"
I started to say that I did not quarrel with women, and stopped myself.
The Terran concept of chivalry has no equivalent on Wolf.
She looked at me with her dark poison-berry eyes, icy and level and
amused, and said, "I will bet _shegri_ with you, unless you fear me,
Rascar."
And I knew suddenly that if I lost, I might better have trusted myself
to Kyral and his whip, or to the wild beast-things of the mountains.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I slept little that night.
There is a tale told in Daillon of a _shegri_ where the challenger was
left in a room alone, where he was blindfolded and told to await the
beginning of the torment.
Somewhere in those dark hours of waiting, between the unknown and the
unexpected, the hours of telling over to himself the horrors of past
_shegri_, the torture of anticipation alone became the unbearable. A
little past noon he collapsed in screams of horror and died raving,
unmarred, untouched.
Daybreak came slowly, and with the first streamers of light came Dallisa
and the white _chak_, maliciously uninvolved, sniffing his way through
the shabby poverty of the great hall.
Pages:
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120