Moorcock, Michael - Castle Brass 02 by Moorcock Michael

Author:Moorcock, Michael [Moorcock, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-07-15T23:49:19+00:00

'In the circumstances, yes. Forget it, Ilian. We may yet avenge your brother - and the rest."

'I must do much to atone for that thing,' said Ilian. She knew there were tears in her eyes and she tried to force them back.

'There is much, anyway, that must be done,' said Jhary-a-Conel.

2

OUTLAWS OF A THOUSAND SPHERES

The small black and white cat drifted high above the forest on a warm upcurrent of air.

The sun was setting. The cat waited, for it preferred to go about its business at night. From the ground, if it could be seen at all, the cat would have been mistaken for a hawk. It hovered, keeping its position by the slightest movements of its wings, close to a city but recently occupied by a huge and ferocious army.

Katinka van Bak had not lied when she had described the army which had defeated her. Her only lie concerned where she had engaged this army and what its intentions were. In a sense, of course, it had occupied the Bulgar Mountains, for did not this land, in some mysterious way, exist within that range?

As the sun sank, so the small black and white cat dropped lower and lower until at last it had settled upon a branch close to the top of one of the tallest trees. A breeze blew, rustling the leaves and making the trees, from where the cat sat, seem to move like the waves of a strange sea.

The cat jumped and landed on a lower branch, jumped again and this time spread its wings, soaring a few feet before finding another foothold.

Slowly it began to descend towards the city, whose lights could be seen far below. Not for the first time was the cat scouting for its master, Jhary-a-Conel; going somewhere where Jhary himself, or his friends, could not go.

At last the cat lay stretched on a branch directly over the centre of the city. Virinthorm had no walls, for it had been long since she had needed them, and all her main buildings were built of carved, polished ebony, inlaid with whale ivory bought from the coastal peoples to the south. Those people had once hunted whales, but now the few who were left were hunted by monsters themselves. The other buildings were all built of hardwood, for stone was a rarity in Garathorm, and all had a rich, mellow look to them - those which had been left untouched by the invaders' brands.

The cat dropped still lower, digging its claws into the smooth roof of a large building and climbing to the main beam.

A terrible smell filled the city. It was a smell of death and of decay. The cat found it at once unpleasant and interesting, but it denied itself the instinct to explore the source of the odours. Instead it spread its wings and flew away from the building and then back again, losing height rapidly and then gliding gracefully through an open window.

The cat's unusual sixth sense had not betrayed it.

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