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.Her eyes closed.She forced herself to rise, find her direction.She could barely see the dragon’s backbone pointing east and west behind her; the great towers, the roiling steam, half-hid it.At least it was still behind her; she hadn’t begun drifting in circles.The broken fragments of the lost kingdom rose everywhere in front of her.She could only sketch a path from one shadow to the next, and hope they did not shift themselves from place to place, stones and memories of stone, like some moving labyrinth, to trap her there.She walked until she turned gold with dust, and her thoughts under the violent heat were distilled to vapor, blown away before she could grasp them.Finally, a dragon-claw of light raked through her eyes, into her mind, and, between one step and another, she fell into her shadow.She tasted water, impossibly sweet and cold.She tried to speak, and choked- A hand cradled her head, raised it- She opened her eyes, trying again to speak, and saw a stranger turned away from her as he set the water skin down.Behind him stood a great dragon the color of twilight.Its eyes were stars, its wings, opening, spread purple-grey across the sky.She tried to rise, managed to lift one hand.The stranger turned to her.The dragon breathed; night swirled around her, a blinding dark without a star.When she woke again, a vast, silvery tide had swept across the sky.The dragon, looming against the night, was a shadow limned by stars.One star had fallen near her, giving out a soft, unwavering glow in spite of the restless winds.The stranger sat outside the circle of its light; she saw his loose, pale desert garb straying in the wind.He might have been dreaming or watching dragons, but he sensed her waking.She saw a flash of silver beneath his sleeve as he reached out to touch the fallen star.It burned brighter, sent its soft light washing over her face; his was still in shadow.She asked, “Is the dragon yours?” Her voice sounded thin, far-away, as if she were dreaming it.But he heard her, he had risen suddenly, noiselessly, to scan the dark.“What dragon?”“The one there against the stars.”He saw it; she heard his breath.Then he settled himself again.“It’s stone.” His voice was low, dispassionate.“Sometimes I think these great stones change shape at night, wander where they will.” He passed her the water skin.“Hungry?”“No.”“You will be.” He passed her another skin, of honey wine.She drank a little, and closed her eyes.She saw dragon wings, sheer and delicate as moth wings, dusted with stars.She remembered then where she was going and why, and dragged her eyes open.“I must go.” But she could barely lift her head.He took something out of a pouch, began peeling it; the wind brought her the impossible scent of oranges.He passed her a section, ate one himself.“It’s easy to get lost at night, even for a mage.”The desert, it seemed, abounded with mages.“How many dragon years have you been here?”He was silent; she felt him study her.“Not long enough,” he said at last, “to be unsurprised by everything.Have you taken to dwelling in the desert?”“No.”“Then you came to see dragons.”“No.”He handed her another piece of orange.‘ “Then why are you walking through the heart of the Luxour?”“I’m travelling north.”“From where?”She did not, she realized, even know the name of Rad’s village.“South.”“Most people,” he commented after a moment, “would have followed the river around the desert.”“I’m in a hurry.”“The Luxour slows time for those who hurry; it elongates itself.It hides itself from the curious; it shows itself to the innocent, and the unwary.It works its own magic.” His voice sounded detached, as if his attention were roaming the desert around them, peering into moon-shadows, listening to the winds.“It is a place of enormous power, and when you reach for that power, it slips away to return when you have stopped looking for it.”Scanning the night for intimations of such power, she saw only a great, sinuous spiral of stars following the moon’s path, that reminded her of Rad’s white dragon.She thought of him, drugged by some deep, healing sleep, and of the white dragon in Chrysom’s tower, and then of Nyx, finding the key in Ro Holding that would unleash the dragons of Saphier, and she moved abruptly, murmuring in frustration, blinking dust out of her eyes.“Do these winds never stop?”“Never,” he answered.“They are dragons’ breath, fire and ice.”“I saw the ice-dragon.”He leaned forward slightly, his voice less distant.“Did you.”“Not the dragon itself—““No.”“But the cave where it sleeps.Like a hole in the night.”“Yes.”“I heard it breathe.”“And what else have you seen?”“A shadow.But nothing that cast the shadow.”He said, “Ah,” very softly.“And what else?”“Nothing more.A heart, maybe.A bone- The mage I saw yesterday said there was a golden dragon at the bottom of a well.A dragon of light.”“Mage.” His voice went flat on the single word; she sensed all his attention then, pulled back out of the night to focus on her.“The one who lives among the rocks.”“Does this mage have a name?”“I didn’t ask.She is quite old and somewhat blind.”He made a soft sound; his attention strayed again.“She may see better, then, on the Luxour, where nothing is quite as it seems.”“She had lost, she said, all interest in magic long ago [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]