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large loom, weaving some darkly figured fabric.
Its uninterrupted, snake s-head rhythm made Chulian uneasy. He hesitated and
shot a quick glance at his companion. Side by side, close together, they moved
forward until they could see the other side of the loom and Sharlson Naurya.
She was wearing a closefitting dress of gray homespun. Her rapt eyes seemed
to be looking not so much at her work as through it, though her busy fingers
never hesitated. Was it only cloth she was weaving, Chulian wondered, or
something else something bigger?
With almost a guilty start, he realized of whom she reminded him. Only a
suggestion, of course Still, there was in her face the same dark strength,
the same sense of hidden yet limitless purpose, as he had just seen, and
cringed before, in the archpriest Goniface.
After a moment she turned her head and looked at them. But there was no change
in her expression as if they were merely part of that bigger, invisible
fabric. Without haste she tucked the shuttle into the warp and stood facing
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them, folding her hands at her waist.
Sharlson Naurya, Chulian intoned solemnly, but a trifle jerkily, we come,
inviolable emissaries of the Hierarchy, to do the bidding of the Great God.
Her green eyes smiled at that, if eyes can smile. But what Chulian wondered
was what those eyes saw when they looked past him. Brazen girl! What right had
she to take this so calmly!
He drew himself up.
Sharlson Naurya, in the name of the Great God and his Hierarchy, I arrest
you!
She bent her head. And now there was something twisted and evil about the way
her eyes smiled. She suddenly spread her hands outward from her waist.
Run, Puss! she cried with an almost mischievous urgency. Tell the Black
Man!
A glittering talon ripped at the waist the gray homespun of her dress from
within. There was a rapid disturbance of the cloth. Then through the slit
something wriggled and sprang.
Something furry, big as a cat, but more like a monkey, and incredibly lean.
Like a swift-scuttling spider it was up the wall and across the ceiling,
clinging effortlessly.
Chulian s muscles froze. With a throaty gasp his companion lunged out an arm.
From the pointing finger crackled a needle of violet light, scorching a zigzag
track in the crude plaster of wall and ceiling.
The thing paused for a moment in the air hole, looking back. Then it was gone,
and the violet beam spat futilely through the air hole toward the black
heavens, where one star glittered.
But Chulian continued to stare upward, his slack jaw trembling. He had got one
look at the tiny face. Not when the thing had moved, for then it had been only
a rippling blur, but when it had paused to glance back.
Not all the features of a face had been there. Some had been missing and
others had seemed telescoped into each other. And the fine fur had encroached
on them.
Nevertheless, where the features had showed through the fur, they had been
white, and, in spite of all distortions, they had been a peering, chinless,
noseless, hellish, but terribly convincing caricature of the features of
Sharlson Naurya.
And the fur had been of exactly the same shade as her dark hair.
Finally, Chulian looked back at her. She had not moved.
Still stood there smiling with her eyes.
What was that thing? he cried. It was much more a frightened appeal than a
demand.
Don t you know? she asked gravely. She reached for a shawl hanging from the
end of the loom. I am ready, she said. Aren t you going to take me to the
Sanctuary?
And pulling her shawl around her, she walked toward the door.
It seemed darker than ever outside, and dead still. If any commoners had heard
the disturbance, they had not come out to investigate. Of course, that was the
law, but Chulian wished that some commoner would break it just this once. Or
if only they would meet up with a patrol of deacons!
Through the narrow, uneven streets hurriedly bobbed the two violet halos,
straining toward the beacon-glow of the Sanctuary.
If only the girl wouldn t walk so slowly! Of course, they could hurry her
up each had an elbow in one of his puffed hands but somehow Chulian didn t
like the idea of hurting her, especially since she was otherwise so docile.
After all, that thing of hers was somewhere on the roofs, perhaps following
them. At any moment he might look up and see a tiny anthropoid muzzle poked
over an edge, outlined against the stars.
When they got to the Sanctuary, things would be different!
Lightless doorways, lightless mouths of other streets, marched past them. At
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the next corner they must turn to the left to avoid the haunted house, Chulian
reminded himself.
But when they got to the turn, the street to the left was walled stuffed
solid with blackness.
Not the starhazed blackness through which they had been passing, but blackness
utter and complete, making the rest seem gray.
Nothing more.
Chulian looked sideways past the girl at Brother Arolj s face, sickly under
the glowing halo, and caught an answering panicky glance.
In a rush, so they wouldn t be able to flinch, they plunged into the
blackness, the girl between them.
Their halos were extinguished. There was no light whatever.
As if out of a wall of ink, they scrambled back again, gasping. For one horrid
moment Chulian feared they would be trapped in the blackness forever. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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