Eye of the Ocean Book 3 Ji'jin Station

Eye of the Ocean – Book 3: Ji’Jin Station
and the chance to run. She had said something to the man and he turned his
head to reply. Angry, she saw that much, but also the wariness as though he had
reason to fear her. Or be afraid for her, she saw that as well. And saw his golden
brown eyes in the sunlight and his darker brown hair looking as though touched
by the same frost as the grass when they had ridden out that morning.
“I've known you,” she said, trying to shrug her hands away from the aides and
finding that she couldn't. “You didn't hate me.” And how had she felt towards
him? She did laugh, a small sound that matched the drums more than anything
she had managed so far. Her wrists should be broken by now, but the aides were
stopped, and across the mound, the three dancers she could see were stopped,
even the cloth of their robes billowed out and stayed where the twist of the dance
step had put it. Only her and the vass'lt were moving and he had his knife raised
even though there had been no signal to begin. And the drummers... or were
they playing? The sound continued at least, but the drummers were stopped,
batons raised, their mouths open with effort.
Hands touched her wrists; the aides were fitting the cuffs. Again? Ulanda
shook her head, her stomach lurching with a fresh tide of fear. Bile flooded her
mouth, bitter as she choked it down again, making her eyes water. Maybe I'm
just crazy, she thought, coughing to clear her throat. Her lungs were burning.
“Now,” she screamed hoarsely at the aides, twisting to either side. “Do it!”
The aides had frozen again, feeling like stone behind her.
She lifted her eyes, blinking through tears. Two of him, one moving around
and towards her again, but his face was different, as though he'd taken some of
the other into himself. And enough of the vision lingered that she saw what lay
beyond the hill they were riding up: a series of stone buildings. And another man
on a tall red horse, waiting on the crest of the rise. Then a cairn of stones near
the green waters of a lake, granite rising behind, the lower reaches encased in ice
but with peaks of bare stone tearing into the blue sky. Another cold wind, but this
one blew through her, turning her bones to ice, shattering them.
- 35 -
“Which should we compare, Empress, the fantasy or the memory?” Mullaki put
the question in the polite form and let the context carry her displeasure. Temple
Net reached into the interface and that alone showed insanity. And that she could
feel the loom-master tying threads together for another attempt?
“Overpriest, is the universe a fantasy because we are capable of experiencing
so little of it?” Poss a'ltic asked. She sounded distracted, much of her attention to
Laurel Hickey www.2morrow.bc.ca