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kitchen doorway. Aurelianus dragged two stools up beside the coping-stones of
the open fire and shoved away several soot-and-grease-
crusted iron poles; wrapping his hands first in an old towel, he carefully
lifted down a pot of boiling water from a chain over the fire. He then fumbled
about under his gown and at last produced a metal box and two small pouches.
'Give me your hands,' he snapped.
Duffy extended them, and Aurelianus dipped the towel in the scalding water,
shook it out gingerly and then wiped the blood off the Irishman's hands. Duffy
winced and was about to voice a complaint when the old man loosed the
drawstring of one of the pouches and sprinkled green powder over the
lacerations; a sharp coldness spread into Duffy's hands through the cuts, and
the hot, throbbing pain went out like a snuffed candle flame.
'Well!' he said. 'Thanks.' He started to draw back.
'Not so fast, we're not through.' Aurelianus was untangling a spool and needle
from a lot of other litter in the metal box. 'Look somewhere else, now, and
tell me about these devils.'
Staring a little nervously at the uneven stones of the ceiling, Duffy told him
about the evening's bizarre, musically accompanied duel. 'But I was certain I
was a dead man, right at the start there,' he said when he'd finished. 'I just
watched helplessly while my body performed actions I
never willed. And, somehow the harder I tried to shake off enchantments and
let my real self take control, the stronger this... other control became.'
'Yes, I can imagine. Look, I don't know how to tell you this gently, but
there's an errand you and
I have to run tonight before we can totter off to our beds. It shouldn't be
too -'God damn it, no!' Duffy exploded. 'You're insane! Tonight? I'm not even
going to listen -''Silence!' Aurelianus thundered. 'You will listen to me, and
that respectfully, you ignorant, brawling fool. I wish I
could give all this to you slowly, with lots of explanation, and time to
assimilate it and ask questions, but if our situation was good enough to allow
for all that, neither of us would have to be here in the first place.'
Aurelianus was angry, but in spite of his words Duffy suspected that the anger
was not really aimed at him. 'Do you want to know what happened to you
tonight? Hah? Oh, you do? Then pay attention - those two creatures were..,
scouts, shall we say, advance riders of the
Eastern Empire. God knows what they were doing here already - Suleiman hasn't
even left
Constantinople yet, and I didn't expect this kind of thing to appear until he
was well up the
Danube.' He shook his head unhappily. 'But one makes the best preparations one
can, and then deals with difficulties as they arise.' He was working busily
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over Duffy's hands, but vague pressures and tugging were all the Irishman
felt. 'The fact that these things focused on you, rather than the city in
general, or the brewery, is particularly worrying. It indicates that they
weren't just blindly sent north by Ibrahim, but rather were summoned and
instructed by someone here. I'd give a lot to know who that would be.'
'So would I,' Duffy growled. 'But you haven't said yet what this errand is.'
'We're going to summon equivalent guards.'
'And another thing - ' Duffy paused. 'Did you say equivalent?'
'Yes. What other thing?'
'Oh. Uh. . .yes. What did exactly happen during that fight? What was that when
my body started acting on its own, and cut my hand and went on guard with only
my dagger? If you say you don't know, I won't believe you,' he added.
'Very well. I think I can tell you that.' He gathered up his things. 'Do you
have a pair of gloves? Well, here. Shake some of this powder into them before
we start tonight. It'll kill the pain and keep the cuts clean.' He sat back
and smiled coldly. 'This will of necessity sound a trifle mystical to you. I
hope you don't object.'
'I can't object, if it's true.'
'That's right. Doubtless you've heard of reincarnation?'
'Yes. To have been an Egyptian princess in some previous life.' Duffy picked
up his tankard and took a long draught. 'Why is it always Egyptian princesses
that they were?'
'Because most people weren't anything at all, and they make up something that
sounds glamorous to lend a bit of color to the only life they'll ever have.
But I'm not talking about those fools. A
few people really have lived previous lives, and you are one of them. When -, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]