Mother Of Winter by Barbara Hambly

Author:Barbara Hambly
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-04-23T20:39:12+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

He sat on plank scaffolding in a corner of the Keep ... The Keep?

Dawnlight surrounded him, dove-colored and chilly. But everything within him knew that he was in the Keep.

He seemed to be sitting at the outer edge of a maze of scaffolding, miles of it stretching away in both directions, thousands of feet along black glass walls that rose up unevenly against that orchid sky.

He looked down and saw a chasm of shadow hundreds of feet deep, from which the spiderweb framework rose: planks and what looked like bamboo, rope bridges, all wreathed and woven with lines of magic.

Machinery rested on some of the platforms, unfamiliar black shapes that glistened with cold crystal appurtenances in their circles of silver and smoke; more power-circles had been drawn on every jerry-built bridge and catwalk, their curves and lines reaching off into the twilight air to form a lace of unsupported magic.

And on every one of those platforms and bridges and catwalks, he could see the bodies of sleeping men and women, like sentries felled by plague. Beside one, two cats were ; sleeping, too.

It is the Keep, Rudy thought. The Keep before it was finished. And the woman who sat bowed, defeated, curled within herself on the black plinth that rose out of the center of the foundation-it was the Bald Lady.

The scaffolding where he sat he could feel the edge of the damp planks sharply against his thighs, smell the oil of the machine next to him and the heartbreaking cold-was close enough that he could see her face when she raised her head at the sound of hooves, close enough to see the stoic pain in her eyes at the sight of the man framed within the open square of what would be the Keep doors.

"Rudy?"

Alde's voice. She sounded scared. As well she might, he thought.

He opened his eyes to a brief vision of her, sitting on the edge of the bed where he lay. Then he slipped back to find himself once more in the darkness of the corridor, with strange chalky creatures like legless scorpions rolling pillbug fashion down the dirty floor, and the dead herdkids standing in a row in front of him, hand in hand, watching him ...

"Rudy!"

Pain went through his head as if it had been split with wedges, and he rolled over fast-someone barely got him a slop bucket before the tsunami of nausea hit.

"Well, there's a waste of good rations," remarked the Icefalcon's voice.

Rudy made a weary but universal gesture and after a moment ventured to open his eyes again. He was in his own small chamber. Somebody had brought in half a dozen glowstones , so the place was fairly bright, and about two-thirds of the population of the Keep seemed to have packed itself into the seven-by-fifteen cell.

He revised the number downward to a score or so, including the Bishop Maia, Varkis Hogshearer and his repellent offspring, Philonis Weaver-who was one of the several nonmage Healers in the Keep

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