Shadows and Shades (Adventures in the Liaden Universe®) Read Free Page A

down the hill. Eventually, she came upon a path; which she followed until it abandoned her on the threshold of the larger building.
      Here she hesitated, every Scout nerve a-tingle, for this should be a Forbidden World, socially and technologically unprepared for the knowledge-stress that came riding in on the leather-clad shoulders of a Scout. She had no business walking up to the front door of the local hospital, library, temple or who-knew-what, no matter how desperate her difficulty. There was no one here who was the equal—who was the master— of the thing in her ship's hold. How could there be? She hovered on the edge of doing damage past counting. Better to return to her ship, quickly; rise to orbit and get about setting the warning beacons.
      ...and yet, the legends, she thought—and then all indecision was swept away, for the plain white wall she faced showed a crack, then a doorway, framing a man. His pale robe was rumpled, wet and stained with grass. His hair was dark and braided below his shoulders; the skin of his face and his hands were brown. His feet, beneath the stained, wet hem, were bare.
      He was taller than she, and strongly built. She could not guess his age, beyond placing him in that nebulous region called "adult".
      He spoke; his voice was soft, his tone respectful. The language was tantalizingly close to a tongue she knew.
      "God's day to you," she said, speaking slowly and plainly in that language. She showed her empty hands at waist level, palm up. "Has the house any comfort for a stranger?"
      Surprise showed at the edges of the man's face. His hands rose, tracing a stylized pattern in the air at the height of his heart.
      "May Naratha's song fill your heart," he said, spacing his words as she had hers. It was not quite, Montet heard, the tongue she knew, but 'twould suffice.
      "Naratha foretold your coming," the man continued. "The Voice will speak with you." He paused, hands moving through another pattern. "Of comfort, I cannot promise, stranger. I hear a dark chanting upon the air."
      Well he might hear just that, Montet thought grimly; especially if he were a Healer-analog. Carefully, she inclined her head to the doorkeeper.
      "Gladly will I speak with the Voice of Naratha," she said.
      The man turned and perforce she followed him, inside and across a wide, stone-floored hall to another plain white wall. He lay his hand against the wall and once again a door appeared. He stood aside, hands shaping the air.
      "The Voice awaits you."
      Montet squared her shoulders and walked forward.
      The room, like the hall, was brightly lit, the shine of light along the white walls and floor adding to the misery of her headache. Deliberately, she used the Scout's mental relaxation drill and felt the headache inch, grudgingly, back. Montet sighed and blinked the room into focus.
      "Be welcome into the House of Naratha." The voice was deep, resonant, and achingly melodic, the words spaced so that they were instantly intelligible.
      Montet turned, finding the speaker standing near a niche in the left-most wall.
      The lady was tall and on a scale to dwarf the sturdy doorkeeper; a woman of abundance, shoulders proud and face serene. Her robe was divided vertically in half—one side white, one side black—each side as wide as Montet entire. Her hair was black, showing gray like stars in the vasty deepness of space. Her face was like a moon, glowing; her eyes were dark and sightful. She raised a hand and sketched a sign before her, the motion given meaning by the weight of her palm against the air.
      "I am the Voice of Naratha. Say your name, Seeker."
      Instinctively, Montet bowed. One would bow, to such a lady as this—and one would not dare lie.
      "I am Montet sig'Norba," she said, hearing her own voice thin and