Operation Chaos

XI

Aloneness was not broken by the face which looked upon me, a face for which I have no words save that it was huge and its eyes were those of a corpse. But then, I did not see it, nor feel the cold which was deeper and stabbed me more cruelly than any I had known since last the thought-voice came through notspace and not-time to shake the senses I did riot have. And the end of every hope and every faith was upon me.

“Be proud, Steven. I myself have worked to bring the death of you and your companions. To that end, I myself planted a prank in the head of a fool; for know, only thus may we safely work in the world, and I would not trust the subtleties of this one task to any minion. Pleasing though the general destruction is, material harm to men is not the true aim, and indeed my maneuverings to encompass the doom of you twain could prove costly if they provoke retaliation from the Other Side. But the danger to ours that you represent has become ever more clear as time runs toward a certain moment. I cannot know when that moment waits or what lineaments it will bear; but I know you must not be part of it.”

That which was I would have cringed, were it not less than a point in nothingness. “And yet,” tolled through me, “and yet, Steven, you need not be dead. I forebode that the woman Virginia can be a worse enemy than you. Yes, I forebode that, lacking her, you are no threat to the Plan; but she, without you, might well prove so, if not as great a menace as you two conjoined. How this may be, there is no augury. But note her skills and her Gift; note that she has not twice been trapped like you; note what a spirit she bears within her. Vengefulness for your death may drive her to search below the appearance of things. Or she may take some other course. I cannot tell what. But I see that although you burn, she is not absolutely inescapably caught.

“Would you live, and live well, Steven?”

Fainter than light from the farthest star flickered out of me: “What must I do?

“Take my service. Accept my geas. The salamander will release you before irreparable injury has occurred. When your hurts have knit, the geas will make you do a single thing; nothing else for a long, rich lifetime. You will call her outside, stand well clear, and distract her wariness for the moment the salamander will need to materialize upon her as it did upon you.

“If you refuse this, return to the instant of your own cremation alive.”

Virginia was more than infinitely remote, and I hack no body to feel with nor tongue to speak yea or nays But the focus that was I considered her within the anguish it had known; and it became absolute rage, match the absolute hate that had stormed it free another timelessness; and the not-scene exploded back into the void whence it had come.