She pressed her head against my shoulder and whispered,
"Race, take me with you!"
For answer I only picked up her narrow wrists and turned them over on my
palm. The jeweled bracelets were clasped again around the thinly boned
joints, and on some self-punishing impulse she had shortened the chains
so that she could not even put her arms around me. I lifted the punished
wrists to my mouth and kissed them gently.
"You don't want to leave, Dallisa."
I was desperately sorry for her. She would go down with her dying world,
proud and cold and with no place in the new one. She kissed me and I
tasted blood, her thin fettered body straining wildly against me, shaken
with tearing, convulsive sobs. Then she turned and fled back into the
shadow of the great dark house.
I never saw her again.
CHAPTER TEN
A few days later I found myself nearing the end of the trail.
It was twilight in Charin, hot and reeking with the gypsy glare of fires
which burned, smoking, at the far end of the Street of the Six
Shepherds.
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