OCR Text |
Show 85 the bare feet on the ground in front of him, waited a moment to gather his breath, then looked up and nodded at the angel who was holding a bulky set of plates that kept falling closed. Lorin looked over at Martin, who stared back, his face white and his upper lip shiny with sweat. There was no point in rushing, Lorin decided; they would take their time. Martin gripped his hands together under his chin, closed his eyes tightly until the tears seeped out, and concentrated. Lorin idly watched the pages being turned in front of him, nodding to indicate it was time to turn another one, remembering this or that character he had seen floating in the stone in the hat, musing over others that looked unfamiliar to him, wondering if they were familiar figures carved by a different hand or if they were unknown runes that he was yet to be introduced to. He was aware that for all of his familiarity with this sort of thing, there were dimensions and planes that he had not seen and would take a lifetime to imagine. He glanced past the pocked sheet of gold in front of him and saw an angel disappear behind a scaling maple tree about forty yards away and slowly peer around it from the other side. He caught a white flicker in the corner of his eye and looked to his left in time to see another one moving across a short clearing and disappearing behind a boulder. Looking back in the direction he had left David and Oliver he could see the flit of white fabric lighting up the tangled darkness of the copse and realized there was an angel behind every tree. He was so absorbed in this discovery that it was several seconds before it registered on his hearing that Martin was making grunting sounds and breathing heavily. He looked at his friend and was alarmed to see him staring at the angel with his eyes bulging like eggs and his tongue loosely floating in a pool of saliva on the floor of his open mouth. He was making little clawing gestures in the air. Lorin reached to put a hand |