Divided against Yourselves (Spell Weaver) (6 page)

“Now, Morgan, short of awakening someone’s previous lives, how can you prove that you have the knowledge you claim?”

“Well,” replied Morgan slyly, “I can hardly just tell you how the spell works. Then any collection of spell casters with the right amount of power would do the job. You wouldn’t need me.”

“What do you suggest then?” I asked impatiently.

“Let me raise the power again without casting it at anyone,” suggested Morgan. “Taliesin, you have felt this spell yourself. You and the water witch over there have both seen it in operation. Surely you can sense enough from such a display to test the truth of my words.”

“It’s too risky!” pronounced Nurse Florence immediately. This time she spoke aloud instead of just thinking. I couldn’t help but be a little irritated at the obvious attempt to force my hand.

“The
tynged
would stop me from actually aiming it at anyone,” said Morgan to me, pointedly ignoring Nurse Florence.

“Raise the power!” I said to Morgan, also ignoring Nurse Florence, whose face betrayed more shock than I had ever seen before. I felt more than a twinge of guilt. After all, Nurse Florence had saved my life more than once. Even more compelling, she had risked her life to save mine. Still, Carla’s coma was my fault. If I could find a way to cure it, I was going to take that way.

Again Morgan raised her left hand and engulfed it in the unhealthy red glow. Nurse Florence and I reached our minds out, poking gently at the force. Instinctively, my mind recoiled from it at the first touch. Glancing quickly around, I saw that Stan had reflexively backed away, and even Carla seemed to twitch in her bed, though I might have just imagined a reaction on her part. Still, the power Morgan wielded definitely felt the same as Ceridwen’s awakening spell.

Fighting my instinctive aversion to that magic, I sent my mind back into its heart, seeking to understand its nature, visualize its workings. When at last I had satisfied myself that this spell did not just feel the same, but
was
the same, I pulled back out again, and, conscious of how rude I had been to Nurse Florence, I waited for her confirmation of what I already knew. Not having been the victim of the spell, she needed to study it longer, but after a few more minutes, even she had to agree.

“It is the same power,” she admitted. “But that only proves that Morgan knows how to cast the spell, not that she knows how to undo it.”

“Really?” replied Morgan angrily. “Do you really think I would be foolish enough to accept only part of the information about the spell as payment?”

“Based on what Ceridwen said at the time, her agenda only required being able to cast the spell. She had no need to undo it. Perhaps she never created a way to undo it.”

Nurse Florence and Morgan glared at each other. Well, I could hardly expect them to be friends, and I kept telling myself Nurse Florence was right to be cautious, even though my heart cried out to stop talking and start curing Carla.

“My ‘agenda’ is more diverse than hers,” replied Morgan finally, again addressing me exclusively. “I pressed her for a way to reverse the spell, and she taught me one.”

“Then why not just use it?” I asked. “What made you think you need me?”

Morgan sighed. “I said there was a way to reverse the spell. I didn’t say that it was easy or that I could do it alone. You may recall the spell seems to take very little effort to cast, a rather unusual characteristic for a spell of such power. But power must always be paid for somehow. Ceridwen paid for it by making the process needed to reverse it insanely difficult. Observe!”

The reddish glow on Morgan’s hand turned green, and, before I could move a muscle, the greenness whipped out, grabbed onto something within Carla, and pulled. The guys drew their weapons, and Nurse Florence raised her hands as if to use magic.

“I’m not hurting her!” Morgan snapped. “I said observe! What do your senses tell you?”

I don’t know how much the guys could see, but I could see clearly that the green whip had latched onto a tendril of redness from within Carla and was pulling on it steadily, but with absolutely no effect. Again I sent forth my mind into the force Morgan was using. I tasted its nature, and I knew immediately that it was the opposite of the power in the awakening spell. I studied its workings even more diligently than I had probed the workings of the first spell.

After a few minutes Morgan extinguished the green glow. She looked visibly more drained than she had just a few minutes before that. “As you can see,” she said tiredly, “there is a way to pull the second dose of that spell out of her and restore her to consciousness, but I cannot do it by myself.”

“How about removing both castings and returning her to normal?” asked Stan. I was surprised at first, but then I realized where he was going with the question. I thought I had patched him up pretty well after his awakening, but clearly there was something about his own earlier lives he wanted to be rid of. I don’t know how I missed it earlier. I could see it clearly enough in his eyes now.

In sharp contrast to the way in which Morgan reacted to Nurse Florence’s questions, she smiled indulgently at Stan’s. “Removing the second casting, difficult as it is, is easier than removing both. The second does not…what is the word? ‘Stick’ I think…yes, stick quite as hard; it doesn’t dig into the soul in quite the same way. Two or three strong casters would probably be enough to remove the second. Removing both would require all the rulers of Annwn to work together, which they haven’t done for more than a thousand years, or you would need a smaller number of casters of such great power that their like has never been seen among men, nor even among faeries.”

“And we are just supposed to trust you that this is so?” asked Nurse Florence in her most abrasive tone.

“Once we are all bound by an appropriate
tynged
so that you cannot simply cut me out after I share my knowledge of the spell, you can test it for yourself.” Again, Morgan answered Nurse Florence’s question, but she directed the answer to me alone.

“
Tynged
or not, you and Tal have fundamentally different goals. You both want Carla out of her coma, but Tal wants the original Carla back at the end, and you want Alcina.”

Mentally, I tried to silence Nurse Florence, but she ignored me. I had hoped to play dumb on this point and reinforce the strength of Carla’s persona without Morgan realizing what was happening until it was too late. Morgan might know the spell, but I knew how to deal with its aftermath. Now, with the conversation out in the open, I could easily lose the element of surprise. It was a good thing that wasn’t the only idea I had in mind…

“Sneer at me as much as you want, Morgan,” continued Nurse Florence. “There is no way around that problem, and I suspect you know that perfectly well.”

“Taliesin, remember I have been watching you,” said Morgan, not that I really needed or wanted to be reminded of that. “I know perfectly well what you want, and I certainly know what I want. I believe it is possible to separate Carla from Alcina and to transfer the essence of Alcina into another vessel. We can both have what we want.”

By now Nurse Florence was sputtering with indignation. “You can’t be serious. No one can split Carla from Alcina, if they both really are in that body. They are different manifestations of the same soul. Are you claiming to be able to split a soul, Morgan? And even if you could, what would be the consequences? Would they both exist as maimed remnants, each conscious of her incompleteness, yet never able to reach completeness? And by
vessel
I assume you mean
body
. Where do you think you can get one of those? Who will you have to murder to do it?”

Morgan remained silent, but if looks could kill, Nurse Florence would certainly be lying dead on the floor. Finally, Morgan turned back to me. “I would not propose something which I was not confident I could do. It will not be simple or easy. It may take months, perhaps even years, but at the end of the process, you will be reunited with Carla, and I will be reunited with my sister. Consider well what I have said. We will meet again…under more suitable circumstances.”

By now I was well enough trained to feel the mystical energy building in the room and knew that Morgan was getting ready to slip into Annwn. Nurse Florence knew it too.

“Tal, declare the negotiations ended now, before she leaves, and we might capture her! She’s too dangerous to be allowed to roam around at will!”
thought Nurse Florence with almost headache-producing intensity.

Yeah, no question there—it was dangerous to let Morgan roam around. If I declared negotiations at an end, the
tynged
would be released, and Morgan would have to face all seven of us; she wasn’t likely to allow such good odds in the future if she could help it. Unfortunately, there was one big problem with attacking her now.

“Carla is between her and us. I can’t just turn Carla’s hospital room into a battlefield!”
Nurse Florence nodded. She might not like giving up such a good chance to stop Morgan, but she knew that I was right.

Morgan smiled with something—triumph, maybe—pointed to her left, and then faded into the swirling mists of Annwn. The portal closed with an almost audible thud as soon as she was through it. Glancing to where she pointed, in the far corner of the room, I saw the gleam of White Hilt. She had left it behind, perhaps as a show of good will to convince me that she was sincere, since she could just as easily have taken it with her.

“We can still follow if we hurry…” began Nurse Florence.

“Remember the trouble we ran into on the way over,” prompted Dan.

Suddenly, I recalled again the bloodstains on their clothes. In the light of the hospital room, they looked far worse than they had outside. “Morgan has obviously recruited some allies.” Dan continued. Who knows what we might run into on the other side?”

“Besides, we need her cooperation if we are to have any chance of reviving Carla,” I said as calmly as I could.

Nurse Florence looked at me as if I had just shot her through the heart. “Tal, you can’t be seriously thinking of bargaining with her!”

“I have never been more serious in my life. Morgan is the only living person who understands the spell well enough to help us undo it. I have to make a deal with her.”

Nurse Florence was speechless, as were most of the others. Stan looked ready to cry, though whether from shock or from relief that maybe his problem would be solved I couldn’t tell. Dan looked totally blank. Shar and Carlos both looked outraged. Gordy, who had in some ways the most expressive face of any of them, looked like a little kid who had just been told that there is no Santa Claus.

“Tal,” he said in obvious disbelief, “what the hell?”

CHAPTER 4: TWO CAN PLAY AT THAT GAME

“Tal, you can’t possibly mean you want to work with Morgan!” Nurse Florence had retreated behind her professional, detached face, but she was clearly upset, almost more upset than I had ever seen her.

“I love Carla,” I replied simply. “I love her so much it hurts. And I can’t stand seeing her this way anymore—especially since it is my fault she’s here. So yes, I will work with Morgan. I will work with Satan himself, if that’s what it takes.”

“Pretty much the same thing,” muttered Dan.

“Tal, she tried to kill me before!” Shar nearly shouted at me. “How can you forget that so quickly?”

“Yeah!” seconded Gordy. “I bet she would kill any of us—even Carla—to get whatever the hell she wants.”

“How do the rest of you feel? Carlos? Stan?”

“Tal, she was just holding a knife to Gianni’s throat,” replied Carlos. “That tells me all I need to know. No, you can’t work with her.”

Stan’s response was a little more nuanced. “Well,” he began weakly, not at all like his recent self-confident manner, “I think Tal needs to at least figure out how much of what she said is actually true. It can’t hurt for him to talk to Morgan again.”

No, I hadn’t been mistaken earlier. Stan had his own reasons for exploring how to reverse the awakening spell. I would have to figure out what those reasons were—later. Right now I had more urgent concerns. I let the guys and Nurse Florence argue with me for a while, scarcely listening to them anymore. Then, at what I hoped was the right moment, I sent a quick message to Nurse Florence:
“Morgan has Gianni ‘wired’ and is listening in. Can you disconnect him and make it feel to her as if the connection faded naturally?”
Nurse Florence nodded silently and moved quickly to Gianni. While she worked the guys continued to pound me verbally. Fortunately, it was not too long before Nurse Florence gave me a thumbs up.

“I’m going to set a little barrier to make sure she can’t listen in by any other means.”
It was relatively easy to set up a kind of psychic “white noise” to keep anyone from seeing or hearing us from a distance, at least not without making us very aware of it. In my weakened condition, the spell gave me a headache, but I knew Nurse Florence was pretty drained as well, and she had just had to perform very precise magic to free Gianni of Morgan’s surveillance.

“OK, now we can relax. Morgan can’t hear us anymore.”

“That conversation was for Morgan’s benefit?” asked Stan.