1
True love, like any other strong and addicting drug, is boring - once the tale of encounter and discovery is told, kisses quickly grow stale and caresses tiresome . . . except, of course, to those who share the kisses, who give and take the caresses while every sound and color of the world seems to deepen and brighten around them. As with any other strong drug, true first love is really only interesting to those who have become its prisoners.
And, as is true of any other strong and addicting drug, true first love is dangerous.
2
Some called Huntress the last moon of summer; some called it the first of fall. Whichever it was, it signaled a change in the life of the Barony. Men put out into the bay wearing sweaters beneath their oilskins as the winds began to turn more and more firmly into autumn's east-west alley, and to sharpen as they turned. In the great Barony orchards north of Hambry (and in smaller orchards owned by John Croydon, Henry Wertner, Jake White, and the morose but wealthy Coral Thorin), the pickers began to appear in the rows, carrying their odd, off-kilter ladders; they were followed by horse-drawn carts full of empty barrels. Downwind of the cider-houses - especially downwind of the great Barony cider-mansion a mile north of Seafront - the breezy air was filled with the sweet tang of blems being pressed by the basketload. Away from the shore of the Clean Sea, the days remained warm as the Huntress waxed, skies were clear day and night, but summer's real heat had departed with the Peddler. The last cutting of hay began and was finished in the run of a week - that last one was always scant, and ranchers and freeholders alike would curse it, scratching their heads and asking themselves why they even bothered ... but come rainy, blowsy old March, with the bam lofts and bins rapidly emptying, they always knew. In the Barony's gardens - the great ones of the ranchers, the smaller ones of the freeholders, and the tiny backyard plots of the townsfolk - men and women and children appeared in their old clothes and boots, their sombreros and sombreros. They came with the legs of their pants tied down firmly at the ankles, for in the time of the Huntress, snakes and scorpions in plentiful numbers wandered east from the desert. By the time old Demon Moon began to fatten, a line of rattlers would hang from the hitching posts of both the Travellers' Rest and the mercantile across the street. Other businesses would similarly decorate their hitching posts, but when the prize for the most skins was given on Reaping Day, it was always the inn or the market that won it. In the fields and gardens, baskets to pick into were cast along the rows by women with their hair tied up in kerchiefs and reap-charms hidden in their bosoms. The last of the tomatoes were picked, the last of the cucumbers, the last of the corn, the last of the parey and mingo. Waiting behind them, as the days sharpened and the autumn storms began to near, would come squash, sharproot, pumpkins, and potatoes. In Mejis the time of reaping had begun, while overhead, clearer and clearer on each starry night, the Huntress pulled her bow and looked east over those strange, watery leagues no man or woman of Mid-World had ever seen.
3
Those in the grip of a strong drug - heroin, devil grass, true love - often find themselves trying to maintain a precarious balance between secrecy and ecstasy as they walk the tightrope of their lives. Keeping one's balance on a tightrope is difficult under the soberest circumstances; doing so while in a state of delirium is all but impossible. Completely impossible, in the long run.
Roland and Susan were delirious, but at least had the thin advantage of knowing it. And the secret would not have to be kept forever, but only until Reaping Day Fair, at the very longest. Things might end even sooner than that, if the Big Coffin Hunters broke cover. The actual first move might be made by one of the other players, Roland thought, but no matter who moved first, Jonas and his men would be there, a part of it. The part apt to be most dangerous to the three boys.
Roland and Susan were careful - as careful as delirious people could be, at any rate. They never met in the same place twice in a row, they never met at the same time twice in a row, they never skulked on their way to their trysts. In Hambry, riders were common but skulkers were noticed. Susan never tried to cover her "riding out" by enlisting the help of a friend (although she had friends who would have done her this service); people who needed alibis were people keeping secrets. She had a sense that Aunt Cord was growing increasingly uneasy about her rides - particularly the ones she took in the early evenings - but so far she accepted Susan's oft-repeated reason for them: she needed time to be solitary, to meditate on her promise and to accept her responsibility. Ironically, these suggestions had originally come from the witch of the Coos.
They met in the willow grove, in several of the abandoned boathouses which stood crumbling at the northern hook of the bay, in a herder's hut far out in the desolation of the Coos, in an abandoned squatter's shack hidden in the Bad Grass. The settings were, by and large, as sordid as any of those in which addicts come together to practice their vice, but Susan and Roland didn't see the rotting walls of the shack or the holes in the roof of the hut or smell the mouldering nets in the comers of the old soaked boathouses. They were drugged, stone in love, and to them, every scar on the face of the world was a beauty-mark.
Twice, early on in those delirious weeks, they used the red rock in the wall at the back of the pavilion to arrange meetings, and then some deep voice spoke inside Roland's head, telling him there must be no more of it - the rock might have been just the thing for children playing at secrets, but he and his love were no longer children; if they were discovered, banishment would be the luckiest punishment they could hope for. The red rock was too conspicuous, and writing things down - even messages that were unsigned and deliberately vague - was horribly dangerous.
Using Sheemie felt safer to both of them. Beneath his smiling light-mindedness there was a surprising depth of ... well, discretion. Roland had thought long and hard before settling on that word, and it was the right word: an ability to keep silent that was more dignified than mere cunning. Cunning was out of Sheemie's reach in any case, and always would be - a man who couldn't tell a lie without shifting his eyes away from yours was a man who would never be considered cunning.
They used Sheemie half a dozen times over the five weeks when their physical love burned at its hottest - three of those times were to make meetings, two were to change meeting-places, and one was to cancel a tryst when Susan spied riders from the Piano Ranch sweeping for strays near the shack in the Bad Grass.
That deep, warning voice never spoke to Roland about Sheemie as it had about the dangers of the red rock . . . but his conscience spoke to him, and when he finally mentioned this to Susan (the two of them wrapped in a saddle-blanket and lying naked in each other's arms), he found that her conscience had been troubling her, as well. It wasn't fair to put the boy in the way of their possible trouble. After coming to that conclusion, Roland and Susan arranged their meetings strictly between the two of them. If she could not meet him, Susan said, she would hang a red shirt over the sill of her window, as if to dry. If he could not meet her, he was to leave a white stone in the northeast comer of the yard, diagonally across the road from Hockey's Livery, where the town pump stood. As a last resort, they would use the red rock in the pavilion, risky or not, rather than bringing Sheemie into their affairs - their affair - again.
Cuthbert and Alain watched Roland's descent into addiction first with disbelief, envy, and uneasy amusement, then with a species of silent horror. They had been sent to what was supposed to have been safety and had discovered a place of conspiracy, instead; they had come to take census in a Barony where most of the aristocracy had apparently switched its allegiance to the Affiliation's bitterest enemy; they had made personal enemies of three hard men who had probably killed enough folks to populate a fair-sized graveyard. Yet they had felt equal to the situation, because they had come here under the leadership of their friend, who had attained near-mythic status in their minds by besting Cort - with a hawk as his weapon! - and becoming a gunslinger at the unheard-of age of fourteen. That they had been given guns themselves for this mission had meant a great deal to them when they set out from Gilead, and nothing at all by the time they began to realize the scope of what was going on in Hambry-town and the Barony of which it was a part. When that realization came, Roland was the weapon they counted on. And now -
"He's like a revolver cast into water!" Cuthbert exclaimed one evening, not long after Roland had ridden away to meet Susan. Beyond the bunkhouse porch, Huntress rose in her first quarter. "Gods know if it'll ever fire again, even if it's fished out and dried off."
"Hush, wait," Alain said, and looked toward the porch rail. Hoping to jolly Cuthbert out of his bad temper (a task that was quite easy under ordinary circumstances), Alain said: "Where's the lookout? Gone to bed early for once, has he?"
This only irritated Cuthbert more. He hadn't seen the rook's skull in days - he couldn't exactly say how many - and he took its loss as an ill omen. "Gone, but not to bed," he replied, then looked balefully to the west, where Roland had disappeared aboard his big old galoot of a horse. "Lost, I reckon. Like a certain fellow's mind and heart and good sense."
"He'll be all right," Alain said awkwardly. "You know him as well as I do, Bert - known him our whole lives, we have. He'll be all right."
Quietly, without even a trace of his normal good humor, Cuthbert said: "I don't feel I know him now."
They had both tried to talk to Roland in their different ways; both received a similar response, which was no real response at all. The dreamy (and perhaps slightly troubled) look of abstraction in Roland's eyes during these one-sided discussions would have been familiar to anyone who has ever tried to talk sense to a drug addict. It was a look that said Roland's mind was occupied by the shape of Susan's face, the smell of Susan'-s skin, the feel of Susan's body. And occupied was a silly word for it, one that fell short. It wasn't an occupation but an obsession.
"I hate her a little for what she's done," Cuthbert said, and there was a note in his voice Alain had never heard before - a mixture of jealousy, frustration, and fear. "Perhaps more than a little."
"You mustn't!" Alain tried not to sound shocked, but couldn't help it. "She isn't responsible for - "
"Is she not? She went out to Citgo with him. She saw what he saw. God knows how much else he's told her after they've finished making the beast with two backs. And she's all the way around the world from stupid. Just the way she's managed her side of their affair shows that." Bert was thinking, Alain guessed, of her tidy little trick with the corvette. "She must know she's become part of the problem herself. She must know that!"
Now his bitterness was fiighteningly clear. He's jealous of her for stealing his best friend, Alain thought, but it doesn't stop there. He's jealous of his best friend, as well, because his best friend has won the most beautiful girl any of us have ever seen.
Alain leaned over and grasped Cuthbert's shoulder. When Bert turned away from his morose examination of the dooryard to look at his friend, he was startled by the grimness on Alain's face. "It's ka," Alain said.
Cuthbert almost sneered. "If I had a hot dinner for every time someone blamed theft or lust or some other stupidity on ka - "
Alain's grip tightened until it became painful. Cuthbert could have pulled away but didn't. He watched Alain closely. The joker was, temporarily, at least, gone. "Blame is exactly what we two can't afford," Alain said. "Don't you see that? And if it's ka that's swept them away, we needn't blame. We can't blame. We must rise above it. We need him. And we may need her, too."
Cuthbert looked into Alain's eyes for what seemed to be a very long time. Alain saw Bert's anger at war with his good sense. At last (and perhaps only for the time being), good sense won out.
"All right, fine. It's ka, everybody's favorite whipping-boy. That's what the great unseen world's for, after all, isn't it? So we don't have to take the blame for our acts of stupidity? Now let go of me, Al, before you break my shoulder."
Alain let go and sat back in his chair, relieved. "Now if we only knew what to do about the Drop. If we don't start counting there soon - "
"I've had an idea about that, actually," Cuthbert said. "It just needs a little working out. I'm sure Roland could help ... if either of us can get his attention for a few minutes, that is."
They sat for awhile without speaking, looking out at the dooryard. Inside the bunkhouse, the pigeons - another bone of contention between Roland and Bert these days - cooed. Alain rolled himself a smoke. It was slow work, and the finished product looked rather comical, but it held together when he lit it.
"Your father would stripe you raw if he saw that in your hand," Cuthbert remarked, but he spoke with a certain admiration. By the time the following year's Huntress came around, all three of them would be confirmed smokers, tanned young men with most of the boyhood slapped out of their eyes.
Alain nodded. The strong Outer Crescent tobacco made him swimmy in the head and raw in the throat, but a cigarette had a way of calming his nerves, and right now his nerves could use some calming. He didn't know about Bert, but these days he smelled blood on the wind. Possibly some of it would be their own. He wasn't exactly frightened - not yet, at least - but he was very, very worried.
4
Although they had been honed like hawks toward the guns since early childhood, Cuthbert and Alain still carried an erroneous belief common to many boys their age: that their elders were also their betters, at least in such matters as planning and wit; they actually believed that grownups knew what they were doing. Roland knew better, even in his love-sickness, but his friends had forgotten that in the game of Castles, both sides wear the blindfold. They would have been surprised to find that at least two of the Big Coffin Hunters had grown extremely nervous about the three young men from In-World, and extremely tired of the waiting game both sides had been playing.
One early morning, as the Huntress neared the half, Reynolds and Depape came downstairs together from the second floor of the Travellers' Rest. The main public room was silent except for various snores and phlegmy wheezings. In Hambry's busiest bar, the party was over for another night.
Jonas, accompanied by a silent guest, sat playing Chancellors' Patience at Coral's table to the left of the batwing doors. Tonight he was wearing his duster, and his breath smoked faintly as he bent over his cards. It wasn't cold enough to frost - not quite yet - but the frost would come soon. The chill in the air left no doubt of that.
The breath of his guest also smoked. Kimba Rimer's skeletal frame was all but buried in a gray serape lit with faint bands of orange. The two of them had been on the edge of getting down to business when Roy and Clay (Pinch and Jilly, Rimer thought) showed up, their plowing and planting in the second-floor cribs also apparently over for another night.
"Eldred," Reynolds said, and then: "Sai Rimer."
Rimer nodded back, looking from Reynolds to Depape with thin distaste. "Long days and pleasant nights, gentlemen." Of course the world had moved on, he thought. To find such low culls as these two in positions of importance proved it. Jonas himself was only a little better.
"Might we have a word with you, Eldred?" Clay Reynolds asked. "We've been talking, Roy and I - "
"Unwise," Jonas remarked in his wavery voice. Rimer wouldn't be surprised to find, at the end of his life, that the Death Angel had such a voice. "Talking can lead to thinking, and thinking's dangerous for such as you boys. Like picking your nose with bullet-heads."
Depape donkeyed his damned hee-haw laughter, as if he didn't realize the joke was on him.
"Jonas, listen," Reynolds began, and then looked uncertainly at Rimer.
"You can talk in front of sai Rimer," Jonas said, laying out a fresh line of cards. "He is, after all, our chief employer. I play at Chancellors' Patience in his honor, so I do."
Reynolds looked surprised. "I thought . . . that is to say, I believed that Mayor Thorin was ..."
"Hart Thorin wants to know none of the details of our arrangement with the Good Man," Rimer said. "A share of the profits is all he requires in that line, Mr. Reynolds. The Mayor's chief concern right now is that the Reaping Day Fair go smoothly, and that his arrangements with the young lady be ... smoothly consummated."
"Aye, that's a diplomatic turn o' speech for ye," Jonas said in a broad Mejis accent. "But since Roy looks a little perplexed, I'll translate. Mayor Thorin spends most of his time in the jakes these days, yanking his willy-pink and dreaming his fist is Susan Delgado's box. I'm betting that when the shell's finally opened and her pearl lies before him, he'll never pluck it - his heart'll explode from excitement, and he'll drop dead atop her, so he will. Yar!"
More donkey laughter from Depape. He elbowed Reynolds. "He's got it down, don't he, Clay? Sounds just like em!"
Reynolds grinned, but his eyes were still worried. Rimer managed a smile as thin as a scum of November ice, and pointed at the seven which had just popped out of the pack. "Red on black, my dear Jonas."
"I ain't your dear anything," Jonas said, putting the seven of diamonds on an eight of shadows, "and you'd do well to remember that." Then, to Reynolds and Depape: "Now what do you boys want? Rimer 'n me was just going to have us a little palaver."
"Perhaps we could all put our heads together," Reynolds said, putting a hand on the back of a chair. "Kind of see if our thinking matches up."
"I think not," Jonas said, sweeping his cards together. He looked irritated, and Clay Reynolds took his hand off the back of the chair in a hurry. "Say your say and be done with it. It's late."
"We was thinking it's time to go on out there to the Bar K," Depape said. "Have a look around. See if there's anything to back up what the old fella in Ritzy said."
"And see what else they've got out there," Reynolds put in. "It's getting close now, Eldred, and we can't afford to take chances. They might have - "
"Aye? Guns? Electric lights? Fairy-women in bottles? Who knows? I'll think about it. Clay."
"But - "
"I said I'll think about it. Now go on upstairs, the both of you, back to your own fairy-women."
Reynolds and Depape looked at him, looked at each other, then backed away from the table. Rimer watched them with his thin smile.
At the foot of the stairs, Reynolds turned back. Jonas paused in the act of shuffling his cards and looked at him, tufted eyebrows raised.
"We underestimated em once and they made us look like monkeys. I don't want it to happen again. That's all."
"Your ass is still sore over that, isn't it? Well, so is mine. And I tell you again, they'll pay for what they did. I have the bill ready, and when the time comes, I'll present it to them, with all interest duly noted. In the meantime, they aren't going to spook me into making the first move. Time is on our side, not theirs. Do you understand that?"
"Yes."
"Will you try to remember it?"
"Yes," Reynolds repeated. He seemed satisfied.
"Roy? Do you trust me?"
"Aye, Eldred. To the end." Jonas had praised him for the work he had done in Ritzy, and Depape had rolled in it the way a male dog rolls in the scent of a bitch.
"Then go on up, the both of you, and let me palaver with the boss and be done with it. I'm too old for these late nights."
When they were gone, Jonas dealt out a fresh line of cards, then looked around the room. There were perhaps a dozen folks, including Sheb the piano-player and Barkie the bouncer, sleeping it off. No one was close enough to listen to the low-voiced conversation of the two men by the door, even if one of the snoring drunkards was for some reason only shamming sleep. Jonas put a red queen on a black knight, then looked up at Rimer. "Say your say."
"Those two said it for me, actually. Sai Depape will never be embarrassed by a surplus of brains, but Reynolds is fairly smart for a gunny, isn't he?"
"Clay's trig when the moon's right and he's had a shave," Jonas agreed. "Are you saying you came all the way from Seafront to tell me those three babbies need a closer looking at?"
Rimer shrugged.
"Perhaps they do, and I'm the man to do it, if so - right enough. But what's there to find?"
"That's to be seen," Rimer said, and tapped one of Jonas's cards. "There's a Chancellor."
"Aye. Near as ugly as the one I'm sitting with." Jonas put the Chancellor - it was Paul - above his run of cards. The next draw uncovered Luke, whom he put next to Paul. That left Peter and Matthew still lurking in the bush. Jonas looked at Rimer shrewdly. "You hide it better than my pals, but you're as nervous as they are, underneath. You want to know what's out at that bunkhouse? I'll tell you: extra boots, pictures of their mommies, socks that stink to high heaven, stiff sheets from boys who've been taught it's low-class to chase after the sheep . . . and guns hidden somewhere. Under the floorboards, like enough."
"You really think they have guns?"
"Aye, Roy got the straight of that, all right. They're from Gilead, they're likely from the line of Eld or from folk who like to think they're from it, and they're likely 'prentices to the trade who've been sent on with guns they haven't earned yet. I wonder a bit about the tall one with the I-don't-give-a-shit look in his eyes - he might already be a gunslinger, I suppose - but is it likely? I don't think so. Even if he is, I could take him in a fair go. I know it, and he does, too."
"Then why have they been sent here?"
"Not because those from the Inner Baronies suspect your treason, sai Rimer - be easy on that score."
Rimer's head poked out of his serape as he sat up straight, and his face stiffened. "How dare you call me a traitor? How dare you?"
Eldred Jonas favored Hambry's Minister of Inventory with an unpleasant smile. It made the white-haired man look like a wolverine. "I've called things by their right names my whole life, and I won't stop now. All that needs matter to you is that I've never double-crossed an employer."
"If I didn't believe in the cause of - "
"To hell with what you believe! It's late and I want to go to bed. The folk in New Canaan and Gilead haven't the foggiest idea of what does or doesn't go on out here on the Crescent; there aren't many of em who've ever been here, I'd wager. Them are too busy trying to keep everything from falling down around their ears to do much travelling these days. No, what they know is all from the picturebooks they was read out of when they 'us babbies themselves: happy cowboys galloping after stock, happy fishermen pulling whoppers into their boats, folks clogging at bam-raisings and drinking big pots o' graf in Green Heart pavilion. For the sake of the Man Jesus, Rimer, don't go dense on me - I deal with that day in and day out."
"They see Mejis as a place of quiet and safety."
"Aye, bucolic splendor, just so, no doubt about it. They know that their whole way o' life - all that nobility and chivalry and ancestor-worship - is on fire. The final battle may take place as much as two hundred wheels northwest of their borders, but when Farson uses his fire-carriages and robots to wipe out their army, trouble will come south fast. There are those from the Inner Baronies who've smelled this coming for twenty years or more. They didn't send these brats here to discover your secrets, Rimer; folks such as these don't send their babbies into danger on purpose. They sent em here to get em out of the way, that's all. That doesn't make em blind or stupid, but for the sake of the gods, let's be sane. They're kiddies;'
"What else might you find, should you go out there?"
"Some way of sending messages, mayhap. A heliograph's the most likely. And out beyond Eyebolt, a shepherd or maybe a freeholder susceptible to a bribe - someone they've trained to catch the message and either flash it on or carry it afoot. But before long it'll be too late for messages to do any good, won't it?"
"Perhaps, but it's not too late yet. And you're right. Kiddies or not, they worry me."
"You've no cause, I tell you. Soon enough, I'll be wealthy and you'll be downright rich. Mayor yourself, if you want. Who'd stand to stop you? Thorin? He's a joke. Coral? She'd help you string him up, I wot. Or perhaps you'd like to be a Baron, if such offices be revived?" He saw a momentary gleam in Rimer's eyes and laughed. Matthew came out of the deck, and Jonas put him up with the other Chancellors. "Yar, I see that's what you've got your heart set on. Gems is nice, and for gold that goes twice, but there's nothing like having folk bow and scrape before ye, is there?"
Rimer said, "They should have been on the cowboy side by now."
Jonas's hands stopped above the layout of cards. It was a thought that had crossed his own mind more than once, especially over the last two weeks or so.
"How long do you think it takes to count our nets and boats and chart out the fish-hauls?" Rimer asked. "They should be over on the Drop, counting cows and horses, looking through barns, studying the foal-charts. They should have been there two weeks ago, in fact. Unless they already know what they'd find."
Jonas understood what Rimer was implying, but couldn't believe it. Wouldn't believe it. Not such a depth of slyness from boys who only had to shave once a week.
"No," he said. "That's your own guilty heart talking to you. They're just so determined to do it right that they're creeping along like old folks with bad eyes. They'll be over on the Drop soon enough, and counting their little hearts out."
"And if they're not?"
A good question. Get rid of them somehow, Jonas supposed. An ambush, perhaps. Three shots from cover, no more babbies. There'd be ill feeling afterward - the boys were well liked in town - but Rimer could handle that until Fair Day, and after the Reap it wouldn't matter. Still -
"I'll have a look around out at the Bar K," Jonas said at last. "By myself - I won't have Clay and Roy tramping along behind me."
"That sounds fine."
"Perhaps you'd like to come and lend a hand."
Kimba Rimer smiled his icy smile. "I think not."
Jonas nodded, and began to deal again. Going out to the Bar K would be a bit risky, but he didn't expect any real problem - especially if he went alone. They were only boys, after all, and gone for much of each day.
"When may I expect a report, sai Jonas?"
"When I'm ready to make it. Don't crowd me."
Rimer lifted his thin hands and held them, palms out, to Jonas. "Cry your pardon, sai," he said.
Jonas nodded, slightly mollified. He flipped up another card. It was Peter, Chancellor of Keys. He put the card in the top row and then stared at it, combing his fingers through his long white hair as he did. He looked from the card to Rimer, who looked back, eyebrows raised.
"You smile," Rimer said.
"Yar!" Jonas said, and began to deal again. "I'm happy! All the Chancellors are out. 1 think I'm going to win this game."
5
For Rhea, the time of the Huntress had been a time of frustration and unsatisfied craving. Her plans had gone awry, and thanks to her cat's hideously mistimed leap, she didn't know how or why. The young cull who'd taken Susan Delgado's cherry had likely stopped her from chopping her scurf. . . but how? And who was he really? She wondered that more and more, but her curiosity was secondary to her fury. Rhea of the Coos wasn't used to being balked.
She looked across the room to where Musty crouched and watched her carefully. Ordinarily he would have relaxed in the fireplace (he seemed to like the cool drafts that swirled down the chimney), but since she had singed his fur. Musty preferred the woodpile. Given Rhea's mood, that was probably wise. "You're lucky I let ye live, ye warlock," the old woman grumbled.
She turned back to the ball and began to make passes above it, but the glass only continued to swirl with bright pink light - not a single image appeared. Rhea got up at last, went to the door, threw it open, and looked out on the night sky. Now the moon had waxed a little past the half, and the Huntress was coming clear on its bright face. Rhea directed the stream of foul language she didn't quite dare to direct at the glass (who knew what entity might lurk inside it, waiting to take offense at such talk?) up at the woman in the moon. Twice she slammed her bony old fist into the door-lintel as she cursed, dredging up every dirty word she could think of, even the potty-mouth words children throw at each other in the dust of the play yard. Never had she been so angry. She had given the girl a command, and the girl, for whatever reasons, had disobeyed. For standing against Rhea of the Coos, the bitch deserved to die.
"But not right away," the old woman whispered. "First she should be rolled in the dirt, then pissed on until the dirt's mud and her fine blonde hair's full of it. Humiliated ... hurt . . . spat on . . ."
She slammed her fist against the door's side again, and this time blood flew from the knuckles. It wasn't just the girl's failure to obey the hypnotic command. There was another matter, related but much more serious: Rhea herself was now too upset to use the glass, except for brief and unpredictable periods of time. The hand-passes she made over it and the incantations she muttered to it were, she knew, useless; the words and gestures were just the way she focused her will. That was what the glass responded to - will and concentrated thought. Now, thanks to the trollop of a girl and her boy lover, Rhea was too angry to summon the smooth concentration needed to part the pink fog which swirled inside the ball. She was, in fact, too angry to see.
"How can I make it like it was?" Rhea asked the half-glimpsed woman in the moon. "Tell me! Tell me!" But the Huntress told her nothing, and at last Rhea went back inside, sucking at her bleeding knuckles.
Musty saw her coming and squeezed into the cobwebby space between the woodpile and the chimney.
