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was sure he'd be able to take care of himself under the circumstances."
"He saw what happened to you." Another half-step closer. "He was not happy about that."
"He did not understand."
"Oh yes he did. That's why it was so terrible."
Mark's last half-step had been too much. Kristin let out a small cry and turned to dash back into
the Mindsword's zone of domination.
But the Prince, who had been shifting his weight forward and making every other subtle preparation
he could contrive, was a shade too fast for her. He had no need to turn before he pounced. His
left hand caught her by the arm in a crushing grip, and yanked her back from the fringes of blue
haze.
Kristin, who had come unarmed, tried to bite, and screamed, and struggled, but her husband held
her now in both arms and swung her off her feet, toward his waiting mount. Karel, having wisely
maneuvered himself into the exact place where he was needed, leaned from his saddle, Swordless,
wheezing, recognizably himself. The wizard's large right hand, pale and gemmed with rings, moved
out to palm Kristin's forehead softly. In the next instant she went limp.
Murat was awakened by the sounds of distant screaming. Not quickly wakened, for it seemed to him
that he spent endless time struggling toward consciousness from a slough of oblivion. But at last
he was conscious, sitting upright on the floor of the upstairs hall in the expropriated farmhouse,
the Mindsword's hilt still grasped in his right hand.
He shouted for Vilkata, but at first only a sleepy mumbling answered. In any case it was now too
late. He needed no wizard or demon to tell him that Kristin had somehow fled or been snatched
away.
FIFTEEN
KRISTIN came drifting upward out of oblivion, joyfully cradled in a small canoe wrought from the
stuff of dreams, borne by this craft with no volition of her own into a beautiful dim grotto that
reminded her of someplace, sometime long ago. This was a condition of great happiness but it
proved transitory. The Princess yearned for the enchanted canoe to stop at this point but it would
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not, instead carrying her along a stream that flowed with increasing swiftness.
And then her canoe jolted against reality, and turned abruptly into a plain field cot. With the
sudden arrival of full wakefulness the blessed environment of watery dim stream and grotto
transformed itself into the dim interior of a military field tent, where a single candle on a map
table was all that held back darkness.
And Kristin knew that something horrible had happened. . . .
Her eyes wide open now, the Princess lay without moving on the field cot, covered by a brown army
blanket. The desolate rush of returning memory confirmed her fears; Mark and her uncle had
captured her, seized her violently just outside Murat's encampment. They had dragged her away by
force, detached her from the one being in the universe who now meant more to her than all the
rest. . . .
Yet her separation from Murat was not the mortal pang it might have been. A pleasant haze of
dulled perception, relaxed indifference, kept her from feeling the full pain that ought to have
come with such a loss.
Turning her head, Kristin saw that she was almost alone inside the tent. A woman soldier of the
Tasavaltan army, uniformed in blue and green, was dozing, her head nodding, in a camp chair almost
within arm's reach of the cot. The woman in the chair roused herself as soon as Kristin stirred,
and a moment later had hurried to the doorway and was passing word to someone outside the tent
that the Princess had awakened.
Kristin remained inert, trying to marshal her strength, for what kind of effort she was not sure.
After the passage of an interval, which to the Princess seemed neither short nor long, her uncle
Karel's face appeared above her, swimming dimly in a pleasant haze of lethargy; and soon, beside
it, the familiar countenance of Mark.
Speaking tenderly, and as calmly as they could, the two men took turns explaining to Kristin that
she was safe and secure in Mark's camp, surrounded by her own loyal soldiers.
Looking from one face to the other, she asked in a small voice: "Loyal to whom?"
The two men exchanged glances. Then he who had once been her husband said quietly: "To their land,
and to their Princess."
"Is Rostov here?"
"He is."
"Then kindly convey my compliments to the general, and tell him that I wish to see him."
Another interval went by in the dim tent without looming faces; when they returned, Rostov's steel-
stubbled black countenance was there between the other two.
"General, I have orders for you," Kristin murmured sleepily. Somehow she was having trouble
calling any authority into her voice. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]