Year of the Unicorn by Andre Norton

Author:Andre Norton
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: &WORKING
Published: 2011-03-22T19:11:21+00:00

No Shadow!

THE SIMPLE bag, my desperate thoughts kept coming back to that. They had scooped up snow, dumped it by the fistful into a small pot now shoved close to the flames. A few drops from a certain small bottle into that and-

But I was as far from achieving that as I was from finding the vanished gate. What I did not know was so much more than what I did.

They ate and the smell of the roasting meat, as they tore it with teeth or sawed chunks off with the belt knives, aroused the hunger the cordial had allayed. They offered me none and I knew their purpose. Whatever use they planned to make of me this night, I would not go hence with them in the morning. Why should they wish to burden their troop with a woman who was also a feared witch?

The simple bag. I tried to keep my eyes from it, lest one of them followed my gaze and find it. But when I stole another look I saw, doubtless by some trick of firelight, it was now in the open, could be sighted by any who turned his head. In the open-but how? It had been between two rocks-those two-and now it was inches away!

That shook me-so simple a thing among all the greater. However it is such that tugs at reason when greater shocks will not. The bag had lain there, now it was by so much the nearer to me. As if my desire and will had lent it legs on which to answer my unvoiced summoning. Legs-will? Almost I dared not believe-but I had to.

The flap-cover of the bag-it was fastened so and so. Not daring to look I stared into the flames of my captors’ fire and concentrated on building a picture in my mind of that latching. So easy to finger, but for the mind-ah, that was different. How many times can one accurately and minutely describe some well-known possession we handle a hundred times a day? It is so familiar to us that the eye takes no record of its details. To try to recall without looking at it now becomes strange and alien.

Thus and thus-rod into metal loop, turned down-so! I had it correctly pictured, or hoped that I had. Now-to reverse that locking-turn up-slide out-Dared I look to the bag once more to see if it had obeyed my will? Better not-though not to know-

Now-within-how were ranked those contents? I put myself back in the night filled room of Dame Alousan, the cupboards I had opened, drawers which had yielded to my pull. In what order had I filled those pockets and loops? So deeply did I search memory that the fire and the scene before me blurred. I dared not think on how much time I might have left, as one by one I used memory as a pointer as to what lay now in the shadows. The fifth pocket-it was the fifth pocket! If memory had not foresaken me utterly when I needed it most.

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