Spell of Intrigue | Page 8

draw
deliberately on the link had primarily revealed that where magic was
concerned I had deep reservoirs of total incompetence whose surfaces I
had barely begun to scratch. There was one thing I could do, though,
that fell in my own department. Rather than merely glower at the
woman by the door, or let my jaw assume its practiced wide-open
position on my chest, I forced my face into something approaching a
sarcastic grin. I figured the effect was less than completely successful
on the sarcasm front, but I was hoping the subtle element of mockery I
was aiming for would balance that out.
After a moment whose true length I wouldn't have ventured to guess,
the eyes across the room narrowed. Her fingers folded inward as the
tortured air in her hands rippled and became clear. The pressure against
my body eased. "So," she remarked. Her voice had the tenor of a violin
string plucked with a pick of broken glass, smooth and lyrical above a
whiplash spike.
I kept my grin from widening with relief; this had probably been only
the starter. "So," I said also, for good measure.
"'So?' All you can say is 'So?' I'd have thought better of you, you,
always so proud of your reputation for having the perfect thing to say at
the right time. Or do I still hold that much of a spell over you?" She
tilted her head up and to one side and chuckled, but her chuckle held a
disturbing hint of some nasty joke in it, barely contained.
"My reputation is occasionally expanded in the telling," I temporized.
As far as I knew, I had never seen her before in my life.

"In a way." said the woman, "I suppose this was the perfect refuge for
you. I'm almost embarrassed how long it took to track you down."
That's what she said, but she didn't look embarrassed at all.
"Really," I said. "How nice. I'm sorry I put you to so much trouble. To
what exactly do I owe the honor of all that effort, as well as the
pleasure of your visit?"
"Now that I see you I'd know you anywhere," she said musingly. "Even
if you do have a different body, even if you are hiding out in a rattrap
room in a flea-infested town. Scarcely your style at all, which is, of
course, the beauty of it. I can even understand your not giving me a
proper greeting. Rest assured, though, my dear, certain things can
survive any number of new bodies. Come over here and kiss me."
I tried to keep the gagging feeling in my throat from becoming loud
enough to be heard across the room. "Don't you think that should
wait?" I said instead, hoping I didn't sound too much like a drowning
frog.
She scowled. It was a mean scowl. I was glad it wasn't directed at me,
only at whoever she thought I was. I was only sorry that whoever that
really was didn't happen to be around at the moment. "Very well," she
said finally. "So that's the way you're going to be about it. I would have
thought you would let yourself unbend that far, but then again, I do
know you, so perhaps not. Nevertheless," and the scowl crawled again
toward her equally nasty grin, "I am still your wife."
"How are you feeling?" said Jurtan Mont.
"When one considers the alternatives," said Zalzyn Shaa, "not too bad."
He plopped down to sit on a convenient rock. "After all, look around
us." A sweep of his arm took in the shrub-covered hillside, the neat
patches of farmland falling away from them in long cultivated waves,
the low gorge of the River Oolvaan and the beginnings of the
mountains beyond, and, slightly downstream to their right, the sprawl
and bustle of Roosing Oolvaya.

"Yeah," said Mont, following Shaa's gesture, "what?"
"Come now. Surely you have more of an aesthetic sense than that. Or
have I been wasting my time on a toad?"
Mont dropped the sack containing the herbs Shaa had been collecting
next to the rock and lowered himself to the ground. "Okay, it's a nice
view, but what does that have to do with how your heart is?"
"If one is going to push one's limits," Shaa said sagely, "one might as
well do it where there's something pleasant to look at. If one's limits
obligingly retreat, then the pleasant vista can serve as sufficient instant
gratification for attempting the exercise in the first place. Even if the
limits remain in force, one can at least console oneself with the thought
that one might easily not have anything to look at at all, pleasant or
otherwise."
"So you've got more energy?" Shaa had set a fairly brisk pace