Drake, David - Lord of the Isles 7 by Drake David

Author:Drake, David
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf

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Double stood on the parapet chanting words of power, his face to the sea and his pudgy arms spread out to the sides. He'd thrust an athame from Cervoran's collection under his sash, an age-blackened blade carved from a tree root, but he wasn't using it for the spell.

If there really was a spell. Ilna, standing to the side as Double had ordered her, felt if anything angrier than usual. She couldn't understand the words the wizard was using-of course-but she did understand patterns. Double's chant was as purposeless as a snake swallowing its own tail.

She grinned slightly. Double reminded her of a snake in more ways than that. But if the fact she disliked a person doomed him, the world would have many fewer people in it. It wouldn't necessarily be a better place, but it'd be quieter.

From here Ilna could see the waves beyond the harbor mouth. Double'd said they were coming to the roof to do that, to watch the waves, but she suspected that was a lie. Certainly his incantation wasn't affecting the sunlit water, and yet....

And yet there was a pattern in the waves. Ilna couldn't grasp the whole. It was far too complex, for her and perhaps any human being, but it was there. Perhaps she was seeing the work of the Green Woman spreading from the shining fortress on the horizon, but Ilna thought it was greater even than that.

Ilna's smile spread a little wider; someone who knew her well might've seen the triumph in it. She was glimpsing the fabric of the cosmos in the tops of those few waves. She saw only the hint of the whole, but no one she'd met except her brother Cashel could've seen even that. That didn't make life easier or better or even different, but she granted herself the right to be proud that she almost understood.

She felt herself sliding deeper into contemplation of the waves, following strands of the cosmos itself. Things became obvious as she viewed them from nearer the source. Double had brought her here: not to work a spell but to trap her the way a clover-filled meadow traps a ewe. The sheep could leave, but the pleasure of her surroundings holds her for a bite, and another bite, and just another-Merota screamed.

Ilna's concentration was a knife blade, smooth and clean and sharp. The pattern of the waves and the cosmos was for another time or another person. She jumped from the parapet to the stairs directly below her, though that meant dropping her own height to the bricks. To start down the stairs where they opened onto the roof, she'd have had to go past Double....

He stopped chanting, but he didn't try to restrain her.

Chalcus called something, his voice blurring with its own echo. He sounded as if he'd stepped into a vast chamber.

Ilna reached the marble landing and the entrance to the king's suite; the guards there jumped back to let her by. Her hands were empty.

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