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father."
"But truly I never killed the boar. I was only boasting when I said so
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-- I thought you liked me brave. I have no memory of that killing. My mind
went black. I think my dead mother entered me and drove the spear."
"Liar and changer of lies! But I'll amend my judgment: you live by fear except
when your father whips you to courage. I should have realized that and warned
Glavas Rho against you. But I had dreams about you."
"You called me Misling," she said faintly.
"Aye, we played at being mice, forgetting cats are real. And then while
I was away, you were frightened by mere whippings into betraying Glavas Rho to
your father!"
"Mouse, do not condemn me." Ivrian was sobbing. "I know that my life has been
nothing but fear. Ever since I was a child my father has tried to force me to
believe that cruelty and hate are the laws of the universe. He has tortured
and tormented me. There was no one to whom I could turn, until I
found Glavas Rho and learned that the universe has laws of sympathy and love
that shape even death and the seeming hates. But now Glavas Rho is dead and I
am more frightened and alone than ever. I need your help, Mouse. You studied
under Glavas Rho. You know his teachings. Come and help me."
His laughter mocked her. "Come out and be betrayed? Be whipped again while you
look on? Listen to your sweet lying voice, while your father's huntsmen creep
closer? No, I have other plans."
"Plans?" she questioned. Her voice was apprehensive. "Mouse, your life is in
danger so long as you lurk here. My father's men are sworn to slay you on
sight. I would die, I tell you, if they caught you. Don't delay, get away.
Only tell me first that you do not hate me." And she moved toward him.
Again his laughter mocked her.
"You are beneath my hate," came the stinging words. "I feel only contempt for
your cowardly weakness. Glavas Rho talked too much of love. There
are laws of hate in the universe, shaping even its loves, and it is time I
made them work for me. Come no closer! I do not intend to betray my plans to
you, or my new hidey holes. But this much I will tell you, and listen well. In
seven days your father's torment begins."
"My father's torments -- ? Mouse, Mouse, listen to me. I want to question you
about more than Glavas Rho's teachings. I want to question you about Glavas
Rho. My father hinted to me that he knew my mother, that he was perchance my
very father."
This time there was a pause before the mocking laughter, but when it came, it
was doubled. "Good, good, good! It pleasures me to think that Old
White-beard enjoyed life a little before he became so wise, wise, wise. I
dearly hope he did tumble your mother. That would explain his nobility. Where
so much love was -- love for each creature ever born -- there must have been
lust and guilt before. Out of that encounter -- and all your mother's evil --
his white magic grew. It is true! Guilt and white magic side by side -- and
the gods never lied! Which leaves you the daughter of Glavas Rho, betraying
your true father to his sooty death."
And then his face was gone and the leaves framed only a dark hole. She
blundered into the forest after him, calling out "Mouse! Mouse!" and trying to
follow the receding laughter. But it died away, and she found herself in a
gloomy hollow, and she began to realize how evil the apprentice's laughter had
sounded, as if he laughed at the death of all love, or even its unbirth. Then
panic seized her, and she fled back through the undergrowth, brambles catching
at her clothes and twigs stinging her cheeks, until she had regained the
clearing and was galloping back through the dusk, a thousand fears besetting
her and her heart sick with the thought there was now no one in the wide world
who did not hate and despise her.
When she reached the stronghold, it seemed to crouch above her like an ugly
jag-crested monster, and when she passed through the great gateway, it seemed
to her that the monster had gobbled her up forever.
Come nightfall on the seventh day, when dinner was being served in the great
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banquet hall, with much loud talk and crunching of rushes and clashing of
silver plates, Janarrl stifled a cry of pain and clapped his hand to his
heart.
"It is nothing," he said a moment later to the thin-faced henchman sitting at
his side. "Give me a cup of wine! That will stop it twinging."
But he continued to look pale and ill at ease, and he ate little of the meat
that was served up in great smoking slices. His eyes kept roving about the
table, finally settling on his daughter.
"Stop staring at me in that gloomy way, girl!" he called. "One would think
that you had poisoned my wine and were watching to see green spots come out on
me. Or red ones edged with black, belike."
This bought a general guffaw of laughter which seemed to please the
Duke, for he tore off the wing of a fowl and gnawed at it hungrily, but the
next moment he gave another sudden cry of pain, louder than the first,
staggered to his feet, clawed convulsively at his chest, and then pitched over
on the table, where he lay groaning and writhing in his pain.
"The Duke is stricken," the thin-faced henchman announced quite unnecessarily [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]