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"I'll be all right."
A while after the curtains closed behind them, May stuck her head out.
"The god invites you to come inside with us," she called to Afreyt.
Afreyt caught her breath. Then she said as evenly as she could, "Thank the
god, but tell him I will remain here ... on guard."
"Very well," May said and the curtains closed again.
Afreyt clenched her hands under her cloak. She hadn't admitted to anyone, even
Cif, that for some time now Odin had been fading. She could hardly see even a
wispy outline any more. She could still hear his voice. but it had begun to
grow faint, lost in wind-moaning. The god had been very real at first on that
spring day when she and Cif had found him, and found that there were two gods.
He'd seemed so near death then, and she'd labored so hard to save him. She'd
been filled with such an adoration, as if he were some ancient hero-saint, or
her own dear, dead father. And when he had caressed her fumblingly and
muttered in disappointment (it sounded), "You're older than I
thought," and drifted off to sleep, her adoration had been contaminated by
horror and rejection. She'd got the idea of bringing in the girls (Did that
make her a monster? Well. perhaps) and after that she'd managed very well,
keeping it all at a distance.
And then there'd been the excitement of the journey to Lankhmar and the perils
of Khahkht's ice-magic and the Mingols and the renewed excitement of the
arrival of the Mouser and Fafhrd and the realization that Fafhrd did indeed
resemblea younger Odin -- was that what had made god Odin fade and grow
whisper-voiced? She didn't know, but she knew it helped make everything
torturesome and confusing -- and she couldn't have borne to enter the litter
tonight. (Yes, she was a monster.)
She felt a sharp pain in her neck and realized that in her agitation she'd
been tugging at the pendant end of the noose beneath her cloak. She loosened
it and forced herself to sit quietly. It was full dark now.
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There,t~cr~ fr~nt flames flickering from ~arkf~e and Hellglow too. She heard
sn~~tches of talk from the campfires and bits of the new ch~nt ~nd laughter as
the story ofthat went round. It was very cold, but she did not move. The east
Frew silvery-pale. the milky effulgence domed up. and at last the white moon
edged into view.
?'he cump stirred then and after a while the bearers came up and
unwedgedOdin's gallows and lifted it up and the litter too, and Afreyt arose,
unkinking her stiffjoints and stamping her numbed feet, and they all marched
off west across the moon-silvered rock, shouldering their grotesque weapons
and the two larger burdens. Some of them limped a bit (after all, they were
sailors. their feet unused to marching) but they all went on briskly to the
new Odin-ch~nt, hunching their backs against the east wind. which now blew
strong and steadily.
* * * *
Fafhrd had just kindled his second torch from the emberend of the first and
his surroundings had grown warmer, when the lofty passageway he was following
debouched into a cavern so vast that the light he bore seemed lost in it. The
sound of the cast-away torch-stub hitting rock awakened distant faint echoes
and he came to a stop, peering up and around. Then he began to see
multitudinous points of light as stars, where flakes of mica in the fire-
born stone reflected his torch, and in the middle distance an irregular pillar
of mica-flecked rock and on its top a small pale bundle that drew his eye.
Then from far above he heard the beat of great wings, a pause. then another
beat -- as though a greatt vulture were circling in the cavernous dark.
He called, "Mara!" toward the pillar and the echoes came back and amongst
them, shrill and faint, his own name called and the eohoes of that.
Then he realized that the wing-beat had ceased and that one of the high mica-
stars was getting rapidly brighter, as though it were swiftly traveling
straight down toward him, and he heard a rush in the air as of a great hawk
stooping.
He jerked his whole body aside from the briFht sword darting at him and
simultaneously struck with his ax just behind it. The torch was torn from his
grasp, what seemed like a leather sail struck him to his knees, and then there
was a great wing-beat, very close, and another, and then the shrill bellow of
a man in agony that despite its extremity held a note of outrage. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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