The Magic of Recluce - L. E. Modesitt [97]
I tried to cast my thoughts, like my senses, toward the figure next to me.
White!
A white fog that curled around me so tightly that I couldn’t see. I couldn’t speak—trapped somewhere in nothingness; a nothingness bright enough to burn my thoughts.
Answers…answers…answers…The words echoed without sound through my head, but I could not speak, could not see.
Was I standing? I couldn’t even see my arms, or move, or even feel whether my muscles could move.
Justen? What had he done? Why?
…answers…answers…answers…
In the white fog, that mind-blinding light, were shafts of yellow, red, blue, violet—all spearing me, slashing at one thought, then another.
…answers…answers…answers…
Finally, I remembered what he had said about insisting that I was myself. But had that been a trick also? Another way to gain my confidence? To catch me in a web of white?
…answers…
Was Justen really the one who needed the new body? Why had I trusted him?
I…am…me…me…
Had the white retreated a shade, become not so blinding?
…answers…
I…am…me…me…Lerris…Lerris…
I kept thinking the words, repeating them until I felt myself come together somehow. I…am…Lerris…Lerris…
“…Lerris…” The words stumbled from my mouth as I crashed to the floor of the wayfarers’ hut.
Thud…
This time, blackness reached out and grabbed me.
When I woke, I was still lying in a heap on the dusty clay, and it was well past midday.
My head felt as though each of the colored light-spears had ripped through it trailing barbed hooks, and my tongue was swollen, my mouth dry. Still, I slowly eased myself into a sitting position, wondering what had become of Justen.
I looked over to the bench.
“Oh…”
The gray wizard lay there, his hair thin and silver, wrinkles across his face; he was breathing unevenly. I glanced at my own hands, but they were still mine, if shaking.
My legs wobbled as I half-stumbled, half-crawled to Justen’s pack and fumbled out the red pouch. When I grasped my staff to help me stand, the reassurance from the wood helped, and I tottered out and toward the brook.
Wheee…eeeee…Only Gairloch whinnied, but Rosefoot raised her head as well, and both watched me as I filled the kettle, trying not to feel like each chill northern gust would topple me into the water.
Justen was still breathing, but still old, and unconscious, as I rebuilt the fire and heated the water.
Whatever the potion was that smelted like senthow, it killed my shakes and returned me to the realm of the living—the tired living. Then I eased a drop or two onto Justen’s dried lips.
“Oooo…” His eyelids fluttered.
Another few drops, and he was able to swallow.
In time he croaked, “…some stew…the blue pouch…”
So I made that. This time, hearing my steps to and from the brook, neither pony even lifted a head from grazing.
After a mouthful of stew, which despite its blue tinge tasted like a venison pie, I looked at Justen. “Did you have to show me so convincingly?”
He shook his head slowly. “Strength rises to strength. If I had really tried to take you over, not just isolate you, one of us would be dead.” Some of the silver hairs had darkened and his hair seemed thicker. A few wrinkles had eased, and the gray wizard merely looked old, rather than ancient. “Did you learn?”
“Uhhh…” I thought for a moment. What had I learned? “I think so. That wanting something badly can let someone else enter your thoughts or body…”
“Just your thoughts. Once they control your thoughts, the body comes next.”
I shivered. “Would I have stayed in that white forever?”
“For a long time. An isolated personality dies over time, or goes mad and then dies. The white wizards don’t talk about it, but it takes several years, and I once did restore someone. He avoided me thereafter.” Justen took another sip of the tea, followed by the stew.
“Does insisting on being yourself hold off that whiteness if you realize it soon enough?”
Justen frowned. “That depends on the wizard. With someone like Antonin, you have to reject his temptations from the first. Give him the slightest edge, and he’ll manipulate your emotions