Mindbond by Nancy Springer

Author:Nancy Springer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781453248508
Publisher: Open Road Media

Chapter Twelve

Mahela sent a retainer, one of the dark-bearded nobles in all his splendid array, to summon me before the day was old. The man looked at me with blank eyes as he delivered his message, that I was wanted to amuse the goddess with the storyteller’s art. Then he led me off rapidly, taking no pause for my limping footsteps as my unshod feet were cut against the vicious stones of that place.

The entry to Mahela’s dwelling was from above, between the bare trees where the banners hung. The servant in splendid array led me up a wooden walkway, past the throne and the tree with blue fruit standing captive in its pot, then down a broad and sturdy ladder. The downward entry reminded me of the pit prison where I had first met Kor. A dark prison, that. This place, not quite as dark but a prison nevertheless.… In an oddly shaped chamber full of greenish, rippling shadowlight, Mahela awaited me. It was not, praise be, the bedchamber Kor had described, but a room that was mostly open space. The walls sloped inward toward the floor—I noticed that only dimly at the time, for the mighty froth of sunstuff on them dazzled me, and the bench of sunstuff and blood-red velvet, softer than the velvet of a hart’s antlers in springtime, on which Mahela sat, and the swirl of servants around her. She dismissed them with a flick of her hand as I approached, and they backed away from her, bowing, as I came before her.

I stood facing her, awkward, knowing I should bow, not yet able to manage it but ducking my head in a salute of sorts. She motioned at me impatiently.

“Proceed,” she commanded.

I stood dumbstruck. Never had I felt less inspired. “What tale would you like to hear, my lady?” I asked after too long a pause.

“How am I to know?” Her voice darted as sharp as her beak had she been in bird form, and she stirred like a hawk rousing. “You are the storyteller. Tell a tale that will please me.” Or bear my wrath, her voice said.

“But my lady, how am I to choose?” I swallowed and tried to explain. “I have never done so before. When I tell tales to my people, we sit around the fire at night, campfire or cooking fire, and the old true stories seem to spring out of the flames.”

“I see,” she said slowly, and if her wrath was averted it was because I had given her a new thought, a diversion. “Sit, then.”

There was nowhere for me to sit except on the floor, which was covered with a thick red cloth furred like moss, and I did so. Mahela closed her eyes, and the room went dark as night. In another breathspan a fire sprang up out of the floor at my feet, a smokeless, shadowy, yellow-green fire that gave no warmth, though the flames leaped and flickered as if they fed on fatwood—and no logs lay there.

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