Falcons of Narabedla by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Author:Marion Zimmer Bradley [Bradley, Marion Zimmer]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Fiction, General, Science Fiction, Usernet, C429, Kat, Extratorrents
ISBN: 0099356503
Publisher: Orion
Published: 1984-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

The fire in the other room had burned to an ember. Without a glance my way, Narayan mended the fire, sat down, his legs stretched to the little blaze, his chin in his hands, waiting. I could not stand still; I walked, restless, around the room, speaking in little jerks and half-sentences, not knowing how much was memory and how much was what I could piece together from the jigsaw puzzle of this strange, nightmare world.

“You are—you were the Dreamer,” I said. “I remember —being bound to you, and later I—I remember when I freed you. Not knowing what it might mean, not knowing whether you might have slain me on the ground of sacrifice.”

“No.” Narayan was as motionless as Gamine’s veils. “No, Adric, never that. We cannot kill one another, you and I. I could order you killed, I suppose, but I—I would never do that unless there was no other way. I always hoped there would be another way, for me, for you.”

I tried to trim my words carefully between the two personalities that were battling in my brain. At least I was beginning to reconstruct Adric’s story with some coherence and logic, not the isolated scraps I had deduced before.

“Adric freed you,” I said. “I am not sure whether it was for your sake, or whether he wished to—to work for his own power against the others in Rainbow City.” Yes, that was the burning incongruity; that Adric, this harsh and cruel man, should have freed a Dreamer, should have worked against his own people and his own power. Why, why? If I knew that, I would have the key to everything.

But I did not know. I sighed and went on.

“Karamy took Adric from you, by treachery,” I said. “She sent him, half-mad, back to the Crimson Tower. Karamy’s magic stripped him of his memories, broke the bond between you and Adric.”

“Not entirely,” Narayan said, staring into the fire. “I knew when you woke. But I could not come, myself, into Rainbow City and rescue you. You know what is kept there.”

I didn’t, but it hardly seemed important now.

“Karamy stripped Adric of memory and power, sent him back to stargazing in Narabedla; she hoped, when at last she let him return, that he would be the old Adric. Karamy needed his power, more than she feared it. But it was not Karamy—” the voice that was not quite mine shook, suddenly, with my own weariness and the blank terror I’d been keeping at bay, “it wasn’t Karamy who sent me here! I’m not Adric, you were perfectly right, I’m no more Adric than you are! I’m in Adric’s body, yes, I have—I have some of his memories, his thoughts, he sometimes moves me like a puppet, but her—” my voice cracked suddenly; I knew I sounded like a hysterical kid, but I couldn’t stop once it had broken loose. “I’m not Adric! I’m not,I don’t belong here at all.”

Narayan jumped up and I heard his hurrying steps behind me; then his steely hands were on my shoulders hard, swinging me around to face him.

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