The Far Side Of Forever Part 58

"You're startled and surprised," the woman said, a spiteful smile on her very beautiful face. "I led you through a dozen different worlds, and still you never guessed.

You're not very bright, are you?"

"Apparently not," I said with a shrug, studying, her thick, glorious black hair and honey-colored eyes, her small but very well-made body, her beautiful fur-trimmed red riding outfit, the grace and elegance in her least move- ment or gesture. "To tell the truth, it never occurred to me that any woman could be so warped. I've heard it said that women aren't better or worse than men, only worse, and you seem to prove the contention."

"I'm not only better man men, I'm also better man other women," she said with a very ladylike snort of disdain, dismissing what I'd said to anger her as though I'd been referring to someone else. "I happen to be per- fect, more perfect than anyone ever bom or created, more perfect than you're capable of understanding. There's never been anyone like me, or ever will be again."

"Perfect," I repeated with more nausea than pity. and then I really heard something else she'd said. "Wait a minute, what did you mean, born or created? I know of only one world whose people are created, and they aren^t really alive-or in any way human. On this world people aren't created, they're-"

I broke off when I saw the secret, triumphant look on her face, the look that said I'd picked up on exactly what she'd wanted me to, something she hadn't wanted to say straight out. But was that what it was? That she'd, some- how been created? Considering the power and ability it would take to create an actual, living person, I was some- what skeptical about the truth in that-and then I stiffened as another idea came to me, one that began to answer a few questions.

"Yes?" she prompted very brightly, moving a slow step to her left so that more of the candlelight would fall on her. "Was there a question you had?"

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"No, more like a belated guess," 1 said with a headshake, making sure I kept her the center of my attention. "Your comment about being created- You were able to steal the balance stone because it was Graythor who created you, wasn't it? He told you how to approach the Tears, and you used that against him.**

"I really do think I must take back what I said about your not being bright," she crooned, all the triumph in the universe blazing out of her eyes. "Yes, it was Graythor who created me, but I'm not able to say that to anyone who doesn't already know, and until now there was no one but Graythor himself. How absolutely delicious that soon the whole world witi know, that he created not only a woman, but one with the Sight. Then they'll also know how I was able to simply walk away with the balance stone."

"Because he couldn't bring himself to stop you," I said with another nod, raising my hands to rub at my arms- "And your being Sighted means you maintain your exis- tence spell all alone, without needing him always near you. That was probably his second biggest mistake."

"He said something very much like that just before I took the stone," she pouted, and men suddenly her entire att.i.tude changed. All the pettiness and high-handedness melted completely out of her face and bearing, and nothing was left but a very small, very beautiful woman. "Oh, I try to put on a brave front, but you have no idea how horrible it's been for me," she said, the expression in her eyes now very soft and very sober. "He taught me every- thing I wanted to know about magic, but he refused to let me out of his sight, refused to let me a.s.sociate with other magic users. For years I was his prisoner, locked away here or in one of his other houses, no one but servants or stablehands to talk to if I grew bored. And then, when the day finally came that he showed me the-the real reason he'd created me, not as a companion but as-a-a-victim, I knew I had to do something to escape him, and to tell the world what he's really like! I had to show everyone, in the most public way possible, and that's what I did!"

She was gently wringing her delicate hands now, misery flowing out of her like an aura, a pleading for belief

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putting a glint of tears in her lovely eyes. I doubted there were more than a dozen people anywhere, mate or female, who wouldn't have opened their arms wide to offer her what comfort they could, just as they would have done with a poor, injured fawn.

"No wonder he refused to let you a.s.sociate with other magic users," I observed, my cool answer putting a hint of surprise in those lovely, tear-bright eyes. "You must, have learned how to do that almost from the very begin- ning, and one doesn't expose friends to one's dangerous experiments."

"What-what do you mean?" she stumbled, still going for it. tt! don't understand what you're saying."

"What I mean is that that routine would probably have had every sorcerer and male wizard challenging each other in earnest, just to win the chance to touch your hand," I explained, this time deliberately folding my arms. "Rather than decimate the ranks of the Sighted, Graythor kept you isolated while he tried to figure out what he'd done wrong, probably hoping he could undo it. It's too bad he didn't sc.r.a.p the experiment and forget all about it."

"How can you say that to me?" she asked in a strength- less whisper, the tears now rolling down her cheeks. "I know I insulted you earlier, but I was afraid you would try to hurt me without giving me a chance to explain! If you'd ever been hurt by a man, had ever been taken advantage of by someone stronger the way I was, then you would understand-and maybe sympathize just a little."

Oh, she was really good, that one, and I was able to appreciate just how good when I felt myself brushed with a general suppression-release counterspell. Somehow she had found out about the suppression spell Morgiana had put on me, and had just touched me with the counterspell that would have released it-if it hadn't already been released.

My magical defenses had made no attempt to stop me counterspell, of course; release from involuntary suppres- sion is a positive act, and my defenses were set to counter only negatives- If the counterspell had done what it had been expected to do, I would have regained all those memories with a jarring crash, and then would have imme- diately been on the small woman's side.

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"I'm afraid I'm all out of sympathy where you're con- cerned," I told her, trying to keep my fury from building out of control. "Graythor never took advantage of you, he's not that kind of a man, but I'll bet you took enough advantage of your own. He probably gave you everything you asked for-until you asked for one thing too many. I wonder what that could have been."

"I wanted him to make this world a better place for someone as perfect as I am!" she spat, apparently more angry over her trick not having worked man over anything I'd said. She was a true and complete egotist-as well as completely insane. "This world has things and people that offend me, but he refused to wipe them out!" she blazed, fee useless act discarded like a cape dropped from shrug- ging shoulders. "He-refused-me, and that was when I first realized how much I hated him. I took the balance stone and put it out of his reach, but he sent the seven of you after it and you got it back! Now he's hiding away, his mind gone from his body so I won't be able to make him help me again, but I don't need his help! When he returns and awakens he'll be devastated, because he'll know that the balance stone was brought back in time to save this filthy world, but I was here td^take it again! And I will take it again!"

She was nearly foaming at the mouth by then. her small hands closed to fists as she leaned toward me in her rage, absolute determination in every line of her body. The next instant, with her lips moving near-soundlessly, a raging green whirlwind attacked me, trying to draw the breath from my lungs and the life from my body. The strength behind the attack was considerable, all of her energies directed toward my destruction, and I understood at last why the ambushers coming at us a few minutes earlier hadn't been under compulsion. She'd been saving every- thing she had to face me, as she'd clearly suspected-or expected-she would have to do. She hadn't used the entry because she hadn't wanted to, not because I'd in- sulted her into facing me.

The violent green whirlwind raged around me, scream- ing silently in its attempt to break through my s.h.i.+elding, but that s.h.i.+elding wasn't the result of a minute or two of

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casual spelling. I had to brace myself against the sheer power of the attack, but aside from that it didn't reach me.

After about fifteen seconds I raised my left hand and spoke a spell of counterattack, and great yellow sheets of light appeared and began to weave their way into the green whirlwind, erasing whatever sections of it they touched. In no more than another few seconds all but a lingering hint of the whirlwind was gone, leaving nothing behind but a faint green coloring of the room's shadows.

"That was very pretty," I said, wondering if it would be possible to do something that had just occurred to me.

"Next time let's use pink and red with maroon highlight- ing. Or would you prefer a different color scheme?"

"You don't fool me," she sneered, straightening from the pose she'd held through the attack. "Your counter was more pa.s.sive than active, with less strength than it should have had- How much magic have you had to use today, girl? How far have you drained the pitiful amount of power you have to begin with? And, more importantly, how much do you have left? Not enough, I'll wager, to keep this up for long!"

And then she was at me again, with bright orange streaks of lightning that tried to skewer me where I stood.

This time I called large brown cus.h.i.+ons into being to accept the thrusts of the orange streaks and then absorb them, but all she did was laugh at my efforts even though they were successful. Once again my counter had been more pa.s.sive than active, and even as I lowered my left hand I was as aware as she of the faintest of tremors in it. I had used a tot of magic that day, not to mention moving five people and six horses through a couple of gates, but 1 couldn't afford to be tired. I couldn't afford to be tired, and 1 wouldn't be!

"If I'm all that helpless, then you won't mind joining me in h.e.l.lfire combat," 1 said, touching my hand to the box of the balance stone hanging at my waist. I couldn't let that woman-that creature-regain possession of the stone no manor what it cost me, and as painful as the combat would be, it would still be better than the other idea I'd had. "What do you say. Lady Perfection? Would you like to form the combat cylinder, or shall I?"

"There will be none of that!" she snapped, suddenly no longer amused, her body stiff rather than simply still "I could hardly be adept at h.e.l.lfire combat when I've never been to even a single Conclave, and I won't have you do to me what you did to Draffan. If you try and I'm about to lose, I'll send my own h.e.l.lfire to Graythor's helpless body!"

"Leaving his mind nothing to return to," I said with growing disgust, and then another realization came to me.

"Draffan, you said! That's the name of the Sighted I faced that night at the inn, right at the beginning of the journey.

That must have been you disguised as the barmaid, so you were there-and made not the least effort to help your dupe when he was about to lose his life for you."

"And risk revealing myself so early in the game?" she asked with a sound of derision, tossing her head. "1 wanted to see you all suffer first, and that's what 1 did- Now I'm growing bored with this, and I want to see it end."

Her third attack was blazing silver discs cutting at me, but even as I fended them off I began the process of gathering to me every breath of strength I had, and then I began building the spell I hadn't wanted to use. If I could have spared the concentration I would have begun shaking in fright, but 1 hadn't the time to be frightened, not even at the thought of using unSeen magic. There was nothing to See with unSeen magic, nothing but a concept or an idea, nothing to describe in detail but the nebulousness of thought.

It was black, black for the lack of solidity, black for the lack of true knowledge-and black for the picture of the rest of one's life, should the spell be the least bit off.

Steadiness stayed with me, but the warmth of life did not; I gathered what I needed, and me ice of fear as well.

And then I thrust the last of the discs away and began my own attack, the only attack 1 would have the time or the strength for. I stood straight and tall as I raised my right hand and began speaking me spell, a spell which, as far as I knew, had never before been spoken. The woman frowned as she heard the words, trying to translate them to something she could understand, but then distraction came when she pushed at my strength and couldn't move it. The

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power I gave to the spell was building an ever-thickening, invisible sphere around her, and push though she might with all of her strength, she wasn't finding it possible to break out of it.

"What are you doing?** she cried, putting her arms out to either side of her, as though to keep the invisible walls of the sphere from crus.h.i.+ng in on her. "Where are you getting all that strength? You can't possibly have'that much left, you simply can't!"

"I don't,'* I told her in what felt like deep distraction, most of my attention and all of my concentration on main- taining that thickening sphere. "What I'm using is the reserve reservoir I began building the day I nearly ran out of strength and also nearly died because of it. You sent that beast through the gate to attack us inside my warding of our camp, and ever since then a small bit of whatever power I used was shunted into the reservoir for storage.

Against need. Like now."

"No," she whispered, shaking her head, her arms still out against the tightening sphere. "You couldn't have done that! You-! What are you doing?"

"I'm creating a very small world," 1 told her, floating in my effort to hold the necessary concentration. "When me world is complete there will be nothing in it that can't be found in this world-except that magic won't be possi- ble- It won't simply be a blind world, it will be dead, no magic, no magic use, no magical ability of any sort. In- just a little while."

"No!" This time she screamed the word, finally under- standing what my spell had been about-and what it meant to her. She had been created by magic, and only her own magical ability maintained her existence; in a world with- out magic she would not simply be unSighted, she would simply not be. It was a horrible thing to do to her. but 1 hadn't been able to find another way.

"I won't let you!" she screamed, white-faced and terri- fied, and then she turned back to the entry she'd chosen not to use earlier. She tried to approach it, found that she couldn't, then whirled back to face me with her hands to her head. "Eppan, help me!" she screamed, the terror

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