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By Root 1612 0

the theory is sound, the result is disappointing. Her first child is so like her that its father-species can’t even see it. The second is the same. The third is apparent to them, but can find no common language with which to communicate. Again and again she tries, using those creatures that approach her resting place as templates for her experiments. She gives birth to children so like herself that they share her own limitations, and to children so like their fathers that they lackthe abilityto see her at all,andto dozens who have qualities of both, but never in the correct proportion. She gives them the abilityto alterperception, so that they can bridge the vast conceptual gap between their parent races, but the ones who arestrongest in that areahave no realunderstanding of what sheis, or why they have been born. Still she tries, over and over, each time new material makes its way to her domain, hoping against hope that someday the right combination will be found....

And it has been found, but not as she had imagined Not in the soul of one child but in the presence of many, each one interpreting for the brothers most like him, taking her memories and her hopes andher fears andclothing them in aframework of alienunderstanding—of human understanding—untilat last, in the brain of adying sorcerer, they aretranslatedso that men might comprehend them—

He pushed himself up onto his elbows and stared toward Shaitan’s peak. The mother of the Iezu had completely enveloped Gerald Tarrant’s body. Images played along her surface and throughout her substance, human and alien both. Stars, faces, mists and darkness, color and light and a thousand shapes without form or name. An attempt at some kind of visual language? Or perhaps simply the reflections of all the humans she had courted, as she plucked from each a single strand of consciousness to guide her procreative efforts.

He looked at Karril, kneeling by his side, and saw in the Iezu’s expression such unadulterated shock that only one interpretation was possible. He didn‘tknow. None of them knew

“You’re human,” Damien whispered. The words made his throat burn.

The Iezu nodded slowly. “Half,” he agreed, in a voice that trembled with awe. “And half...” He looked up at the mother. “Something else.”

And then suddenly, with frightening clarity, Damien saw the last image again. This time the detail that had almost escaped him didn’t.

... in the brain of a dying sorcerer ...

He struggled to his knees; the motion set off a fit of coughing so violent that it almost knocked him down again. But that wasn’t going to stop him. The living circuit the Iezu mother had described was clearly using a man’s brain for its receiver, and since that wasn’t him and there was only one other man present—

“He’s alive?” He struggled to his feet as he gasped the question, and started to stagger toward Tarrant. “I felt him die!”

A hand grabbed his arm and pulled him back, roughly enough that he nearly fell. “And so he did. Does your kind never start up a man’s heart once again, after it falters? Is the brink of death such an absolute place that no human soul is ever rescued from it?” Damien tried to pull loose from him, but the demon (no, not a demon, something strange and alien and terrible and wonderful, but not a demon) wouldn’t let go. “Don‘t,” Karril warned. “She saved him for her purposes, not yours. If you get in her way now, there’s no telling what she’ll do.”

“So she can use him as a translating device? Is that her purpose?”

The Iezu shook his head. “She doesn’t need him for that. Now that she understands the pattern, and her children know how to help her, any human will do.”

“What, then?” He stared up at the mother’s fluid form, trying to catch some glimpse of the man inside it. “What does she want him for?”

The Iezu turned his attention to the creature as well, and for a long moment said nothing. Damien saw that many of the other Iezu had gathered near the mother, as if to intensify their bond.

“She says that he killed her child.” Karril found the words with effort; clearly the Iezu bond