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There is the legend of Lord Ulane, who in a somewhat different
context challenged the son of the lord of Rewsby Grove, and found himself
taking on all the men of Rewsby Grove one by one, but, frankly, I don't
believe it; I've been through Rewsby Grove, and it's a tumble-down ruin, not
worth anybody's fighting for.
"Lady," Lord Arefai said, his voice taking on a formal lilt that I hadn't
heard from him before, "I go, as our an-cestors have always gone, in search of
game for the table, hoping that my search will prove fruitful, that my eye
will be sharp, and my arm strong and accurate."
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I didn't think that would be a problem, all things con-sidered. I didn't know
of my own observation, mind you, that there were deer in the forest beyond,
but I would have been astonished if there weren't, and wouldn't at all been
surprised to learn of a dozen of them, hobbled and blind-folded, waiting in
the woods. Our beloved ruling class does not like to come back empty-handed
from the hunt, and the chief huntsman was absent, no doubt assuring that there
would be game in our path.
The wind brought me a scent of patchouli and lime as she reached into the
bosom of her robes and pulled out a piece of red silk. I'm sure it's called a
scarf, although it was far too light and sheer to keep out any wind. A stiff
breeze would have torn it.
"A token," Lady ViKay said, "for the most successful of the hunters."
Two servants appeared at her elbow, one with a silver salver, another with a
teak tripod. Without looking down, she set the scarf down on the salver just
as the first servant managed to set the salver on the tripod. I was expecting
the breeze to blow the silken scrap away, but one of the servants had already
thought of that, and immediately set a highly polished onyx weight on top of
the silk.
Under the shiny bone-white stone, the crimson silk flut-tered in the breeze
like a pinned butterfly.
Arefai looked over the group carefully, his eyes resting on mine for too long.
I don't mind a bit of acting, but this was ridiculous. I wasn't going to shoot
his deer, embarrass him, and commit suicide, all in one stroke. The only
reason I had been cred-ited with the kill back in Den
Oroshtai had been because Arefai was using my arrows which he knew. The
contest with Lord Minch had been fixed by Narantir's predisposi-tion spell,
cantrip, incantation, or whatever it was which he should have known.
I had no illusions about my abilities as a bowman, and no intention of finding
some now. I would shoot low and wide and late, thank you very much, and let
the spells fall where they may.
His eyes swept past me, and I could breathe again.
The horses were waiting for us at the bottom of the hill.
Hunting in Glen Derenai turned out to be different from hunting in Den
Oroshtai.
Where the hunting trails in Den Oroshtai were paved, those in Glen Derenai
were dirt paths,
sometimes barely broad enough for a single horse and rider, sometimes wide
enough for half a dozen to ride abreast. Where the hunting trails in Den
Oroshtai cut mainly through dark woods, oc-casionally skirting a meadow or
glen, those in Glen Derenai stretched out alongside fields, over unfarmed
hills, and down next to streambeds shining in the sun. Strips of forest
separated plowed fields from meadows, but the paths tended to cut across the
strips, instead of running along inside them.
It was all a much more open, much brighter, much more golden than green thing
to hunt in Glen
Derenai.
It was, however, equally painful: bouncing on the back of a horse hurts.
There's a sleight to the way you move your hips and back, and I didn't have
it. Everybody else did; except when they stood in their stirrups, it looked
like the bottoms of all the lords were glued to their saddles. Even Toshtai,
looking far too large for his suffering saddle horse, didn't bounce up and
down as he rode.
Riding through grasses that brushed my knee, we topped a hill. I finally
caught a glimpse of the sea Eter Kabreel, the Closed Sea, the body of water
that separates D'Shai from the mainland north of
Bhorlan.
We quickly rode downslope, and the sea disappeared, but I still had to repress
a shudder. There's something about the Eter Kabreel that always bothers me. I
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don't know what it is, honestly, and I
probably never will.
It's not unfamiliarity; I spent my first seventeen years as an itinerant, and
I've seen large bodies of water before; it's not like I'm a peasant, away from
my paddy and hut for the first time.
I've seen the waters of D'Shai, from the friendly gray and blue waters of the
Eter Shalough that separate the Ven from the rest of D'Shai, where sailboats
both large and small follow the zigzag trade route north and south, to the
Eter Enothien, the Open Sea that laps on the morningwise coast of the Ven,
Helgramyth, and Otland, and the waters that go on forever from there.
And I have seen the icy lakes up in Helgramyth, so clean and blue that it
looks like they never have been sullied by man.
I have walked from north to south and sunwise to morningwise in D'Shai, from
Wyness Tongue in the north to Flinder Bay in the south, from the most
morningwise coast of the Ven to Lower Midwich, and south from there to
Wisterly, where the Tetnit stands guarding the Sleeve, that narrow body of
water that separates D'Shai from Bhorlan and the Bhorlani.
I have seen the waters, and have drunk and swum in most, but something about [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]