Hart's Hope by Card Orson Scott

Author:Card, Orson Scott [Card, Orson Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Horror, Adult, Young Adult
ISBN: 9781429964258
Amazon: 1429964251
Goodreads: 8629874
Publisher: Orb Books
Published: 1983-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

SEGRIVAUN

The woman gave them each a hand and pulled them into a room that was lit, to Orem’s surprise, by daylight. Wasn’t it night? Hadn’t he been hours in the dark? Or could it be the next morning already? No, he wasn’t that tired. There was no open window; just a few cracks in the wooden wall, with a roll of heavy black cloth tied above it, ready to be let down at night to hold candlelight inside. Orem wondered if this woman lived all her life here. Perhaps. It paid: Braisy handed her two silvers.

“Ah,” said the fat woman. Her breasts hung well below her waist, as if she were smuggling grain sacks under her blouse. Her belly wagged to and fro when she walked. Her face, too, was draped with flesh; even her brow hung loosely over her eyes, and she actually lifted her forehead with her hand so she could look up and see Orem’s face.

“What is he? Why this way? Surely not for the King, this one!”

“A shadow said to take him to you, Segrivaun, and you’d lead us to the glass of public death.”

Segrivaun looked away, let her brows fall down over her eyes again. “For him?”

“Said he was wanting.”

“Oh, yes, wanting. They brought what he wanted here just an hour ago, cloven hoof and two men binding. Only four horns, but enough, enough, a little one but enough. I want nothing of him. Go on, through here.”

She led the way into a cavernous passageway. Forced to bend in the low tunnel, following right behind the woman, Orem couldn’t hide from the stench of her; she was foul. But the way was not long. They came to a room with a round hole in the ceiling and two heavy ropes coming down. One rope was taut and tied to a stout iron ring bolted to the floor; the other was also taut but hung free through a hole near the ring, going down deeper into the house.

The fat woman positioned them opposite her and bade them stand away from the ropes, while she fairly enveloped the fastened one in her belly and breasts, holding to the free rope with both hands. She grunted and pulled down on the free rope. The floor rose under them.

Not the whole floor, but a circle of it, and it wobbled madly. They rose past one floor, past another, and finally stopped at the third. Segrivaun lifted them a few inches clear of the floor, then began rocking back and forth. It was a terrifying motion, and Orem couldn’t balance fast enough to keep from falling. But when he fell, the platform fell also, and enough to the side of the hole that it stayed as Segrivaun stepped to the caught edge and held it there with her weight.

Braisy quickly took the lamp a few steps away, to where some heavy boards lay on the floor. He took one up, spanned the hole in the floor with it, and shoved it under the edge of the circle of wood.

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