From alt.pub.dragons-inn Wed Mar 16 17:11:08 1994 Xref: netcom.com alt.pub.dragons-inn:7133 Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn Path: netcom.com!netcomsv!cds8604!uunet!maunakea!li From: li@Data-IO.COM (Phyllis Rostykus) Subject: [MG] Cursebreaking (1 of 2) Message-ID: Keywords: Kardia, Dasham, 'Raelf, Ilya Sender: usenet@maunakea.Data-IO.COM (The News) Nntp-Posting-Host: inigo Organization: Data I/O Corporation Date: Tue, 15 Mar 1994 23:08:08 GMT Lines: 335 This was written by Hutch, Penny, and I, with feedback from various other authors on this group. Hyup... we're starting to get back into it. Liralen Li ============= Kardia was elated when she went down to breakfast, and looking for someone to tell her good news to. Kev was dashing about the kitchen, whirling and making roaring sounds with a ship in his hands. He did pause for just a moment to pat Sceadu and say, "GOOD doggy!" before he dashed off again. She tried to catch him, but he squirmed away wild eyed and giggling and ran off laughing like a loon. Sceadu snorted and then laid down in a corner of the kitchen. Miro came through and only stayed long enough to grab a glass of juice. He didn't meet Kardia's eyes when she waved. She frowned, her feelings hurt a little. Kardia sighed, thumped her backpack on the table, and got herself some crumpets and toasted them. While she waited, she pulled out a plate, the butter, jam and lemon curd and started the coffee. When the first pair popped up, she slipped Sceadu a few bites, and found out that not only had the giant dog's red eyes changed to a deep, earth colored brown; but he now slobbered a bit like a real dog might at the scent of butter, bread and jam. She laughed softly and when the coffee maker burbled at her, she poured a generous serving into a hand thrown mug, sipped her coffee and ate her breakfast, watching the doorway that Miro had left by with a slight frown. When 'Raelf came into the kitchen, the motion broke her reverie, and she grinned at him. He looked tired, distracted; but he managed a "Hey" and a grin. She nodded at him and then unzipped the main section of the pack; and pulled out a cloud of white with a flourish. "Oh, wow," said 'Raelf and carefully didn't let the cloth fall on him. He stepped closer and took a good look. "Fini?" he asked Kardia with a smiling glance. His eyes were the deep, almost black green of fir boughs. Kardia grinned back at him and did a little victory dance right there. He laughed and joined her for a moment. Then he got a slightly abstracted look on his face. After a long moment's silence she started to reach out, to touch his shoulder. He blinked twice, hard, then sighed, before her fingers could touch skin; she froze, meeting his gaze. His eyes were like dry wells, the image of perfect health outwardly but with darkness behind, none of the energy she was used to seeing there. He focused on her face again. "I'm sorry, I think I blanked out. I'm running on empty." He dragged fingers back through his hair, and sighed again. "OK. So I anticipate some trouble -- Dash has a lot of spells in place that she doesn't quite maintain but she's the lynchpin. So we gotta find someone to take over. Gah..." He slumped back against a refrigerator. Kardia's eyes opened wider and she stopped her instinctive reach, instead shifting to the sight she used when working her weavings. He was flickering very fast between the elements, but only staying in any one for milliseconds before shifting again. He was dim, not the traces of bright flame and clear air. She looked away, and saw a glimmer of light which her normal sight identified as a bowl of fruit. Sudden inspiration struck, and she tossed him four apples and an orange in quick succession. He didn't even bother to eat them human style; they vanished as soon as they touched his skin. The frenetic flickering slowed to a more regular pace, though the elemental washes were still faint and dull. "Oh wow, thanks," he said, pushing himself away from where he'd slumped against the wall and coming to his feet. "I've been having a hard time keeping up, with Raye gone off to have her kid at home." Kardia shook her head, frowning. "You're right. There is more to it. But right now there's nothing we can do about it, so we better do with what we have to." He picked up two more apples, eating them slowly and methodically, not dissolving them into their elements and absorbing them. <> He motioned Kardia into the dining room, bringing her plate and mug. There was a pot of steaming tea waiting in the dining room. Kardia drank off the last of her coffee and poured tea for both of them. "Should be any second now," he said, inhaling the Bergamot fragrance from his cup. A globe of light sprang into being in the air over the table, Dasham's amanuensis looking out. "Acting Supreme Archmage Dasham is out of her office right now, please leave a message and she'll be back with you." The voice was crisp and efficient, and very bored. Kardia's eyes went very wide at the tone of voice, but she managed to choke back her laughter. "Fine. Tell her, _now_, that the spider has finished her web and it's time to fit it to the fly. Priority is gold." The amanuensis nodded curtly, and said something inaudible over the flood of chirpy, innocuous music that came from the lightglobe. "I hate being put on hold," 'Raelf said conversationally, when the globe flickered suddenly and Dasham was looking at them, frowning with disapproval. "'Raelf, it's been four days since I've seen you. What's your progress? You say Kardia has finished?" "Yeah, she's got a lovely lace catsuit all ready to fit. Thing is, you recall we talked about you having to let go of all your active magic, while she does the fitting? Well, you also have to let someone else take over your passive stuff, for about a half hour." "I saw your memo about that. Very well. I will require that you take over the operation of anything that must be transferred, ..." "Hold it," 'Raelf interrupted. "I'm not an archmage, and your way of doing things isn't compatible. I can carry anything you could put into a spell-matrix device, but I refuse to endanger you or Kardia by carrying your defensive wards, and frankly I can't handle much more in the way of spell load." "Really? You held off the assault of a certain entity dwelling centrally, and you managed to hold your own against a being which had previously destroyed our Supreme Archmage. Why should you have trouble with the minor spells I carry?" Kardia looked on interestedly as 'Raelf half-blushed, but she was carefully sipping tea when Dasham glanced towards her. "Simple, Dash. With the Mamoun Grosse I was dealing with a known quantity, and I was, frankly, not quite sane. I had seen Generica destroyed by an ambitious megalomaniac. Looping back in time to save myself was a wildly dangerous gamble; I thought I'd be dead one way or the other -- either Her Nubs would kill me or I'd be torn apart in the crosstemporal turbulence when Raven was destroyed. But Generica has more flexible timefields than most places. I got back before I could get crushed by the paradox, and..." He refilled his cup and toyed with a tea cracker. "And in the second case, I was desperate. Incidentally, Delalle wasn't completely destroyed, we managed to rescue a large part of him." Dasham's eyes narrowed, and a faint smile crept across her face. She toyed with a mechanical pencil, then recognized that 'Raelf wasn't going to say anything more. "So, when were you planning to spring him on us? I wish you'd told me earlier, it would have been easier to do this job knowing that it would be temporary." "Don't relax too soon, love. We ate him. What Mar didn't erase is currently growing up as the next heir to my household, and my mate used the parts I didn't use, to help forge the heir to her own line. No way he's coming back to claim anything from you." "I knew it was too good to be true," Dasham sighed, meditatively, and pulled a strand of red hair back into its clasp. "I knew, by the way, that you had eaten him. I just wondered when you were going to admit it." "How did you find out?" "When I took over as Supreme Archmage I conjured a demon of the tenth rank and commanded a detailed recounting of each second of my predecessor's life, from the point where he came out of his retreat to the point where he ceased to be. The demon was unwilling to approach the ward that you and your mate set, but he knew that the man who came out of your meeting was incomplete, his soul was a copy. So he refused to examine further, which is just as well, because he would have been spotted and destroyed by the Mar entity." She leaned back. "So why didn't you come after us?" 'Raelf asked. "Because the demon's answer came after you had started your war, in fact, it came after you and your wild sorceress friend had broken the geas I was carrying." "Good timing, again?" "Essentially. So why can't you carry the spells for me?" "Distraction didn't work, huh?" 'Raelf grinned weakly. "No. And it won't work this time either. Answer me." "Fine. I expect you to keep this confidential, then." She nodded assent. "You noticed that I can navigate around in time. Well, it's more than that. Time is a tool for me, for my family. It's part of our ability to adapt to changes, it gives us an inherent power to move between places. My family can use that power to move in time as well, better than most of the 'kan. And I'm better than most of my family. So, when Mar started his process of dismantling this universe, my survival reflexes started to kick in, and I found myself bending time a lot, trying to avoid the circumstance where I would end up facing him, not really knowing what he was, just that there was a disaster coming up that would threaten my life." He sipped at the cooling tea until Dasham fidgeted. "So once I knew what was going on, once enough evidence had mounted, and then Dariel showed up and I knew for sure... My mate and I played a game to see which one was going to be the covert and which would be the overt. She won overt, and she started building a Self that could fight Mar on his own terms. I was the bait, but I was going to be bait that could fight back. So I started a lot of timeloops, so Mar couldn't just erase me without erasing most of the local timestream. He was still vulnerable to paradox, you see, and I used that so I wouldn't have to meet Mar in his own War. There are other wars as primal as the War of Hope and Unbeing, and I made sure we would meet in one of those. Then I used the timeloops, in a style of combat called a Temporal Fugue. Each time he would have defeated me utterly, I came in from another timeline and wrenched the causality loose, and he had to face me again. I was the anchor, the baseline "me", and it was my efforts that kept the fugue going. It was a close battle, I was very badly injured." Again he sipped at the tea. "I still am. I'm caught in the temporal fugue. I exist in six different streams, and one of those streams, the one who finally won the battle, is healing in a safe place. I can't remerge until I can remerge with him first. If I do it otherwise, the whole thing collapses, and Mar will have won. So meanwhile I have basically no resources to draw on. Anything I do magically right now comes from the spell patterns I carry in my focus staff, or from the mechanisms I use. My timebrothers don't have that restriction, but they're, uh, not safe for this kind of work." "I see," Dasham frowned, tapping the pencil against the table where she was sitting. "In that case, since it's a security matter and the geasa will hold, I will trust Urcohea to carry the wards. Most of my passive spells are things that you could hold in that spell matrix you carry around if you unload it. You can bring in backup if you need it but I'll have to approve of it." "No hassle. Hey, Ilya would be able to help a lot, he has a similar style to yours, and he's an archmage." "Who is Ilya?" "My mate." "ar'Elya? I thought you said Ilya. How many mates do you have, anyway?" "Just the one, but she's got eight alternates -- trust me, her family is just as unusual for us as it is for you. Most of us are only one person at a time." "I should hope so. Is this Ilya person in our registry?" "Sort of. Leah has full access as visiting extraplanar archmage, but the registry was signed with her basename." "Well, you work out the details, let me know if you have any problems. I'm going to finish this paperwork. You come by this afternoon at four bells. I'll have Urcohea waiting." "Sure thing. Have a good one." The globe vanished. 'Raelf sagged a little. "I think I am going to go for a swim in that nice plankton-infested water out there. You want to go swimming?" Kardia tilted her head, questioningly, and spelled out four quick letters in sign language. "Yeah, you're right, I better check on how soon Raye gets back. She hates timediving, so we better make sure it's the right slot when she gets here. <> There, she should be..." A globe of light, flashing and sputtering, appeared in the air where the other one had been. 'Raelf tapped a finger on the edge of the globe, and it snapped into focus. "Raye," he said to the shadowy image, "How was the trip?" <> "When you get here, please arrive at +4 hours from this mark, and show up ready to help with Dasham. I'm going to need some backup." <> "She wants me to carry her passive spells while Kardia does the curse unweaving. I can do that, but I'm on the ragged edge here from trying to keep the drift down, so it would be better if maybe Ilya could do the heavy lifting?" <> "Yeah. How's the offspring?" <> "Cool. Miss you, get here soon." <> The globe vanished. "So Kardia, you ever been surfing?" ------ Copyright 1994 by Stephen Hutchison and Phyllis L. Rostykus Permission granted for distribution via Usenet and for archival. All other rights reserved. 'Raelf, Miro, and Kev are all property of Stephen Hutchison. Leah, Raye, and ar'Elya are the property of Penny Hutchison. Kardia is the property of Phyllis Rostykus -- Liralen Li | "Remember, science is talking about the universe in a li@inigo.Data-IO.com | way you can understand it, magic is talking to the aka Phyllis Rostykus | universe in a way it can't resist hearing." Carl Rigney