by W. C. Conner
I will try, Wil, but now is not the time. I will contact you when I am in a place that I can focus on the task.
With that, Caron closed her mind and concentrated on where the guards were taking her in the event she had to find her own way out at some future time.
All was dark and quiet in the room to which Caron had been confined following her confrontation with Styxis. She lay sleeping soundly after having spent more than two hours taking Wil on a visual tour of the area in which her seeing told her Styxis’s daughter was hidden. It was apparent that he was passing the information on to someone or something else, for he would often fade as he relayed the message to his ally, Gulak. In the end, Gulak, with her aid, narrowed the search to an area not very far from the fortress.
I sense the presence, but I can see nothing, she sent to Wil.
I can see what you are seeing, Caron, he replied. It is said that the best place to hide is often in plain sight. We will find what we seek. Of that I have no doubt.
A moon just past half full shone brightly into the room as she became conscious of something sitting on the edge of the bed, stroking her face softly. Her mind fought its way out of an uncharacteristic, gently erotic dream and her eyes flew open to find herself being sensually stroked by the creature which had carried her to Blackstone earlier that day.
She opened her mouth to speak, but he put his finger softly to her lips, stopping her voice with his touch. Use your mind only so we don’t waken the guards. They do not know I am here. He smiled knowingly. The dream was from me, he sent. It is what we do. Were you enjoying it?
No. I mean, yes. It... it was lovely, but... What are you doing in my room? she asked.
I came to give you pleasure. He removed his finger from her lips and looked longingly toward her eyes. I wish to lie with you, he said. I wish to pleasure you in return for the pleasure you gave me today.
Caron felt a rush of warmth in response to the overwhelming sensuality of the creature, but though she found him erotically attractive, she knew that she could never bring herself to knowingly share her body with him.
I’ll not deny that your beauty and your skills are without equal, she sent, but there must be more than the physical pleasure. There must be love with the pleasure.
The creature tilted its head and arched its brow in an inquisitive manner. Is this one of the perversions Styxis has warned us of? it asked.
She would consider it a perversion, Caron replied, for it is something she can never understand, something she will never have, and I pity her for that.
The creature waited silently, clearly wanting Caron to continue.
Our world has all the pleasures that you are made for, she sent, but we have love, also, which is more than pleasure alone. It is that which makes one from two, both during the physical pleasure and outside of it. She struggled to explain it such that he could understand. You and your brothers seem to think as one, she tried. It is much like that. The two who pleasure each another think as one, feel as one, want as one, dream as one.
That much I can understand, he replied. That two can feel as one as I do with my three brothers is a mystery that intrigues me. Your world must be a beautiful place with this “love” as well as colors.
His mind stopped the sensuous stroking of Caron’s mind which it had been doing the entire time, and a new feeling of almost childlike curiosity overtook the feelings coming from him. Tell me more of the colors, he said. I wish to learn more about them. It seems impossible that in your world color can be seen all the time. It must overwhelm the senses from the air.
Pity for this beautiful creature trapped in this hideous world filled her and she placed her hand on his. My name is Caron, she sent. When I feel close to someone as I do to you, I am more comfortable if I can call them by their proper names. Do you have a name I may address you by?
I have a name, he returned. Actually, we have a name, for the four of us are one, as you said. We are of one mind, one voice, one thought. You may call us Plaisir, for that is what we do.
Plaisir. A sensual name for a sensual creature, Caron thought, forgetting the creature could hear her unless she guarded her mind carefully.
Thank you. It is what we do, it responded.
How do I describe our world to you, Plaisir? she thought. She cast about in her mind, trying to find a common point of reference. Clouds in the sky outside the window gave her an inspiration. You have rain here, do you not?
Of course.
And if it rains during the day, do you not have rainbows?
If you mean the color arches, yes. But they are fleeting.
To be in my world during the day is like living in the rainbow all day. Everywhere you look there is color of one sort or another. There are also the grays you see here, but they are just part of the rainbow.
The creature was quiet for several moments as it absorbed Caron’s words. I wish to visit this world of yours, it sent. My brothers and I wish to see your world.
You have been kind to me, Caron sent after several moments of thought. If there was a way for you to enter my world, would you help me with a dangerous task?
The beautiful man that was Plaisir looked to the wall of the room as it talked with its brothers in its mind. To see a world filled with the colors of the color arches, we will help you, it sent at last to Caron. What is it you wish us to do?
I need you to help bring the wizard to me. He is traveling in this direction with Gulak and my heart misgives me when I think of him in the company of a demon.
That is a valid fear, Plaisir sent. Gulak is not to be trusted. Why is he traveling with Gulak?
It was Gulak that attacked the hut in which we were staying and kidnapped the wizard. The wizard has told me they have an alliance of some sort that has to do with kidnapping the baby in an attempt to overthrow Styxis.
Plaisir’s face registered the first true emotions Caron had seen on it other than curiosity and he appeared to commune with his siblings before rejoining her. Gulak must never get the child, Plaisir sent, surprising Caron with the depth of the emotion driving the thought. She is the key to a change in our world. Perhaps even a change that would allow some color into it.
Wil’s words spoken to her in the little hut before he had been kidnapped came back to her. “There is a hint of a spring that has never before been in this cursed place.”
She raised her eyes and looked full into Plaisir’s so that he could see the truth in hers. I’m certain the wizard means the baby no harm, she sent to the creature. He is her father.
47
Gulak’s army had bivouacked in a stand of twisted bushes tall enough and thick enough to hide them from anything on the ground or air. The demon had become more and more unpleasant the closer they got to Blackstone and Wil had been getting more and more uncomfortable with his situation. He knew at the outset that a demon would be an unreliable political partner at the very best, but he had hoped their overlapping goals would hold the alliance together long enough to accomplish what he had come for. Wil wanted his daughter and an end to Styxis’s ability to influence his world. Gulak wanted Styxis’s body and her throne. Wil had let him believe that there was a way he could make that happen without actually saying as much.
“Are you truly as powerful as she believes you to be?” Gulak had asked him in the cave before they departed.
“The powers I represent are possibly even more powerful than she believes them to be,” Wil had replied.
“Surely your power is not great enough to make the harridan desire me,” Gulak said, his doubt obvious in his expression.
“I have the power to control Styxis’s desire,” Wil answered honestly. What he didn’t say was that the only control he might have would involve the timing of her seduction of him.
It had been a long day of hard hiking through twisted and tangled undergrowth as Gulak’s army moved toward Styxis’s Blackstone. Now, beneath a thick bush at the edge of the bivouac area, Wil’s avatar lay exhausted on the ground, c
urled up to maintain his body heat in the late afternoon chill. In his state of half sleep, his mind drifted through the memories that were a component of the talisman from which a part of him was constructed. That part of the avatar that was Wil saw, heard, felt and reacted as Wil himself would since he was the sum of what Wil had been at the time he and Caron had crossed the boundary.
The darkness had been working to draw a noose around the Old Forest, of that there was no doubt. Wil was certain that once it had encircled the Forest it would close in upon itself like the drawstring of a bag with the goal of capturing his essence, of trapping his power within the Forest. Once it had drawn close enough to the center of the Forest, the resulting concentration of darkness would create a weak point between their worlds through which Styxis could send her minions to attack him. She would be able to exploit the weakened Forest to take him prisoner.
She was a demon in every way and incapable of love. But she was also a woman and thus was attracted to power, but not the mundane powers of physical strength or beauty or wealth or influence. None of those drew her to them as did the power of the raw magical potential in Wilton. His was the only power she had encountered in her thousands of millennia of existence that matched her own, and it had driven her nearly crazy with desire. This was the man she wanted by her side to serve her, to pleasure her, even to dominate her, though she would never admit that to herself, and that was what she had been working to make happen.
Wil had sensed all of that in the one brief meeting at the turning to Wrensfalls when he had seen her for the first time and been captured by her sensuous beauty and the power of her name during her intrusion into Caron’s mind. Although Styxis would never admit to herself that she would want Wil to dominate her, Wil was realistic enough to admit to himself that his carnal desire for this embodiment of evil would likely overwhelm him should he ever be taken before her in person. Wil knew there existed an obsessive tension between them that would produce only disaster if allowed release.
He knew that he could not allow her to dictate the manner of their meeting; a meeting that, because of the overwhelming attraction they exerted on one another, was as inevitable as the coming of morning. Thus he had planned and worked to gain the strategic high ground for the encounter that must happen.
Part of that plan required his essence near the margin of the Old Forest as a lure for the darkness, a point toward which it would flow, but the Forest would not allow him even halfway to its margin. So he had summoned Caron who, unknowing at that time, carried the spirit of their daughter yet within her. And he had brought their daughter forth from the woman he loved and given her spirit a place once again to be. He had brought forth a child to be his comfort and his companion, and he had brought her forth to help him in his battle with Styxis.
It had been Aimee, accompanied by the shade of Gleneagle, who he had sent to the spot at the edge of the Forest toward which the darkness had flowed. It had been that part of her essence born of his essence that had attracted the darkness to it. It had been her magnetism that had drawn the darkness to create a locus through which a connection could be made between the two worlds, a connection through which he could control the confrontation.
But now there were two daughters, one from each of the two women who controlled his life. Two daughters, the one born of the love he shared with Caron, the other born of the lust and machination of Styxis. Two daughters who shared both his essence and Caron’s essence, for this second daughter was the life-spark of the conjoining of Wil’s and Caron’s love that had been captured and given life by Styxis.
In a way, both daughters are Caron’s, Wil realized, yet neither is physically hers, for neither of them grew within her body.
As he pondered, Aimee’s face materialized in his mind.
I have already used one of my daughters in the setting of this trap for Styxis, he thought, and she is safe in the Old Forest with me, but this other one will never be safe unless I can contrive to get her out.
Oh, Caron, I find myself doing those things I always despised in wizards – manipulating, managing the truth, using those I love and those around me. Am I any better than Greyleige? I do it for the love of our world and for my love of you, but did not Greyleige start out with noble intentions also?
Even my presence here is a subterfuge, he thought, but you must not know that I planned not to return until you are safely home. Your safe escape will be easy, for it is part of my plan, but now I must find a way to have both you and our other daughter delivered safely to our world before Styxis can discover the fraud I am here to commit.
His half sleep turned into a dream in which he looked up to find the demon standing over him.
“A shame,” the demon said, smiling down at the wizard. “Dead of a broken skull, and just as we were becoming such good friends.” He kicked at the body and laughed. “Oh, did I forget to thank you for finding the demon’s spawn for me?” Breaking into great peals of laughter, he looked at the troll who had struck Wil from behind and jerked his thumb in Wil’s direction.
“Bury him,” he ordered.
Wil’s avatar shuddered and forced itself awake as the four armed troll reached for it. Gulak stood at the other side of the opening, communing with the troll who had been reaching for him in his dream. He shifted his eyes toward Wil from time to time, a cunning smile on his strange reptilian lips. As they finished talking, the troll snapped a crisp salute and strode away from Gulak as the demon turned and summoned Wil.
The avatar’s corporeal body was now standing hidden behind one of the thick bushes as he projected an image of himself to the demon who waited for him with his arms akimbo as if he was a parent awaiting an errant child. To Gulak, it appeared as if Wil arose from where he had been sleeping beneath a bush and walked hesitantly to him. As Wil stopped before him and looked up, Gulak nodded his head.
Wil watched as the events of his dream replayed themselves, but this time the troll’s club passed through the head of the projection. Gulak scowled as the projection evaporated, then turned toward a new image of the avatar as it rose to its feet once again from under the bush.
“I’m getting the feeling you’re not entirely reliable as an ally,” the image said wryly.
“I was just testing you,” Gulak said, swallowing in his nervousness and surprise.
“Did I pass?” Wil’s image asked. As he awaited a reply, he sensed the presence once again of the troll who had attempted to take his head off with its club. He smiled at Gulak as this second projected image evaporated as well, leaving the troll swinging the club through empty air one more time.
“That’s it,” Wil’s voice said from the air beside Gulak’s ear, “I’m calling our partnership off.”
“Wait,” Gulak said, circling as if trying to determine where Wil was hiding. “I was just testing to see if you were as powerful as you said you were. I’m willing to accept that you’re able to do what you said you could.”
The demon jumped visibly as another image of the avatar appeared less than two feet in front of his face. “I don’t believe you,” Wil’s image said. “I go my own way from this point, Gulak. We can see Blackstone from here. Based on the information Caron had me pass along to you, I believe I can find my daughter on my own.”
At that, Gulak looked past his shoulder and smiled. “You’re too late, wizard.” He turned and headed for a break in the growth in which they were sheltered. “My troops have surrounded the place of her concealment. It is only a matter of moments before she is mine.”
Wil’s image faded as the demon walked through the break to end up standing beside him where he had actually been all during the attack upon his projections. In the late afternoon light, the dim figures of the troll army that had accompanied them surrounded a large empty circle on the slope before them. Almost immediately, a flash of red energy exploded at the center of the circle and raced outward and upwards, etching clearly the shape of a large circular building. As the crackling energy crawled up the walls
, that part it had burned over stood revealed.
Wil knew now why Caron had been able to sense but not see the baby; it and the building in which it was hidden had been invisible.
At the look of surprise on the avatar’s face, Gulak chuckled. “I’ve got the power now, wizard,” he said. “If you want your precious daughter, you will help me pull Styxis off her throne and into my bed.”
The avatar hung his head in defeat. Caron, he thought, if you can hear me, I need your help.
In the center of the Old Forest, Wil paced back and forth in the cottage. Even though it was invisible, he could feel the weight of his phantom left arm as it swung uselessly while he walked and turned, walked and turned. The dark circles beneath his eyes hinted at the tension and sleeplessness he had experienced as he tracked the progress of Caron and the avatar.
He knew now what it was like to be a general watching a battle unfold from afar, unable to do anything to affect the action, and chafing under the frustration of it.
Aimee sat in the same chair at the little table in the kitchen that had been her mother’s when she was there. The spoon in her hand moved dutifully back and forth between the bowl and her mouth as she watched her father pacing.
Even though he knew the Forest would never have allowed him to go with Caron, he blamed himself for the danger in which she found herself. I shouldn’t have sent you, my love, he thought as he paced. I have placed you in a danger I should have taken on myself.
He broke into a nervous sweat as he watched his avatar struggling with the demon, then laughed aloud at the avatar’s creative illusions in the face of Gulak’s treachery. “Oh, well done!” he shouted as the second projection confounded Gulak’s assassin.
Aimee’s large gray eyes looked up at her father in curiosity. He grabbed her up with his good arm and twirled her around the floor. “We will be able to do this yet, my sweet,” he said, beaming into her beautiful little face. “Your brave and clever mother and her companion will finish what you made possible.”