Emerald Magic_ Great Tales of Irish Fantasy - Andrew M. Greeley [126]
“You? Are you one of them?” she asked.
“No,Countess . . . I am Captain Sean Shannon Henry.” I paused. “You are the Countess Kathleen O’Shea?”
“Kathryn would be more accurate . . .”
I murmured words. From where they came I could not have said.
“The countess had a soul as pure as unfallen snow and a mind that no evil could know . . .”
“I am not that good. And Gortforge is not so poor as this place here.”
“You are a saint,” I said.
“No. I care that people do not barter their souls to live—or to keep their children from suffering and hunger. That’s all.”
Had I done that? Bartered my soul for something? For what? Interludes have a meaning. That’s why they’re so deadly. If you don’t have interludes, the ship never leaves the departure system. If you have too many, it never arrives at its destination—or any destination any have yet discovered.
Her eyes softened. “Souls ride with you, don’t they?”
“In a way,” I admitted.
“We will add those he is trying to save to the price for yours,” offered the second trader, the one with the gold ring on his finger.
“No!” The words were out before I thought.
“You would doom them, then?” asked the first trader.
“No. I would doom your bargain.”
“You cannot,”Kathleen/Kathryn said. “I have made it, and I stand by it.”
“You’re a saint,” I said again.
“You had best find that out in the world that counts.” She vanished.
I felt my mouth open. That was the first time that had ever happened to me in an interlude.
“Your soul is not worth a thousandth part of hers,” announced one of the traders, “but we will carry you into the depths with us, until the soul of the countess is tendered to the one who paid for it.”
“A bargain under duress is not a valid sale,” I pointed out. “A soul must be tendered freely.”
“She tendered hers freely.”
“She did not. As she said, anyone with a soul of worth would ten der it to prevent another’s suffering, and the One Who Is already has judged that you cannot have her soul.”
Both looked at me, and I felt as though I had been skewered by those black eyes.
“And what of your soul, Captain Sean Shannon Henry? Your soul has not been so judged.What is it worth to you?”
“Hers, and more . . .”What I meant was not what I said, because what I meant was that my soul had worth, but, as they had already judged, not nearly the worth of hers. Not yet, anyway.
Something happened, because, before I could say more, the men in black had vanished, and so had the Countess Kathleen . . . or Kathryn . . . O’Shea, and I was in the depths of the ocean, cold and black, water weighing in upon my lungs with such force that all the air I had breathed was forced out in an explosive gasp.
With that, brilliant blue swept across overspace, and black light-nings shattered the blueness.
Then, I was again flying free, banking ever so slightly to avoid the singularity below my left wing tip. Somewhere deep within my swan-form, every part of me ached as I scanned the darkness of overspace, glad that I had emerged from the interlude, but pushing away the questions as I searched for the beacon that was Alustre.
I discovered that we had almost oversoared it and swung into a downward spiral, ignoring the flutter of dislodged pinnae, as we dropped lower . . . and lower—until I could feel the power of the beacon vibrating my sinews/feathers.
Only then did I untwist the energies flowing through the translation generators. Instantly, the black swan was no more, and the Yeats and I were but pilot and ship.
I passed out briefly from the pain when we reemerged into underspace, normspace for those of us who live in it.
“Captain . . . Captain . . .”Alora’s voice finally got to me.
“I’m . . . here . . . Rough translation,” I pulsed, checking, then deploying the photon screens.
“Rough?” A sense of laughter, ragged laughter, came across. “The Yeats isn’t making any more translations without some serious