, she wondered unhappily, the
means by which she would destroy Minho's kingdom bit by bit, insidiously,
without shouting or the clash of arms?
Seventeen days. Six had passed. Eleven remained, and already she was tired of
tasteless pap and innocuous people. She missed ibn Saul's snappishness, Lovi's
petulance, Gregorius's elaborate lies, and
Yan Oors's dark ugliness. She missed the stinks of offal and wet ashes and the
raucous cries of crows, all long banished from these islands. She even missed
bruising rocks beneath her hip and shoulder when she slept on the
ground because here, wherever she lay down became as soft as a bed of flower
petals and smelled as sweet.
But her patience had rewarded her; she had learned several important things.
Minho's tale, as recorded in Anselm's scrolls, had made no mention of a magic
sphere that contained a universe in miniature, that could be manipulated at
the sorcerer-king's will. Now she knew what Minho had concealed beneath the
drape of dark cloth. She knew also that he had lied: was the "water-sphere" a
device of his own conception and creation, or was it an artifact of an age
earlier still, a creation of some mind that surely understood, as Minho did
not, the logical basis for all things magical? And almost hidden in the poet's
tale were other nuggets: iron was forbidden here but she had her mother's
ring, which sucked the heat from
Minho's forges. And what did Minho fear, that he had banned all other
practitioners of his sorcerous art?
Yet against her thigh (or so she believed) was a crystal egg that held the
soul of Cunotar the druid, his malevolent spirit bound for almost a thousand
years in reticulations of blue-and-crimson glass.
Here, people sacrificed the pleasures of food and drink lest their indulgence
conjure elements at odds with insipid perfection. But Pierrette did not. Here,
Neheresta, old and jaded, remained forever trapped in the body of the sweet
child she had been, on that momentous day when Minho had uttered his spell.
Thinking of children, the recollection of another vision swam before her eyes.
The vision itself was simple and straightforward, of two young people standing
amid a multitude, the man's left hand and the woman's right resting on the
shoulders of a smiling boy of perhaps seven years' age. The significance of
that vision
requires exposition of events that transpired a year or so in Pierrette's
immediate past.
Even in Anselm's ensorcelled keep, the histories written by Diodorus Siculus
and Titus Livius had begun to fade from the mage's books. All the events more
than 126 years before the birth of the Christian savior were disappearing from
the pages and soon would fade from the memories of men. Somewhere in the past,
Pierrette understood, something had been changed, and the course of events
that led to her age and to her existence would no longer come about. She, and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl akte20.pev.pl
campfires in the ruins of Minos's palace at
Knossos. He foresaw distant Egypt convulsed in revolution, so entire subject
peoples would pack up
their querns and looms, and flee into the desert.
Minho sent couriers throughout his brother's kingdom with promises of gold and
steady work, and gathered the best of every trade potters, bronze, silver, and
goldsmiths, masons, farmers, poets, and dancers. All others warriors, taxmen,
and trolls who made black weapons from red rocks, he turned away, and all
lesser scholars and magicians also. When the fires below would no longer
remain pent within the rock, he uttered a great spell.
Plunging his hand into his magical sphere, he plucked his chosen land this
very kingdom from the face of the earth, and floated it in a pool left behind
by the receding tide. When the cataclysm was past he returned it to its place,
but its ties to the bed of the sea were broken, and thereafter, with a nudge
of his finger, he could move it first here, then there, at his will.
"And so it is today," concluded the poet. "Here, all is perfect, for all that
is evil was left behind.
"Sing praise to Minho," he cried, "who preserves us always in our perfection."
Voices arose, as one, in a song all knew well. Pierrette remained silent, for
she knew neither the words nor the tune, and she was not as impressed as they
were with Minho's great feat, or indeed with their own complaisant perfection.
She slipped away from the gathering. Because she often ate the lovely but
tasteless fruits of their labor, which they merely sniffed and admired, her
requirements differed from theirs. Because her boat and the cedar bucket were
not nearby, she performed her necessities in a secluded willow copse. When she
Page 135
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
looked back, from afar and above, the copse was already leafless amid a
spreading circle of black devastation. Was this, she wondered unhappily, the
means by which she would destroy Minho's kingdom bit by bit, insidiously,
without shouting or the clash of arms?
Seventeen days. Six had passed. Eleven remained, and already she was tired of
tasteless pap and innocuous people. She missed ibn Saul's snappishness, Lovi's
petulance, Gregorius's elaborate lies, and
Yan Oors's dark ugliness. She missed the stinks of offal and wet ashes and the
raucous cries of crows, all long banished from these islands. She even missed
bruising rocks beneath her hip and shoulder when she slept on the
ground because here, wherever she lay down became as soft as a bed of flower
petals and smelled as sweet.
But her patience had rewarded her; she had learned several important things.
Minho's tale, as recorded in Anselm's scrolls, had made no mention of a magic
sphere that contained a universe in miniature, that could be manipulated at
the sorcerer-king's will. Now she knew what Minho had concealed beneath the
drape of dark cloth. She knew also that he had lied: was the "water-sphere" a
device of his own conception and creation, or was it an artifact of an age
earlier still, a creation of some mind that surely understood, as Minho did
not, the logical basis for all things magical? And almost hidden in the poet's
tale were other nuggets: iron was forbidden here but she had her mother's
ring, which sucked the heat from
Minho's forges. And what did Minho fear, that he had banned all other
practitioners of his sorcerous art?
Yet against her thigh (or so she believed) was a crystal egg that held the
soul of Cunotar the druid, his malevolent spirit bound for almost a thousand
years in reticulations of blue-and-crimson glass.
Here, people sacrificed the pleasures of food and drink lest their indulgence
conjure elements at odds with insipid perfection. But Pierrette did not. Here,
Neheresta, old and jaded, remained forever trapped in the body of the sweet
child she had been, on that momentous day when Minho had uttered his spell.
Thinking of children, the recollection of another vision swam before her eyes.
The vision itself was simple and straightforward, of two young people standing
amid a multitude, the man's left hand and the woman's right resting on the
shoulders of a smiling boy of perhaps seven years' age. The significance of
that vision
requires exposition of events that transpired a year or so in Pierrette's
immediate past.
Even in Anselm's ensorcelled keep, the histories written by Diodorus Siculus
and Titus Livius had begun to fade from the mage's books. All the events more
than 126 years before the birth of the Christian savior were disappearing from
the pages and soon would fade from the memories of men. Somewhere in the past,
Pierrette understood, something had been changed, and the course of events
that led to her age and to her existence would no longer come about. She, and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]