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Authors: Darrell Schweitzer
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else he is waiting for some slip, the slightest excuseto execute you.”
“But why, Eminence, do you care what happens to me, when you wanted me smothered?”
“Even I can be wrong, can’t I? If I am to teach you anything, and I guess I shall, since there is nothing else for me to do in these last moments of my life—no, I don’t expect to escape him for very long either—I suppose the first thing I should explain is that there are two kinds ofmagic in the world: shallow magic, and deep magic. Everything I do is shallow magic. Mostly tricks, illusions, maybe a short-term prophecy, that sort of thing. Deep magic moves the whole world. It involves vast forces and powers. Yes, the Dark and Bright Powers are part of deep magic. They live by it and are controlled by it. All deep magic flows from The Goddess, and since her death there has beenlittle of it to speak of, and all that scattered and irregular. But like The Goddess, it is dark and light, evil and good. It’s just as well that no one controls it all, because the possibilities are endless.”
“Then what is there to be afraid of?”
The magician stopped in midstride, then pulled up a stool next to the one on which the boy sat. He leaned toward him, until his nose andmoustache were uncomfortably close, and Ginna could feel his breath as he whispered intensely.
“Listen to what I saw very carefully, and never repeat any of it. When you were found in the cradle with Kaemen, I went into a trance to find out what the thing—that is, you—portended. My spirit left my body and I could see things far differently than I can now. I saw only spiritual things clearly,with material shapes, the walls of the palace for instance, no more than vague outlines of light and shadow. I was walking through this flickering world when I came upon an intensely black, huddled shape. It was an old woman. She was crouched on the floor by the cradle. As my spirit approached her, she looked up at me and I saw how hideous she truly was. Her eyes were gouged out, and little redfires burned in her sockets. She laughed at me, and exploded into a cloud of black shapes, some of them like herself, some not human at all, many no more than puffs of smoke. They were all around me, their numbers rapidly increasing. They were the Dark Powers. I am sure of it. They clustered around that cradle like bees to sweet sap dripping from a tree. Suddenly I was no longer in that place,and I had a vision of the world covered entirely with darkness dripping like oil from the body of that woman. She loomed huge over me, chanting some prayer or invocation in a language I could not understand. And as I watched helplessly, new continents and cities rose out of the midnight sea, all of them irreparably strange and evil. It was not a place in which mankind could live. The Dark Powers werefruitful and gave birth to more monstrosities. One of them shaped like the old woman walked right through me. I was suffocating in her nearness. When I turned and looked back I saw her shiny, dog-like teeth through the back of her head, and an eye glared at me from her hair. It was then I perceived that she had no feet, but instead it seemed her body was balanced on two serpents standing upright.Her legs were ropy, scaly affairs, wriggling along. As I watched, her outline became less definite. It flickered, and melted into the blackness at my feet. I was suffocating, I tell you. I couldn’t breathe the air. I tried to rise out of my trance state, and I felt myself floating up from that level—it’s like a box within a box within a box and you have to get out of all of them to wake up. Everytime I did the hag was there, pressing her frigid hand over my face. When at last I escaped, it was because she let me go. She was only toying with me. “You shall live to bear witness to the coming of my dominion,” she said at the very last. Then I found myself right here, in this room, lying on the rug, and you’ll never know how glad I was
“But why, Eminence, do you care what happens to me, when you wanted me smothered?”
“Even I can be wrong, can’t I? If I am to teach you anything, and I guess I shall, since there is nothing else for me to do in these last moments of my life—no, I don’t expect to escape him for very long either—I suppose the first thing I should explain is that there are two kinds ofmagic in the world: shallow magic, and deep magic. Everything I do is shallow magic. Mostly tricks, illusions, maybe a short-term prophecy, that sort of thing. Deep magic moves the whole world. It involves vast forces and powers. Yes, the Dark and Bright Powers are part of deep magic. They live by it and are controlled by it. All deep magic flows from The Goddess, and since her death there has beenlittle of it to speak of, and all that scattered and irregular. But like The Goddess, it is dark and light, evil and good. It’s just as well that no one controls it all, because the possibilities are endless.”
“Then what is there to be afraid of?”
The magician stopped in midstride, then pulled up a stool next to the one on which the boy sat. He leaned toward him, until his nose andmoustache were uncomfortably close, and Ginna could feel his breath as he whispered intensely.
“Listen to what I saw very carefully, and never repeat any of it. When you were found in the cradle with Kaemen, I went into a trance to find out what the thing—that is, you—portended. My spirit left my body and I could see things far differently than I can now. I saw only spiritual things clearly,with material shapes, the walls of the palace for instance, no more than vague outlines of light and shadow. I was walking through this flickering world when I came upon an intensely black, huddled shape. It was an old woman. She was crouched on the floor by the cradle. As my spirit approached her, she looked up at me and I saw how hideous she truly was. Her eyes were gouged out, and little redfires burned in her sockets. She laughed at me, and exploded into a cloud of black shapes, some of them like herself, some not human at all, many no more than puffs of smoke. They were all around me, their numbers rapidly increasing. They were the Dark Powers. I am sure of it. They clustered around that cradle like bees to sweet sap dripping from a tree. Suddenly I was no longer in that place,and I had a vision of the world covered entirely with darkness dripping like oil from the body of that woman. She loomed huge over me, chanting some prayer or invocation in a language I could not understand. And as I watched helplessly, new continents and cities rose out of the midnight sea, all of them irreparably strange and evil. It was not a place in which mankind could live. The Dark Powers werefruitful and gave birth to more monstrosities. One of them shaped like the old woman walked right through me. I was suffocating in her nearness. When I turned and looked back I saw her shiny, dog-like teeth through the back of her head, and an eye glared at me from her hair. It was then I perceived that she had no feet, but instead it seemed her body was balanced on two serpents standing upright.Her legs were ropy, scaly affairs, wriggling along. As I watched, her outline became less definite. It flickered, and melted into the blackness at my feet. I was suffocating, I tell you. I couldn’t breathe the air. I tried to rise out of my trance state, and I felt myself floating up from that level—it’s like a box within a box within a box and you have to get out of all of them to wake up. Everytime I did the hag was there, pressing her frigid hand over my face. When at last I escaped, it was because she let me go. She was only toying with me. “You shall live to bear witness to the coming of my dominion,” she said at the very last. Then I found myself right here, in this room, lying on the rug, and you’ll never know how glad I was
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