Moraga felt a moment's panic, for she knew what she would have meant by such a phrase—but she reminded herself that it was the weakling Gregory who spoke, not herself or any of her fellow assassins, and lay down planning to stay awake until he was under his own blanket and more vulnerable than ever to the warmth of a woman seeking comfort.
But what was this? Gregory did not lie down—he stayed
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sitting by the campfire, back straight, legs crossed, hands palm upward on his knees, gazing off into the night with a dreamy, absent look.
"My—my lord?" Moraga asked, trying to sound timid instead of indignant. "Will you not sleep?"
"I shall not, damsel." His voice was remote, like a distant call carried on the wind. "Someone must keep watch in case a bear or wolf should come, or even to keep the fire from burning down."
Moraga sat up. "Then I shall take the first watch!" She would abandon it, too, as soon as Gregory was lying down.
"Thank you, but no. I shall spend the night in a trance that will restore me quite as much as sleep would, but that shall let me remain vigilant. Do take your rest; there is no need for any sentry other than myself."
"If... if you say so, my lord." Defeated for the moment, Moraga lay down again. She actually tried to sleep—it didn't seem there was much point in anything else, now—but found she could not; she was seething at this latest obstacle, and it brought to mind again the Gallowglasses's defeat of her plans. She thrashed about, trying to banish them all from her mind, trying to forget Magnus's return from the Green Witch's healing, Cordelia standing triumphant with Alain's hands in hers, Geoffrey kneeling to propose to Quicksilver there before all the court at the end of her trial, and the memories of the thwarting of her plans whipped up such a fury in her that she began to shake. She took slow, deep breaths, remembering the ritual for calming that her martial arts teacher had shown her, and gradually managed to let her anger fade, her harmony return to bury the feelings of hurt and outrage that were always there in the depths of her heart, waiting to spring out and betray her whenever she most needed to think clearly. After a few minutes, drowsiness came with a suddenness that surprised her. She was grateful for it and let it sweep over her, bearing her away into a deep and calming sleep, and if dreams of her triumphs surfaced, then submerged as she slept, all the better to restore her confidence in her struggle against this emotionless boy who watched over her slumber.
The dreams, of course, were not entirely the product of an
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angry and frustrated mind, nor were the memories of her defeats at the hands of the Gallowglass family. Warned by anomalies in her behavior during their trip to Loguire, Gregory suspected that he had an enemy in his keeping, not an innocent victim who had talents the crown badly needed. The suspicion was strong enough to warrant a breach of the es-per's ethics he had been taught, so he inserted key images into Moraga's seething mind that made her remember her various crimes against the family and her defeats. Then he projected a soothing, calming drowsiness, and when she had drifted into sleep, he slipped other key ideas into her mind and paid close attention to the memories they evoked. He witnessed each of the three assassinations she had carried out, even as she had been assigned to do—first winning the man's trust, or at least relaxation of his vigilance, by the sexual magnetism she projected, then slipping a knife between his ribs as he slept, or poison in his food as he ate. He was surprised to discover that she thought herself plain and unattractive but had an amazing amount of confidence in her telepathic ability to convince her victims that she was intensely desirable. He even witnessed her latest and unassigned murder—that of the former Chief Agent, making sure that he left a letter appointing her Chief Agent in his stead.
So, then. He dealt not only with the witch who had mangled his brother's emotions and striven to murder Cordelia, Alain, and Geoffrey, but also with the Chief Agent of the anarchists of Gramarye—not only his family's personal nemesis, but a public enemy, too.
What would she do? He could not say, but he knew the thrust of it would be to kill him or twist his emotions toward a solitary life that would not result in reproduction. He smiled, amused—that last would require no effort at all, would require only that she leave him alone, for he had seen the emotional cripple that Magnus had become, had watched Geoffrey waste an immense amount of time dallying with wenches, and had resolved himself to avoid women as anything but friends and to sublimate his sex drive into research. Moraga had already given him an impulse that should result in a conceptual breakthrough, for though he had been careful not to show it,
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her flirtations had been most stimulating. He needed the night's meditation badly; he had a great deal of sublimating to do.
He began it by constructing an automatic defense system. He had learned enough about computers from the horse's mouth—the horse being Fess, his father's computer-brained robot charger—so that he knew how to weave a response program into his own mind, conditioning himself to respond to telepathic aggression by reflecting any hostile energy back to its source. Then he relaxed, sure that, though he would not himself take any offensive action against Moraga, anything she tried to do to him would instantly be done to her instead.
Of course, he would still take her to Runnymede, Their Majesties' capital, would still escort her to meet the royal witches—not to apply for membership, but for trial.
He recited a mantra and relaxed into his trance, letting images of quanta rise into his mind—but they kept being overlaid with images of the real and natural Finister as she saw herself in her mirror, a sight that she found repulsive but whose beauty Gregory could only admire. With it came a sensing—only that, a vague mental perception, not even a hunch or a clear thought coming to the surface of her mind and certainly not images, only glimpses of tattered ghosts— but he suspected that there were qualities in Finister that she fought to deny and ignore, a tenderness and ability to empathize, a caring for others that she had been taught to regard as vulnerability and weakness and had consequently suppressed, hardening herself in denial. She had been instructed to use her sensitivity to others' feelings as a means of finding their weaknesses, had been taught that her natural sensuality meant she was born to be a slut and had worth only as a sexual being. Her teachers had told her she could rise above whoredom by using her sexuality as a weapon and becoming an expert assassin, both emotionally and physically.
Gregory's heart wrung with sympathy for the sweet, loving child of whom he gained such furtive glimpses; he was strongly tempted to probe more deeply in an attempt to learn more, perhaps even to cure—but even the ethical penetration
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of an enemy's mind had its limits, and Finister had not yet shown evidence of being so dangerous as to justify such an invasion—at least, not very dangerous to himself.
Besides, Gregory was afraid of causing more trauma than he might cure. Firmly putting temptation behind him, he turned his mind away from Moraga and concentrated on his favorite mantra, the reconciliation of general relativity with quantum mechanics and the search for an equation that would unite the two.
Moraga woke before dawn, amazed that she had slept so deeply and so well. She stretched, then remembered her current mission and sat up, stretching again as luxuriously as possible, chin up, back arched, arms reaching backward. She glanced at Gregory out of the corner of her eye but saw him in profile, glassy eyes gazing steadfastly ahead. If he had seen her at all, it was only out of the corner of his eye.
Piqued, she pulled her robe on over her shift, a shift far more clinging than any true peasant would have worn—after all, it had been made with artificial fibers spun by a very advanced technology—and went off into the bushes to perform her morning ablutions. When she came back, she found Gregory as she had left him and reflected that she really need not have risked a poison ivy rash—she had only needed
to step around behind his back.
That thought made her toy with the notion of giving herself a sponge bath where she had slept, at the corner of his eye— but no, Moraga was supposed to be modest, if not truly innocent. That would have to wait.
On the other hand, Moraga was no virgin and, being a normal, healthy young woman, might very well have normal, healthy appetites—perhaps even more than normal. She stood eyeing Gregory, letting her face and form adjust a little farther toward their natural state. She might feel herself heavy and distasteful, but she knew by experience that men thought just the opposite, no doubt because of the sensuality she projected into their minds. Besides, she had to admit that her natural figure was voluptuous and her mane of blond hair was her glory. Her face she would have characterized as goggle-eyed,
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snub-nosed, fat-lipped, and frog-mouthed, but she had learned that men wished to kiss those fat lips and lose themselves in those goggling eyes. She didn't understand it, really, but she knew how to make use of it.
She advanced on Gregory with the intention of doing exactly that.
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Moraga knelt at Gregory's side, put her lips next to his ear, and breathed, "Waken, Sir Knight. A damsel awaits you, famished and eager to satisfy her hunger ere the night ends."
Gregory sat, mute and immobile, eyes still gazing off into the lightening woods.
Irritated, Moraga moved toward the front and into Gregory's line of sight, bending toward him and wishing she had chosen a low-cut gown, though it would have been out of character. She could, however, undo the topmost button, and she did. "Come, sir! Would you keep a woman waiting? That is most ungentlemanly of you! Cease your vigil and celebrate life with me!"
Still Gregory gazed ahead unmoving, as though she had not even been there.
Moraga passed beyond irritation into outright anger. He would notice her, he would pay attention, she would distract him! She sat back on her heels, tossing her head so that her hair fell forward, its color lightened from the real Moraga's mousy brown to a rich, vibrant red. She smiled secretively, letting her eyelids droop and her lips moisten, then sat directly before Gregory, fingering the second button and purring, "Wake, sir, for the day will be upon us soon! Then we must be on our way, with no more excuse for. . . dalliance. ..." She let her voice trail off suggestively, leaving the nature of the dalliance to his imagination.
It would seem he had none. His eyes remained glazed, his posture rigidly upright, his expression unvarying.
"Oh, you might as well be made of wood!" she cried, and leaped to her feet. "This is like talking to a wall! Could a woman be more unfortunate than to be cursed with a man
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whose body is there but whose heart is not? Nay, sit in your trance, then, and may you have joy of your loneliness!" She turned on her heel and strode off into the trees, seething with rage.
Long she paced the wood, letting the anger crest, then subside. How could she begin to seduce a man who scarcely noticed her? How, if his mind was so absent that she could not gain his attention? And not only his mind, either—she found herself wondering if there was also something missing in his body.
Finally she calmed, her course of action becoming clear, her resolution hardening. She sat on a fallen log, letting her mind clear and emotions fall away, then thought, with clear precision and with all her strength,
Storks shall flock Unto the crane As seven-league boots Rise Anselm 's bane.
She was very much aware that Gregory could be listening, of course, or any other esper loyal to the Queen. It was an old problem for the anarchists of SPITE, the Society for the Prevention of Integration of Telepathic Entities, one they had solved by developing a code that sounded much like children's nonsense verses. In this case it meant, "All home agents come to the Chief on the High Road twenty-one miles north of Castle Loguire."
She rose from her log with malicious satisfaction. Soon she would begin the ending of this farce, and the Gallowglasses' interference with SPITE's plans.
Gregory came up from his trance striving to fight down the thrill of Moraga's breath in his ear, the memory of her leaning close and the hint of voluptuous contours beneath her sacklike dress, the longing to discover what undoing that second button might disclose. She was quite right, of course—it was time to have breakfast, for the false dawn would not last long, and they should be on their way as the sun rose. He stood,
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stretching, and called, "Your pardon, damsel, but rising from my trance takes some little time."
He waited a few minutes for her reply, then frowned when there was no answer. He had watched her go off into the trees, but surely she could not have gone very far. "I do not truly scorn your hunger," he called. "Do you blow the coals aflame, and I shall fetch journeybread from my pack and ..." His voice trailed off as Moraga failed to reappear. He waited several minutes, but no voice replied to his. He frowned, eyes losing focus, the clearing about him becoming less real than the world of the mind as he listened for responding thoughts—but there were only the sharp sensations of small predators on the hunt, the fear of their prey, some child reciting a nonsense rhyme in her head, and more distantly, the grumbling thoughts of farmers as they stumbled about their morning tasks, cursing their lack of sleep.
Gregory frowned—what could have upset the damsel so that she would have gone so far away? Certainly it was rude of him not to answer when she spoke to him, but when he explained that it took a while for him to surface from his meditations, she would understand, would she not? It was scarcely a calculated insult. She was herself an esper and should understand the requirements of the mental powers that passed for magic on this world. Why should she be irritated if his reply were delayed?
Well, there was no accounting for it. He would simply have to seek her. He turned to saddle his horse, then realized that she had left her own.
Somehow, that struck him more sharply than her mere absence. She had rejected the palfrey that Duke Diarmid had provided. Gregory knew it was ridiculous to feel that by doing so, she had rejected his company as well—but he did.
Of course, if she viewed him as her jailer, she might well reject him or, more to the point, believe that she had escaped him. Gregory sighed and tightened the girth. He would have to seek her out, for jailer or not, he was responsible for escorting her, and for seeing to it that she went to Runnymede and the Royal Coven. He mounted, took her palfrey by the reins, and rode into the wood with the palfrey following.
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By the time Moraga reached the marker for the twenty-first mile, she was beginning to wish she had taken that palfrey, or at the very least, picked out a good, stout, dead branch for flying. The quarter mile had not seemed long enough to bother, but as she came up to the milestone, she saw that the men, having teleported, were already waiting. The first of the women came in for a landing as she arrived and the other two were in the sky.
"Good day, Chief Agent," said Mercu. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man of middle years who fought to hide his indignation at taking orders from a chit half his age.
"Good day," Finister replied. She surveyed her male lieutenants with satisfaction, for although she cast no glamour into their minds and they saw her with her natural form and face, she could feel their hunger for her. It was conditioning, no doubt—the residue of the sensuality she had projected into their minds, ever so discreetly, in months past. Like Mercu, Coyle and Lork might resent her rank as Chief Agent, but their hunger for her kept them subservient.
She turned to Leiku and Honoria, just dismounting from their broomsticks. Like the men, they resented her being their boss—but they resented her in every other way, too, envious of her power over men (surely it could not have been envy of her physical appearance!) and jealous of the males' attentions.
Resentful or not, they would do her bidding as long as her schemes worked out, for SPITE had
enjoyed very little success on this planet in the past twenty years, and Finister's gains, though minor, were at least not total disasters. She studied the line of faces, taking stock of their abilities and merits. They were all home agents, born on Gramarye of the 10 percent who were operative espers. All had grown up as orphans; most were foundlings. Indeed, only Mercu knew who both parents had been, and that they had died when he was six months old.
They were highly skilled in telekinesis, teleportation, projective telepathy, and, of course, telepathy itself. Moreover, the SPITE orphanage had raised them as it had reared Finister herself—as though it were forging weapons, which in some
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sense it had. Each was single-minded, dedicated, and ruthless, hating the society that had spawned them and fanatically loyal to the organization that had reared them. There wasn't a one of them who would not cheerfully have died to win Gramarye for SPITE.
Except Finister, of course. In her, the early lessons had taken root too well; she knew she could trust no one but herself. It followed, both logically and emotionally, that she dared not let anyone have power over her, which meant that she could only feel safe if she had both wealth and the power it could buy. Her lieutenants might wish to win Gramarye for SPITE; Finister intended to have it for herself—and these were the weapons with which she would win the fight.
4 'It's time to divide and conquer," she told her lieutenants. "We're going to split the Gallowglasses away from one another, then hit each of them with an armed squad all at the same moment, so that they can't come to help one another."
The lieutenants stared in surprise for a moment. Then they began to grin.
"Smart, Chief," Coyle said. "They'll have a tough time fighting off a physical attack at the same time as a mental one—and if they call for help, they'll just distract each other. Why didn't anybody think of this before?"
Finister suppressed the urge to say, "Because the old Chief Agent wasn't a genius"; she knew the comment would be too revealing. Instead she said, "Because it was too simple. We were looking for elaborate plots that would tear apart the whole kingdom. We missed the fact that the problem is really personal."
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