Into the thinking kingdoms - Alan Dean Foster [86]
“I will miss you, Fhastal. Until I return home.”
“I hope I’ll still be alive by the time you get back. I would like to learn how this turns out for you.”
“You should have told me about the carving’s power.” He spoke in a tone that was chiding but also affectionate.
“I did, Etjole Ehomba, I did!” She was laughing at him now, and for a brief moment the all-encompassing white flame seemed to dance higher, like a live thing summoned fleetingly back to life. “Did I not tell you when last we spoke that you were speaking to the image and that the figurine was the real me? That by your wearing it I would be able to travel with you?”
Now it was his turn to smile as he remembered, fondly. “So you did, Fhastal. I listened to your words but did not hear.”
She wagged a finger at him and the simple gesture caused him to experience a start of recognition. When chiding children and their elders alike, as she did frequently and every day, aged Fhastal, real Fhastal, the chuckling, easygoing old Fhastal of the village, wagged her finger in exactly the same way.
“You see clearly and far, Etjole Ehomba, but there are times when you need to listen better!”
“I will remember,” he assured her solemnly, speaking as an unruly child would to a doting parent.
“See that you do.”
Simna stepped boldly forward. “Hoy, don’t I rate a farewell kiss as well?”
The tall figure gazed speculatively down at the eager swordsman. “I think not, friend of Etjole’s. You are too quick with the hands that wield that fine sword and, modest maid that I am, I have only enchantment and fire to protect me.” Reaching out, she playfully tousled his hair. “Perhaps in another life.” With those words, the last of the ethereal enveloping flame flickered out.
“Fhastal, wait!” Ehomba stepped forward, into the space where she had been. No pale efflorescence, no lingering glow, marked her final passage. There was only a faint warmth in the air, a smell of natural perfume, and the teasing tail end of a dissipating, girlish laugh.
“For us.” There in the dark and deserted street far from home he stood and murmured to the sky. “She gave the last of her youth to save us. It was embodied in that figurine that she gave me for protection.” Turning, he confronted Simna. The swordsman was still staring at the space the beauteous phantasm had vacated, savoring an already dwindling memory. “She could have enjoyed those moments in the company of old friends back in the village, or among those equal to her in experience and learning. But she gave it to us.”
“Hoy, and a wondrous thing to behold it was,” Simna readily agreed. “Knowledge and fighting ability and a sense of humor all in one woman. Not to mention those—”
Ehomba cut him off. “Show some respect, Simna.”
“I would love to, bruther. Hoy, would I give a month of my life to show that woman some respect!”
“That was a vision of her as a youth. Nowadays she is old, and wrinkled, and bent.”
The swordsman nodded somberly. “But still beautiful, I’d wager.”
“Yes. Still beautiful.” Taking a deep breath, he turned toward Ahlitah and the big cat’s mewling, unhealthy charge. “She told us to ask questions of Knucker. We should follow her advice.”
“Hoy.” Simna walked alongside his friend. “Just so long as we keep in mind that no matter how much he knows, he doesn’t know everything.” The swordsman sniffed. “I don’t care what she said. Nobody knows everything. Especially a broken-down ruin of a human being like that.”
While a disgusted Simna stood nearby and the litah preened blood and bits of dismembered gut from his fur, Ehomba crouched before the gently swaying form of the man they had rescued from the close. A firm push from one finger would have been enough to knock Knucker over.
“How are you doing, my friend?”
The rocking stopped. Bloodshot eyes looked up and blinked like broken