[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
wings above her head, and lifted her into the air, a creature all fire, blazing, beautiful.
She cried out aloud, a clear, wordless cry. She flew high, headlong, fast, up into the sky where the light was growing
and a white wind had erased the unmeaning stars.
From among the hosts of the dead a few here and there, like her, rose up flickering into dragons, and mounted on the
wind.
Most came forward afoot. They were not pressing, not crying out now, but walking with unhurried certainty towards
the fallen places in the wall: great multitudes of men and women, who as they came to the broken wall did not hesitate
but stepped across it and were gone: a wisp of dust, a breath that shone an instant in the ever-brightening light.
Alder watched them. He still held in his hands, forgotten, a chinking stone he had wrenched from the wall to loosen a
larger rock. He watched the dead go free. At last he saw her among them. He tossed the stone aside then and stepped
forward. "Lily," he said. She saw him and smiled and held out her hand to him. He took her hand, and they crossed
together into the sunlight.
Lebannen stood by the ruined wall and watched the dawn brighten in the east. There was an east now, where there
had been no direction, no way to go. There was east and west, and light and motion. The very ground moved, shook,
shivering like a great animal, so that the wall of stones beyond where they had broken it shuddered and slid into
rubble. Fire broke from the far, black peaks of the mountains called Paln, the fire that burns in the heart of the world,
the fire that feeds dragons.
He looked into the sky over those mountains and saw, as he and Ged had seen them once above the western sea, the
dragons flying on the wind of morning.
Three came wheeling towards him where he stood among the others near the crest of the hill, above the ruined wall.
Two he knew, Orm Irian and Kalessin. The third had bright mail, gold, with wings of gold. That one flew highest and
did not stoop down to them. Orm Irian played about her in the air and they flew together, one chasing the other higher
and higher, till all at once the highest rays of the rising sun struck Tehanu and she burned like her name, a great bright
star.
Kalessin circled again, flew low, and alighted hugely amid the ruins of the wall.
"Agni Lebannen," said the dragon to the king.
"Eldest," the king said to the dragon.
"Aissadan verw nadannan," said the vast, hissing voice, like a sea of cymbals.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
Beside Lebannen, Brand the Summoner of Roke stood planted solidly. He repeated the dragon's words in the Speech
of the Making, and then said them in Hardic: "What was divided is divided."
The Patterner stood near them, his hair bright in the brightening light. He said, "What was built is broken. What was
broken is made whole."
Then he looked up yearning into the sky, at the gold dragon and the red-bronze one; but they had flown almost out of
sight, wheeling now in vast gyres over the long, falling land, where empty shadow cities faded to nothing in the light
of day.
"Eldest," he said, and the long head swung slowly back to him.
"Will she follow the way back through the forest, sometimes?" Azver asked in the speech of dragons.
Kalessin's long, fathomless, yellow eye regarded him. The enormous mouth seemed, like the mouths of lizards, closed
upon a smile. It did not speak.
Then ponderously dragging its length along the wall so that stones still standing slid and fell grating beneath its iron
belly, Kalessin writhed away from them, and with a rush and rattle of upraised wings pushed off from the hillside and
flew low over the land towards the mountains, whose peaks now were bright with smoke and white steam, fire and
sunlight.
"Come, friends," said Seppel in his soft voice. "It's not yet our time to go free."
Sunlight was in the sky above the crowns of the highest trees, but the glade still held the chill grey of dawn. Tenar sat
with her hand on Alder's hand, her face bowed down. She looked at the cold dew beading a grass blade, how it hung
in tiny, delicate drops along the blade, each drop reflecting all the world.
Someone spoke her name. She did not look up.
"He's gone," she said.
The Patterner knelt by her. He touched Alder's face with a gentle hand.
He knelt there silent a while. Then he said to Tenar in her language, "My lady, I saw Tehanu. She flies golden on the
other wind."
Tenar glanced up at him. His face was white and worn, but there was a shadow of glory in his eyes.
She struggled and then said, speaking roughly and almost inaudibly, "Whole?"
He nodded.
She stroked Alder's hand, the mender's hand, fine, skillful. Tears came into her eyes.
"Let me be with him a while," she said, and she began to cry. She put her hands to her face and cried hard, bitterly,
silently.
Azver went to the little group by the door of the house. Onyx and Gamble were near the Summoner, who stood, heavy
and anxious, near the princess. She crouched beside Lebannen, her arms across him, protecting him, daring any wizard
to touch him. Her eyes flashed. She held Lebannen's short steel dagger naked in her hand.
"I came back with him," Brand said to Azver. "I tried to stay with him. I wasn't sure of the way. She won't let me near
him."
"Ganai," Azver said, her title in Kargish, princess.
Her eyes flashed up to him. "Oh may Atwah-Wuluah be thanked and the Mother praised for ever!" she cried. "Lord
Azver! Make these accursed-sorcerers go away. Kill them! They have killed my king." She held out the dagger to him
by its slender steel blade.
"No, princess. He went with the dragon Irian. But this sorcerer brought him back to us. Let me see him," and he knelt
and turned Lebannen's face a little to see it better, and laid his hands on his chest. "He's cold," he said. "It was a hard
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
way back. Take him in your arms, princess. Keep him warm."
"I have tried to," she said, biting her lip. She flung down the dagger and bent to the unconscious man. "O poor king!"
she said softly in Hardic, "dear king, poor king!"
Azver got up and said to the Summoner, "I think he will be all right, Brand. She is much more use than we are, now."
The Summoner put out his big hand and took hold of Azver's arm. "Steady now," he said.
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]