I writhed internally She was right, and I had suspected, had probably even known, but I’d been suppressing it. I’d possibly even triggered its onset myself, with that shadow walk, with my body energies…
“It’s tricky,” I said, “and very personal.”
“Oh. Matters of the heart are either very simple or totally inscrutable to me,” she said. “There doesn’t seem to be a middle ground.”
“Let’s stipulate simple,” I told her. “We were already breaking up when I noticed the signs, and I’d no desire to call up the power in an ex-lover who might one day want to practice on me.”
“Understandable,” Jasra said. “Very. And ironic in the extreme.”
“Indeed,” Mandor observed, and with a gesture he caused more steaming dishes to appear before us. “Before you get carried away with a narrative of intrigue and the underside of the psyche, I’d like you to try a little breast of quail drowned in Mouton Rothschild, with a bit of wild rice and a few amusing asparagus tips.”
I had driven her to her studies by showing her another layer of reality, I realized. And I had driven her away from me because I had not really trusted her enough to tell her the truth about myself. I suppose this said something about my capacity for love as well as trust. But I had felt this all along. There was something else. There was more….
“This is delicious,” Jasra announced.
“Thank you.” He rose, rounded the table, and refilled her glass manually rather than use a levitation trick. As he did, I noticed that the fingers of his left hand lightly brushed her bare shoulder. He sloshed a little into my glass as an afterthought then and went back and sat down.
“Yes, excellent,” I observed as I continued my quick introspect through the dark glass suddenly cleared.
I had felt something, had suspected something from the beginning, I knew now. Our shadow walk was only the most spectacular of a series of small, off the-cuff tests I had occasionally thrown her way, hoping to catch her off guard, hoping to expose her as – what? Well, a potential sorceress. So?
I set my utensils aside and rubbed my eyes. It was near, though I’d been hiding it from myself for a long while…
“Is something the matter, Merlin?” I heard Jasa asking.
“No. Just realized I was a little tired,” I said. “Everything’s fine.”
A sorceress. Not just a potential sorceress. There had been the buried fear, I now understood, that she was behind the April 30 attempts on my life-and I had suppressed this and kept on caring for her. Why? Because I knew and did not care? Because she was my Nimue? Because I had cherished my possible destroyer and hidden evidence from myself? Because I’d not only loved unwisely but had had one big death wish following me around, grinning, and any time now I might cooperate with it to the utmost?
“I’ll be okay,” I said. “It’s really nothing.”
Did it mean that I was, as they say, my own worst enemy? I hoped not. I didn’t really have time to go through therapy, not when my life depended on so many external things as well.
“A penny for your thoughts,” Jasra said sweetly.
II
“They’re priceless,” I answered. “Like your jokes. I must applaud you. Not only did I know nothing of this at the time, but I didn’t make any correct guesses when I did have a few facts to rub together. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I’m pleased there came a point where things went wrong for you,” I added.
She sighed, nodded, took a drink of wine.
“Yes, it came,” she acknowledged. “I was hardly expecting any recoil from such a simple bit of business. I still find it hard to believe that there’s that much irony running around loose in the world.”
“If you want me to appreciate the whole thing, you’re going to have to be a little more explicit,” I suggested.
“I know. In a way, I hate trading that vaguely puzzled expression you’re wearing for one of delight at my own discomfort. On the other hand, there may still be material able to distress you in some fresh fashion on the other side of it.”