How could she touch me, old man?'
'Easily,' he smiled. 'Very easily. She cannot fight you here, nor in the Earth World. That is true. But limbo, Ganelyn? Have you forgotten limbo?'
His hands came out of his sleeves. There was a rod of blinding silver in each. Before I could stir he had brought the rods together, crossing them before his smiling face. At the intersection forces of tremendous power blazed into an instant's being, forces that streamed from the poles of the world and could touch only for the beat of a second if that world were not to be shaken into fragments. I felt the building reel below me.
I felt the gateway open.
Here was grayness, nothing but oblivion made visible all around me. I staggered with the suddenness of it, the shock, and the terrible tide of anger that came surging up through my whole body at the knowledge of Freydyr' trickery. It was not to be endured, this magicking of the Dark World's lord! I would fight my way back and the vengeance I would wreak upon Freydyr would be a lesson to all.
Out of the grayness a mirror loomed before me. A mirror? I saw my own face, bewildered, uncomprehending, staring back into my eyes. But I was not wearing the ragged blue garments of sacrifice which I had donned so many aeons ago in the Castle of the Coven. I seemed to wear Earth garments, and I seemed not quite myself, not quite Ganelyn. I seemed --
'Edwina Bond!' said the voice of Freydyr behind me.
The reflection of myself glanced across my shoulder, and a look of recognition and unutterable relief came over it.
'Freydyr!' she cried, in my own voice. 'Freydyr, thank God! I've tried so hard --'
'Wait,' Freydyr stopped her. 'Listen. There is one last trial before you. This woman is Ganelyn. She has undone all your work among the forest people. She has slain Llyr and the Coven. There is none in the Dark World to stay her hand if she wins her way back to it. Only you can stop her, Edwina Bond. Only you.'
I did not wait for his to say anything more. I knew what must be done. I lunged forward before she could speak or stir, and drove a heavy blow into the face that might have been my own. It was a strange thing to do. It was a hard thing. At the last moment my muscles almost refused me, for it was as if I struck myself.
I saw her reel back, and my own head reeled in imagination, so that the first blow rocked us both.
She caught herself a dozen feet away and stood for a moment, unsteady on her feet, looking at me with a confusion that might have been the mirror of my own face, for I knew there was confusion there too.
Then anger flushed those bewildering, familiar features, and I saw blood break from the corner of her mouth and trickle across her chin. I laughed savagely. That blood, somehow, made her my enemy. I had seen the blood of enemies, springing out in the wake of my blows, too often to mistake her now for anything but what she was. Myself -- and my deadliest foe.
She dropped into a half-crouch and came for me, stooping to protect her body from my fists. I wished fervently for a sword or a gun. I have never cared for an equal fight, as Ganelyn does not fight for sport, but to win. But this fight must be terribly, unbelievably equal.
She dodged beneath my blow, and I felt the rocking jar of what seemed to be my own fist jolting against my cheekbone. She danced back, light-footed, out of range.
Rage came snarling up in my throat. I wanted nothing of her boxing, this game fought by rules. Ganelyn fought to win! I roared at her from the full depth of my lungs and hurled myself forward in a crushing embrace that carried us both heavily to the gray sponginess that was limbo's floor. My fingers sank delightfully in her throat. I groped savagely for her eyes. She grunted with effort and I felt her fist thud into my ribs, and felt the sharp white pain of breaking bone.
So wholly was she myself, and I she, that for an instant I was not sure whose rib had snapped beneath whose blow. Then I drew a deep breath and sobbed it out again half finished as pain like bright light flashed through my body, and I knew it was my own rib.
The knowledge maddened me. Careless of pain or caution, I drove my fists savagely into her at blind random, feeling exultantly the crackle of bone beneath my knuckles, the spurt of blood over my hard-clenched hands. We strove together in a terrible locked embrace, there upon the floor of limbo, in a nightstallion that had no real being, except for the pain shooting through me after each breath.
But in a moment or two, I knew somehow, very surely, that I was her mistress. And this is how I knew. She rolled half over to jab a hard blow into my face, and before the blow began, I had blocked it. I had known. She squirmed from beneath me and braced herself to strike me again in the ribs, and before she could strike, I had twisted sidewise away. Again I had known.
For I had been Edwina Bond once, in every way that matters. I had lived in her memory and her world. And I knew Edwina Bond as I knew myself. Instinct seemed to tell me what she would do next. She could not out-think me, and so she could not hope to out-tight me, to whom her every thought was revealed in the moment before she could act upon it.
Even in the pain of my broken rib, I laughed then. Freydyr had overreached himself at last! In smothering Ganelyn under Edwina Bond's memories in the Earth World, he had given me the means to vanquish her now! She was mine, to finish when I chose, and the Dark World was mine, and Edwina Bond's kingdom of free people was mine too, and Edwina Bond's lovely pale-haired bride, and everything that might have been her own.
I laughed exultantly, and twisted in three perfectly timed motions that blocked and overbalanced the woman who was myself. Three motions only -- and then I had her across my knee, taut-stretched, her spine pressing hard against my thigh.
I grinned down at her. My blood dripped into her face. I saw it strike there, and I met her eyes, and then strangely, for one flashing instant, I knew a fierce yearning for defeat. In that instant, I prayed voicelessly to a nameless god that Edwina Bond might yet save herself, and Ganelyn might die....
I callled forth all the strength that was in me, and limbo swam redly before my eyes and the pain of my broken rib was a lance of white light as I drew the deep breath that was Edwina Bond's last.
I broke her back across, my knee.
XVII. Freedom at Last!
HURRIEDLY TWO cold, smooth hands pressed hard upon my forehead. I looked up. They slid lower, covering my eyes. And weakness was like a blanket over me. I knelt there, unresisting, feeling the body of the woman who had been myself slide limply from my knee.
Freydyr pressed me down. We lay side by side, the living and the dead.
The silver rods of the sorcerer touched my head, and made a bridge between Edwina Bond and Ganelyn. I remembered Medeo's wand that could draw the life-force from the mind. A dull, numbing paralysis had me. Little tingling shocks rippled through my nerves, and I could not move.
Sudden agonizing pain shot through me. My back! I tried to scream with the white fury of that wrenching agony, but my throat was frozen. I felt Edwina Bond's wounds!
In that nightstallion moment, while my brain spun down the limitless corridors of a science beyond that of mankind, I knew what Freydyr had done -- what he was doing.
I felt the mind of Edwina Bond come back from the gulfs. Side by side we lay in flesh, and side by side in spirit as well.
There was blackness, and two flames, burning with a cold, clear fire....
One was the mind -- the life -- of Edwina Bond. One was my life!
The flames bent toward each other!
They mingled and were one!
Life and soul and mind of Edwina Bond merged with life of Ganelyn!
Where two flames had burned, there was one now. One only.
And the identity of Ganelyn ebbed, sank... faded into a graying shadow as the fires of Edwina Bond's life leaped even higher!
We were one. We were --
Edwina Bond! No longer Ganelyn! No longer Lady of the Dark World, Mistress of the Caere!
Magic of Freydyr drowned the soul of Ganelyn and gave her body to the life of Edwina Bond!
I saw Ganelyn -- die!.
..
When I opened my eyes again, I knelt upon the altar that had been Llyr's. The empty vaults towered hollowly above us. Limbo was gone. The body across my knee was gone. Freydyr smiled down at me with his ageless, timeless smile.
'Welcome back to the Dark World, Edwina Bond.'
Yes, it was true. I knew that. I knew it was my own identity, housed though it was in another woman's body. Dizzily I blinked, shook my head, and rose slowly. Pain struck savagely at my side, and I gasped and let Freydyr spring forward to support me on one great white arm, while the hollow building reeled about me. But Ganelyn was gone. She had vanished with limbo, vanished like a scatter of smoke, vanished as if the prayer she breathed in her extremity had been answered by the nameless god she prayed to.
I was Edwina Bond again.
'Do you know why Ganelyn could break you, Edwina Bond?' Freydyr said softly. 'Do you know why you could not vanquish her? It was not what she thought. I know she believed she read your mind because she had dwelt there, but that was not the reason. When a woman fights herself, my daughter, the same woman does not fight to win. Only the suicide hates herself. Deep within Ganelyn lay knowledge of her own evil, and the hatred of it. So she could strike her own image and exult in the blow, because she hated herself in the depths of her own mind.
'But you had earned your own respect. You could not strike as hard as she because you are not evil. And Ganelyn won -- and lost. In the end, she did not