Chapter 16


Finister was astounded to discover Gregory so near to the place in which she had left him. She was even more astounded, almost shocked, to see him calmly dragging brush to the center of the clearing and staring at it while it shrank in on itself, melding into a single substance and hardening into gleaming off-white blocks, very fine-grained, seeming almost translucent, almost to glow with an inner light as they sat there. He had already made a score of them, piling them up by telekinesis, then fusing them together so tightly and making them melt together so that they became one seamless wall. He must have welded their very molecules.

How dare he! Did she mean so little to him that, instead of seeking her, he would cast aside all thought of her and set himself to playing with blocks? How childlike, how feckless, how fickle!

How improbable. The thought gave her pause; he was very deceptive, seeming to have decided on one course of action while he really pursued another. What might it cover, this facade of seemingly aimless play? From hiding, she projected a thought at the blocks, trying to analyze them—and was amazed to find that the cream-colored substance drank up her psionic probe as though it had never been.

So that was it! He was trying to build himself a shelter to protect himself from her! He had feigned desire while he really sought first to trap her, now to wall her out! Blazing with anger, she strode out into the clearing to confront him.

But she was too late for a frontal assault; the wall was already high enough and wide enough to come between them easily. Gregory had only to step behind it to become impervious to any telepathic attack.

That left sex, which hadn't worked, and anger, which she hadn't tried much yet. She advanced on him, crying, "For shame, sir! Would you leave a woman lost and defenseless in so perilous a forest as this?"

Gregory didn't even try pointing out that it was she who had left him—he knew now that emotionally it was the same thing. "Your pardon, lass—but enemies may come and I had need to prepare a shelter."

She noticed he hadn't said whose enemies, or whom the wall was supposed to protect. "And how would you have sheltered me if enemies had fallen on me while you were building here?"

"Indeed, I fear you have the right of it. I should have kept seeking until I found you."

He didn't sound very penitent, though, and her blood boiled at the suggestion that he had indeed searched for her. Of course he had, and of course she had made herself very hard to find. "What manner of guardian are you, sir, who ceases the search so soon? Indeed, if you cared at all for your ward, you would rack the forest for months until you found her!"

"I am a careless escort indeed," Gregory said, striving to seem remorseful—but he was definitely trying and seeming, not being.

"Dare I travel with you more?" Peregrine advanced on him. "How do I know you would not turn and attack me?"

At least he looked genuinely appalled. "Oh, no, sweet lady, I would never do such a thing!"

No, he wouldn't, more was the pity, unless she could make him so angry that he forgot himself. "How can I be sure?" she taunted. "Is it because you are not man enough? Not man enough to search, not man enough to care, not man enough to lust after a woman badly enough to seek her out?"

For a moment, desire flared in his eyes. "So beauteous a creature as yourself could inspire lust in the very stones!" Then the desire doused as quickly as it had come, leaving him as bland and polite as ever. "But I would never act upon it to wrong a damsel."

"Then you cannot care much for her," Peregrine said acidly. How could the maddening boy remain so calm? She had insulted his very manhood! She pushed another button. "Or perhaps you were afraid to seek me, fearful that you might indeed happen upon some cruel, crude woodmen who would fall upon you with cudgels—or some bear or wolf who would rip with fang and claw!"

"Perhaps I am," Gregory said with chagrin but no great conviction.

He was entirely too sure of himself, and for a moment she saw again the fire with which he had frightened away her bandits. Fear rose within her, but she thrust it aside and pressed the attack. The foul insults she had heaped upon him must have stimulated some emotion, no matter how well he hid it! She changed tactics and pressed close, projecting desire and recklessness even as she denounced him. "There, I am within your reach, only inches away! Have you the courage to reach out and take what you say you desire? No, for you are afraid my passion will burn you, sear you from limb to limb, leave you shaking with emotions that tear you asunder!"

Her eyes flashed as she spoke and she saw the shudder run through him as her projections touched him. She felt an uplift of elation, knowing she held him fascinated, and pressed right up against him, hip to hip and breast to chest. "There, you did not even have to reach—I have come to you! Do you dare to grasp what you touch? Dare to enfold me in your arms and taste the sweetness of my mouth?" She hit him with every ounce of attraction she had, both sexual and emotional, eyes glinting with vindictive delight.

Gregory swayed for a moment but steadied himself and straightened, arms rising but not touching. His voice shook with desire as he said, "I dare, but I withhold. You are too precious a gem to debase with the sweat of my hands."

She almost screamed in frustration. She knew his whole body clamored for her! How was he able to resist?

Gregory felt the power rising from the earth to fill him, power to resist, to maintain his integrity. He wanted her, yes, so badly that he ached with the yearning—but he did not want her like this, angry and challenging, eager only for proof of her power over him. If he could not bring her to him out of her own desire for the totality that was Gregory, for himself and only for himself, he would not accept her at all.

The thought tripped him into an analytical mode and he felt his senses sharpen, his reason honed by the power of the earth on which he stood. Why should she be angry and challenging him sexually only because he had not come hotfoot after her? Surely not merely to prove her own power! Her anger must be only another ploy in her game of seduction— but why should she want to seduce him if she were not in love with him? He was immensely flattered that she would go to such lengths and dearly wished to believe she had been moved to boldness simply because he had become more attractive—but with the clarity of the site of power, he knew it could not be true.

Still the idiot boy refused her, refused to grasp what was his for the taking! Could he suspect how she wished to strike at him once she had him mesmerized by desire? No, surely not! But she would never have him transfixed more thoroughly than she did now, and if he would not reach out to consummate his desire, she would! Reaching up, she clasped his face in both hands and pulled it down to her own, kissing him lightly at first, lips nibbling, then with tongue teasing, and as his mouth opened to embrace hers and his arms finally rose about her, she reached out with her mind, pulling his into an erotic dreamland strong enough to make him lose contact with the world.

Gregory knew well what she was doing and why but allowed hope to spiral and carry him away, letting his heart believe what his mind denied—that she was truly in love with him. He remembered everything Geoffrey had taught him about kissing and put it to practice, letting the kiss deepen almost of its own accord as he touched her back, her shoulders, her hips in the places Geoffrey had told him of, and was elated to feel an answering increase in her desire. Overcome with affection and wanting to give her even more pleasure than she gave him, he fed her own eroticism back to her, amplifying it strongly. He felt his own desire feed hers, then felt her tremble as her emotions became rapacious, feeding back into him until he felt he would burst even though he threw his whole heart into the kiss and fed the desire back into her, swollen with love.

Finister's whole body convulsed; dazed, she melted in his arms, and Gregory let himself be lost in her kiss and in the ecstasy she wove about him as the emotions of her desire and his fed upon one another, swelling and spinning them both into a whirlpool of rapture that paralyzed them, so intense as to prevent the very deeds it inspired, until the power of the spell overwhelmed Finister and she broke the kiss, slumping in his arms, unconscious.

Gregory teetered, scarcely able to hold on to consciousness himself, but the power of his site slowly steadied him, and he reached down into her mind with overwhelming love but found there only a sort of rosy haze. With great tenderness his mind groped through that mist, trying to achieve mentally what his body had been denied.

He froze, and his heart turned to ice. Beneath the haze of a very real desire still burned the white, actinic spark of hatred and lust for revenge, the hunger to slay him as soon as he dropped his guard. It was still there, the determination to fulfill her assignment, to enslave or slay him, and the hormonal intoxication of erotic feedback only obscured it, delayed it, but never for a moment cancelled it.

Reaction hit him and he plunged into a despair as great as his intoxication had been only minutes before. He slumped to the ground mourning, holding the unconscious woman in his arms and gazing down at her with yearning and agony, overcome with the realization of his failure. All his efforts had been insufficient. His magic had amplified her desire, yes, but he himself had proved inadequate. His enchantment might have taken the desire she had kindled within him and caught her up in a gyre of emotion—but his body, his face, his personality had all failed to win her love.

Cordelia found him there weeping over the unconscious woman. So deeply immersed in his grief was he that he did not even notice her panicked call for her mother and brother.

Something flickered across the face of the moon; looking up, Cordelia saw her mother's broomstick spiralling down to land—holding not only Gwendylon, but Geoffrey, too! So that was why he had not teleported to her immediately, only sent a thought that he would join her "presently." Her alarm doubled—what had happened to him, how had he damaged himself, that he must fly on a broomstick rather than teleport?

Her concern diminished only a little when Geoffrey said as he dismounted, ' 'Mother, you are not sufficiently recovered to do this!"

He sounded quite anxious. Cordelia cried in alarm, "Recovered? Recovered from what?"

"I have slept well and long, Geoffrey," Gwen assured him. "Be not anxious, my son. For the patient's sake as well as my own, I shall not attempt this healing if I so much as suspect I have not the strength." She turned to her daughter. "Your brother is kind to be so concerned, Cordelia, but I have not suffered anywhere nearly so much as he seems to think."

"No, only exhausted herself, first in a game of riddles with a computer, then with drinking it dry of all its knowledge of the human mind!" Geoffrey protested.

Cordelia stared. "What computer? Where?" And nothing would satisfy her until she heard the whole story or at least a summary of it, at the end of which she regarded her mother with admiration. "You must tell me how you outguessed a mainframe, Mother, when we have leave—but Geoffrey is right, you must be careful not to strain yourself."

"I shall be cautious, never fear, and if you doubt me, remember my concern for the patient." Gwen touched her hand with a warm smile. "Now, my dear, what is so horribly amiss? . . . Oh!" She stared at her youngest, sitting on the ground before a wall glowing with twilight, head bowed over the beautiful young woman in his arms. Even from ten yards' distance she could see how his shoulders shook. She stepped closer to Cordelia and murmured, "What has happened here?"

"I know not," her daughter answered in the same tone. "I know only what I see; I have feared to inquire without you."

Gwen touched her son's mind and found it in turmoil. "Wisely refrained, Cordelia, when he is so distraught." She stepped forward to kneel by Gregory and asked softly, "Why do you weep, my son?"

"For a love that shall never live, Mother," he answered in a hollow voice.

Gwen studied him for a moment, frowning, then said, "Say that you weep for unrequited love, rather—and if the poor child you hold in your arms has been so wounded in her heart as I think, it is small wonder that she cannot love, neither you nor any man."

Gregory looked up at her with deadened eyes. "There is no hope of healing her heart, then?"

"I have not said that," Gwen answered. "There may be hope indeed. Let me study her mind awhile."

Gregory straightened, his eyes coming alive. He sat very still, cradling Finister in his arms, waiting while his mother probed and sifted through the woman's memories, even the ones she had forgotten, and especially the ones of which she had never been aware. Finally Gwen nodded and said, "I think she can be healed."

Gregory heaved a sigh of relief, going limp, then remembered that he held Finister in his arms and straightened again.

"Before we do, though," Gwen said, her voice suddenly grim, "we must ask whether we should."

Her children stared at her, appalled.

Then Gregory found his voice. "Do you ask if it is right to slay her, Mother? We have threshed out that question already!"

"You have threshed it," Gwen agreed, "but have you found wheat, or chaff?"

Cordelia frowned, looking into her mother's eyes. "What have you found, Mother, that makes you now doubt her right to live?"

"Chiefly that, though her will may have been formed by those who punished her for independence and rewarded her for subservience," Gwen said, "it was nevertheless her own choice to slay and maim. Perhaps I can cure her, perhaps not; perhaps I can bring her true self out clear of the fears and yearnings that shroud it—but she may still choose to murder and steal. Have we the right to cure her and free her if she will become no more human for our efforts?"

The young people were silent, two of them staring at Finister as though they were seeing her as a monster for the first time—but the third still with love. "Surely we have the right to decide it, Mother," Gregory said, "for it is our family that has suffered from her actions more than any other."

"There is some truth in that," Gwen said slowly. "Must we summon your father for a family council, then?"

"Father? No!" Cordelia said instantly, then explained, "There is no need, for we know what he will say—that if she has injured even one of his children, the only mercy she deserves is a quick death."

Geoffrey nodded. "If he votes for mercy. I think he might prefer that her death be slow."

"Yes, if he did not have to wreak it," Cordelia returned.

"There is truth in that," Gwen sighed. "He loses reason at thought of hurt to you and myself."

"More pertinent, I think, is the question of what Magnus would say if he were here," Geoffrey offered. "After all, it is he who has suffered most at her hands."

Gwen cast a dubious look at the tormented face of her youngest but agreed, "There is merit in that. Do you truly think Magnus would say we should slay her?"

"Probably not," Geoffrey said in disgust. "You have reared us all to be too merciful."

Thank Heaven for that, Gwen breathed in silent prayer.

"We need not wonder," Gregory said, his voice listless. "I have spoken with my brother every other month or so since he left home."

Gwen turned to gaze at him. "Indeed you have, and have told me of his exploits."

Geoffrey and Cordelia eyed their brother with some envy; his telepathic range far exceeded their own—though, Cordelia had to admit, it might only have been that his desire for contact with Magnus was greater than theirs. He had been very young when his idolized elder brother had left home.

"Well enough, then," Gwen said. "Reach halfway across the galaxy if you must, my son. Let us hear what your brother says."


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