The White Tigress of Kaniburrha





Then, as so often in the past, her snowy fur was sleeked by the wind.

She walked where the lemon-colored grasses stirred. She walked a winding track under dark trees and jungle flowers, crags of jasper rising to her right, veins of milk-white rock, shot through with orange streaks, open about her.

Then, as so often before, she moved on the great cushions of her feet, the wind sleeking her fur, white as marble, and the ten thousand fragrances of the jungle and the plain stirring about her; there, in the twilight of the place that only half existed.

Alone, she followed the ageless trail through the jungle that was part illusion. The white tiger is a solitary hunter. If others moved along a similar course, none cared for company.

Then, as so often before, she looked up at the smooth, gray shell of the sky and the stars that glistened there like shards of ice. Her crescent eyes widened, and she stopped and sat upon her haunches, staring upward.

What was it she was hunting?

A deep sound, like a chuckle ending in a cough, came from her throat. She sprang then suddenly to the top of a high rock, and sat there licking her shoulders. When a moon moved into view, she watched it. She seemed a figure molded of unmelting snow, topaz flames gleaming beneath her brows.

Then, as before, she wondered whether this was the true jungle of Kaniburrha in which she sat. She felt that she was still within the confines of the actual forest. But she could not really know.

What was it she was hunting?


Roger Zelazny, Lord of LightChapter 5


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