Holly Lisle World Gates 01 Memory Of Fire

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nest of blankets in a wicker basket that she d created for him, snored
softly that little-kid snore that sounded like a cat purring beside a heat
vent. He was a cute little guy, and angelic-looking when he was asleep. When
you hear us coming, shove him through first. Well, make sure it s really us,
then shove him through. And we ll go through. And then Pete, and then you.
What if the traitors are with the prisoners?
They won t be. They might be chasing after us, but they won t be with us.
She glanced at the arch she d formed of two saplings and bound with a silk
cord. The green fire of the otherworld shimmered inside of it, and in its
shadows, Eric could still see Lauren s foyer. Empty.
Empty was good.
I ll be ready, she said. Are you changing into& into whatever you re going
to be while you re here, or once you get just outside the wall?
I ll change here. I want you to see what I look like, because I ll still look
like that when I bring everyone back. He closed his eyes tightly and
swallowed hard. If I don t come back& He didn t want to say those words, but
he had to. If I don t come back, you might as well stay here. There won t be
anything to go home to within the month. If you dare, and if you have loved
ones you can reach quickly, you might bring them over. On this side, even if
they re carrying the plague, you should be able to heal them. But don t waste
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time trying to decide what you want to do. It& wouldn t hurt to have your
contingency plans already made, so that you can just go ahead and carry them
out.
Pete said, You ll be back.
I hope so.
Lauren asked him, If you& ah, don t come back& is there anyone you want us to
rescue for you?
He thought about his parents, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, good
friends. He started to say yes. No.
No? Lauren watched his face closely.
No. That will be my incentive to succeed.
Good luck, Pete told him.
He nodded. Then he knelt on the frozen ground and stared up at the black sky,
at the stars that twinkled in configurations that were almost, but not
exactly, the way they should have been and would be in his home sky.
Let me hear what I must hear, he willed. Let me see what I must see.
Into the silence of the night sky, images poured. Voices whispered. He studied
inhuman faces, forms, and voices; pored through alien thoughts and hopes and
fears, willing that all things that would not hand him the key to the castle
be eliminated. The babble became a steady, pulsing current, and then a faint
trickle, and at last he held the three best images in his mind three creatures
for whom the watchmen would unquestioningly open the gates to the city, for
whom the guards would willingly unlock the castle doors, to whom no answer
would be withheld, and from whom no command would require the approval of
another.
The first creature was the master of the castle but he was currently in
residence. And he never traveled without a retinue. The second was an odd,
squat little monster with bat wings and a hellish, Shar-Pei-wrinkled face, who
frequently traveled alone and who was fond of dropping in unannounced. He
would have been perfect, if Eric hadn t had to worry about the conservation of
mass in altering his form. He could fudge a little, but certainly not the
sixty to seventy percent of his body mass that he would have to shed to
transform into the ugly little monster.
The third was& Eric didn t know what she was. A breathtakingly beautiful
creature, thin as gossamer but nearly twice as tall as a man, she had the face
of a Chinese goddess huge, almond eyes, tiny mouth, almost invisible nose and
hair red as blood and twisted into ten thousand beaded, beribboned cords. She
wore a gown that floated around her as if it were alive. And, according to the
thoughts of those who had dealt with her, she never spoke. She merely pointed,
or if pointing did not get her what she wished, she placed a thought picture
into the head of the person she wanted to obey her& and that person obeyed.
That, Eric thought, would work. He could be female for a while. Female what,
he didn t know. But female.
He brought the magic into himself, and embraced its fire in each cell. He held
the picture of the lovely creature in his mind, and wrapped the picture around
him, and stretched himself to become it. The pain
The pain devoured him. Fire burned in his joints, fire burned inside his
lungs, fire blazed within his flesh and bone and nerves and brain until he
wanted to scream, wanted to die, wanted to bite into himself and devour
himself to get at the maddening, enveloping, inside-out horror of it and put
an end to it.
Then, sharp as the first frost of autumn, something snapped within him and the
pain was gone.
Good merciful Lord, Pete whispered.
Oh& Lauren sighed, and mesmerized, rose and began to walk toward him.
Stay, he said. I ll be back as fast as I can. This feels& really awkward,
and I want to get back into my own skin. His voice, to his horror, was his
own. A man s voice, purely human.
Well, he hadn t planned on speaking to anyone but the prisoners anyway. And if
they heard his voice in this body, maybe they d believe it was really him.
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He said, Wait until sunrise. If I m not back by then, I m not coming.
Lauren and Pete both raised a hand, and he acknowledged their waves before he
turned and headed toward the town.
Copper House
Getting in proved easy so easy it frightened Eric. The city watchmen almost
fell over themselves lowering the drawbridge for him; the castle gatekeeper
threw open the gate before he even reached it, and as he passed him, said,
Shall I summon the Master for you, Glorious One?
Eric responded with a quiet No placed in the Orian s mind. The gatekeeper
dropped to his hands and knees and crawled backward, scraping his forehead
across the floor as he did.
Damn. Who, or what, was this thing he was pretending to be? He was starting to
scare himself.
He stalked through the mostly sleeping castle, and when he came across a
guard who shrieked at the sight of him but managed to stifle the shocked
scream almost before it left his lips Eric touched the guard and placed within
his mind the image of the prisoners.
The guard bowed, shuddering at his touch, and, discreetly pulling away,
scurried off up a passageway. Eric followed, musing that he had certainly
chosen the right disguise for his infiltration of the castle but he never
wanted to run into the genuine article of whatever he was.
Their path meandered through stone corridors, and then along a passageway clad
floor, walls, and ceiling with copper. His terrified guide led him to a
massive copper door, and with shaking hands opened it for him. The Sentinels,
awakened by the sound of the door opening and by the light of the guard s
lantern falling across their faces, rubbed their eyes and sat up. They looked
bewildered, weary, and scared.
And now Eric came to an obstacle. He needed to have the guard leave& but he
didn t dare let him get too far. The guard was going to have to show him and
the Sentinels through the maze of the castle and out. He couldn t speak into
the guard s mind, directing him to what he wanted him to do, because the
copper that now surrounded Eric would prevent him from any magical subterfuge
at all. Yet he couldn t let the guard remain within earshot, because he had to
tell the Sentinels who he was and what he had to do, and the minute he spoke,
the voice that came out of him would belong to a human male instead of the
inhuman goddess-thing that he appeared to be, and that voice would blow his
disguise. From Richmond to Gettysburg, as his father always used to say.
Eric looked at the guard, looked at the Sentinels, looked back at the guard.
Dammit. He was stuck. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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