Trapped

Hump sensed the power too. Sweat glistened on his shaved head as he tried to slide out of Dreamsinger's grip. She held on calmly, never once losing hold despite the man's slick of perspiration. Her smile curled as tranquilly as the Mona Lisa's… even as her hand began to glow a fierce gold.

The enforcer must have noticed that fingershine-he couldn't see the hand itself, but he couldn't miss a new source of light so close to his head. Especially one as bright as noon. He poured out a new round of curses, but I wasn't fooled by his bluster; panic underlay every syllable. As the light increased in intensity, he yelled, "What do you want, bitch?"

Dreamsinger didn't answer. Her one-note humming took on a tiny edge of pleasure.

"I'll kill you, bitch," the man wailed. "I'll fucking kill you." The bravado rang so hollow I would have ignored it… if I hadn't noticed Dreamsinger's lips move at the same time, mouthing the identical words. "Let me go, or I'll rip out your throat." The man spoke; Dreamsinger spoke with him. Her eyes blazed with inner amusement. When Hump jerked his head, trying to snap out of the Spark Lord's grasp, Dreamsinger's head moved too. Duplicating the motion in perfect unison.

That's when I noticed her own head had begun to glow: the same golden color as her hand, dim at first, but brightening quickly. Hump continued to curse; Dreamsinger continued to mimic his words and actions; the golden shine grew fierce.

I realized I was witness to a Twinning.

Twinning spells were legendary: sorcerers linked their thoughts to someone else as a way to pluck information from the target's brain. People talked about "copying brain waves," but I knew enough about cognition to realize it wasn't so simple. To clone thoughts from one brain to another required drastic restructuring in the receiver's mental architecture-not just writing a few chance thoughts onto the surface, but shuffling billions of neural connections. Our thoughts aren't superficial things; they're the conscious tips of unconscious icebergs, the end results of uncountable electric pulses channeled along complex chemical pathways. To duplicate the knowledge in someone else's head, you need the same chemical pathways: the same underlying linkages. Twinning wasn't just telepathic eavesdropping; it was gouging out your old brain, reconstructing every synapse to match someone else's blueprints, then seeing what useful information you could now recall.

Some people named it the Sorcerer's Suicide. Certainly, the spell could be used that way. Enchanters who hated their lives (the terrifying rituals, the fear and mistrust from "normal" folks) might grab someone who looked contented and perform a complete Twinning. Exit the sorcerer, enter a duplicate of a more cheerful person. Or rather, a would-be duplicate. Many a sorcerer had Twinned another man's happiness, only to discover the man was happy because he loved his wife, his children, his friends. The sorcerer now loved the same people… but they didn't love him back.

More misery. Much potential for disaster. Twinning never guaranteed "happily ever after."

It didn't even guarantee information. Consider Dreamsinger as she Twinned with Hump: presumably she wanted the name and whereabouts of Dover's smuggling boss. To get those facts, she had to absorb some significant quantity of her victim's mind-you can't pick and choose which memories you get first. Eventually, the spell would provide what Dreamsinger wanted… but by then, she might also have absorbed the enforcer's surly personality. She might, in fact, be the enforcer; maybe not a hundred percent, but enough to be unhealthy for those in the same room.

Yet she was doing it anyway-as if she believed her own personality sufficiently strong to resist being corrupted. If she was lucky, she'd discover the relevant information soon enough that she wouldn't change much: only a few of her own traits, memories, and perceptual matrices would get wiped out, replaced by ones copied from Hump. She could then halt the spell and walk away, only slightly damaged. If she was unlucky, however… we'd get two enforcers for the price of one.

The radiance around their two heads grew more brilliant by the second, a blazing gold so intense it was like staring into the sun. I had to look away… and as I did, I noticed a third golden blaze in the room. It came from Dee-James, still frozen in the act of rolling off the table. He burned with his own golden fire: a third sun orbiting at a distance from the other two.

I wondered how long he'd been glowing. With so much light from Dreamsinger and Hump, I hadn't noticed the third flare-up. For all I knew, he could have been ablaze for the past few minutes.

Even as I watched, his body unfroze; Dee-James fell to the ground with a dazed thump. The light surrounding him hurt to look at-I had to close my eyes. But why was he part of the Twinning? What did he have to do with…