“With nine in the circle,” said Sayene grimly, “we could break any power that exists.”
Sayene’s words kept ringing in my head as the guards took me back to the alcove. With nine in the circle, we could break any power that exists. And the power they wanted to break was the only thing that was keeping me from being broken myself.
Once I knew you meant to go ahead with that foolishness, I took a hair from your shaving and a tunic still wet with your sweat and made a simple bond between us. Then I could tell what happened, but vaguely, as if through a silk screen. I couldn’t do anything about physical dangers, but when they tried spells, then I could give aid.
和护法约缚有些像呢。
40.
Any woman can be put under Women’s Justice on the demand of ten Free Women, and the men’s laws can’t touch her.
41.
“Once again you pull me in directions I’ve not even considered,” I said wearily. “You make your spells, and I stand there too weak to do what must be done. Tell me, Mayra, do the king and the lords run the Altaii nation, or do the Sisters of Wisdom?”
“You Lords of the Altaii command and control the Altaii nation, Wulfgar. We Sisters of Wisdom can only advise and help where we can. I advise you in this and with Elspeth, you must keep her with you always. She will offer advice critical to the Altaii survival. And as for that weakness, it’s a weakness of all men,” she said wryly. “Few men can kill a woman on her knees. I’d never have taken the chance with a woman.”
They were tall, taller than any man, and their skin glistened in the sun like finely tempered steel. If the wind or the cold affected them I couldn’t tell it, but then I couldn’t tell a male from a female. The Sisters of Wisdom say they aren’t sure there are two sexes. They don’t like to make visions concerning the Runners. It makes them queasy and gives them pains in the head.
44.
He watched as I pushed on past the hanging that had once been the Raven Banner, the Holy War Standard of Telmark.
She failed to form a bond before he was taken, and by the time she tried his presence was clouded.
46.
Along the western edge ran the Sifr Senaka, the Backbone of the World. To the north was the beginning of the snow country, where the land was clear only a few tendays of the year and the tusk-beasts roamed. To the south were the sea and the holdings of the Telmarkers. And along the eastern side lay the cities of the edge of the Plain, Cerdu and Devia, Asyat and Lanta.
世界之脊呢。
47.
She shivered. “It could hardly be worse. I’m nearly as strong as they are, but Selka is the next strongest here or likely to get here before everything’s over, and she’s not even close.
He moved faster than I thought he could, faster than I thought any man could, but I met the attack easily. As fast as he moved, I moved faster, one blade flicking his sword aside, the other opening a cut on his dagger hand.
Whatever Betine had done to him, whatever Mayra had done to me, I knew in that instant I could best him. I moved to the attack.
My blades no longer seemed a blur. They were a blur, blindingly quick flickers of light, gleaming fans of blue steel hissing in the air like hot metal dropped in oil. He struck quickly, too. His sword was a flame in the lamplight. But he retreated, and I advanced. That was the difference.
She scooped up the sky-stone and thrust it at Eilinn. The other woman clutched it before she realized what it was. Her face paled, and she swayed as if she was going to fall.
“Catch hold of yourself, child,” Mayra said insistently. “You had the intelligence to see your one real chance where most women would’ve been blinded by panic. You had the courage to take that chance when most women would’ve seen it as suicide. Gather your intelligence and your courage now, and do what you must do!”
Eilinn held the sky-stone cradled as a woman might hold a bunch of flowers. She stared at it as if her eyes were frozen on it. “I—I—”
“The truth, girl. The words must be the truth, and you must know them for the truth.”
Sweat beaded on the kneeling woman’s brow. “I, I renounce my rights before the law and my rights above the law. I renounce my property and possessions. I renounce my f-freedom. I s-surrender my life and my will to the o-one who will own m-me.” Her skin glistened, now, in the sunlight from the windows, and the sky-stone was wet.
“Now swear,” said Mayra, “swear by the most terrible oath you know.”
“I, I s-swear by m-my flesh and blood and b-bone and spirit.”
Suddenly the protections Mayra had given me grew warm against my chest.
麦特的银狐狸头是变冷哎。
51.
He muttered something about witch women and settled back.
52.
“They come from the same place you do, or from where your ancestors came, at any rate. And if I could send you there, I would. Only, you’d die on the way. Haven’t you thought about the fact that all of the Wanderers are women? Actually, there are Wanderers from other species, too, but all of them are female. Haven’t you wondered why you’ve never heard of one male Wanderer? There’s something between their worlds and ours that is inimical to males. They aren’t just killed, they cease to exist completely.”
地球是吧？
53.
“The Wanderers were like bits of spray thrown up by a disturbance, caught by the wind and carried to another canal. Those men discovered how to reach out to those other worlds in order to gather specimens for study. Unfortunately, they were like a man standing on a boat in one canal throwing a bucket on the end of a rope at another canal while blindfolded. They could never be certain which canal their bucket would land in, or, if you think of the flow of the canal as the flow of time, when it would land.
“One time they might bring back some strange beasts, the next nothing but primordial slime. One time a group of fairly civilized humans, the next stone-age primitives, or Runners, or fanghorns, or a thousand other things. Several times the people or beings caught had weapons powerful enough to give trouble. There was considerable worry about them, but they were always eventually absorbed into the populations of the sequestrations they were put into.”
Dawn had yet to come. Mondra had set an hour before, but Wilaf and t’Fie were still up. T’Fie headed north this time, cast aside in the battle with the others.
When I stare into those eyes it’s as if there’s something behind them, a tunnel stretching off into forever, a feeling of limitless space and endless time.
56.
“You’ve become a link, Wulfgar, a connector between this world and powers beyond. I’m not saying you have any powers of your own,” she added quickly. “You’re not the first male to become a Sister of Wisdom, or would it be brother, but I’ve never heard of a male being such a link before. You’re going to be the focus of events, and not always events of your choosing or liking. You’ll be a catalyst, setting off things by your mere presence, even if you do nothing.”
57.
I’ll let Mayra speak to you now, but not a word of what she says must be repeated outside this tent. She’s put wards around it to prevent eavesdropping. She can’t do it for the entire camp, so don’t tell your most trusted men.
58.
“I told you that Sayene had tapped powers greater than are normal. What I didn’t say was that she intends to use those powers against you in the battle. She’s so confident now she doesn’t take enough precautions. Her actions and intentions are detectable.”
59.
If you begin to lose, our block will fail. Their Sisters of Wisdom will be able to reach you with the new power.”
“And if they do?”
“I don’t know,” she said wearily. “It’s hard for me to read anything concerning this power. All I can say is that it will be horrible.”
I couldn’t see how I’d need the oath-stone in the middle of a battle, but if she said it was needed, I’d carry it.
所以天之石的确被称作誓言石？
62.
The sky was darkening, strange, oily black clouds boiling from out of nowhere. The wind was growing sharper, too, but it seemed unpleasantly warm, and it had a foul smell. My horse shifted nervously. He wanted to leave this place.
Mayra looked at the odd clouds, too. “Sayene’s new powers don’t like the sunlight.” She shivered slightly, despite the warm wind. “Come back from this, Wulfgar.”
最后战争既视感？
63.
Thunder was added to the boiling clouds, a low, growling, unnatural thunder. Light flashed in the clouds, as lightning, but not lightning. The foul wind grew stronger, swelling into a storm.
64.
It struck his chest, and he screamed, a scream that pierced the ear like a hot wire, a scream that echoed over the entire battlefield, going on and on eerily. In an instant he was a living flame, a statue of blue-white fire. Another scream, coming from nowhere and everywhere, joined his, twinning with it, reverberating.
I thrust my hands over my ears, but it went on, digging into my skull. I closed my eyes, but the burning image scorched even behind my eyelids. There was no escape.
Abruptly, both the scream and the light were gone. I opened my eyes. All that remained of Ivo was a pile of ashes with a plume of greasy smoke rising from it. One mass of melted metal within the pile was his sword, I was sure. Another must be the sky-stone.
I was sitting in the palace garden scowling at the fountain when Mayra came.
“Look at that,” I said. “There’ve been days when I’d have killed to get that much water for my tents, and here it is being used just for looking at.”
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