The Far Side Of Forever Part 54

step forward with the hint of a headshake. "But I don't understand. Do you mean to say you're going on anyway, even though you know what will happen?"

"What else am I here for?" she asked in turn, trying not to shudder at the "happening" Zail had referred to, "I didn't go through all those terrible things just to give up now, especially not when the enemy so obviously expects me to do nothing else. He did this deliberately, to make me sick enough to quit, and that's dirty. I'm going to keep at it even if it kills me."

We all blinked at the fierce determination coming from the small, pale woman, then set up a cheer that made her turn away with a small laugh and a deep blush. There hadn't been one of us who had expected her to go on, and I was fairly sure she knew it. She could have used our lack of belief in her as an excuse for making no further efforts, but instead she'd turned her anger on the enemy and had defeated his purpose. We all owed Dranna more than an apology for what she'd done, and once we got back I swore to myself that she would get it.

After that I stood near Dranna at the doors, and as soon.

as the slime sprayed out I vanished it, then cleaned what had gotten on her before I could stop it. The routine helped her only a small amount, but it didn't have to go on. for very many doors. In a short while the horrible spraying stopped, and we all began wondering what the next obsta- cle would be.

The answer came when we stepped through the latest doorway into an area much larger than the ones we'd pa.s.sed through, and saw that instead of there being only one set of doors, now there were three. The ploy didn't seem as terrible as it should have been, but when we looked at Su, she shook her head with a frown.

"Don't know how it can be, but the trail goes to all of those doors," she said, sounding more indignant than upset. "How could the stone be behind three separate doors?"

"It can't be," Rik growled, glaring at each door in turn.

"The stone was probably carried through all three door- ways, but was left behind only one. All we have to do is figure out which."

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No one was silly enough to suggest that we check them all, not when we knew that opening the wrong door was guaranteed to bring about something unpleasant. We had one chance and only one, but tossing a coin looked to be the most informative way of making the decision.

"There must be some indication of which door to choose," InThig fretted in the heavy growl that was be- coming more usual with it, moving only its head to study each door in turn. "Are you still unable to see through these walls, Laciel?"

"I really don't think I ought to try," I answered, swiv- eling my head around the way everyone else was doing.

"I've thought of a way to get through the repet.i.tion spell covering the outer walls, but it's a fairly obvious way once you think about it, and that makes me suspicious. If I manage to See through these walls, it might not turn out to be the triumph we're expecting."

"That makes more sense than 1 like to think about,"

Rik muttered, one hand to his face as he studied the doors- "Lead us all here, force the use of magic, and then-"

His hands went up in the air in an unspecified gesture, but we all knew what he meant. The only thing capable of keeping the game going was exactly the right move. "That means we have to think our way eut, but we don't have anything to think about. All we can do is imagine the stone being carried from door to door-"

His words broke off as his eyes narrowed, he stood thinking furiously for a short time, then said, "InThig!"

When the demon raised its head in a questioning way, the only answer it got was the sight of the blurring which presaged Rik's change into link-shape. Dranna m.u.f.fled a gasp and moved closer to Zail, but all the rest of us were too busy wondering what was going on to pay any atten- tion to her- In almost no time at all there was a great bronze beast standing where Rik had been, and then he and InThig were moving toward the set of doors on the left.

The two four-footed members of our party took a good twenty minutes or more examining me three doorways, but at long last they finished whatever they'd been doing. Rik blurred back into human shape, then looked down at InThig.

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"That has to be the one," he said, running a hand through his dark hair. "What do you think?"

"The same," InThig agreed with a nod, the faintest purr audible in its voice. "That was a very clever idea."

* 'If it was all that clever, how about letting the rest of us in on it?" I suggested, resisting the temptation to add certain verbal embellishments. That was no place to start an argument, but the provocation was certainly there.

"It's very simple," Rik said, me pleasure in his bronze eyes showing how much he had appreciated InThig's com- pliment. "We know that the stone was carried up to two of the doors, but it could only have been left behind one.

That means that the trail left by the person carrying the stone would have to be different leading up to the proper door-there's no other way it can be. It's not only me stone itself that leaves a trail, it also causes whoever's carrying it to leave a-scent -of sorts, the scent InThig followed to find the gate we'd be using coming out of the blind world. The door with the least or greatest or most unbalanced scent has to be the door leading to the stone."

"I regret to say mat I find myself unable to follow you, my friend," Kadrim said, voicing everyone's thoughts but Su's. The big woman nodded with understanding, a faint but definite smile on her face, but she was the only one of us not totally lost-

"Look, you just have to think about what's necessary to do what was so obviously done," Rik said, clearly trying to explain to a nonswimmer just how easy diving is.

"Carrying the stone up to three doorways also means carrying it away from only two, which would make the proper doorway the one with the lightest scent. Or it means carrying the stone up to the proper doorway twice, which would make it the one with me heaviest scent. As a last possibility it has to mean that the doorway with an unbalanced scent, lacking the last time out, would be me proper one, but I was hoping it wouldn't come down to that fine a distinction. Happily it didn't, so I think we're in. The doorway with the lightest scent is the one to the left."

Once again looking at something became a group effort, no one voicing any of the doubts they might have felt- I.

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myself, could think of two or three ways to throw Rik's calculations out of whack, but 1 didn't care to mention that. We had to have some basis for the door we chose, and right then Rik's way was the only one we had.

? "Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained," Zail quoted '" in a mutter after taking a deep breath, then he turned to Dranna with the beginnings of a gleam in his eye. "Or, if you prefer, in for a lamb, in for a sheep. Are you with me, sweetheart?"

^ "I think I'd rather be behind you," Dranna answered, ^ making us all chuckle, but she hadn't been joking- She ^ followed Zail cautiously as he strode to the lefthand set of jg. doors, and 1 surrept.i.tiously braced myself. If that was where the stone was, then that might very well be IT.

Zail studied the doors the way he had the outer palace wall, taking almost as much time and doing just as little.

As a final effort he went to one knee and examined the floor under the priceless carpeting we stood on, then looked up at us with a shake of his head.

"There doesn't seem to be anything on either of these doors, not even an ordinary, run-of-the-mill lock," he said, not pleased but also not uncertain. "Shall I do the honors again?" ^

"No, this time it's my turn," I said before anyone else-like Rik-could voice an opinion. "Step back, please, Zail. I get to do this alone."

I moved toward the doors with a great show of confi- dence and a.s.surance, two things I would have needed magic to produce in myself just then. That innocent door had to be an invitation, and if my suspicions were right, then I had a date that had been set quite some time earlier.

Zail stood up and gave ground just as I'd asked him to, and despite the beginnings of protests I could hear behind me, I put my hands on both doork.n.o.bs and pushed the doors wide.

To find nothing but an empty, candle-lit room that was black as the rest of the palace was white.

"Could-that-be it?" Zail asked in a very hushed voice from behind my right shoulder, his tone the closest to reverent I had ever heard it to be. The room was empty of what / had been expecting to find, but it did hold a slim

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pedestal in its center, one that seemed to be carved out of a single diamond, and on the pedestal sat a small, silver- trimmed blue box.

"Unless there's a gate, that's got to be it," Su said from behind me to the left, her voice more relieved than rever- ent. "The trail goes right up to that stand and then ends."

"Then what are we waiting for?" Zail demanded with laughing eagerness replacing the awe. "Let's go get it."

"We're waiting for mis," I said, putting up my left hand while my right arm kept him from moving past me, The gesture I made linked in one of my previous spells with a flash of bright orange, just the way it was supposed to, and then I was able to relax. I'd more than half expected the stone to be s.n.a.t.c.hed away as soon as it was in our reach, but my spell had just negated any such effort and had proved beyond doubt that our quest had been successful- The stone was ours now, and whatever else the enemy had in mind would no longer involve the object of our search.

With me necessary done we all entered me room, me to move around studying the smooth black walls, everyone else crowding around me pedestal to make satisfied noises over the silver and blue box. Or almost everyone else. I looked down from one section of the ceiling to find Rik standing next to me with folded arms, inspecting me the way I was inspecting the room.

"Find what you were looking for?" he asked in a very casual, friendly way, then shook his head in answer to his own question. "No, you couldn't have, or you wouldn't still be looking. I'm not too bad at finding things- If you tell me what it is, I'll be glad to help."

"Thanks anyway," I said, turning to move away from him. "I prefer handling it alone."

"The way you preferred being the one to open me doors?"

the pest pursued, following after me as though he were on a string. "What you're looking for couldn't have anything to do with that, could it? You couldn't possibly have expected to find our enemy in here?"