Madwand (Illustrated) Read Online Free PDF Page B

rather not. Second, ignorance on your part may actually benefit me.”
    “Mister, someone’s already gotten my number. I don’t like the notion of being suddenly engaged in another sorcerous duel.”
    “Oh, they’re all right if you win. That was the nature of the assassination attempt?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, you’re still intact.”
    “Just barely.”
    “Good enough, my boy. Keeps you alert. Now, perhaps we’d best coarsen your features a bit and lighten your eyes a trifle. Shall we have a wart beside your nose? No? An interesting scar on your cheek then? Yes, that should do it . . . ”
    “And you won’t give me your name?”
    “It would mean nothing to you, but your knowledge of it might trouble me later.”
    Pol willed the dragonmark to life, hoping his disguised arm would mask this from the other’s second sight. The man voiced no reaction as the throbbing began. Pol sent the force up and down his right arm, freeing it from the paralysis. Then his neck. He had to be able to turn his head a bit . . . Best to leave the rest as it was for the moment. Catalepsy, he knew, is hard to fake.
    The hands continued to move over his face. The other’s face remained out of his field of vision. Pol summoned a tough, gray strand and felt its ghostly presence across his fingertips.
    “Now they’ll all think you’ve been to

III.
     
    It was more than a little traumatic at the beginning: the sights and sounds—all of the new things we encountered beyond Rondoval. I hovered close to Pol for the first several days, drifting along, sensing everything within range, familiarizing myself with the laws governing new groups of phenomena. Travel, I discovered, is broadening, for I found myself spreading over a larger area as time went on. My little joke. I realized that my expansion was at least partly attributable to the increased number of things whose essences I absorbed as we traveled along—plants as well as animals, though the latter were more to my liking—and partly in accord with Boyle’s and Charles’ laws, which I’d picked out of Pol’s mind one evening when he returned in memory to his university days. I cannot, in all honesty, consider myself a gas. Though I am anchored to the physical plane, I am not entirely manifested here and can withdraw partly with ease, entirely with more difficulty. I confine myself to a given area and move about by means of my will. I am not certain how that works either. I was aware, however, that my total volume was increasing and that my ability to do physical things was improving—like the rabbits. I had decided to look upon the entire journey as an educational experience. Any new thing that I learned might ultimately have some bearing upon my quest for identity and purpose.
    And I was learning new things, some of them most peculiar. For instance, when that cloaked and muffled man entered the compound, I had felt a rippling as of a gentle breeze, only it was not physical; I had heard something like a low note and seen a mass of swimming colors. Then everyone, including the camp watchman, was asleep. There followed more movements and colors and sounds. Having recently learned the meaning of “subjective,” I can safely say that that is what they were, rather than tangible. Then I observed with interest as he altered the sleepers’, memories concerning Pol, realizing from the sensations I had experienced and from my memory of those back at Rondoval during Pol’s duel with the sorcerer in brown that I was extremely sensitive to magical emanations. I felt as if I could easily have altered these workings. I saw no reason to do so, however, so I merely observed. From my small knowledge of such affairs, it seemed that this one had an unusual style in the way he shifted forces among the planes. Yes. Sudden memories of a violent occasion reinforced this impression. He was peculiar, but I could see how he did everything that he did.
    Then he stood beside Pol for a long while