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."The moon's path," she murmured, "is a goddess's silvery footprints," and shepulled on pointed shoes woven of water and silver.Her dress coalesced into shimmery silk, and she bound her waist with atamarisk branch, emerald and gold of early spring."There!" she exclaimed,pirouetting for his approval."How do I look now?""You're lovely," he said, amazed.Then his ears twitched."But you'll look aforeigner to Minho, who is of Cretan birth.""Oh!" She blushed again as the shimmering gown shifted and bared smallpink-tipped breasts in the Cretan fashion of Minho's day."No!" she saidfirmly, covering her chest with a handful of tiny flowers plucked from thepond.Her bodice became delicate lace."You did that on purpose!""I wanted a look at your pretty bosom," he said."But be warned.Just as Iput a thought in your head that changed what you wore.Don't let otherssuggest things.Don't let them change.what you are.""This isn't all play, is it? Thank you for reminding me." Seeing how far themoon had ridden across the sky, she said, "I must do it now." She turned awayand began to chant.All her years of study went into the careful phrases.Guihen understood onlya passage here, a word there, for she spoke in tongues of sorcerers past.Itwas not a language.Here was a phrase of succinct Latin, subtle meaningscompressed into a few inflected syllables.There was a fulsome word in rollingEtruscan, followed by a sentence in the harsh Greek of Odysseus's time, aclause in a Galatian Celtic dialect long extinct, and an exclamation barked inthe Salyen tongue.There was, Guihen reflected, no one spell, and no one tongue to express thesubtleties of time, distance, and unreality Pierrette wished to bridge.APage 201ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlsingle phrase, translated into a language less flexible, or more, might changemeaning and effect, so Pierrette spoke each one in the original words thatexpressed exactly what she wanted.That was why no ordinary man understood great spells.That was the barrier sofew could cross between mere magic and genuine mastery.Guihen gazed with aweat the girl who uttered the words, and considered with cold trembling thepower she drew into herself.He watched mist coalesce upon the pool and gather at her feet, a carpet thickas moss by a holy spring.He watched her step delicately onto it.It rose, andbore her upward and away.* * *This, Pierrette marvelled, was no magpie's flight.Mist was vapor wascloud and clouds scudded across the sky, wind-driven.Clouds were whitepillows, and she reclined at her ease, her moonlight dress shimmering, herdark hair one with the blackness between the stars.She flew on unseasonal wind, north over Arelate, glimpsing Nemausus's roofson her right, and then over bare highlands cut by immense gorges.Beyond thehigh country the land was green with the first leaves of spring, then turnedrusset and brown over lands still locked in winter's grasp.Her course shifted westward over dark forests of the Frankish domain.Shedrew a wooly cape of cloud about her shoulders, against the moist chill,without a word aloud to make it so.Still far, but visible from her great height, was the moonlit glitter of thewestern ocean, her goal.At last the steely water was beneath her.Ahead onlygroping fingers of black rock reached into that emptiness that few ships daredsail.The tide rushed like a river in full spate between a rocky point and alow, offshore island.The tide was the ship-breaker that swelled the coldpopulation of Sena, Isle of the Dead.Her conveyance of moonlit cloud began along, gentle descent.Beyond that island was a wet hell, home to unimaginable beasts, and souls inlonely torment.Yet looming up from the sea where no land should be, surrounded by a veil ofmist (or merely confusion) were black scarps in concentric circles islands andharbors, houses, wharves, and green, green fields abloom with the colors ofsummer and sunshine.The Fortunate Isles were aptly named.She drifted toward a small central island.A pillared temple with fat blackand vermilion columns reminded her of the portico of Anselm's keep.There in acourtyard with tiles painted to match the cloudless sky, she alit.Her mistyconveyance drifted away.Where were the priests and acolytes Anselm haddescribed?"I sent them away," said a warm, resonant voice, "when I was sure you werecoming." Minho.The king.The sorcerer [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]