At the last moment, when he thought he would die, suffocated, the black pool released him and flung him back on his bed, contemptuously rejecting him.
He lay there, gasping, terrified.
Take as many women as you like. But love always and only me. For if you do love another, I promise you that your love will destroy both her and you.
Had he truly heard the voice of Blossoming Reed, burning and cruel in his mind, coming from as far off as the stars? The locket fell to the floor with a crash that seemed to shake the stone building in which he lay. He remained motionless, paralyzed with dread.
XLIX
Feeling as if he would burst into flames with anger, Simon stood under a bright blue sky dappled with high white clouds on a wooden quay at Livorno, two weeks after leaving Orvieto. The masts of small boats lined the waterfront like a forest of tree trunks stripped of their leaves.
If I were traveling with a proper entourage, a few knights and a troop of archers, by God's wounds they'd carry me. These shipmasters are too damned independent.
One large ship, anchored midway between the shore and the arm of the harbor, looked to Simon like his last chance. Leaving Thierry on the quay, he dropped a silver denaro into the callused palm of a man with a dinghy and had himself rowed out to the big ship.