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.She left the pirate babble behind.Lucky positioned himself on the lifeboat's prow, and for a short time, served as its figurehead.Halfway to the isle, the small dots trailing misty streamers of darkness resolved as squid-riding kuo-toa.Anusha suddenly recalled Nogah's role the first time a landing party from the Green Siren came ashore.The ex-whip had chanted the entire time, to keep the attention of the sentinels and Gethshemeth elsewhere.Anusha ceased rowing and looked hard at the distant flyers.Their patterns didn't seem any different.They hadn't noticed her yet, down here on the darkening sea.Had Nogah been wrong? Considering the ambush the others had walked into, it seemed possible the ex-whip had accomplished exactly the opposite of her stated aim.Anusha resumed rowing.Her pace quickened, until she sawed at the oars like a madwoman.Why not? She didn't need to pause for rest or breath.It wasn't heavy work, just tedious.She sped across the water.In short order, she beached the lifeboat next to the first launch, in a thick tangle of mangrove roots.Nothing had found or disturbed the site, as far as she could determine.She wondered what had become of the rowers left by the first sortie.Nothing pleasant, she guessed.Anusha debated whether she should pull the travel chest completely ashore or leave it in the boat for a quick getaway later.She decided to leave it in the boat.She addressed the guard dog."Lucky! Good boy! Good boy! Stay here, Lucky.Guard! Stay until I return, all right?" Lucky tried to lick her proffered hand and settled himself directly on top of the travel chest.What had she done to deserve the trust of such a loyal, innocent little creature? She patted him on the head, then turned toward the isle's interior.*****Raidon hurtled through a gap between nothing and everything, through a space where people were not meant to go.Light speared his eyes and burned his face.His teeth rattled in his jaw.All the bones in his body tried to burrow out of their fleshy cocoon.His chest ached as he gasped over and over, trying to draw in another breath of air.But there was no air.A gray haze narrowed his vision smaller and smaller…A guttering blue parabola snatched him out of the no-space where he trespassed.Raidon and Angul fell ten feet onto a flagstone floor.He couldn't suppress a long, hacking cough, even though his ribs seared with each contraction.He lay on his side in a half fetal position, riding out his body's mutiny.When the coughing subsided, he rested.Where had Cynosure dropped him this time?The chamber was a great stone vault filled with hulking, dimly glowing rectangular objects.Most protruded from the floor, but some stuck out from the walls and several hung from the ceiling.Ancient, magical script glimmered on the blocks; the source of each object's glow was this script-born light.Two walls were collapsed beneath rubble, and many of the blocks were sundered, their runes darkened.Slender tubes of dully pulsing light protruded from the stone blocks, one or two from each.The corralled light was gathered in thick bundles, suspended from the high ceiling by fancifully carved stone gargoyles.Many of the cords were frayed and snapped, their light dead, and others lay in snakelike disarray on the rubble-strewn floor.It was cold too.Raidon's breath steamed, and his face and hands were already chilled.Other than the cold, nothing immediately threatened him except the wounds the Chalk Destrier had given him as their fight concluded.He closed his eyes, reaching for his focus.He visualized his chest and the bones that gave his torso shape as lines of energy.They were cracked and misshapen-a few were broken.Pulses of pain spiked out from them through the rest of his body He imagined the spikes as real objects, then imagined their pointy ends eroding away.These sorts of visualization tricks aided his concentration.When the piercing pain receded enough for him to continue, he mentally grasped each broken and damaged bone, one after another, and straightened it.New spikes of agony shot through his body, ones he couldn't dampen.But he did not stop until every bone was mended.Raidon finally released his focus.Stabbing pain had been replaced by a body-wide dull ache.He lay awhile longer in the winter-cold chamber of rubble and strange objects.Stray thoughts of his long-dead life intruded.He saw Ailyn playing in the courtyard of their home in Nathlekh.She wore a yellow dress, and her face was grubby.She clutched a great mass of wild daffodils from the garden.He could smell them.The monk smiled.Ailyn returned the impish grin he knew so well.His heart clenched."Hey, little girl," he murmured to the phantom.His throat was tight.Ailyn laughed and skipped away.A new pain pulled him from waking reverie.Something hard and painful lay below his prostate form.He shifted and saw the object was Angul.He looked at its dull length for a few moments.His vision was blurred with unwept tears born of his daydream.The monk rubbed at his eyes until they were clear.He grabbed Angul's cold hilt and stood.From this new vantage, he could see farther into the chamber.The lines of light that were not burned out seemed to lead to a nexus at the chamber's heart.He walked toward that gathering point, favoring one foot slightly.At the center lay a crumpled, half buried shape, like the husk of some fantastically large spider's recent meal.The shape was a humanoid figure forged of crystal, stone, iron, and more exotic components, but it had fallen over.Its surface was rusted, pitted, and cracked, and half of it was buried beneath a section of collapsed ceiling.A partially visible design winked from its dented metallic chest-the Cerulean Sign."Cynosure?"The figure did not respond [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]