He shook his head. “I acted out of instinct, but I should have used judgment. There is no excuse.”
“You are pathetic!” she sneered. “Why do I waste my time with you? I owe you nothing! I am trapped in this world because of you, and I don’t even know why that is so! You have stolen away my life; you have stripped me of my magic! Now you would deny us the protection of your own small measure as well! Don’t use it, you would say, because it might cause harm! You would pity those who try to destroy us because we must destroy them first!”
His lips tightened. “I pity anything that must die at my hands.”
“Then you are nothing! You are less than nothing! Look about you and tell me what you see! This is a world of mist and madness, Sir Knight! Could it be that you have failed to notice? It will destroy us quickly enough if we underestimate its dangers or show weakness in the face of its considerable strengths! Stand on your hind legs, or you are just another dog!”
“You know nothing of me!”
“I know enough! I know you have lost your nerve! I know you are no longer able to lead us!” Her face was as cold and hard as ice. “I am stronger now than you. I can make my own way! Stay on your knees, if you must! Stay here and wallow in your pity! I want nothing more to do with you!”
She started to rise, shoving past the Gargoyle. The Knight reached out, grasped her arm, and pulled her back down before him. “No!” he shouted. “You will not leave!”
The Lady swung at him with her fist, but he blocked the blow. She swung again, but he caught her wrist. She looked into his face and found it hard-edged and taut. The weakness was gone from his eyes.
“When you leave,” he hissed at her, “you will leave with me!”
She stared at him without speaking. Then her free hand came up slowly and touched his cheek. She felt him flinch, and she smiled. She let her fingers trail down to his neck and drop away.
Then she leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth.
Handful of Dust
Abernathy stopped halfway down the stairs leading from his bedroom to the great hall of Rhyndweir and listened in dismay. At the foot of the stairs, Kallendbor was screaming at Horris Kew. At the gates of the fortress, the people of the Greensward were trying to break through. Across the countryside, there was chaos.
It was not a happy time.
From the start Abernathy had known that something would go wrong with Horris Kew and the great mind’s eye crystal giveaway. He had known it as surely as he had known his own name. It was so predictable that it could have been written in stone. Horris Kew had been involved in a lot of schemes over the years, had come up with a whole bushel full of ideas for quick fixes and cure-alls, and not a one of them had ever worked. It was the same story every time. Things would start out in promising fashion and then somewhere along the way go haywire. No matter what the circumstances, the result was always the same. Somehow, some way, Horris Kew invariably lost control of the events he had set in motion.
In this instance, however, knowing it was so was not enough to save Abernathy. Knowing didn’t do you any good if you didn’t also believe. In truth, Abernathy needed to believe the exact opposite, because once he accepted that nothing had changed with Horris Kew and his schemes, even twenty years later, he had to acknowledge that the mind’s eye crystals weren’t what they seemed, and he couldn’t possibly bring himself to do that. Abernathy was in the throes of serious denial. His own wondrous crystal had captivated him totally. Its visions had enslaved him. He was a prisoner of the prospect of being forever able to recapture glimpses of his former self and to live with the hope that what he was seeing might be a promise of what one day would be again. The visions were his private ecstasy, his own secret personal escape from the hard truths of life. Abernathy had always been a pragmatic sort, but he was helpless before this particular lure. The more he called the visions up, the more entranced he became by them. His addiction progressed from mild to severe. It wasn’t just that he found pleasure in the visions; it was that they offered him the only escape that meant anything.