Falcons of Narabedla

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Book: Read Falcons of Narabedla for Free Online
Authors: Marion Zimmer Bradley
Tags: Science-Fiction, Darkover, Sci-Fi, Classic, interplanetary adventure
the waver of a moth toward a flame. “Adric—” she murmured. The wings of her cloak lifted and fluttered across her shoulders as if they would fly of themselves. She was a shy thing, and her dark hair waved softly as if it too were winged. I touched her fingers lightly, but under the smolder of Karamy’s gaze I let her go. She watched me, shyly, with averted face.
    Evarin’s face was slyly malicious, but his voice was pure silk. “It is—pleasure to follow you again, my brother,” he almost purred, and I scowled at the mockery at his face and refused his offered hand. Only Gamine said nothing, coming forward on gliding feet to bow briefly and retire; but the silver-sweet, sexless voice of the spell-singer murmured in a singing, almost wordless, croon.
    â€œSave your spells, Gamine,” said Karamy savagely, and Evarin jerked round at the shrouded form, but Gamine heeded neither of them, and the sweet contralto chanting went on.
    From somewhere the silent men brought horses. Horses—here, in this nightmare world? I had never been on a horse in my life. I found myself vaulting, with a nice coordination of movement, into the saddle. The courtyard, for all the bustle of department, seemed to hold the silence of a grave. Karamy kept me close to her. When we were all mounted, she threw the amber rod upward, and the last rays of the red sun caught its rays and sent a pure shaft of light down the darkened alleyway lined with trees. At the sight of that gleam, a curiously familiar emotion stole through me. I threw up one arm over my head, mimicking Karamy’s gesture. “Ride!” I shouted.
    And the flying steeds kept pace with mine.
    The driveway under the arch of trees led for miles under the thick boughs. Through the easy drumming of hooves, I could still hear the sweet distant sound of Gamine’s singing, which floated on the wind, keeping pace with the rise and fall of the rolling road, in a quick cadence. The wind whipped Karamy’s golden hair like a halo about her head. I glanced over my shoulder to where the rainbow towers stood, now black, silhouetted against the greater darkness of the mountains. Overhead in the pink sky, the crescent of the tiny moon was brightening, and lower in the sky I saw another, wider disc, nearly at full. Cold air was stinging my cheeks and nipping my bones with frost, and I felt the sparks struck from hooves beating on the frozen ground.
    Cold! Yet in Karamy’s garden flowers had glowed in a tropical glory—
    And for a moment, it was entirely Mike Kenscott—sick, bewildered and panicky—who glanced about him with horror, feeling the swirling cold and a colder chill from the golden sorceress at my side. It was Mike Kenscott’s will that jerked at the reins of the big gelding to end this farce now—
    â€œWhat is it?” Karamy cried, over the noise of the hooves.
    And I heard my own voice, raised above the galloping rhythm, cry back “Nothing!” and call out a command to the horse.
    Good God! I was Mike Kenscott—but prisoner in a body that would not obey me—a mind that persisted in thoughts and habits I could not share, a—soul?—that would carry me to destruction! I was Mike Kenscott—trapped on a nightmare ride through hell!

CHAPTER FIVE
    Where the Dreamer Walks
    I had been scared before. Now I was panicked, wild with a nerve-destroying fright. I’m not a coward. I set up a radar transmitter in Okinawa within ninety feet of a nest of Japs. That was something real. I could face it. But under two suns and a pair of little moons, with weird people I knew were not human—all right; I was a coward. I steadied myself in the saddle, trying with every scrap of my will to calm myself. If this was a nightmare, well, I’d had some beauties—
    But it wasn’t. I knew that. The frost hurting my face, the sound of shod steel on stones, the vivid colors around me, told me I was

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