The Cauldron Read Online Free PDF Page A

alien that none could survive! Or, worse, could survive only in a form that would make them wish they had perished! From somewhere in her treacherous memory there appeared tales of travelers who had returned from the borders of the dark domains with neither their minds nor their bodies fully restored. She had even heard tales of navigators who—
    Emergence!
    The ship—and all of time-and-space—blossomed into existence around her. Her physical body was still several unfelt heartbeats away, so she could not see, could not hear, could not feel, but she knew . She always recognized the instant of emergence . Time-and-space, even to the isolated mind, could never be mistaken for otherspace any more than a crowded room, even in utter darkness, could never be mistaken for an empty and echoing cavern. Traveling through normal space was too slow, voyages taking generations. But otherspace , traveling through it bent the rules.
    Melusine waited, consciously stifling the instinctive commands her mind sent to an as-yet-nonexistent body, so that when physical being at last enveloped her she gave only the smallest gasp and shivered for only an instant.
    The restrainment pod quickly shaded from gray translucence to perfect transparency, continuing to support her as her body reacquainted itself with the gravity-like force the ship provided. Finally, the ship was satisfied with her recovery, and the pod parted and was reabsorbed.
    Above her, hovering out of reach until summoned, her augmentor rustled its tendrils as if in anticipation. Watching it with a kind of affection—simply because it was familiar?—Melusine wondered whether, as alien as the notion felt, the creature gained some kind of pleasure from its work. She shuddered. Perhaps, like her, it was simply greeting its own body on emergence, or perhaps it hungered for the touch of a living creature other than the ship.
    To her right, Melusine heard the rasp of the shipkeeper’s breath. Far older than she, older even than the navigator, he must find these journeys near unbearable. A faint thrill of new fear went through her. Should the shipkeeper die, who would keep the ship in hand? If she died, he could fulfill her role, but there was no reverse in the matter.
    Almost against her will, she turned her head toward him—and felt a rush of relief. The shipkeeper’s restrainment pod, though still nearly opaque, was smoothly gray, not the black-blotched dead tissue that would surround a body that had failed to reunite with its returning mind. When the ship determined he could stand on his own, the pod would be reabsorbed.
    Reassured, she looked away. As she did, the amorphous glow of the ship’s liaison brightened above the navigator’s reservoir, calling for her attention.
    Stepping over the concentric irregularities that were all that remained of her own restrainment pod, Melusine looked directly at the liaison, at the central core of brightness—and realized, as it dimmed, that her shadowlids had returned. A fierce hope possessed her. She looked down. The silvery white tunic of the guild fell gracefully to brush the tops of feet— true feet, if not yet entirely her own. The fabric skimmed the lines of a tall, lean body, also not quite her own, but at least one she welcomed. No unsightly bulges, no dwarfish folds, nothing to make the fabric cling unnaturally.
    Eagerly, she brought her hands out through the gold-rimmed armslits of the tunic and felt a small pang of disappointment. Two of these fingers had an extra joint. Or was she misremembering these small details of her original form? Journeys—and this journey in particular—could well affect her memory as well as her form, Melusine suspected. But these fingers were long and slender, with neither the thick webbing nor the patches of congealing slime that had so repulsed her at the last emergence.
    She pressed her palms against her face and felt skin that was warm and soft over blessedly solid bones.
    A mirror , she