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‘What did he try to teach you?’
‘I have no idea. Perhaps he was working up to it. Oh, and he had me massage the leg he lost. The ghost, he calls it. But I could see it plain enough. Remnant energy would best describe the emanation. The body sees itself as whole, no matter the reality of its state. That’s curious, is it not?’
‘Do you see this energy upon hale limbs and bodies, Sheltatha?’
‘Yes. It shows strong among some, weak in others. It comes in many hues. Yours, at this moment, is the colour of a clear sky, close to dawn. Blue, with something hinting at slate beneath it. Dawn, or on the edge of dusk. This tells me, Renarr, that you hide a secret.’
‘We can then make this your study, to begin with,’ said Renarr.
‘How so, when you reveal no such talent?’
‘Never mind the sorcery itself. Indulge in your own explorations with that. Rather, work with me upon the proper reading of those emanations. Let’s discover what you can glean from those you meet, or are able to see.’
‘High Priestess Syntara was proof against my abilities.’
‘I’m not surprised. What of Infayen?’
‘She can kill without feeling. But that numbness makes her dull and insensitive. She cannot grasp subtlety and so fears it. When sensing its proximity, her energy darkens with suspicion, hate, and the desire to destroy all that she cannot understand.’
Grunting, Renarr stood. ‘Good. Useful. So long as no one else knows about your hidden talents.’
‘None but you.’
‘Then why reveal yourself to me? We hardly know each other.’
‘Your energy did not change in my presence,’ Sheltatha replied. ‘That means you want nothing from me, and mean me no harm. You’re just curious. And,’ she added, ‘my magic didn’t change anything in you. No fear, no wonder, no envy. The secret you hold, Renarr, has nothing to do with me, but it’s the strongest thing I’ve ever seen.’
‘Come, then, and I will show you your room.’
Nodding, Sheltatha followed Renarr.
‘The strongest thing I’ve ever seen.’ Beneath it, the colour of slate.
The High Priestess had been too quick in her dismissal of this girl, and that was fortunate, as far as Renarr was concerned. Secrets are what they are. Is it fear that makes one keep them? Not always. No, for me, there is no fear. For me, there is only patience.
The sky at dusk. Waiting for the night to come.
TWELVE
‘YOU FEAR DESIRE,’ SAID LASA ROOK, HER EYES LURID IN THE fire’s light. ‘Hanako of the Scars, I fold back my furs for you, that we may partake in senseless rutting, followed by tender cuddles. Which one pays for the other, I wonder? No matter, choose one as the oyster and the other as the shell, and should I paint in gold its opposite, well, such are the risks of love.’
Hanako pulled his gaze from hers with an effort and glared into the flames. ‘Is this your flimsy veil of grief, Lasa Rook, so quickly flung away at the first heat?’
‘My husbands are no more! What am I to do?’ She swept her hair back with both hands, a gesture that thrust out her chest and, as Hanako mused on the curse of anatomy, the breasts upon it. ‘A vast emptiness has devoured my soul, dear boy, and it is in need of filling.’
‘More husbands?’
‘No! I am done with that! Do you not see me running light as a butterfly through the meadows of my liberated mind? Look well into my eyes, Hanako, slayer of the Lord of Temper. In these pools awaits all manner of lascivious curiosity, forward and back, sideways and upside down. You need only find the courage to look.’
But that he would not do. Instead, he twisted slightly upon the fallen tree trunk where he sat, and frowned at the wrapped form of Erelan Kreed. The warrior was muttering in his sleep, an endless litany of strange names, punctuated by vile hissing and bone-chilling curses. The madness had not abated, and it had been three days now. Even the mosquitoes and biting flies avoided him.
The valley and the dread lake where Kreed had slain the dragon was far behind them, and yet it seemed that the world was reluctant to yield the pattern, as they now sat beside yet another lake, at the base of yet another thickly forested valley. For two days Hanako had carried the warrior, his armour and his weapons, and on both nights, with dusk’s sudden arrival, he had sunk down to the ground on trembling legs, too weary to even eat.
Lasa Rook had taken to cooking their meals, although Hanako was the one to force food into the mouth of Erelan Kreed, fighting the warrior’s delirium and wild, batting hands, his fierce eyes and teeth bared like fangs.
In consideration of that, Hanako wondered, tenuously, if Erelan was perhaps saner than
he appeared. Lasa Rook cooks food to make even the dead fast. I must warn this Jaghut lord. Lead her to no kitchen beneath the rock-piles, lest you unleash the undead in frenzy and madness, spill them fleeing into the mortal realms!
