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put up the tiniest bit of fight, either."
"Because when I fought it, I learned something. I don't was by accident or by
the intention of whatever it was. But I just a hint.
And I have to know more. I have to!"
She snorted softly. "Oh, yeah? What's so important that it's'
sacrificing all our lives?" He raised his head and stared at her, his eyes
blood-colored gloom. "I don't think it's their God," he said. "I
think it's ours."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Harpy was aware of the two guards who flanked him, but only dimly. His
attention was riveted on the circle of hooded Hunzza surrounding him and the
single figure who stood facing him. He heard a faint whining sound. It took
him several seconds to realize he was making the sound.
He felt disconnected from his body, caged within it but no longer in control
of even his most basic physical functions.
"Bringer of the Deadly Dawn," Iskander intoned, his gaze boring into
Harpy's own. "You stand in the place of judgment. You have been summoned
here by the God, who Spoke through the Egg Guardian. Do you understand all
this?"
Distantly Harpy felt moist warmth along the lower edge of his jawline.
He reached up and wiped away the drool leaking from the sides of his mouth.
His own flesh felt numb and dead; it was like touching someone else. He
shuddered and dropped his hand. It was hard to see Iskander.
Something was wrong with his vision. Light seemed to flare inside his mind,
casting everything in hard-edged, discrete flashes, like a stroboscope.
Iskander took a step forward. "Can you hear me?"
"Yes..."
"Do you understand me?"
"Yes."
Iskander paused, as if he doubted the truth of what he heard. He tilted his
head slightly, then stepped back again. "Hold him," he said to the two.
guards. They moved closer and took Harpy's arms. Harpy
ignored them. His gaze wandered away from Iskander's icy, features toward the
hooded figures ranged all around.
"Father..." he whispered.
The anguish in his tone was so strong even Iskander only for an instant. Then
he stepped further away, flipped hood up over his head, and sank to the
ancient stone floor.
Harpy began to scream.
Char had fallen asleep sitting up, slumped across her cot the back wall, her
chin on her chest. Abruptly she blinked, then her head.
"Harpy," she said. "Something's wrong with Harpy... Jim!" He was seated on
the other cot, his face turned toward eyes wide and staring.
Yet she suddenly had the creepy he wasn't there, that there was nothing
intelligent or aware those calm, vacant orbs. She might as well have been
corpse.
-j/m!
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His eyelids flickered. He shook his head slightly. "Eh, what?
"wrong?"
"It's Harpy. Something's happening.." something bad.
he's screaming."
"Screaming?. I don't hear anything. How can you tell?" : "It's not--he's
inside my head. Screaming inside my mind.. felt her cheeks grow warm. What
a ridiculous thing to say... was true.
Jim came off his cot and settled beside her. He draped one across her
shoulders and hugged her. "Screaming?. Can you sense thoughts? Is he saying
anything?."
She closed her eyes. It was the damnedest sensation, like being two places at
once but unable to see the second place. She could feel it--and yet the
feeling was horrible. She could feel Harpy ing but not hear him. And somehow
his feelings were mixed in her own. It was becoming harder and harder to
separate the state her own body from whatever was happening to him.
Jim... it feels like something is growing inside me. Growing everywhere.
Like a... I don't know, a cancer. Like I'm...
splitting."
She turned in his arms and faced him, face pale, eyes shocked wide.
"I'm... Jim, I'm splitting! Help me, oh, God, help me!"
It was almost over. The pain had been terrible, and it had seemed endless,
but now it was subsiding.
Only a little bit of Harpy was left now. He clung to that part, clung to the
final shreds of himsblf, and hoped that this much of what he had been would
still remain with him.
Iskander had thrown back his hood and was staring at him in horror.
The Egg Guardian looked strange, distorted. As if Harpy was seeing him with
new eyes.
But I am, he thought. Everything is new now. And old, of course. So very
old.
Agony continued to drain out of him. Now only the ghost of pain remained,
leaving a feeling of cleansed weakness behind as the last of it faded away.
This was what he'd feared. And despite everything he'd done to prevent it, it
had happened. The part of the old him that still remained contained much of
his previous memory. He knew what they had all thought: that he was a coward,
a Hunzzan freak, terrified of his own shadow. But it hadn't been his shadow
that made his muscles go weak with panic. No, the shadow he'd feared was far
darker and greater than anything they could imagine.
Another, colder part of him analyzed his current situation. Iskander and the
Circle had summoned the power of the God. But of course the
God could not be summoned. It manifested itself as it desired, for it was
immanent, never coming nor going, but abiding always. And it had chosen to
touch him, to trigger the things hidden deep inside him. that made him what he
was.
And what was that?
What he'd feared he was, of course.
He was lying on his side, facing Iskander. The strangeness of his new eyes
was becoming less burdensome. In a short while, he knew, it
would seem as normal as his old vision had. But there was fogginess as he
lifted his head.
"I am..." he said.
His voice was thick, turgid, no longer the clean, sharp hiss, former
existence.
He got his hands beneath him, and then his knees. He there, staring at the
strange new arms, the partially scaled tufts of hair. Fingernails but not
claws. He came to his knees. "You called me..."
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Iskander uttered a short, choking moan.
So slow, so heavy. Hard to stand. The balance was would take some getting
used to. But finally he managed to rise feet and stand facing them, swaying
gently.
"I feared it, you know," he said. "I feared it more than you dido.
knew what it was. You didn't."
"You... you..." Iskander gasped. He had also come to but he held his hands
before him in a warding-off gesture. was a mask of dread.
Harpy almost felt like smiling at him.
"And now that you have me," he said, "what will you do? He was named is now
among you. I am the Bringer of the Deadly Are you happy with me?"
Iskander stared at the great, hulking, slope-browed, form before him, at its
hide of skin and scales, some creature of
Hunzzan and.." other.
He hiked up his robes, turned, and ran.
In the armored heart of the Albagens Empire, Hith Mun Alter the deceptive
quiet of his rooms, contemplating what he had single small holoscreen floated
not far from where he sat and his ever-present tea.
Sometimes the raw power of his position peeped out from the mental and
emotional blinders he had constructed over the centuries, and he found himself
overwhelmed by the naked actuality
A word, a gesture, even a slightly changed expression on his part might call
forth actions and events so powerful he could only barely comprehend them.
What did the Terries say?. Something about holding a tiger by the tail?
He had issued a few simple orders. Now, on his viewscreen, he watched the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]