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Jason would find his own destiny; Karl's son would not become a pawn in
Deighton's game.
Karl Cullinane forced a chuckle, the laugh sounding thin even in his own ears.
Make a play for the sword, indeed. Hah. It wasn't the sword that had brought
him to Melawei; it wasn't the sword that had brought him to the hidden
offshore caverns. But he did have to see it again; he couldn't have come all
this way without seeing that it still stood here.
No, what Karl Cullinane had come here for was in the outer room: his edge
against the slavers.
Ahrmin had taken Eriksen village, chasing the Eriksens back into the hills. It
was understandable:
That was the area of Melawei where Karl had defeated him before; Ahrmin would
want to avenge himself on the land and villagers, as well as Karl Cullinane.
But there was something else near that village.
You made a huge mistake, bastard, he thought as he walked into the outer room.
You picked the wrong spot to lie in wait for me.
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Glowing crystals were scattered across the walls and ceiling of the outer
chamber; captured starlight played across the mottled far wall. Karl knew that
if he'd had the genes to work magic, the dim markings on the wall would have
resolved themselves into sharp-edged runes, the words of spells that could be
impressed on the mind of a user of magic, to be saved, hoarded in the mind,
spilled out as needed.
But he didn't; it was only a dirty wall to him. It wouldn't have been to Andy,
but...
But she wasn't here.
She wasn't here. He'd likely never see her again. What would he give to hold
her in his arms again?
What wouldn 't he give?
Easy, Karl. We've got work to do.
He forced his mind back to the task at hand, and decided that it had been too
long since he had last eaten, although he didn't feel hungry. Killing took
away his appetite.
At least, it used to; it used to be that he felt sick to his stomach both
before and after a kill. Lately, over the past few days, he had returned from
his forays ravenous.
He wasn't hungry now, but, still, the body-as-machine had to be taken care of,
if only for a short while longer. Karl Cullinane left the cavern of the sword
and walked back through the roughly hewn tunnel to the outer chamber where he
had left his gear.
His tunic, breechclout, and leggings were spread out on the cold stone, drying
as well as they could.
He squatted for a moment, feeling at his clothes. His? Well, close enough; the
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slavers he'd relieved of them wouldn't have any further use for them. They
were all still wet from last night, as were half the stack of blanketlike
towels that the Mel had left in the cave, for the convenience of their clan
wizards.
He shrugged. He'd be in for worse than damp clothes before the night was over.
Ignoring the two big sacks containing guncotton sticks and the small one with
the detonators, he dug into the fourth one for a hunk of dried beef, and bit
off a piece while he examined the near wall.
What appeared to be a picture window looked down on the nighttime sea.
Waves roiled beneath flickering stars, while a distant darkness covered the
horizon. To the west, south, and east, other offshore islands lay, some only
tiny rocky outcroppings sporting a tree or two, some large ones only
technically islands, just barely separated from the shoreline by passages too
narrow for any craft save a Mel dugout canoe. A bird flitted across his field
of view; it was
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was.
Off in the distance, a slaver ship lay, floating freely at anchor. That would
make a juicy target, but not for tonight. The slavers were starting to pull in
their outlying posts, but the process wasn't finished.
There was an old Vietcong trick Karl planned to try tonight, which should
speed things along, another turn of the screw: He'd cut off tonight's victims'
genitals, and leave them stuck in the corpses' mouths. He'd thought about
doing so for days, and had decided to wait on it. Mutilating bodies didn't
bother him, not at all. He had put off doing it to give himself something else
to add to the pressure on the slavers.
He turned back to the window. It wasn't really a picture window, of course;
the cavern was at sea level, but the view looked down from a height. The Eye,
the sphere which transferred the image to the glass, was on the island's
heights, waiting.
For this.
Karl ran his fingers over the glass; in dizzying counterpoint, the view spun
until the beach filled the window. Karl would have given a lot to be able to
move the Eye out and over the forest to do a more complete remote
recon village Eriksen was hidden by the trees but even without that, it was a
powerful tool.
Besides, he liked it; the Eye and window suited him.
It was magic-as-technology do this with this, and this happens, see? There was
something far more satisfying about a device that he could see work,
emotionally preferable to even something as useful, as important, as the
amulet that protected him from being located.
He moved his fingers again, then examined the glass closely until he could see
a distant fire that was at least a mile down the beach. It was the spot where,
just a few nights before, he had killed the two watchmen, leaving one burning.
Right now, all it was was a vague glow, so he lightly touched his index finger
to the flicker, and pressed down while the flicker grew, zooming in, the
watchfire growing on the screen until he could see the two slavers sitting in [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]