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step. Ineed desperately to seeLord Kyrtian for myself!Only then would she know
whether ornot he was truly to be trusted and if trusted, to be ap-proached.
But if she was gone from here, there was no telling
what mischief Caellach might not get up to. If she was de- layed if
something happened could Lorryn control the oldtroublemaker for long? Or would
Caellach manage to regainhis hold over his old faction and set this entire
warren seething with so many quarrels and bad feelings that it would all fall
to pieces?
"Your mind or your body?" Kalamadea asked, suddenly, with an odd
birdlike twist of his head.
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"What do you mean?" she replied, wondering what hadpromptedthat sort
of reply.
"Well if it's yourmind that needs to be in two places atonce that is,
if you feel that you have to be able to see andmake decisions yourself about
things going on in two differentplaces at the same time, then we can't help
you," Kalamadeasaid. "But if it's yourbody that needs to beseen in two places
if, for instance, you wanted to leave, and had confidence insomeone enough to
let him make decisions for you but youneeded a sort of figurehead or puppet of
yourself so that certainpeople wouldn't decide to make trouble while you were
gone
"A certain person whose name rhymes withdrain," Alara put in, with a
sly wink.
"Exactly and if that's what's concerning you, well, that's entirely
different. And it's something Alara and I can help youwith." Father Dragon
looked particularly smug, and it didn'ttake long for Shana to realize why,
what he meant, and shewanted to smack herself in the head for not thinking of
itsooner.
"Of course!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Mother there's no reason why you
can't shape-shift intome, is there? You know me wellenough to counterfeit me
for everybody " She flushed, as Lor-ryn laughed and made a face.
" well,practically everybody!"
"No reason at all," Alara said agreeably. "And I don't know why we
didn't think of this before, when You-Know-Who be-came so interfering and
disagreeable. Unless it was because wewere too worried about what had happened
to you to think of it."
Already her mind was racing; if Alara could do this, and waswilling,
thenshe could go in person to see this Lord Kyrtian
and make a decision about whether or not she should try tomake an
ally of him.
She exchanged a glance with Lorryn. "Lord Kyrtian," he saidsimply,
their minds following the same track.
"I can't make a decision about him without seeing him my-self," she
replied, nodding.
"Nor should you," Kalamadea said firmly. "Keman and Dora are good
children, but if they make a poor choice, they have the option of flying away
from Wizards and Citadel and all. Not " he added hastily " that I believe that
theywould, but the op-tion is there, lurking behind their thoughts, and it
could makethem a bit less cautious." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I
believe that same option might have made me too cavalier inmy own decisions at
the time of the First War."
Since Shana had occasionally wondered that herself, there was no good
answer she could make to that.
Since she couldn't, she held her tongue. "Lorryn can con- trol
Caellach better than I can," she said, with complete confi-dence and a wink to
him. "And Lorryn is someone the restwill listen to."
They listen to him more than they do to me, actually. Maybe because
he never was a wizard's apprentice. There were some profound disadvantages to
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having been the rawest of raw be-ginners within the old Citadel and the old
regime itself, and thatwas one of them. "There's only one difficulty, and
that's well,if anyone looks into Alara's mind, they're going to know sheisn't
me."
"But the troublemakers are not the ones who are at all adeptwith the
powers of human magic," Lorryn pointed out logically.
Alara just shrugged off the difficulty. "How often is anyone likely
to snoop on the thoughts of the Elvenbane anyway?" sheasked. "I shouldn't
think it happens often, and besides, I can probably learn mind-wall well
enough to keep them out." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]