The Lightstone: The Silver Sword: Part Two. David Zindell

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СКАЧАТЬ seemed pure folly to climb toward the ridgeline where the lightning was the fiercest. But behind us rode six archers firing off certain death from their bows. These steel-tipped bolts struck even closer than did the lightning. One of them glanced off my helmet like a piece of hail – only from a different direction and with much greater force. The sound of it dinging against the steel caused Atara to turn in her saddle and finally fire off a shot of her own. The arrow sank into the belly of the lead archer, who fell off his horse onto the hail-shrouded earth. But the others only charged after us with renewed determination.

      I was the first to the ridge, followed in quick succession by Alphanderry, Liljana, Master Juwain, Maram and Kane. Atara rode more slowly, the better to make her shots and fight her arrow duel. Another two found their marks, and she called out, ‘Twenty-seven, twenty-eight!’ Just as she reached the ridge-top, however, with the sky’s bright fire sizzling the very rocks, the hail began to fall much harder. It streaked down from the sky at a slant like millions of silver bolts. Her arrows crashed into these hurtling balls of ice with sharp clacking sounds, sometimes shattering them into a spray of frozen chips and snow. The hail deflected the advancing archers’ arrows, too. They fired off many rounds to no effect. But one of their arrows ripped through Atara’s billowing cloak just before two more of hers raised her count to thirty. Then the remaining archer, sighting his last arrow with great care despite the rain and hail, fired off a desperate shot. Lightning flashed and thunder rent the sky, and somewhere beneath these terrifying events came the even more terrible twang of his bowstring. And then I gasped to see a couple feet of wood and feathers sticking out of Atara’s chest.

      ‘Ride!’ she choked out as she kicked her horse forward. ‘Keep riding!’

      It wasn’t fear that drove her on through the pain of such a grievous wound nor even will but regard for us and what must happen if her strength failed. I felt this in the way that she waved on Master Juwain every time he turned his worried gaze toward her; it was obvious in her brave smiles toward Kane and especially in the bittersweet protectiveness that filled her eyes whenever she looked at me. Of all the courageous acts I had witnessed on fields of battle, I thought that her jolting ride across the final miles of Virad was the most valorous.

      Liljana, galloping by her side, suggested that we must stop to offer her a little water. But Atara waved her on, too, gasping out, ‘Ride, ride now – they’re too close.’ There was blood on her lips as she said this.

      Soon the thunder and rain stopped, and the dark clouds boiled above us as if threatening to break apart. The mountainous spur marking Khaisham’s border came into view. It was a barren escarpment of reddish rock perhaps a thousand feet high. It stood like a wall before us. In many places along its length, it was cut with fissures starkly defining great rock forms that looked like pyramids and towers. From the miles of plain that still lay between us and it, it was hard to make out much detail. But I prayed that one of these dark openings into the upfolded earth would prove to be the pass named the Kul Moroth.

      So began our wild dash toward whatever safety the domain of Khaisham might afford us. Count Ulanu and his men were close now, and thundering closer with each passing minute. We rode as fast as we could considering the lameness of Maram’s horse and Atara’s injury. I felt the jolts of pain that shot through her body with every strike of her horse’s hooves; I felt her quickly weakening in her grip upon the reins as her vitality drained out of her. She was coughing up blood, I saw, not much but enough.

      Kane pointed out a rent in the rocks ahead of us a little larger than the others. We rode straight toward it over the stony ground. Now, from behind us along the wind, came the high-pitched howling of the Blues; it chilled us more cruelly than had any rain or hail. It seemed to promise us a death beneath steel-bladed axes or even the gnashing teeth of enemies mad for revenge.

      Death was everywhere about us. We felt it immediately as we found the opening to the Kul Moroth. As Kane had warned us, it seemed an evil place. Others, I knew, had died here in desperate battles before us. I could almost hear their cries of anguish echoing off the walls of rock rising up on either side of us. The pass was dark in its depths, and the sunlight had to fight its way down to its hard, scarred floor. And it was narrow indeed; ten horses would have had trouble riding through it side by side. We had trouble ourselves, for the ground was uneven and strewn with many rocks and boulders. Other boulders, and even greater sandstone pinnacles, seemed perched precariously along the pass’s walls and top as if ready to roll down upon us at the slightest jolt. Long ago, perhaps, some great cataclysm had cracked open this rent in the earth; I prayed that it wouldn’t close in upon us before we were free of it.

      And that, it seemed as we drove the horses forward, we might never be. For just as we made a turning through this dark corridor and caught a glimpse of Khaisham’s rough terrain a half mile ahead of us through the pass, Atara let loose a gasp of pain and slumped forward, throwing her arms around Fire’s neck. She could go no farther. My first thought was that we would have to lash her to her horse if we were to ride the rest of the distance to the Librarians’ city.

      But this was not to be. I dismounted quickly, and Master Juwain and Liljana did, too. We reached Atara’s side just as she slipped off her saddle and fell into our arms. We found a place where the fallen boulders provided some slight protection again Count Ulanu’s advancing army, and there we laid her down, against the cold stone.

      ‘There’s no time for this!’ Kane growled out as he gazed back through the pass. ‘No time, I say!’

      ‘Oh, my Lord!’ Maram said, coming down from his horse and looking at Atara. ‘Oh, my Lord!’

      Now Alphanderry dismounted, too, and so did Kane. His dark eyes flashed toward Atara as he said, ‘We’ve got to put her back on her horse.’

      Master Juwain, after examining Atara for a moment, looked up at Kane and said, ‘I’m afraid the arrow pierced her lights. I think it’s cut an artery, too. We can’t just lash her to her horse.’

      ‘So, what can we do?’

      ‘I’ve got to draw the arrow and staunch the bleeding somehow. If I don’t, she’ll die.’

      ‘So, if you do she’ll die anyway, I think.’

      There was no time to argue. Atara was coughing up more blood now, and her face was very pale. Liljana used a clean white cloth to wipe the bright scarlet from her mouth.

      ‘Val,’ she whispered to me as the slightness of her breath moved over her blue lips. ‘Leave me here and save yourself.’

      ‘No,’ I told her.

      ‘Leave me – it’s the Sarni way.’

      ‘It’s not my way,’ I told her. ‘It’s not the way of the Valari.’

      From the opening of the pass came the sound of many iron-shod hooves striking against stone and a terrible howling growing louder with each passing moment.

      ‘Go now, damn you!’

      ‘No, I won’t leave you,’ I told her.

      I drew Alkaladur, then. The sight of its shimmering length cut straight through to my heart. I would kill a hundred of Count Ulanu’s men, I vowed, before I let anyone come close to her. I knew I could.

      OWRRULLL!

      ‘Oh, my Lord!’ Maram said, taking out his red crystal. ‘Oh, my Lord!’

      As Master Juwain brought forth his wooden chest and opened it to search inside among the clacking СКАЧАТЬ