James Clavell Asian Saga 03 King Rat
James Patterson Alex Cross 05 Pop Goes the Weasel
James Alan Gardner [League Of Peoples 03] Vigilant
James Axler Deathlands 044 Crucible of Time
James Axler Outlander 02 Destiny Run
Ed Greenwood Elminster's Daughter
Harry Turtledove Gladiator
Dunin Wć sowicz K. Stutthof
John Ringo Council War 04 East of the Sun, West of the Moon v5.0
Anonim OpowieśÂć pielgrzyma
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
the entire Plea-
sures Pyramid collapses outward and down, on her, on the water, on the
floating body of the dead diver.
Martel feels the deaths, feels part after part of the city die.
The flame tree darkens, soul-sucking, energy-seeking, cold, bending light away
from it. But it grows, fueled by the en-
ergy Martel funnels into it, overtopping the Regent's Tree, overtopping the
highest spires of the Prince's palace.
Finally, the growth halts. The black tree stands. Untouched.
Silent. Silent while the singleskits pour flame at Martel, silent while the
palace's long-range disrupters and lasers add their weight to the attack.
Silent while the ground beneath Martel and his tree is consumed. Silent while
the innocents in the park die and the city fractures.
Silent while Martel's soul screams and tallies each death with a black weight
in his mind.
The tree of the black flame vanishes. So does Martel. So do the four
singleskits. So does the Park of the Regent, the Park of Summer, and so does
the once-mighty Tree of the Regent.
The tree? Martel bends space and time again and sends the tree back into
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antiquity, back to a planet long since forgotten.
And that is as it should be.
The singleskits and bluesuits are sent journeying, too, to another place,
where their spirits may mingle with those of their victims.
Martel hovers undertime, drawing the thunderstorms, the clouds, the rain,
overriding the climate satellites, fusing their circuits.
He is done. The rains pound Old Karnak, filling the glass-
lined hole that was once the Park of Summer, filling that hole that will
become the Lake of Dreams, chilling the citizens who have never felt day rain,
and leaving the Prince shivering in his powerless palace.
Martel twists his place in space, fractionally, and appears in a narrow
street. His cloak is wrapped around him. No one notices, for attention is
focused on the coal-black clouds above, on the lack of power, on the portals
that will not open, on those trapped inside and out.
A small boy is squeezed between the iris edges of a portal door. His mother is
begging passersby for help, but in this district, at this time, no one will
stop.
Martel gestures, and the door collapses in powder. The child falls and skins
his knee, falls silently, for he can barely breathe. The mother looks sideways
at Martel, then darts to-
ward her son, scoops him up, holding him to her shoulder and brushing the
sticky gray powder off him. He should be dying, squeezed between industrial
doors of such power, but Martel has taken care of that as well, and the child
sleeps on his mother's shoulder.
In the rain, the cloak droops behind Martel. He looks nearly and merely human,
a black rat looking for the darkest comer of Old Karnak.
"Mister ... can't wear black. Bluesuits burn you spot"
Martel smiles at the urchin, dressed in faded red and yel-
low, his green eyes peering from under a red thatch, with a green sandal on
one foot, a red one on the other.
"Death cannot bum, young man. And life is death," he re-
plies, pleased with himself for remembering the Litany at this point.
"Maybe no. Dead you no feel."
"Which way to Old Center? Polony's mansion?"
"That wreck?"
Martel nods, lets a little blackness seep from his soul, well out around him.
"Trick neat. You magician, something?"
"Something like that. Polony's house?"
"Turn left next alley, three streets on right, and take another left ... real
narrow. Watch Gert. Hangs there with viber."
Martel reaches out with his thoughts, checks the boy, changes a few minor
metabolic matters, and ambles on to-
ward his destination.
Three streets on down, he turns right into a narrower way, barely broad enough
for three men elbow to elbow.
Gert is there, removing his viber from the inert form of an unwarned man.
Time for a demonstration.
Martel bends time, again adjusts a few metabolic details.
The figure on the plastistone pavement retches, groans, and sits up.
Gert is not impressed, kicks the man away, and advances
on Martel. The stench of stale ale and of sweat on sweat pre-
cedes him, a weapon in itself.
Gorilla-like, brown hair streaming down over his shoulders, Gert grabs for
Martel, who does not move, embraces the man in black with his right arm, which
is as thick as a small oak, and carves with his left, viber on full power.
Martel should collapse into a heap from either the force of the grasp or from
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the impact of the weapon. He does not.
Neither does the viber make any impression on him or his garments.
Gert is still not impressed, and locks both hands together and brings them
down in a mighty swing on Martel's head.
There is a sharp crack through the narrow passage.
"Aeiiii!"
Gert's hands break each in a half-dozen places. Martel stands unmoved.
The man who had been the victim has regained his feet, uncertain whether he
can profit by picking on Gert or on the strange figure in black, uncertain
whether he should run. He temporizes by darting behind a wastebloc.
Gert stares at his hands.
Martel feels some pity, but not much. He gestures, and be-
hind the gesture makes a few adjustments to Gert and to his hands and arms.
"You sought to give death. That is not yours to give. I have returned life.
But as my reminder ... your hands will never heal."
Gert's former victim looks at the slash in his tunic, at the man in black, and
slinks quietly down the alley.
Martel steps around Gert and proceeds.
At the end of the narrow way, in a small square .by itself, surrounded on all
sides by another street wide enough only for a handful of people to pass
shoulder to shoulder, stands a ruined dwelling. Wide steps of ancient green
marble encircle the structure, modeled as it was after another ancient
building on a long-forgotten planet. The columns are intact, but the roof has
tumbled in.
Martel surveys the wreck. No life, except the rodents, the insects, and two
tarrants who, weasel-like, prey on the rodents.
Drawing on the enormous field of energy poured at him by the proctors, he
channels a portion into Polony's house, re-
building, restoring, turning it to the function of the building from which it
was copied.
At the center, in the hall of worship, he creates a black al-
tar, a solid black cube with each side measuring exactly his own height. At
another touch, he infuses the marble walls and columns with a slight glow,
while changing the stone entirely to jet-black, streaked with a few isolated
shots of silver. Fi-
nally he sets up the self-sustaining energy fields that will en-
able it to withstand the Empire's weapons for the centuries to come. His
defenses will last. Time has proven that.
A quick tour of his handiwork convinces him of the faithful-
ness of his artistry and of his memory. He walks down the front steps, though
"front" is not exactly correct, since the central hall may be approached
through the columns from any side.
A small crowd is gathered by this time: several urchins, in-
cluding the one in red and yellow; the shambling figure of
Gert; a woman in a privacy cloak with the hard and painted eyes of a harlot;
and, of course, the habitual representative of the Thieves' Guild, standing
near the front, ready to demand tribute, and backed by several others in the
shadows, who are armed with old projectile weapons and one stolen blaster.
Martel ignores the thief as he leaves the steps and stops to heal the skin
ulcers of one of the urchins, a job that could have been done by any comer
autodoc, though not so quickly. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
