01 Dragon Wing by Weis & Hickman

Author:Weis & Hickman [Weis & Hickman]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-04-10T22:57:38.291000+00:00

"Whether you did or you didn't, Limbeck, it's gone too far now for you to stop it!" she snapped. Seeing the harried expression on her beloved's face, she softened her voice. "There are pain and blood and tears at every birth, my dear. The baby always cries when it leaves its safe, quiet prison. Yet if it stayed in the womb, it would never grow, never mature. It would be a parasite, feeding off another body. That's what we are. That's what we've become! Don't you see? Can't you understand?"

"No, my dear," said Limbeck. The hand holding the pen was shaking. Ink drops were flying everywhere. He laid it down across the paper on which he'd been writing and slowly rose to his feet. "I think I'll go out for a walk."

"I wouldn't," said Jarre. "The crowds-" Limbeck blinked. "Oh, yes. Of course. You're right." "You're exhausted. All this traveling and excitement. Go lie down and take a nap. I'll finish your speech. Here are your spectacles," Jarre said briskly, plucking them from the top of Limbeck's head and popping them onto his nose. "Up the stairs and into bed with you."

"Yes, my dear," said Limbeck, adjusting the spectacles that Jarre had, with well-meaning kindness, stuck on lopsided. Looking through them that way-with one eyeglass up and the other down-made him nauseous. "I ... think that would be a good idea. I do feel . . . tired." He sighed and hung his head. "Very tired."

Walking to the ramshackle stairs, Limbeck was startled to feel a wet tongue lick across his knuckles. It was Haplo's dog, looking up at him, wagging its tail.

"I understand," the animal seemed to say, its unspoken words startlingly clear in Limbeck's mind. "I'm sorry." "Dog!" Haplo spoke to it sharply, calling it back.

"No, that's all right," said Limbeck, reaching down to give the animal's sleek head a gingerly pat. "I don't mind."

"Dog! Come!" Haplo's voice had an almost angry edge to it. The dog hurried back to its master's side, and Limbeck retired up the stairs.

"He's so very idealistic!" said Jarre, gazing after Limbeck in admiration mixed with exasperation. "And not at all practical. I just don't know what to do."

"Keep him around," suggested Haplo. He stroked the dog's long nose to indicate that all was forgiven and forgotten. The animal lay down, rolled over on its side, and closed its eyes. "He gives your revolution a high moral tone. You'll need that, when blood starts to flow."

Jarre looked worried. "You think it will come to that?"

"Inevitable," he said, shrugging. "You said as much yourself, to Limbeck."

"I know. It seems, as you say, that it is inevitable, that this is the natural end of what we began long ago. Yet it has seemed to me lately" - she turned her eyes to Haplo - "that we never seriously turned our thoughts to violence until you came. Sometimes I wonder if you aren't really a god."

"Why is that?" Haplo smiled.

"Your words have a strange power over us. I hear them and I keep hearing them, not in my head, but in my heart.

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