Free Carnivores of Light and Darkness by Alan Dean Foster

future holds for you.” Her expression conveyed a professionalism that worked hard to conceal a seething, underlying sensuality.
    From a cabinet behind the desk she withdrew a crystal. Not round, as was the norm, but perfectly square. It was filled with embedded bits of other minerals. Rutilated quartz, he decided, or something even more exotic. Without waiting to be asked, he drew his chair close.
    Setting the crystalline cube down on the desk between them, she began to make passes over its surface with her hands, caressing the transparent material with the tips of her fingers. Unwillingly, he found himself envying the stone. Within, the embedded shards of darker material twitched, shuddered, and began to move, realigning themselves according to cryptic patterns that meant nothing to him, but whose very activity he found fascinating. As near as he could tell, the stone cube was solid. Yet the deeply rooted inner crystals were clearly shifting their position within the rock.
    The quartz cube grew cloudy as it embarked on a sequence of color changes. One moment it was morion, the next citrine, then amethyst, a squared succession of gemstone properties. Through it all Rael sat almost motionless, wholly intent on her task. Ehomba could only look on, equally entranced by the doer and the doing.
    At last she looked up, closed her eyes, sighed deeply, and seemed to slump in on herself. The cube became colorless again save for the rutile and other inclusions. Opening her eyes, she blinked at him. Expecting a smile, he was disappointed.
    “Go home, Etjole Ehomba.”
    He blinked. “What?”
    “Go home.” She laid one fine hand atop the cube. “It is all here. I saw it. Disaster, complete and entire. You are doomed to unremitting misery, your quest to failure, the rest of your life to cold emptiness. Unless you end this now. Go home, back to your village and to your family. Before it is too late. Before you die.”

 
    VI
    S TUNNED , HE SAT BACK IN HIS CHAIR . O UTSIDE , THE cacophony of the bazaar continued to rage raucously, the piquant odors of frying food still drifted up to the upper floors of surrounding buildings. But within the room something was different. Something had changed.
    Despite her fervor, she was as beautiful as ever. Briefly, he wondered how that intensity of intellect might translate into physical passion. The moment passed, as circumstances compelled him to concentrate on other matters.
    “I do not understand.” He indicated the crystal cube. “What did you see in that thing to render so dire a warning?”
    As she spoke, her eyes changed from black to green. “A woman of great—no, of supernal, beauty.”
    He pursed his lips. “That is not a sighting I would call a prelude to disaster.”
    “Then you know little of the real world, traveler.”
    His head dipped in barely perceptible acquiescence. “I cannot argue that. I am but a poor herdsman.”
    She eyed him shrewdly. “Are you, Etjole Ehomba? Looking at you, sitting here across from me, far from your animals and your village, I find myself wondering. A herdsman to be sure, and poor in the false coin of commerce perhaps, but there are other kinds of wealth, other means for measuring riches and the true worth of an individual. So, I wonder.”
    As always, he was uncomfortable when the subject was him. He gestured anew at the cube. “If your intent is to turn me from my chosen path, you will have to come up with a threat greater than the sight of a beautiful woman.”
    “My ‘intent’ is to do no such thing. I desire only to try and see what the future holds for you. The path you choose is your own, and only you can decide whether or not to walk it. Life is a noun, Etjole, and living it no more or less than a matter of adding adjectives.” Her petite, fine-skinned hand brushed over the top of the cube. “I am here only to show you what adjectives may be added.”
    “The woman you saw is the Visioness Themaryl,” he told her.
    Her eyes