Realms of Magic - Brian Thomsen King [93]
Teza's fingers tightened on the cover. "You nasty little-" she began, without realizing what she was talking to. Then the tiny woman climbed to her feet. She wiped blood from her mouth, tore a ring off her finger, and flung it at the young man. No words were spoken, but Teza could see the fury on the woman's face, and the devastation on the man's. The painted lady turned to leave, when in one swift movement, the man grabbed her long, braided hair. His hands lifted in a strange movement, his lips mouthed silent words, and in a brilliant flash of silver light that made Teza blink, the woman disappeared. When Teza looked again, the young man was alone, standing as still as before and holding a large tan book.
"What is this?" Teza muttered irritably. She flipped back to the other pages, but none of the remaining pictures moved. Finally she turned past the man and his book to the last page. The last illustration was the strangest of all. In the upper left was a small portrait of the woman, her oval face filled with pleading and her large green eyes brimmed with tears. The center of the picture revealed the book with its binding of red hair unbraided. A dagger pierced the pages, and blood dripped off the binding. At the bottom right, another portrait of the woman showed her joyfully happy.
A horse-thief though she was, Teza was not stupid. Her mind leapt to the obvious conclusion that the lady in the pictures had been transformed into a book by a wizard, and that book was the very one she was holding. That would help explain the red hair and the odd binding of what felt like human skin. What it did not explain was what Teza should do with it now.
If she understood the last picture correctly, a way to free the trapped lady was to open the book and stab it with a dagger. Simple enough. Yet what would that accomplish? Would the knife free her or kill her? And who was she? Why did she make her lover angry? Did she deserve to be transformed, or was her punishment cruelly unjust?
Teza didn't know, and there weren't nearly enough answers in the book. Should she trust her first instincts and break the spell, or take the book to Rafbit and his customer? And for that matter, Teza thought, her anger stirring again, who was this customer, and what did he want with this specific book?
Teza had the distinct impression she was being used, not tested, and she resented it. The job had been easy, even for her, but she was the only one taking the risks, and Rafbit probably figured she was too illiterate to be interested in a book. Maybe he didn't know what was in it either.
She quickly made up her mind to take the book to Rafbit. "But that loud-mouthed half-breed better have some answers," she muttered as she blew out her lamp.
Teza gently closed the book, leaving the hair unbraided, then mounted the aughisky and rode to find her friend at the agreed meeting place near the docks. The water horse, impatient to be away, cantered rapidly through the fog-hung streets, and his green eyes glowed like lamps in the night.
As they neared Immilmar's port facility, with its maze of storehouses, taverns, merchant offices, and docks, Teza slowed the horse to a walk. He moved quietly along the deserted roads to the last pier in the harbor. The air hung thick and heavy with the odors of wet timbers and rotting trash, and the watery smells of Lake Ashane.
Teza gripped the book tightly under her arm, where it remained hidden by her cloak. There was no tingle of magic power to this book, no inherent feeling of a human presence beneath the binding of skin and hair, but Teza sensed somehow that the lady of the book was still alive, trapped in an inanimate form and able to reveal herself only by the beautiful illuminations in her pages. Perhaps she was even aware of what was going on. Teza had always been a firm believer in freedom-particularly her own-and the woman's plight stirred her heart.
At that moment, she spotted a tiny light glowing in the shadow of a shed at the base of the last pier. The light blinked three times in the arranged signal. The aughisky