by Hiatt, Bill
My first impulse was to jump out of bed, but I suddenly realized I was naked. Odd—I was sure I had been wearing pajamas when I went to sleep. Oh, yeah, this was a dream. It had to be a dream, because Morgan couldn’t physically get into the house. I didn’t know she could dream-walk, but that must be what she was doing. I would have to remember to adjust the protection on the house to prevent that kind of thing in the future.
“I have gotten more enthusiastic welcomes,” observed Morgan, her smile broadening. “If you try to scramble any further away from me, you’ll fall right out of the bed. It’s chilly in here; come over, and warm me up.”
“Morgan,” I replied, striving for the most dignified tone I could manage under the circumstances, “what do you want from me? I’m pretty sure it isn’t sex.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” said Morgan, leering at me as if she had x-ray vision and was looking right through the sheet and blankets. Fortunately, the ancient Celts had not conceived of x-ray vision, and Morgan was not that much of an innovator when it came to magic.
“I know you,” I pointed out, “and you may have slept with many men, but never impulsively. You want something, or you wouldn’t be here, so you may as well just tell me what it is.”
“I want…many things,” she replied evasively, slowly but playfully sliding closer to me. I tried to get a little further away, but she was right—too much further, and I would fall out of bed.
“However, the thing I want the most, even a little more than your sweet body, is an agreement about Alcina.”
“I’m inclined to agree with Nurse Florence that separating Alcina from Carla would be pretty difficult, since they only have one soul between them,” I pointed out. “How would you solve that problem?” At this point I just managed to clamber out of bed, with a sheet around me, before Morgan could reach me.
Morgan hovered on the edge of the bed for a while, pretending to pout over my escape from the bed. Tiring of that in a short time, she continued. “Don’t be misled by the water witch’s dogma. Did she not also tell you your playmate Stan could not be a reincarnation of King David?”
The fact that Morgan had somehow learned of that conversation was problematic, but I kept my emotions from showing on my face. “That’s a little different,” I said.
“Is it? There are many people today who believe a soul can be split in two. And didn’t you discover two minds within Stan tonight? Don’t look so surprised; you forgot to extend your protection to the green space behind your house. Anyway, didn’t you?”
“Two minds are a very different situation than two souls. As far as I can tell, when someone’s past-life memories are awakened, the human brain, not knowing what to do with the new information, treats each set of memories as if it were a separate mind. Really, there is still only one mind.”
“Then David was just an illusion? If you believe that, why was it so hard for you to banish him?”
Well, she had a point there.
“You know that mentally David is just as real as you or I. Can you really think he doesn’t have a soul?”
“I’m sure he has a soul. The problem is that it is the same soul Stan has.”
Morgan sighed loudly. “What if I were willing to take all the risks. You could bind me with a tynged that would require me to leave forever if I was unable to provide Alcina with both a separate body and a separate soul.”
I had forgotten about the body part, yet another major problem. “You’re that sure you can manage both?” I asked.
Morgan dismissed the question with a wave of her hand. “If I were not sure, I would not be here.”
I was sorely tempted to propose an oath right at that moment, but the terms of it would require careful deliberation. Besides, since I knew the reversal spell myself, I didn’t need to make an agreement with Morgan to get Carla back; given enough other casters, I could bring Carla back without her, suppressing Alcina in the process. However, the moment Morgan realized that I would not make a deal with her, she would become a major threat to everyone I loved, maybe even to everyone I knew. Again, I needed to at least pretend to be interested.
“I would need time to work out the terms,”
“As would I,” Morgan cut in.
“As would we both then. Let us meet again in a week or so—in more business-like circumstances.”
“Oh, where is the fun in that?” asked Morgan in mock seriousness. “You were not such a prude when you were Taliesin the bard.” With that, she rose from the bed, without anything wrapped around her, presumably to show me what I was missing. Apparently, I was missing a lot… Had I not been in love with poor, comatose Carla, I might almost have succumbed to Morgan’s considerable charms.
“I see from the way you grip your sheet that we will not be making love tonight, Taliesin. Never fear, though—that night will come. We will talk again in a week…though I cannot guarantee the more business-like part. With a wave of her arm, Morgan faded into the moonlight and was gone.
I woke up the moment she stopped dream-walking me, badly tangled up in the sheets, but otherwise unscathed. I glanced over at the clock. Damn! It was only two o’clock in the morning, too early for a cold shower. Too bad—at this point I could really have used one!
CHAPTER 7: TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE
I got up in the morning thinking that at least today couldn’t be worse than yesterday. Then I almost slapped myself because whenever I thought something like that, the day found a way to become worse than the previous one.
Breakfast was even stranger than it had been yesterday. Mom talked at some length about dreaming there was an intruder in the house. I could tell Dad was becoming concerned. If I hadn’t known the truth myself, I might have been concerned too. She kept prefacing her remarks with, “I’m sure I’m being silly,” but she still sounded a little paranoid anyway. I almost dropped my spoon when she started talking about what the intruder in her dreams looked like—and described Morgan almost exactly!
I wanted to reassure her and my dad. Damn it, I wanted to tell them the truth, but I knew I couldn’t. The most I could do was hug my mom extra hard on the way out the door. Somehow, that didn’t seem like enough.
My walk to school with Stan was no better. He was quiet and obviously nervous.
“Stan? You aren’t holding out on me again?”
“Nothing new has happened,” he replied too quickly and too defensively.
I made a practice of not trying to read people’s minds unless absolutely necessary. Well, if Stan was already having trouble again, I needed to know it, so as we walked along, I infiltrated his mind, subtly probing for information.
His mind was still welded to David’s, but the welds already looked less substantial to me than they had last night. I could see the equivalent of hairline cracks on some of them. I couldn’t understand why the situation was changing so fast, especially now that David was trying to be cooperative. I strengthened the joining as much as I could without tipping him off that I was rummaging around in his head. Nurse Florence and I would need to reinforce the connection between him and David—and soon.
I looked for a moment at my own mind, but there was no sign of the degradation so obviously present in Stan’s. I could only see one mind, my own, without even an echo from any of my past lives. Sure, I had their memories and skills if I concentrated hard enough, but they were no longer separate entities and had not been since I managed to merge them four years ago. The integration was seamless. No other mind reader could ever tell that my mind had once been shattered into hundreds of past selves. If I had mended mine so well, why couldn’t I do the same for Stan?
That question continued to nag at me all morning. I stopped by Nurse Florence’s office during nutrition, but naturally she couldn’t solve the problem either.
“Tal, you can show me Stan’s mind, but you’re the expert on how to deal with past selves. I wouldn’t really know what I was looking at.”
“Is there anyone else who might help?” I
asked, already knowing the answer.
“I’m afraid this is such a new problem I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“Do you think Stan’s condition supports Morgan’s theory that a soul can be split?”
Well, that got her attention. Switching immediately to mental communication, she said, “I thought you were just pretending to entertain the possibility to fool Morgan. You aren’t telling me Stan has two souls in him, are you?”
“I can’t really see souls, only minds. He has two minds in him, and I know from last night that they won’t merge easily. Maybe that means that each mind is connected to a separate soul.” Suddenly, I wanted to believe Morgan, at least on that issue. Because if somehow Stan and David had two separate souls, perhaps David’s could be extracted from Stan and sent to whatever afterlife awaited David.
“The soul can’t be split,” asserted Nurse Florence emphatically. “And if it could, wouldn’t it be evil to do it? What possible good could such a thing bring?”
“Morgan dream-walked me last night and suggested a tynged that would let her try her theory and then force her into exile forever if her experiment failed.”
“It’s a trick. Tal, you know who we are dealing with better than I. You know the role she played in bringing down Camelot. We both know how she allied with Ceridwen to destroy us all. Tell me you are not actually considering working with her.”
“I’m not really. What I want is to revive Carla without Morgan being anywhere close. The only reason I’m having second thoughts is what is happening to Stan. I can’t seem to put him together correctly even with David cooperating. How am I going to be able to heal Carla if Alcina, who probably won’t cooperate, is as powerful as Morgan says? And even if I can, we still have Morgan to deal with afterward.”
“Agreed. Vanora has an idea about that.” It would be hard for me to accept any of Vanora’s ideas, and Nurse Florence knew that, but she kept going anyway. “She believes the safest approach is to take Carla to the Order’s headquarters in Wales. There we can attempt the reversal spell with a number of other spell casters to reinforce our attempts. And if you can’t heal Carla appropriately right away, she will stay with the Order until you can. Our headquarters is far easier to defend than the hospital is, and it is likely Morgan won’t even know Carla is there.”
“What about Carla’s family, and the staff at the hospital?”
“Since Carla is in a coma anyway, it would not be hard to substitute an illusion of some kind.”
I couldn’t really say I liked the idea, but it did have some merit. Right now, all Morgan needed to do was assemble strong enough casters, and she could awaken Carla herself—and make sure Alcina got the upper hand. True, Vanora had warded the hospital and I had warded Carla’s room, but Morgan would keep picking away at the defenses once she discovered them, and she would have the luxury of picking away at them full-time if necessary.
“What do we do with Morgan once she realizes she’s been deceived?”
“That’s still a work in progress,” thought Nurse Florence cautiously. “But that’s going to be a problem no matter what we do with Carla—unless we do exactly what Morgan wants.”
I shifted uneasily in my chair. “How do we get Carla to Wales?”
“Water portals would be too tricky with someone in Carla’s condition. We’d have to use Annwn.”
I raised an eyebrow at that.
“I know, I know, that isn’t ideal, but Vanora is working on securing Gwynn’s permission to use his territory. If we calculate the route correctly, we can travel from Santa Barbara to Wales without ever leaving his territory. You, Vanora and I, plus the guys and a few of Gwynn’s warriors should be enough of a force to keep routine menaces away.”
I nodded. Gwynn ap Nudd, the king of the Welsh faeries, respected me and the guys and did regular business with Nurse Florence’s Order, so he’d probably be willing to give us safe conduct and protection. Still, the idea of carrying Carla that distance, even through the relatively flexible geography of Annwn, was daunting. Then again, what other options did we have?
“I don’t like it, but it may be our best bet. If Vanora gets Gwynn’s support, let’s go ahead.”
“OK,” replied Nurse Florence, switching back to voice. “You’d better go, Tal; your next class is starting soon.”
My mind wasn’t much on school for the rest of the day. I did try to pull myself together for the soccer game, mostly because I would catch hell from Dan, our team captain, if I didn’t. Soccer games, since my parents usually came, were also occasions during which I had to at least appear to be happy and untroubled. I had put my parents through too much already; I owed it to them not to create more worries for them if I could possibly help it.
Fortunately, today’s opponents, Saint David’s Episcopalian High School, weren’t exactly strong opponents, so the fact that I was a little off my normal game wasn’t even noticeable. Dan was brilliant, as he always was, the team as a whole performed well, and Saint David’s never knew what hit them. OK, so I did actually fumble a relatively simple pass to Dan at one point, and he noticed, but he knew what kind of problems I had on my mind. OK, so one of my chip passes almost hit one of the Saint David’s players in the head instead of going above it. Even the Saint David’s coach said it was obviously accidental. OK, so one of my attempts at interception only ended up shifting the ball to another Saint David’s player. OK, so I wasn’t likely to be MVP at this rate. OK, so Coach Morton must have been beginning to wonder if putting me on varsity after four years of not playing soccer was really such a smart move after all.
Frankly, as long as I could somehow take care of Carla and Stan, and at some point my newly psychic mother, I couldn’t care less what happened on the soccer field. Well, that wasn’t quite true. I didn’t want to let the other guys down, and on those rare occasions when I didn’t have fourteen different things to worry about simultaneously, I actually enjoyed soccer; it reminded me of the old days, when I could just be a normal kid.
I really hadn’t paid too much attention to the stands today, but I did look around a little as the game was ending. Predictably, there were my parents, sitting as always with Mr. and Mrs. Rinaldi, and naturally Gianni. It took me a minute to recognize that the other kid sitting next to Gianni was Khalid, but not the ragged thief from yesterday. Instead, he was clearly wearing part of his new Sassani wardrobe. Even from a distance, he looked like a commercial for one of the exclusive clothing stores on Rodeo Drive. If Mrs. Sassani wanted to pass him off as Shar’s cousin, she was certainly doing a good job.
I remembered that Gianni had already met him, which probably explained why Khalid was sitting with Gianni’s family. Then I realized abruptly that Khalid’s earlier meeting with Gianni was problematic, since Khalid was pretending to be Shar’s just-arrived cousin. However, the two of them were chatting happily, so I had to assume that Khalid must have given Gianni some plausible explanation. Anyway, there was time enough to worry about that little glitch later.
Sitting some distance away from them was Eva O’Reilly, once my girlfriend, but Dan’s for the last four years. She was still every bit the strawberry-blond sex goddess she had always been, but I no longer felt a throbbing ache when I looked at her. Ever since I had fallen in love with Carla, my feelings for Eva had dissipated like thin smoke in a high wind. Oh, we were still friends, and she was one of the few people who had been through Samhain with us and therefore knew my secret, but there was no longer any possibility of a romantic entanglement that could jeopardize my ability to work with—and remain friends with—Dan. When she saw me looking in her direction, she gave me a friendly wave, mercifully oblivious to all the turmoil she had caused me just a few weeks ago. I waved back, knowing that at least I didn’t need to worry about her any more.
Then I froze. Sitting only a short distance from Eva was a familiar figure in white samite with pale skin and long, lustrous black hair.
Yeah, that’s right—Morgan Le Fay herself…and d
rawing quite a bit of attention, I might add. Morgan was good at many things, but clearly disguising herself as a soccer mom was not one of them. By now I would have thought Morgan would at least dress modern for public appearances like this, but apparently not. Well, at least some of the soccer dads were getting a cheap thrill out of the situation.
She winked and blew a kiss at me. Dan trotted over to me as soon as he noticed her.
“Is that who I think it is?” he asked worriedly.
“I’m afraid that’s exactly who you think it is, and the way my luck is running, she’s either here to kill someone or to force herself on me in the showers.”
Dan raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like there is a story I haven’t heard yet, but that can wait. What do you want us to do about it? Did you summon the rest of the guys?”
“She hasn’t really done anything yet, and we can’t go into combat mode with an audience like this. I’m afraid the next move is going to have to be hers.”
At that point most of the other players were heading for the locker room, and Coach Morton was headed my way, no doubt to tell me to get my head in the game. As it turned out, I was right, and the coach distracted me from watching the stands for a minute. When I looked back up, I saw to my horror that Morgan had walked over and introduced herself to the Rinaldis and my parents.
Quickly I adjusted my eyes and ears for greater acuteness. The introductions among the adults would have sounded mundane if I had not known the context, except for Morgan’s interesting explanation of her unorthodox style of dress. Morgan presented herself as a recent immigrant from the small European nation of Cymru. Within the group she was talking to, only my parents might have recognized Cymru as the Welsh name for Wales, but they didn’t seem to pick up on that. Morgan had a fifth-century Celtic accent that would not be recognizable even to my parents, despite their Welsh ancestry.