She touched the crystal to the surface of the screen. Little flickers of
snow wavered and danced. Then, abruptly, we were looking down from a
height at the lean back of a man in a leather jacket. Slowly he turned.
I saw the familiar set of his shoulders, saw the back of his head come
into an aquiline profile, and the profile turn slowly into a scarred,
seared mask more hideously claw-marked and disfigured than my own.
"Rakhal," I muttered. "Shift the focus if you can, Miellyn, get a look
out the window or something. Charin's a big city. If we could get a look
at a landmark--"
Rakhal was talking soundlessly, his lips moving as he spoke to someone
out of sight range of the scanning device. Abruptly Miellyn said,
"There." She had caught a window in the sight field of the pane. I could
see a high pylon and two of three uprights that looked like a bridge,
just outside. I said, "It's the Bridge of Summer Snows. I know where he
is now. Turn it off, Miellyn, we can find him--" I was turning away when
Miellyn screamed.
"Look!"
Rakhal had turned his back on the scanner and for the first time I could
see who he was talking to. A hunched, catlike shoulder twisted; a
sinuous neck, a high-held head that was not quite human.
"Evarin!" I swore. "That does it. He knows now that I'm not Rakhal, if
he didn't know it all along! Come on, girl, we're getting out of here!"
This time there was no pretense of normality as we dashed through the
workroom. Fingers dropped from half-completed Toys as they stared after
us. _Toys!_ I wanted to stop and smash them all. But if we hurried, we
might find Rakhal. And, with luck, we would find Evarin with him.
And then I was going to bang their heads together. I'd reached a
saturation point on adventure. I'd had all I wanted. I realized that I'd
been up all night, that I was exhausted. I wanted to murder and smash,
and wanted to fall down somewhere and go to sleep, all at once. We
banged the workroom door shut and I took time to shove a heavy divan
against it, blockading it.
Miellyn stared. "The Little Ones would not harm me," she began. "I am
sacrosanct."
I wasn't sure. I had a notion her status had changed plenty, beginning
when I saw her chained and drugged, and standing under the hovering
horror. But I didn't say so.
"Maybe. But there's nothing sacred about _me_!"
She was already inside the recess where the Toad God squatted. "There is
a street-shrine just beyond the Bridge of Summer Snows. We can jump
directly there." Abruptly she froze in my arms, with a convulsive
shudder.
"Evarin! Hold me, tight--he's jumping in! Quick!"
Space reeled round us, and then....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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