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4-.

t.

"No deal," 1 said at once, immediately feeling better as soon as I saw it was willing to d.i.c.ker. "My friends and I axe traveling together for a purpose, one which will be mined if one of them is lost. Leaving two would be like leaving them all."

"You are very exasperating," me thing accused, this time glaring at me. "Very well, I will release two, but that is my final offer. I would sooner be destroyed than give up die nourishment my mates require, nourishment they're unable to get for themselves. Take two or destroy us, and (hat's my final word on the matter!"

The thing lay there glaring at me, showing me my own face set in lines of determination, and suddenly I didn't blow what to do. The creature wasn't bluffing or lying, 1 knew beyond all doubt that it wasn't, and a really horrible thought had come to me. As far as the quest was con- cerned I only needed two of the people who were caught.

exactly what the thing was offering. If I took those two and continued on the trail, we would very likely make it all the way to where the stone was being kept; if I tried to nuke a fight of it, I could conceivably lose all three.

- That's the reason I'm along, Rik had said. To give my life if that will mean saving one w more of the rest of you.

Laciel, child, this isn't a friendly *compet.i.tion, Graythor lad said. You can't let your personal feelings get in the way.

I will release two, the creature had said, but that's my final offer.

I turned to my left and looked up at the bronze-eyed man standing not far from me, the man who was mistaken when he said he loved me. If I'd asked him he would have insisted that I sacrifice him, leave him as payment for two other, more important lives, that one life wasn't worth losing millions for. 1 could have countered the claim by saying that if one life is worth zero, multiplying it by a million does nothing more than add additional zeroes, and . if a million lives are worth dying for, so is one life- The if contention wasn't original with me, but it so happened I

- believed it; if one of us died trying, the loss would be "painful but acceptable; to bargain away the life of one in

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exchange for two others, to let a life be thrown away, was not,

If I'd been silly enough to love Rik, 1 probably would have been silly enough to do as he'd asked.

"Well?" the creature demanded, impatience heavy in its voice. "Haven't you made up your mind yet?"

"As a matter of fact I have," I answered, turning back to stare into my own face. It looked different from the way I was used to seeing it, but mat was because I was used to seeing a mirror image, not a duplication. It wasn't me lying there on the ground, I was the one standing up, and even if everyone else in the universe was confused, I wasn't. "My decision is that we do it my way, whether you like it or not.''

1 didn't even have to move to touch one hand to Rik and the other to Su, Kadrim linked in on the other side of Su by the hand he'd closed around her arm just before I'd frozen them. When the relay was complete 1 activated my defenses, and if my three companions hadn't been frozen they would have screamed at the surge of angry blue sparks. The creature in front of me did scream, me same sound Rik had made the night he'd accidentally touched me, and then my three companions were falling to the ground, and there were no longer three other humans to be seen. Instantly I cut the flow and warded us all com- pletely, then began to try repairing the damage I had so deliberately done.

It didn't take as long as I thought it would to restore the three to pain-free consciousness, and when I saw mat they were all right except for being disoriented, I turned back to the creature. It bothered me that its short, ugly body was still quivering in pain, but when I soothed the pain away its agitation didn't disappear as well.

"How did you do that?" it demanded hoa.r.s.ely, still using my voice. "How did you steal my mates' nourish- ment from me?"

"I didn't steal anything," ! corrected the accusing look in the flat black eyes. "I won back what was mine to begin with, using one of my magical defenses. You told me yourself that you were linked to their minds, so 1 used

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their minds to reach through to you. The only way for you to stop the pain was to release them, which was just what i was waiting for. They're ail free now, and you won't get them back again."

"I truly dislike beings with such great magical strength,"

it spat, disgust and accusation coloring its voice. "Take your friends and leave here now. I wish to be alone to decide which of my mates is to supply nourishment for the rest."

"Why don't you put that decision off for a while?" I asked, then spoke the spell that created half a carca.s.s of meat in front of each of me creatures. The two big ones and three small ones fell on the meat as though they were starving, but the medium-sized one looked up from its carca.s.s to stare at me.

"You were able to offer this in exchange, and yet you still fought?" it asked, bewilderment now covering every- thing else. "And now, with victory indisputably yours, you supply nourishment when you no longer have to? The reasoning behind these things is totally beyond me."

"And I'm afraid I can't explain it," I said, reflecting that to say I'd never bought the safety of any of my pack would be worse than saying nothing at all. "All I can do is wish you and yours well, and caution you to finish as much of that meat as quickly as possible. Once I leave this world, whatever's left will cease to be."

"But whatever was used will remain as used," it agreed, not quite nodding. "Only what remains untouched and unchanged will vanish. I'm familiar with the rule, but I don't understand it either."

"Maybe some day, when I have more time, I'll return and explain it to you," I said, wondering with faint amuse- ment if I was fated to spend the rest of my life lecturing people on magic. "Until that time, I bid you farewell."

"And 1 you," the creature answered, then gave all its attention to the meat in front of it. As dagger teeth tore into the carca.s.s with pleasure I turned away, and found three people up on their feet, waiting for me.

"Don't any of you try outdistancing that warding," I ^ warned them. pleased to see them looking normal again.

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"I've heard other singers in this area, and if you come in range of them you'll be taken again."

"As we were taken this time," Kadrim said, rubbing at one broad shoulder as he looked down at me. "Clearly we should not have left the area of protection you provided, no matter how great we fancied our combined blade-skill to be."

"Which brings up the question of just why you did leave." Rik interposed, giving a regretful Kadrim and a rueful Su his best stem look. "Did it slip your mind that we were all supposed to stay together?"

"Thought it might be a good idea to take a walk when I saw you starting to wake Laciel," Su told him with a small shrug while Kadrim examined the rock formations around us. "Kadrim came along to help me keep an eye on-other things."

"Oh," Rik answered with all me sternness gone, his glance to me just short of the blushing mark. It had been his messing around that had put Su and Kadrim in jeop- ardy, he thought, and the idea wasn't an easy one to accept.

"Maybe I ought to campaign for the job of leader after all," 1 mused, looking at none of them but seeing Rik's continuing upset out of the corner of my eye. "Just to keep everyone in line, you understand. Of course, you'll all have to overlook the fact that I would have banished the warding as soon as we got moving again, which would have made all of you immediately vulnerable- That would have been only a small mistake, though, and everyone's ent.i.tled to a small mistake."

"Only if they don't have other people's lives depending on them," Rik came back, understanding the point 1 was trying to make but refusing to accept it. "We'd better get back to see if Dranna and Zail are all right.''

We all realized that the stiff-necked imbecile was right to remind us that there were two more members of our party whom we'd forgotten about, so we headed back to our campsite as fast as possible. If Zail and Dranna had awakened and decided to come looking for us, I didn't even want to think about what probably had happened to them.

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To our great relief, nothing had happened to them.

When they saw us they started to come forward to meet us, but we waved them back to keep them within the warding, then sat down and explained what the problem was. All three of the former victims spoke about the unbelievably beautiful music they'd heard just before their memories faded out, and I was very pleased to see that they didn't remember anything beyond that. With visions of their loved ones in front of them they would have gone happily to be consumed, and would never have known it was happening. It was a sour joke that Rik would have gone to someone he really hated, but at that point I was the only one who could appreciate the humor in it.

In turn we were told that Zail had wanted to go looking for all of us when he woke to find us missing, but Dranna had had a bad feeling about that world and hadn't been able to force herself to leave the campsite-or to let Zail leave her alone. We all decided aloud that it was a d.a.m.ned good thing at least one of us had more brains than raw courage, and since we weren't Joking, Dranna was pleased.

Everyone else had a second meal while I had my first, and then, after I had warded everyone individually, we went on our way. InThig caught up to us just before the next gate, and told us that the life forms on that world appeared to be harmless. It was clear the demon couldn't hear the "music" any more than I could, and after we all stopped laughing I took a minute to explain what was so funny.

I suppose that mat was the point in time most easily pointed to as when things stopped being funny. We went through a series of worlds after that which I most enjoy remembering as a long string of blurs: the place where me least sound was magnified a thousand times, the place where the planet itself was alive and hungry, the place where the very sunlight and air were painful, the place where living things lay still and unanimated, and only the dead were awake and moving about. That was where Kadrim did most of the fighting, the native "zombies"