Free The Chosen - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 01 by Ricardo Pinto Page B

stood up and moved to sit on a low stool beside her.
    Ebeny looked at him, her eyes large and round. She reached out and touched the samite of his robe. 'You carry it well, Carnie.'
    He blushed.
    'You're upset.'
    They have slaughtered the laying flock.'
    Her lips pressed together, then she forced them into a smile. There's been much destroyed. But you can't make mosaic without breaking stone.'
    'If it were only the stones of the Hold.'
    She nodded. 'I know.'
    'And yet you won't come with us?'
    The Master told you?'
    'Why won't you come?'
    'Because, little one, I'm too old to travel on that sea.' She waved her tiny hand vaguely. It was the colour of sun-dried leaves and marked with the green of a child - gatherer's tattoos. Those tattoos had been among the first glyphs he had ever read. Eight Nuhuron. The God Emperor's name and the reign year when she had been compelled to come to Osrakum as part of that year's flesh tithe. He reached out, took it, covered the tattoos. Her hands were always warm.
    'You are not so very old.'
    She gave him a quizzical look. 'But I am so very afraid of the sea.'
    He laughed, too loudly. 'You? When have you ever feared anything? You don't even fear the Master.'
    'But still I'll not go. Your father came here before you and I gave him the same answer.'
    He almost asked her what encouragements Suth had offered, what threats, but he did not. She had never broken his father's confidences.
    'What's the real reason you won't come with us?'
    She lifted up his chin and looked into his eyes. 'What I have become here, I cannot be in the Mountain. There, I will be nothing but a faded concubine to be thrown away like a worn shoe.' She made a throwing gesture. 'Would you hasten me to that?'
    'My father'll protect you.'
    'Even he must bow to the customs of your House. No. The journey'll be hard and your father's been long away. There might be problems and I don't want to be a burden to him.'
    He drew her hand to his lips. 'But I might never see you again.'
    'Fie,' she cried. 'It'll take a lot more than a little famine to rid you of me.'
    He laughed though his eyes were filling with tears. He leant forward again. The coral pins of his robe rasped along the floor. He nestled his head into her lap. 'I can't leave you behind,' he mumbled into her thigh.
    She ran her hands through his hair. 'Sush, sush, little one. You must do your duty to your father and your blood. You're a Master and can't allow yourself to get upset over an old barbarian woman.' She lifted his face up with both her hands. 4 Do you remember when your father took you and Tain from me to live with the tyadra?'
    He nodded his head in her hands.
    Then you were leaving me to become a man. Now you'll leave me to go off and become a Master, one of the Skyborn. Would you waste your life out here so far from the centre of the world?'
    He stood up. While she adjusted the stiff folds of his robe, he looked around her room, a room of treasures. He counted the plain waxed chests where she kept her robes and the ochre blankets that she made herself with their blue embroidery. He still slept with the blankets she had made for him though he had far finer. Even in the depths of winter something of the summer seemed to linger in their folds.
    He turned round to look down at her. 'Will you give me one of your blankets to take with me?' 'You've several already.'
    'But they've lost their smell of this room ... of you.'
    She smiled and kissed him and together they chose one. She pressed it into his hands. It was dull and crude against the beauty of his Master's robe. He pressed his nose into the blanket and breathed in. It gave him a chance to wipe away the tears. This'll do, old woman.' Once she would have boxed his ears. He realized now that even if she had wanted to she could not reach. He lifted her in his arms and kissed her neck. He left it wet with more tears. She was crying too. He put her down.
    He made to leave but then her hand clasped his. 'Will you do