Night Winds Read Free Page B

have put on my clothes... Yes, and I remember the city and walking and all those faces... All those faces... they stared at me, some of them. Stated and looked away, stared and looked compassionate, stared and looked curious, stared and made awful suggestions... And some just ignored me, didn't see me at all. I can't think which faces were the most cruel... I walked, walked so long... I remember the pain... I remember my tears, and the pain when there were no more tears... I remember... My mind was dazed... My memory... I can't remember...
IV: A Ship Will Sail...
    He looked up from his work and saw her standing there on the quay--watching him, her face a strange play of intensity and indecision. Mavrsal grunted in surprise and straightened from his carpentry. She might have been a phantom, so silently had she crept upon him.
    "I had to see if... if you were all right," Dessylyn told him with an uncertain smile.
    "I am--aside from a crack on my skull," Mavrsal answered, eyeing her dubiously.
    By the dawnlight he had crawled from beneath the overturned furnishings of his cabin. Blood matted his thick hair at the back of his skull, and his head throbbed with a deafening ache, so that he had sat dumbly for a long while, trying to recollect the events of the night. Something had come through the door, had hurled him aside like a spurned doll. And the girl had vanished--carried off by the demon? Her warning had been for him; for herself she evidenced not fear, only resigned despair.
    Or had some of his men returned to carry out their threats? Had too much wine, the blow on his head...? But no, Mavrsal knew better. His assailants would have robbed him, made certain of his death--had any human agency attacked him. She had called herself a sorcerer's mistress, and it had been sorcery that spread its black wings over his caravel. Now the girl had returned, and Mavrsal's greeting was tempered by his awareness of the danger which shadowed her presence.
    Dessylyn must have known his thoughts. She backed away, as if to turn and go.
    "Wait!" he called suddenly.
    "I don't want to endanger you any further."
    Mavrsal's quick temper responded. "Danger! Kane can bugger with his demons in Hell, for all I care! My skull was too thick for his creature to split, and if he wants to try his hand in person, I'm here to offer him the chance!"
    There was gladness in her wide eyes as Dessylyn stopped toward him. "His necromancies have exhausted him," she assured the other. "Kane will sleep for hours yet."
    Mavrsal handed her over the rail with rough gallantry. "Then perhaps you'll join me in my cabin. It's grown too dark for carpentry, and I'd like to talk with you. After last night, I think I deserve to have some questions answered, anyway."
    He struck fire to a lamp and turned to find her balanced at the edge of a chair, watching him nervously. "What sort of questions?" she asked in an uneasy tone.
    "Why?"
    "Why what?"
    Mavrsal made a vague gesture. "Why everything. Why did you get involved with this sorcerer? Why does he hold to you, if you hate him so? Why can't you leave him?"
    She gave him a sad smile that left him feeling naïve. "Kane is... a fascinating man; there is a certain magnetism about him. And I won't deny the attraction his tremendous power and wealth held for me. Does it matter? It's enough to say that there was a time when we met and I fell under Kane's spell. It may be that I loved him once--but I've since hated too long and to deeply to remember."
    "But Kane continues to love me in his way. Love! His is the love of a miser for his hoard, the love of a connoisseur for some exquisitely wrought carving, the love a spider feels for its imprisoned prey! I'm his treasure, his possession--and what concern are the feelings of a lifeless object to its owner? Would the curious circumstance that his prized statue might hate him lessen the pleasure its owner derives from its possession?
    "And leave him?" Her voice broke. "By the gods, don't you