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Back Bleak Seasons Save as PDF
Chapters (102)
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Still, whatever we did, life would become pure hell if the water rose that high. Presents a dilemma, doesnt it?

Possibly a larger dilemma than you suspect.

How so?

If preparations are not initiated immediately much that might prove useful will be lost. But if you tell Mogaba this then it is likely the strong will rob the weak and leave them to suffer. There is now no need to exercise restraint because of potential attack.

I see. Actually, I had foreseen the scramble for stores and high ground. But I did overlook the fact that Shadowspinner extricating himself also freed Mogaba to manage internal frictions in a manner more to his liking. You have something in mind?

I wish to examine the possibility of a temporary alliance. Until Jaicur is relieved.

Has Hong Tray foreseen that as well?

No.

I was surprised by the black despair that collapsed upon me.

She has seen nothing one way or the other.

I brightened. A very little.

I am reluctant to undertake such an obligation, Ky Dam confessed. It was not my idea. It was Sahras. He indicated the beautiful tea server. But she trusts you for no reason she will explain and, moreover, her arguments make sense.

Hong Tray wore a bemused expression. There was, in the way she looked at me, a hint that she foresaw much that she did not share.

I shivered.

Ky Dam continued, We have no hope if we assume a traditional Nyueng Bao stance and depend upon ourselves alone. You have little hope if your Mogaba does not feel he needs your arms anymore.

I stared at the beautiful one, though that was bad manners. She blushed. The attraction was so powerful, suddenly, that I gasped. I felt as though I had known her several lifetimes already.

What the...? This did not happen to me. Not anymore, anyway. I was no sixteen-year-old...Hell, I never felt like this when I was sixteen.

My soul was trying to tell me I knew this woman as well as a man ever knew any woman when, in truth, I had only just heard her name spoken for the first time.

There was something else over there, with her. That was more than one lovely daydream. I knew another one just like her, somewhere else...

The darkness came.

It was sudden and absolute and I had no time to decide if I was running away or being pulled down.

49

49

There was a long, long time in the dreamless dark. A time without an I. A time neither warm nor cold, a time with no happiness or fear or pain in a place no tortured soul would want to leave. But a pin pricked a hole in the envelope. The tiniest thread of light found its way in and fell upon an imaginary eye.

Movement.

A rush toward a point, which swelled and became a passageway into a world of time and matter and pain.