The Sword of Feimhin Read Online Free PDF Page B

shouldn’t have been surprised by Nan’s reaction to London. A modern city must appear completely alien to her. He wanted to comfort her shock at the size and complexity of the city, at the electric lights, the speed of mechanical things, the cars, and cabs and buses – eventhe bicycles – that rushed about through some of the streets.
    â€˜Do you want to go back to our hotel room, Nan? Call off the search for today?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜All right. But you must try to relax.’
    â€˜How can I relax when there is so much that dismays me? These people who press by you, never meeting your eyes!’
    Mark kissed the palm of her hand, an awkward kiss, with her fingers close to scratching the skin of his cheek. It was so good just to be able to touch her, the living girl he loved. Not very long ago he had so longed to be able to do just this; they had been trapped in Dromenon as nothing more than soul spirits, unable to touch one another, even to communicate with each other except through thought alone, unable to express their feelings in any physical form at all.
    â€˜You know, maybe it’s understandable that people are frightened. So much is going wrong here. They don’t know where to turn.’
    â€˜Mark – there is something wrong here. It isn’t merely the people.’
    â€˜What’s wrong? Do you sense something specific?’
    â€˜I think I do. I think what I’m sensing is the proximity to great evil.’
    â€˜What does that mean?’
    â€˜It’s the same feeling I sensed before the calamity.’
    Mark glanced back out through the filthy window. Those streets out there were grimy and threatened with anarchy, ruin – but Nan was suggesting a more arcane danger. He presumed that by calamity she meant the war and invasion of her mountain fastness by the Tyrant’s Death Legion, which had resulted in the fall of her civilisation two thousand years ago, in Tír.
    â€˜
Proximity to great evil?
’
    Nan was a lot more experienced with her oraculum than he was with the same power embedded in his brow. It was possible that she was more sensitive. He felt a prickle of disquiet constrict his scalp.
    A sound: a faint rapping on the steel mesh beyond the glass, so close it seemed only inches from his mind, startled him, and focused his attention on somebody who was standing on the other side of the steamed-up window.
    Unkempt fingernails, like claws, withdrew from the mesh to be replaced by a spectre. A face was peering in at him, through the white lettering of the words HOT SANDWICHES painted on the window: a pale face, the skin semi-transparent. The eyes were a pale shade of grey that looked almost as clear as glass. The large black pupils were starkly highlighted. He saw tawny yellow hair, filthy and matted, tied into rat tails with rolled-up strips of silver foil. It was a girl, maybe fifteen or sixteen years old. She was pressing her cheek and brow so hard against the mesh that her face was distorted by it. When she moved back slightly, Mark could see she had a beaky face, a pink tip of nose, asharp little chin, and heavy lids over those pallid eyes. The confrontation was so direct and unflinching he felt obliged to shake his head, motioning her away.
    But she refused to be dismissed.
    The feral girl withdrew from the screen but she still stared at him as if she somehow knew him. Her eyes darted from his face to Nan’s. Mark saw that Nan’s fringe had parted. The black triangle in her brow, with its pulsating arabesques, was visible. Mark felt at the rim of his beanie to make sure he was hiding his own. He guessed that the girl had spotted the oraculum in Nan’s brow and now there was a heightened restlessness about her, an urgency that he felt unable to ignore. She was scribbling something into a grubby little spiral notebook. He sensed something very strange, something very needful, about her. And he sensed that it mattered to