"Oh, sadly," Dreamsinger said, "I
"Ooo, I'm shivering," the man said. "You might scare these other lollies, but to me you're just a big-titty bitch. Someone taught you a pissy little trick, freezing the air… but as soon as I get loose, I'll show you some
Uh-oh. Thanks to Kaylan's Chameleon, Hump must have seen Dreamsinger as some penny-a-poke prostitute… which told you something about the man, if that kind of woman most aroused his ardor. On seeing the image of his innermost lusts, his first inclination was to beat her up. What a world. Then again, maybe it was
The Sorcery-Lord's face formed a gentle smile-a
Dreamsinger placed her hand lightly on the man's shaved head. He growled obscenities and tried to duck away… but she simply squeezed tighter, her gold-painted Hafsah fingernails digging into the man's scalp. With her other hand, she traced a complicated pattern in the air, as if spelling words in some arcane language. Soon she began to hum, a single tone that started in her throat, then moved without changing pitch: traveling into her nose, then opening up to get more lung-power and finally reverberating all the way to her diaphragm.
Wind rushed past my ears-as if invisible forces were answering a summons, gusting out of the night to do the Sorcery-Lord's will.
The flame on the Caryatid's shoulder-burning all this time, even while the rest of us were frozen-disintegrated into a million tiny sparkles that flew in Dreamsinger's direction: nano-sized particles of magic, ripped from the Caryatid's weak power and drawn toward the Spark Lord's greater attraction. Every atom of enchantment in the room, every high-tech microscopic mite except the ones still holding Hump frozen, came in response to Dreamsinger's call. The unseen shell around Impervia evaporated; she gasped and crumpled out of sight behind the bar. I could hear her pant and wheeze, but didn't dare move to help her.
The expression on Dreamsinger's face had become beatific… and my friend Caryatid also seemed transformed. Avid.
The real thing. Magic. Just how good good can be.
I saw it in the Caryatid's eyes-recognized it from my own eyes twenty years past, when I was going to be
Remember the feeling that anything was possible? How we would ride Life like a wild stallion that only we could tame?
I knew the Caryatid remembered as she watched Dreamsinger gather sizzles of magical force. My sorcerous friend once told me she'd invented her guild name, the Steel Caryatid, when she was only thirteen years old: a name that would look good in history books. Sorcery came so easily to her compared with everyone else in her little school. Then she went to the big-league sorcery department at her provincial university…
You can fill in the rest yourself: shock, denial, bouts of crazed studying, bouts of depression, bouts of self-sabotage with men/drink/procrastination, finally leading to acceptance of a humbler destiny. But the Caryatid could still look at Dreamsinger with sharp-edged memories of what it was like to touch greatness. The power that might have been.