Read Online With a Tangled Skein by Piers Anthony - Free Book Online

ran back to her tree, ran up it as a squirrel might, and disappeared into the foliage. She returned in a moment with a small branch.
     
    Niobe took this and touched it to the wound. The flow of blood abated. The nymph's magic was helping! "Thank you," Niobe said. But how was she to get Cedric back to the cabin-and what was she to do with him there? He weighed far more than she and would be almost impossible to drag, and the movement could kill him. And there was the baby! The dryad pointed to the tree. "You'll help?" Niobe asked. "He'll be safe, there, for a while?"
     
    The nymph nodded yes. So Niobe struggled to drag Cedric the short distance to the tree and there she propped him against its healing trunk. "I'll bring help!" she told the dryad as she picked Junior up and hurried away.
     
    Some hours later, that phase of the nightmare was done. Cedric was in the distant hospital, receiving the best care, and his family and hers had been notified. Both were quick to respond. But that was as far as the good news extended. Cedric was on the critical list and sinking. The bullet had damaged his spinal nerve, paralyzing him, and it had evidently carried an unidentified infection that was now spreading through his weakened system. "We can keep him alive for perhaps a week," the doctor said grimly. "He has a fine constitution; otherwise he would be dead already. Even if we could save him, he would be crippled below the waist and in constant pain, and there is a chance of brain damage. It would, I regret to say, be kinder to let him die."
     
    "No!" Niobe cried. "I love him!" "We all love him," the doctor said. "He was doing a great thing for the land. But we cannot save him."
     
    "But we may be able to avenge him," the wetlands lawyer said. "Obviously the developer arranged to have him assassinated so he could no longer rally the people against the building project."
     
    "But they had already won!" Niobe protested. "Why should they do this now?"
     
    "They must have been afraid he was planning something new."
     
    Niobe remembered Cedric's confidence that the developer would be stopped. Indeed, he must have been planning something! But that was no comfort to her now; she wanted him alive and whole.
     
    "How can I save him?" she asked, clinging to that hope.
     
    The doctor and the lawyer looked at each other. "You must appeal to a higher court," the lawyer said.
     
    "What court is that?"
     
    "The Incarnation of Death," the doctor said. "If Thanatos will agree to spare him, he will live."
     
    She was ready to grasp at any straw. "Then I will appeal to Death! Where can I find him?"
     
    Both men spread their hands. They did not know. "We do not go to Death," the doctor said. "Death comes to us, at the moment of his choosing, not ours."
     
    Niobe took Junior and traveled hastily to the college. There she sought the old Prof. "How can I find Death?" she pleaded.
     
    The Prof gazed at her unhappily. "Lovely woman, you do not want to do this."
     
    "Don't tell me that!" she blazed at him. "I love him!"
     
    He did not misunderstand. It was Cedric she loved, not Death. "And do you also love your baby?"
     
    She froze. "You mean-I must choose between them?"
     
    "In a manner. You, perhaps, might reach Thanatos- but your baby is beneath the age of discretion. He would die. If you insist on making this terrible journey, you must in fairness leave him behind." She looked at Junior, horrified. "But-I can recover him, after-?"
     
    "If you are successful," he said. "But, Mrs. Kaftan, you have no guarantee of success. This is no ordinary person you seek; he is a supernatural entity. You may never return from such a journey."
     
    "Suppose-I place my baby with a good family?" she asked with difficulty. "So that if I don't-don't return-he will be well cared for?"
     
    "That would be an expedient course," he agreed. "Of course you would have to take a lactation-abatement spell, and arrange to have him fed from a bottle while-"
     
    "Then