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.”What had she said to him after the Camerat pull? That she hadn't existedduring the pull, only in the diamond.and the diamond was breaking all aroundthem.Kori lifted the curtain aside.“We're going to try for the mouth,” she said, hereyes on Rit.From the whine, the flitter was moving slowly.“We might survive the next wave but not the one after.”Ulanda looked around, obviously seeing more than the hull tiles and boxes.Kori bowed.“Lady Priest, the spins give that the waves are a form ofcondensed time.It's what lends the wave its shape and also what is stripping the essence of the diamond away.I think that if we hadn't jumped when we did, wewouldn't have been able to make it in at all.”As she left, Ulanda beckoned to the Zimmer to follow her.“Was it triggered bythe points collapsing, or from.” Her voice faded but not from distance - theflitter wasn't large enough that without warding, anything could be said inprivate.Garm had the sense that the conversation was continuing in what existedof the Net, but when he tried to join in, he lost all sense of the Net at all.He hadn't expected more than data points, but at least a few of the neural linkingsystems were operational.At Ulanda's discretion.And Alicia's.Probably Bolda's.And certainly Kori's.But not his.A few moments later, Alicia came in and knelt close to Rit where Ulanda hadbeen.She stroked her husband's face with one hand.“They're all dead now,” shesaid in a small voice as though talking to her husband alone.“Kori said that it was hundreds of years in the last wave alone.”“You could return to anything from the diamond,” Garm said, trying to keep hisvoice from shaking as he comforted her.This he could do - was allowed to do.But even as he spoke them, he could hardly believe he was saying such uselesswords.All the people, the concerns that had been so vital to the girl just hours ago were dust and memories.Alicia had the single braided strand of Rit's hair in one hand, toying with thewarding beads.Instead of more words, Garm took her in his arms, his chinagainst her soft curls.And fought a sneeze.Lemon tea, the smoke was in herclothes.“Do you know what's going on?” he asked after a few minutes.She shook herhead.“You'll be leaving here.” The words were sticking in his throat.“Leaving me here.Will this do as good-bye?”Laurel Hickeywww.2morrow.bc.caEye of the Ocean – Book 2: AlisimThe smooth red beads slipped from Alicia's hand.“No good-byes.”He let her go.“I asked you what was happening.if you don't want to tell me,then release the Net.” Alicia continued watching her husband.“At least tell mehow long until Kori tries to get us out.She needs to drop me off first.”“Garm, I'm sorry.Kori says there's not enough time.”“Make time.There's almost three hours until the next wave.”“We won't survive that long, not if we compromise the shielding to let you out.When the waves reflect off the sides of the diamond, they loose power each time,but it's still enough to drain our crystals.Like they are the diamond, only much faster.”He got up and grabbed the curtain to push it aside, but the cloth came free inhis hand.Trailing it behind, he walked to the side of the flitter that usuallybecame the doorway.Habit.“Here will do,” he said.Wanting to scream.Here!Kori had budded the shielding out once to catch him, she could do it again to let him go.And whispered into the air: “Cassa, now.”And from Alicia: “I'm sorry.”Images formed in his mind - allowed him by Alicia, a gift of what he couldn'tdirectly make Kori give him.There was no diamond mouth, not intact at least.More images, they were solidifying.A woman’s body.Poss a’ltic.He hadn't knownher; they weren’t his feelings, not all of them at least.Kori again, suddenly the keening voice of the Zimmer woman was tearing at his mind.The ship rang withthe sound, the entire diamond did.An echo, he thought, or much of it was.Hewas getting it from the diamond through the Net link with Kori, but how was shegetting it? Rit?Then he forgot about the man lying unconscious at the rear of the flitter.“Who?” he started.Not only Poss a'ltic, the scan had revealed another body,deeper in the wash of dark water.Purple reeds, glimpses of a lavender sky.Smoke and gray marble, the dark lines like snakes.“Who is he?” he askedagain.Then realized who it had to be.Clanny.The Piltsimic's staring black eyes were traced with silver like a pattern of frost on ebony.Bolda growled to Alicia and through her to Kori: “Don't we have somewhere togo?”Garm scarcely heard him.Through the Net link that Alicia still shared with him,he had the sense of the time surge reflection begin to roll towards them asthough drawn to the square of glistening white marble in the center of the ruined diamond mouth.What he actually saw was a wave of water.Foam on the crest.And heard theroar that you hear as the force of the wave is condensed into an ever smallerarea by the rising ground of the shore.Except the ground didn't only grow upfrom the ocean's depth, but narrowed all around.Laurel Hickeywww.2morrow.bc.caEye of the Ocean – Book 2: AlisimThey weren't going to make it.There was no place to go.A white square? Anarm-span across, too small.And too solid.The flitter centered on the image, seeming to Garm to be a toy, his perspectivesuddenly from well outside the craft.Then from even further away, his visionretreating as though racing towards the points that didn't exist any longer in the ruin the diamond had become.And he remembered Ulanda's fear that leaving the diamond would mean herdeath, Gennady's blade slipped between her ribs.And that instead of almostanything else he might have done, he had told a story about a Ri and a Lillisimthat had never existed.And about goats.What did survival mean to her now? Over and over, she had lost what hadbeen promised her.Overpattern had created the diamond and then destroyed it.Would it takeoverpattern to get them out? “Ulanda.,” he began.He might have been a feather in deep water, the wave passing barely feltunder him.He might have been a grain of sand, simply rolled with the water in atight topsy-turvy circle, to settle again on the ocean floor as the energy of the wave moved on.He had no frame of reference, hadn't with Cassa either.Ulanda was doingsomething, and she wasn't doing it for him.Other voices.Other hands.Collecting people, Alicia had called it.And he wasn't one of them any longer.- 63 -Nisstin waited, schooling his patience.An hour or more and Panntin still stoodat the start of the world-altar where the mound of sand had once grown out ofthe waste.He shifted his weight slightly, his leg ached.And he had made a poor choice ofa place to stand: white flowers bloomed nearby, mixed in with the enitree bushesand protected from the deer by the long thorns.He lifted the fabric of his tunic off the sunward shoulder; the black cloth was burning his skin.The smell of sweatand hot silk mixed with the flowers.His dress uniform.It smelled like a battleground, the heat intensifying the carrion stink of theLady blooms.Like bodies left to rot.He had to think, it was hard to rememberwhere Fontil's grave was, the land had changed so much.Where it had once beenflat, now there were rock-strewn gouges in the earth.The outermost arms of thespiral curve of the world altar had been repeated, larger again, in the surrounding Laurel Hickeywww.2morrow.bc.caEye of the Ocean – Book 2: Alisimarea [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]