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.She wasn’t going to light the forest on fire just to scare the girl.Besides, she might have accidentally hit her.In moments, even the sound of hoofbeats faded.Sister Ariel shook her head and made no attempt to follow.So much for the obvious part of the gamble.What Vi did now was the real trick.Good luck, Vi.May you come back to us ready to heal.She hoped that someday she might sit with Vi in her chambers at the Chantry and laugh about what they’d done today, but she didn’t think it would happen.Not after what she’d just done.Passionate women tended to hate women like Sister Ariel.Or at least they hated being coldly manipulated—but what choice did Ariel have?“And now you,” she said, turning.“My undying warrior.How do you work?”“I didn’t see you last time,” Kylar told the Wolf.“I thought maybe I was done with you.” The Wolf was sitting in his throne in the Antechamber of Mystery, his lambent yellow eyes weighing Kylar.The indistinct ghosts who populated the indistinct chamber murmured beyond Kylar’s hearing.The whole place still unnerved him.He couldn’t feel the floor beneath his feet.He couldn’t see the ghosts when he looked directly at them.Couldn’t tell if the chamber actually had walls.His skin prickled, but he couldn’t have said if it was warm or cold here.He couldn’t smell.Aside from his voice, he heard nothing.He had a sense of noise, voices, the scuff of feet beyond his hearing, but that was only an intuition.He was disembodied and somehow he’d carried along some of his senses but not all of them, and none of them reliably.Only a few things were clear here: the Wolf, and the two doors.One was plain wood with an iron latch, the other gold with light leaking around the edges.“I was too furious to bear the sight of you,” the Wolf said.He didn’t look much happier now.Kylar couldn’t think of anything to say.Furious? Why?“It took Acaelus fifty years to rack up three deaths.You’ve done it in less than six months.You took money for a death.Money.Wasn’t the price for that blasphemy enough? Will you never learn?” the Wolf asked.“What are you talking about?” Kylar could sense that the ghosts or whatever the insubstantial people were who crowded the chamber had gotten very quiet.“You sicken me.”“I don’t—”The Wolf held up a burn-scarred finger and the weight of the small man’s authority was such that Kylar stopped immediately.“Acaelus took money once, too, after his first wife died.I think he didn’t really believe in his immortality until then.He took money twice and did something worse once.After that, I showed him what it cost.It stopped him, as it should be stopping you.If you persist in throwing lives away, I will make you rue every day of your interminable life.”It was like a bad dream: the frowning tribunal holding him to a standard he didn’t understand, declaring his guilt, the looming watchful figures, the doors of judgment, the threat of a truth he couldn’t bear.He would have shaken himself, pinched himself—if he’d had a body to shake or pinch.If he didn’t remember being killed.“I don’t know what you’re talking about.What the hell am I supposed to do?” Kylar asked bitterly.“What am I for?”Light flashed in those hard gold eyes and the world telescoped.Perspectives changed and Kylar felt suddenly awkward.Fat and uncoordinated, he was seated in a small chair.His fingers were short and pudgy and wailing filled his head.His head itself seemed almost unbearably heavy.He flailed and realized he was the one screaming.He was back in a body, but it wasn’t his.He was a baby.In front of him, the gray-haired man, now a giant, held a spoon full of gruel.“OPEN WI—IDE!” the Wolf crooned, pushing the gruel toward Kylar’s face.Kylar snapped his screaming mouth shut.Light flashed once more and he was back in his own body.The man smiled wolfishly at him.“You are nothing but a fat, awkward child in the land of giants.You close your mouth instead of eating.You speak when you should listen.What are you for? Any answer I gave you’d reject.So why should I waste my time? You’re as arrogant as your master ever was, and you don’t have a shred of his wisdom.I find you wanting.”“What am I supposed to do?”“Better.Do better.”* * *Part of Ariel wished she could slow whatever was happening in Kylar’s body.As it was, he was almost recovered.As she watched, the arrow in his chest wobbled and began to shift.Then it quivered and began to rise out of his body as if being pushed from within.With an audible plop, the arrowhead broke through skin that had already healed flush around the shaft.The arrow fell to the side and Ariel grabbed it and put it in her pack next to the gold tablet for later study.The skin over Kylar’s heart the arrow had just broken was knitting together so quickly she could see it.In moments, it was smooth once more, unscarred.Sister Ariel reached out with her magic, but as soon as it touched Kylar’s body it was absorbed.A tremor passed through him and his heart started beating.A long moment later, his chest rose and he coughed violently, spitting half-congealed lumps of blood out of his lungs.Then the coughing passed.Sister Ariel tried to watch without touching, but the streams of magic were so fast she couldn’t begin to understand them.She put a hand close to his body, and the air felt cold there.The grass beneath him was wilted and white.It was like his whole body was sucking up energy in any form and using it to heal him.What would happen if he were put in a cold, dark room? Would the healing stop? How the hell was he translating all that energy into magic? How was he doing it at all, much less unconsciously?Gods, studying such a man might even tell the sisters about the afterlife.That was something they’d given up on long ago, considering it outside the realm of experimentation.Kylar could change everything.She pooled magic in a white ball in her hands and brought it close to his body to watch the way the magic was sucked in like water down a drain.Amazing.Now this, this was a puzzle she could devote her life to solving.The last of the magic dissolved from her hands and Kylar’s eyes flicked open.Sister Ariel raised her hands.“I’m not here to hurt you, Kylar.Do you remember me?”He nodded, his eyes darting around like a wild animal’s.“What are you doing here? What’s happened? What did you see?”“I saw you dead.Now you live again.Who killed you?”Kylar seemed to deflate, too tired or too rattled to bother with a denial.“It doesn’t matter.A wetboy.Nothing personal [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]