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His slight smile was altogether drained of irony now, though not of
satisfaction. She blinked and stepped back.
Liss, sitting cross-legged against the parapet on the opposite side of the
platform, was staring up with her mouth open. The two soldiers weren't even
pretending to be watching Jokonans. Their riveted expressions were of men
contemplating a daunting feat they had no desire to emulate, such as
swallowing fire, or being the first to charge up a scaling ladder.
"Time," Illvin murmured, "is where you take it. It will not linger for you."
"That is so," whispered Ista.
She had to give his dalliance this much credit; the stones seemed suddenly a
much less attractive solution to her plight. That had been his intent, she had
no doubt.
A dark violet splash of light sparked past her inner vision, and Ista's head
turned to follow it. From somewhere below, an outraged cry rang out. She
sighed, too wearied to pursue the mystery. "I don't even want to look."
Illvin's head, too, had turned at the cry. By his lack of further craning, he
also shared her surfeit of horrors. But then he looked back at her, his eyes
narrowing. "You looked around before we heard anything," he noted.
"Yes. I see the sorcerous attacks as flashes of light in my inner vision. Like
little bolts of lightning, flying from source to target, or like streaking
fire-arrows. I can't tell what their effect will be just by seeing them,
though; they all look much the same."
"Can you tell sorcerers from ordinary men just by looking? I can't."
"Oh, yes. Both Cattilara's demon and Foix's appear to me as shapes of shadow
and light within the boundaries of their own souls, which, since they are both
living persons, are bounded by their bodies.
Foix's demon still retains the shape of a bear. Arhys's ragged soul trails
him, as though it struggles to keep up."
"How far away can you tell if a person is a sorcerer?"
She shrugged. "As far as my eye can see, I suppose. No, farther than that: for
my inner eye sees spirit shapes right through matter, if I pay attention, and
concentrate, and perhaps close my outer eyes to
reduce the confusion. Tents, walls, bodies, all are transparent to the gods,
and to god-sight."
"What about a sorcerer's sight?"
"I am not sure. Foix seemed not to have much, before I shared mine, but his
elemental is an inexperienced one."
"Huh." He stood a moment, looking increasingly abstracted. "Come over here."
He took her hand and towed her to the western side of the tower, overlooking
the walnut grove. "Do you suppose that you could give an exact tally of Joen's
sorcerers, if you tried? In her camp, from here?"
Ista blinked. "I don't know. I could try."
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The trees' feet were now wading in gray shadow, though their very tops still
glowed golden green in the last of the light. Campfires twinkled through the
leaves, and a suggestion of the pale squares of many tents. Men's voices
carried enough to be heard up on the battlements, although not well enough to
make out what they said in the Roknari tongue. On the far side of the grove,
the cluster of big green tents, gaudy with pennants, began to glow like
verdant lanterns from the lamps being set within them.
Ista took a long breath to try to compose her mind. She extended her
perceptions, closing her eyes. If she could sense Joen or Sordso from here,
could they sense her? And if Joen could sense her . . . she took another
breath, banished the frightening thought, and determinedly uncurled her soul
once more.
Upwards of five hundred faint soul-lights moved like fireflies among the
trees, the Jokonan soldiers and camp followers busy about their ordinary
tasks. A smattering of souls glowed with a stronger, much more violent and
disrupted light. Yes, there were the threads, the snakes, wavering through the
air from those scattered whorls to converge all in one dark, disturbing spot.
Even as she watched, one line crossed another as their possessors moved in
space, passing like two strands of insubstantial yarn that did not knot or
tangle.
"Yes, I can see them," she told Illvin. "Some are snubbed up near to Joen,
some are all spread out across the camp." Her lips moved as she made her
count. "Six hug the command tents, twelve are arranged near the front of the
grove, nearest to Porifors. Eighteen altogether."
She peeked, turned half around toward the river and the Jokonans' second camp
investing the town, and closed her eyes once more. Then turned fully around,
toward the bivouac of the third column that had set up along the ridge to the
east of the castle, cutting the road to Oby and commanding the valley
upstream.
"All the sorcerers seem to be in the main camp near Joen. I see no ribbons
reaching to the other two camps. Yes, of course. She would want all her
sorcerers as close under her eye as possible."
She completed her turn and opened her eyes again. "Most of the sorcerers seem
to be sheltered in tents.
One is standing under a tree, looking this way." She could not see his
physical body, through the leaves, but she could tell which tree it was.
"Hm," said Illvin, staring over her shoulder. "Can
Foix tell which is which? What man is a sorcerer, what man is not?"
"Oh, yes. I mean, he can now. He saw the sorcery light with me when the cups
broke and again, standing on the wall when the rest of it began." She glanced
warily back over her shoulder at Illvin's tense, closed expression. His eyes
were tight with thought, some notion that did not seem to give him much
pleasure. "What are you thinking?"
"I am thinking . . . that by your testimony Arhys appears to be immune to
sorcery, but sorcerers do not appear to be immune to steel. As Cattilara
proved upon poor Umerue. If Arhys could close with them, just them, and yet
somehow avoid the other fifteen hundred Jokonans around Porifors . . ." He
drew a breath, and wheeled. "Liss."
She jerked upright. "Lord Illvin?"
"Go and find my lord brother, and ask him to attend upon us here. Fetch Foix,
too, if he is to be found."
She nodded, a bit wide-eyed, scrambled up, and scuffed rapidly down the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]