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Whhhhstttt!

The heat seared around me, but I deflected it, letting the white flame sheet around me. I took a single step toward her.

Wwhhhssstttt!

Another step carried me through and past her firebolt.

Whhhsssttt!

Moving as though through glue or old varnish, I managed another long step.

She backed up almost to the hearth.

Whhsttt!

A knife—another one of the bronze blades—appeared in her hand. “Touch me and you lose her!”

I stopped.

She lifted the knife and reversed it.

I threw all the order I had left in me at the knife, trying to order the copper and tin, bend it away from chaos.

“Ohhhhhhhh…”

The muscles in her arms stood out as she tried to bring the knife toward her body. I staggered toward her, pouring all the order-feelings I could toward her.

“Ugffff…”

Clank…

Her legs bent, then buckled as she collapsed against a chair and bounced onto the floor.

I half-walked, half-dragged myself across the white marble squares, toward the doll-like figure sprawled between the white-oak table and the hearth.

After kneeling on one knee, I turned her face up. The slash across her fair neck was more burn than cut, ugly as it looked, although the blood didn’t help appearances much.

I left it alone, afraid that any more order-meddling was dangerous, at least until I gathered my own thoughts and strength back.

A quick look toward the white wizard showed me but a heap of white ashes. Even as I watched, the white ash turned to dust, and the dust vanished into the white haze that still filled the castle. Only the white robes and matching white boots remained upon the white tiles of the floor.

I looked back at the unconscious Sephya, noting the slight build, the reddish tinge of hair beginning to replace the black.

My stomach twisted, even as I gathered my last energies to break another mental lock—this time, the one Antonin had provided for the woman who had tried to keep eternal youth by letting Antonin’s promises ensnare another near-innocent from Recluce.

I had guessed but not known what had been done to her, not as Sephya, but as another soul trapped in Antonin’s web. In a way both Sephya and Tamra had been trapped. Yet Sephya had agreed, knowing that Tamra would in time wither away under Sephya’s personality as reinforced by Antonin. The white wizard had not lied, exactly; rather, he let Tamra think she was about to learn how to control the powers she had always been denied. Tamra would not have known that Sephya would control her body.

Thanks to Talryn and Recluce, Tamra had never learned, just as I had not learned, that she already possessed that power all along. Except Tamra had refused to accept her power, insisting that someone else declare her worthy; while I had kept asking for the reasons, instead of acting, and the reasons had nearly become an excuse for not acting.

I took a deep breath, knowing what had to be done before I lost my nerve as I feared my father had.

“Lerris, you can’t do that!”

I ignored the caution from somewhere far away, too far away for me to worry about as I looked into the closed eyes of the slim, red-headed figure. Tears were streaming down my face, but they, too, were distant from what had to be done. If I had listened…but that was another question, and we all choose our own demon-inhabited hells.

One deep breath, and I plunged, deep into the darkness, away from the swirls of my own thoughts, away from the crumpled clothes that were all which remained of the white wizard upon the floor of his about-to-crumble fortress and palace.

Call the depths of the mind white darkness, the chaos that preceded chaos. Call them what you will, but they are chaos, a chaos so formless that it cannot bear description.

First, to find within that chaos the patterns that were, that had been. What those patterns really were, I did not try to discover, for that would have been yet another rape. Instead, as I discovered, touched, each gossamer thread, I restored it, not reading it, or the joys, tears, anger or boredom it held, but replacing it as it had been before Antonin had changed Tamra’s temple