Into the thinking kingdoms - Alan Dean Foster [85]
Still edged in pale white flame, the figure halted before the two panting men. And smiled. Ehomba hesitated, uncertain, staring hard, reluctant to trust the interpretation his brain insisted on applying to the information his eyes were conveying.
“Fhastal?”
“Hello, Etjole Ehomba.” And the magnificent smile widened.
It was Fhastal. But not the wise, wrinkled, hobbling old woman he had known since he was a child. Standing before him was a figure of towering feminine power, unforced sensuality, and burgeoning knowledge. Simna looked on in admiring silence.
“I do not understand,” the herdsman said simply.
Placing one end of her shield on the ground, Fhastal leaned the club up against it and rested her folded hands atop both. “The little figure of me was carved not when I was a child or when I was as you know me, Etjole, but when I was like this. So when the seal was broken, I came to you not as I am, but as I was.” She chuckled softly. “Was I not something uncommon when I was young?”
“By Gospoed’s galloping gonads, I’ll vouch for that!” Despite Ehomba’s frown of disapproval, the swordsman made not even a veiled attempt to lower his gaze.
Without knowing quite why, the herdsman found himself twitching uncomfortably beneath her white-flamed, uncompromising gaze. Yet it was the same look, only slightly moderated by venerable age, that he had seen in her eyes on the day he had set off from the village. But that was Fhastal: spry, learned, and occasionally coarse, still as fond as anyone of a crude joke or good laugh despite her crippled physique and enfeebled senses.
There was nothing of frailty or failing about the body that stood straight and lithe before him now. But the white flame in which she was circumscribed was growing dimmer even as she spoke.
She glanced briefly down at herself. “Yes, this part of me is withering. From here on I can only be with you in heart and spirit, Etjole Ehomba. A comforting memory at best. Would that it could be otherwise.” Raising her arms up and to the sides, she executed a leonine stretch. Observing the swordsman’s reaction, Ehomba feared the smaller man’s heart would fail him.
“You saved us,” he professed simply.
Picking up shield and club, she advanced until she was standing within inches of him. The pale flame that emanated from her body exuded no heat. Her kiss, however, was as full of fire as the pyre thorns.
“Ah, Etjole!” she husked as she stepped back from him. “What a most excellent man you have grown up to be, and what a lucky woman is Mirhanja.” Her expression turned serious. “You have a long ways still to travel.”
He nodded. “I have been told twice now that if I continue on I will be killed. What can you tell me?”
The exquisite face shifted from side to side. “Nothing, Etjole Ehomba. I can tell you nothing. I am the Fhastal of my youth, and that young woman fought hard to learn what was around her. I had neither the time nor the ability to look ahead. Even now, that is a gift that is denied to me.” Turning slightly, she gestured in the direction of the cringing, rocking figure. Having returned from its slaughter, the black litah stood watch over the helpless human shape. “Why not ask him? He knows everything.”
Simna made a rude noise. “Knucker the drunker? He knows a lot, I’ll give him that much. But everything? Not even the greatest of wizards knows everything. And that disgusting little snot’s no wizard.”
“No, he isn’t,” Fhastal the younger agreed. “But I think it barely possible that he may very well know everything, just as he says. The trouble is, knowing everything does not make one perfect. And just as he is no wizard, neither is he perfect.” The last vestiges of flickering white flame had nearly vanished from her body, for the first time isolating her supple, graceful form sharply against the frame of night.
Reaching up to