Paladin of Souls - Lois McMaster Bujold [100]
Ista peeked over the balustrade. Catti rippled away over the pavement below, silks fluttering behind her as she ran, following the continuous line of light. Light that cast neither shadow nor reflection. She, and it, vanished under the arcade.
What is this sorcery, Cattilara? Ista shook her head in bewilderment.
I shall feed my starving eyes, then. Perhaps, when they are full enough, they will teach me . . . something.
And if not, I shall still have snatched a crumb.
The hinges on the door to Illvin’s chamber were very well oiled, Ista noticed. The heavy carved door moved easily. From here, she could hear faint snores from the next chamber, beyond an inner door. Goram, or some like attendant, sleeping within call, should a miracle occur and Illvin wake to call. Careful not to touch the floating line of light, she eased her way around a chest and padded across the rugs to Illvin’s bedside. The opposite side from the one Catti had taken. She delicately lifted his sheet down, opened his robe as Catti had, and studied him altogether.
Ignoring the obvious for a moment, she tried to study the swirling light, to read some pattern or message in it. The brightest was collected at his groin, temporarily, but nodes glimmered over navel, lip, and forehead as well as heart. Lip and forehead were extremely faint. She was certain he was thinner than when she had seen him in her first dream, cheeks more hollowed, ribs . . . she had not seen his ribs before, but she could surely count them now. She could mark the line of his pelvic bone, beneath his skin. Her finger traced it, paused.
He moved, barely: faint, highly recognizable twitches of lust . . . or, perhaps, the echoes of such movement, coursing back through the trembling line of light like a wave returning from some farther shore? Minutes slipped by; she could count her heartbeats. She could count his. They quickened. For the first time, his lips moved, but only to emit a low groan.
A strain, a shudder, a brighter blaring of light, then it was over. The cold fire coursed chaotically over his body, then recentered its wellspring over the dressing below his heart and pulsed on. Pumping out . . . what?
His flesh went back to looking disturbingly dead.
“So,” Ista breathed. “Isn’t that . . . curious.”
Wisdom, or even knowledge, eluded her still. Well, some aspects of what she had just witnessed were very clear. Some . . . weren’t.
Softly, she closed his robe, tied its belt. Drew the sheet up as it had been. Studied the floating line of light. She remembered her dream of it.
Dare I?
She certainly wasn’t getting anywhere just staring at it. She reached forward, arched her hand around it. Paused.
Goram, I salute you.
She hitched her hip up on the bed and leaned forward. Touched her lips to Illvin’s, then took a deeper caress from them. Closed her hand.
The light sputtered out.
His eyes sprang open; he inhaled her breath. She propped herself on one hand, beside his head, and gazed down into those eyes, as dark as she remembered from her first visions. His hand moved, circled up behind her head, gripped her hair.
“Oh. That’s a better dream.” Voice dusky as old honey, a soft northern Roknari-tinged accent: richer by far than she’d remembered from her own sleeping visions of him. He kissed her in return, cautiously at first, then more confidently—not so much in belief, as dizzily dispensing with belief.
She opened her hand. The light renewed itself, spiraled up from him, sped away. With a sigh of anguish, he faded again, eyelids not quite meeting. The gleam between his lashes was the more disturbing for being so motionless. Gently, she closed them for him.