“Guinalle.” Temar’s voice was choked with tears and he reached for her. The look of consternation she gave him cut him like a knife.
“Who are you?” she asked, suddenly wary, drawing away unconsciously. “What do you want with me?”
“It’s me, Temar.” He did not understand this, why did she not recognize him?
“D’Alsennin has somehow been revived within the body of one of our companions,” Livak spoke to Guinalle, forcing herself to speak slowly and clearly, sparing Temar only a fleeting look of naked hatred. “That sword has something to do with it, I don’t fully understand how. You must send Temar back to himself and pray to Arimelin that our friend survives unharmed!”
Guinalle was rubbing her eyes, as if she sought to wipe away the lingering effects of her long enchantment. Raising her head, she studied Temar closely, frowning.
“Yes, I see it now—the eyes, the gestures, all that I know, but the face, the body, no wonder I did not recognize you, Temar.”
“What are you saying?” Now it was his turn to retreat in instinctive defense. “I know I am somewhat changed, but the enchantment—”
“Look at me.” Guinalle studied his eyes and he saw wonder in her face. “Look at your hands,” she said, “feel your hair.” She reached to run her fingers through the tight curls.
“What are you doing?” Temar snapped, “don’t you know me?”
“I know you, Temar D’Alsennin, none better, but not in this guise,” Guinalle said with a touch of her old manner. “You must let this man return, and go back to your sleep until we can revive you properly. You have fought the Artifice and twisted it, broken through it to invade an innocent man’s mind and steal his body! That was never intended.”
Temar could not meet her gaze. He looked back down at his hands to see those tanned and scratched artisan’s fingers instead of the thin aristocratic hands of a nobleman, the sapphire seal ring of his house missing. Fear clutched at him, his own cowardice appalling him.
“I can’t, I can’t go through that again,” he whispered, remembering the sickening, smothering sensation, the feeling of drowning, of choking, the soft claws of enchantment stealing his mind away. “I can’t do it, don’t ask it of me!”
“So will you stay as a thief in this man’s body?” Guinalle’s hazel eyes were hard in the unearthly green light, her tone uncompromising. “Where will you go? There will be no place on either side of the ocean for the abomination you will have become!”
Temar gasped under the lash of her words and tears started to his eyes. “How can you say that?”
Guinalle rose cautiously to her feet and held out her hand. “Come with me, whoever you are.”
She picked her way unsteadily through the rows of silent sleepers, the strangers who had accompanied Temar to this place following at a distance, the red-haired woman fumbling in a belt-pouch, face dangerous as she rested her other hand on a dagger at her belt. Guinalle came to a lone figure by a hollow, laid out on its back, hands meeting on its chest, fingers circled around empty air. Temar looked down at himself, at his lean, angular face, bloodless lips, thin black brows startling against the pallor of his skin, harsh lines above closed, blind eyes.
“We brought you down here after we wrought the Artifice,” murmured Guinalle, eyes distant. “Vahil took your sword, he and Den Fellaemion bade me farewell, and then I laid myself down to sleep with you all.” She gazed around the cavern and sighed. “I felt so alone, so very alone.”
“I’m here now,” Temar blinked away angry tears.
“No, you’re not, you’re no more than an evil dream tormenting this man. You cannot live in his body without both of you going mad.” Guinalle shook her head with absolute conviction. “Temar, listen to me, trust me. You must go back under the bonds of the Artifice until I can return you to yourself.”
“I won’t! I can’t!” shouted Temar. “How can you ask that of me?” He seized her, rage filling him, struggling with a furious impulse to shake some understanding into her.
“For the sake of the love we once shared,” replied Guinalle softly as the echoes of his outburst died away. “This isn’t you, Temar, is it?”
Temar stared at her aghast and then at the strange hands he was using to clutch Guinalle’s shoulders, his own familiar hands empty and still beside them. A sudden howling fury rang silently through his head, an enraged demand for release hammering against the inside of his skull, sending his senses reeling, blinded, deafened. The moment passed but he staggered under its impact.
“I can’t face the darkness again,” he pleaded, unable to help himself.
“Trust me.” Guinalle laid her cool hands on his temples and the pain coursing through his head eased a little.
“Place the sword back in your own hands,” she said calmly. “It’s going to be all right, my dearest.” Her eyes left Temar’s for an instant, to convey her reassurances to the silent knot of strangers watching, still, intent.
Temar unbuckled the sword with clumsy fingers, sliding it into the unfeeling hands of the body that had once been his. Weakness overcame him again and he knelt, all strength in his legs deserting him as Guinalle began a low-voiced incantation, her own voice roughened with tears.
The scream of terror and desolation that ripped from his throat set Temar’s blood racing in his veins, but as he tried blindly to climb to his feet he pitched forward—and knew no more.
Kel Ar’Ayen,
43rd of Aft-Summer
I came to myself lying across a body that was as cold and immobile as stone. Pushing myself backward in horror, I found I was as weak as a half-drowned kitten and able to make about as much sense as I struggled to speak. I gasped and hugged my arms to myself, nausea surging up within me, threatening to choke me. A flush like sudden fever left me sweating and dizzy, head ringing like a new-struck bell. I swallowed on a throat ripped raw by the screams of another man’s anguish.
“Hush, let me,” Livak was at my side, dragging me away, to prop me sitting against the rough wall of the cave. She knelt before me and gripped my shoulders with both hands, staring deep into my eyes. “Ryshad?”
I nodded and she held me tight, burying her face in my neck where I felt her hot tears of relief. I wrapped my own arms around her, feebly at first then with growing strength. The urge to vomit passed and I felt the sweat cooling on my body in the dimness of the cavern.
“Are you all right?” I recognized Guinalle at once, but where I had always heard her voice clear and comprehensible in my dreams now I found it hard to understand her slow and lilting words.
“I am, thank you.” I nodded as best I could with Livak’s red hair half smothering me.
“Do you remember…” Guinalle began hesitantly.
I raised a hand to silence her. “Yes,” I replied curtly. “No matter, I don’t want to speak of it.”
She managed a half-smile of guilty relief and turned to Temar. Disentangling myself from Livak’s embrace, I managed to get to my feet and looked down on the physical body of the man I’d spent so long struggling against inside my head. Livak came to join me, wrapping an arm around my waist as she tucked herself under my arm. Temar looked very young and I realized with an overwhelming relief that I was free of his uncertainties, his ill-governed emotions, all the ills of youth that I had thought I had left behind long since. Not that this whole foul experience hadn’t left me with a few quandaries of my own, but I would address them in my own time, I decided. For the present, it was enough to know I was sole master of my own head once more.
Guinalle laid a fond hand on Temar’s waxen forehead and I shivered as unseen fingers touched my own skin in a shadowy echo.
“Are you all right?” Livak moved to look at me, face concerned, and as she did so her foot knocked against a dagger on the floor. I recognized it as hers and reached down to pick it up.