Legacy of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [95]
“How did you know it wasn’t Gwendolyn? Could you see through the disguise?”
“Their disguises are not easy to penetrate. They overplayed their hand by having the woman use magic. In all the time we have kept watch on Joram, I’ve never seen Gwen rely on Life. Not even when she’s alone. Eliza noticed and thought it was odd, but she was too willing to believe it was her mother to question it. Then, I saw Joram’s injuries. I know it was more serious than they let on.”
“Why did she abandon the disguise?”
“It takes a great deal of magical energy to maintain the illusion. She could not expend the energy necessary and fight me at the same time, which is why I attacked her.”
“If you had been wrong?” I hinted.
“But I wasn’t. If I had been, however, and it really was Gwen, then I would have had a chance of rescuing her.”
“Do you believe that the Technomancers have her prisoner?”
“I would say yes, since they were able to create such a realistic illusion. On the other hand, I would say no, since Smythe didn’t mention her as one of the hostages.”
“But what else could have happened to her?”
Mosiah shook his head. Either he didn’t know or he wasn’t saying.
I tried another question. “That thing you called a stasis mine. What was that?”
“If one of us had stepped on it, it would have trapped us all in a stasis field. We could not have moved until the Technomancers released us.”
I hesitated to ask my next question, because I feared his answer. Finally, I ventured, “What if this experience is not real—a hallucination. Maybe they’re controlling our minds.”
“If that is true,” he said with a wry smile, “and they are controlling our minds, then I doubt if they would permit your mind to consider the possibility. The Technomancers may be responsible for this, though I can’t fathom why they would want to send us to another time when they so clearly had us where they wanted us in the last one.”
He was silent a moment, then said quietly, “There were those who once practiced the Mystery of Time upon Thimhallan. The Diviners.”
“Yes, but they perished during the Iron Wars,” I pointed out. “Their kind was never seen or heard of after that.”
“True. Well, we must keep our eyes and ears open and see if we can solve this mystery. Joram is dead.” Mosiah pondered. “What would Thimhallan have been like if Joram had died at the hands of the Executioner? If Joram had died before he destroyed the Well of Life and released the magic? I wonder. . . “
He retreated into his own thoughts, fell back a pace or two behind me to indicate that he wanted to be alone. I was intent on my thoughts for a moment or two and then I noticed that Eliza was glancing at me out of the corner of her eye and that, by her smile, she seemed to invite me to come walk beside her.
My heartbeat quickened. I drew near her. With a small gesture toward Scylla’s armored back, to enjoin silence, Eliza began to sign to me. It amused me to find that my language of the hands— a poor second to a voice—was becoming a language of intrigue and secrecy.
“I arn sorry for my part in our quarrel last night,” Eliza signed to me. “Will you forgive me, Reuven?”
I knew well the quarrel she meant, though I could not have said that a second ago. As words or images will trigger memories of a dream, so her reference brought the entire scene to me, only much more real than any dream. It was not a dream. It had happened—at least in this here and now, it had happened.
Perhaps it was the influence of the magical Life flowing through my veins, but my other self—the self of Earth—was rapidly fading into the background.
“There is nothing to forgive, my dear one,” I signed in return.
I looked at her, the sun glistening on her black curls, the golden shimmer of her crown, the dappled sunlight now sparkling on her jewels, the shadows of the trees now gliding over her, dimming all light