Chapter 50
The Homecoming
Connie basked in the warm afternoon sunlight as she lay half-asleep in a wagon of straw. Roggentine had been nearly leveled in the battle against Chaos that wracked the land in their absence. Now, while Connie slept, workers were busy rebuilding the walls around Calicus’ garden. A newer, far more spectacular Roggentine was rising from the rubble of the old. But she knew she’d never see it, for up in the tower in Calicus’ abode, they were preparing the spells needed for her return to Earth.
It had been an arduous, seven-month journey back to the southern coast of Cerinavia from the frozen continent of Atranaea. During that time, Connie had abundant opportunity to study Snow’s spell books and accumulate enormous celestial energy. On her arrival in Roggentine, she profoundly impressed Calicus with her knowledge and skill level. A week later, Calicus bestowed upon her the title “First Order Sorceress.” Yes, now it really is ‘Connie the Celestial Sorceress,’ Connie thought. She smiled to herself. She rather liked the sound of that.
“Connie!” came Snow’s voice from Calicus’ doorway. “Connie!” she shouted again.
Connie blinked her eyes open. The bright, yellow sunlight in her eyes blinded her momentarily.
“Come hither. It is time for you to go.”
Connie lifted herself out of the straw. Sind ran up to her a moment later. In the fight for Roggentine, he had gone over and above in defending against the scourge of Chaos. The last several months had made a young man out of the boy. And the young man was a hero. To Connie’s pleasure, he had a natural affinity for elemental magic. He learned quickly, too. Connie knew that Alyndia would have a loyal apprentice waiting for her when she returned to Cerinya.
Sind took Connie’s hand. He led her to the door at the base of the tower, where Snow waited patiently. Snow was completely healed of her injuries with the help of some powerful spirit magic. The celestial sorceress watched Connie with a doleful expression as her former apprentice passed through the doorway. She knew that very shortly, Connie’s spirit would no longer inhabit Alyndia’s body.
“Has Calicus contacted Alyndia?” Connie asked as they walked up the spiral stone staircase to his lab at the top of the tower.
“Yes, and she is waiting for you. The professor’s machine on Earth is operating even as we speak.”
Calicus had decided it was too risky to use Alyndia’s original method of transferring souls through fixating the spirit on a material item. Instead, they decided to exchange by physical contact between Connie’s and Alyndia’s bodies. To do this, Snow and Calicus would open a portal to a chlorine-filled chamber in the professor’s lab. This portal would allow their material bodies to occupy a dimension on the Earth’s material plane. Then, by using a special airlock that would not allow the mingling of atmosphere between the two worlds, Connie and Alyndia would grasp each other by the hands. After that, if all went according to plan, the silver cord would untangle itself, and the spirits of the two women would be restored to the bodies of their birth.
Rahl met Connie at the top of the stone staircase and greeted her with a sad smile. To her, he looked weary. On impulse, Connie embraced him. They stood at the top of the staircase this way for a long time without speaking. Snow slipped by them into the lab. She took Sind with her.
“I will miss you,” Connie whispered to him.
“I will never forget you or what you have done for this world.”
“You can have the city erect statues of us.”
“They do not believe what we did. They think that they themselves defeated Chaos.”
“Thankless, they are!”
“Indeed.”
“Sometimes, Rahl, it seems all the good a person does in life is entirely hidden from the world,” she lamented. “Everyone always sees the bad while your heroism and sacrifices go unnoticed. It reminds me of my work in the CIA.”
“Let our success be our secret, then.”
Connie took Rahl’s hand, and together they entered Calicus’ lab. There, Connie saw a Thaumaturgic Circle of Conjuration etched into the stone floor. A tall, black candle sat at each corner of the triangle. At the center of the triangle hung a black curtain suspended in midair without any visible means of support. Right now, it was just a curtain, but Connie knew that in a few minutes, the curtain would become a portal to Earth. For now, the black cloth wavered lightly in the breeze that blew into the room from Calicus’ open window.
Calicus smiled warmly at Connie when he saw her. He handed Snow a glowing green dagger.
“What is that for?” Connie asked, alarmed, referring to the dagger.
“This is to cut the silver cord,” Snow said as she stuffed the blade in her belt.
“Why would we want to cut the silver cord?”
“It is in case the spell somehow perverts while the exchange is taking place,” Snow explained. “The cords that bind your souls to your original bodies should unravel themselves and disappear. However, if something goes wrong, we will cut the cords. Of course, this is the last resort, because by severing the cords, you and Alyndia won’t be able to return to your respective bodies, and one or both of you will likely die. But it’s better to cut the cords with the chance of saving one of you than lose you both.”
Sind grabbed Connie’s free hand. He looked up at her. “Will you ever come back to see us?”
Connie knelt so that she could face him squarely. “No, I will never be able to visit, but Alyndia is nice. She will be a good teacher to you.”
Sind’s eyes filled with acidic tears on hearing this. “But I don’t want to know Alyndia. I want to be with you. Can I go with you to Earth?”
Connie shook her head. “No, you can’t. The air is not good for you there. It would hurt you.”
“Maybe you can cast a spell,” Sind pressed. “You’re a celestial sorceress. You can do it if you want to.”
“I cannot, as there are no spells that I know of that will allow a person to breathe the atmosphere on Earth. But I would certainly cast such a spell on you if I could.”
Connie started feeling the familiar moisture in her eyes. She didn’t want Sind and Rahl to see her this way. She stood up and walked over to the open window. She fixed her gaze on the city beneath the emerald sky. Already, the new city was beautiful. Alyndia would have a lot of new buildings to paint within a few short years.
Rahl joined Connie at the window. She sensed his presence there.
“I’m going to miss this place,” she said.
“Is there not any place on Earth like Cerinya?”
Connie shook her head. “No, Rahl. And there is no one like you in it, either. And there’s no one like Snow or Sind.”
She turned to the swordbearer and smiled. The sunlight reflected off his eyes. The breeze fanned out his hair. She realized at that moment how much she adored him. She resisted a strong urge to kiss him.
“You must leave now,” Calicus said to Connie.
“Just a moment,” Connie replied without looking back toward the old sorcerer. She gazed into Rahl’s eyes and spoke to him in a soft, intimate voice so that only he could hear.
“I have a question for you, Rahl. I want you to answer me honestly, if you can.”
He gave her a slight nod. She took a deep breath. “If I could arrange to stay on Cerinya for a while longer, I wonder—” For the first time in her life, she could not find the words to express what she wanted to say, and it wasn’t because of a language barrier. “You know, I was wondering if you would ever—” Emotion well up within her. Get a hold of yourself, Connie. She wiped her eyes. “I just want to say I’m so happy to have met you,” she said, feeling thoroughly discomfited by her lack of ability to express herself.
Rahl smiled at Connie. “The feelings are mutual, Connie,” he said tenderly. “I shall never forget you.”
On hearing those words, Connie embraced Rahl again. “And I shall never forget you,” she whispered as she buried her face in his shoulder.
“Connie!” Snow called out. “We don’t have forever!”
“Take care, sweet lady,” Rahl said softly as he stroked her back with his big hands.
Connie lingered in Rahl’s embrace a moment longer, then she reluctantly returned her attention to Snow, Calicus, and the Thaumaturgic Circle. The candles burned with a bright blue light. The black curtain no longer moved with the breeze that blew through the windows. It hung beside the Circle as a rectangular window of velvety darkness—darkness without texture, appearing like the darkness she once saw in Tristana’s eyes.
Calicus poked his wooden staff through the portal. The end of it vanished into the darkness.
“Behold the portal, Connie. Your home world awaits you on the other side.”
Snow abruptly stepped into the circle. “I will go with you to monitor the situation,” she said to Connie.
“No! You should not!” Calicus told Snow. He moved to block her from entering with his staff, but before he could, she slipped into the blackness of the portal. He cursed.
“That scoundrel! I did not give her permission to enter the portal. Now I must wait here myself.” He gazed at Connie. “Go now,” he said, gesturing with his staff. “The spell will not last indefinitely.”
Connie stood in front of the rectangle of negative space. It was like a Threshibian bag with a hole in the bottom that led to Earth. So this is it, Connie thought. This is the end of my time in Cerinya. She stepped into the circle, then she turned around to face Rahl, hoping to look into his eyes one last time, but he had turned away and now seemed to be staring pensively out the curvy tower window, his head bowed. She wanted to say something more to him, transmit to him some tender thoughts, but there was really nothing more to say. Not wishing to prolong the pain, Connie took a deep breath and stepped through the black portal.
Stepping through the portal felt like stepping through a thin waterfall of icy cold water. As her head passed through, she felt a popping sound in her ears as though there were an abrupt change in air pressure. Connie found herself standing in a dark hallway. Several paces directly ahead of her stood a rectangular doorway of bluish-white light—the aperture. Unlike the magical portal from Cerinya she had just passed through, the aperture, which led to the earthly realm, was special in that it could exist only by the fusion of magic and technology. The white light in this portal was as bright and featureless as the green light in the portal to Calicus’ tower. The light from the portals, for all its brilliance, did not reflect on the surfaces of the hallway.
Connie walked slowly toward the other end of the hall. The floor seemed to sway and flex beneath her feet as though she were walking across a long rope bridge. She hadn’t noticed at first, but all around her were tiny white points of light, like stars. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she saw swirls of stars like galaxies and nebulae. She reached out and touched a wall of the corridor. It was hard and smooth like glass, and it felt warm to her touch, though her body seemed unable to sense the ambient temperature of the corridor. She continued moving forward toward the light at the other end of the portal and passed into it.
Now she stood in a metal-and-plexiglass chamber measuring three paces deep and three paces across. It was just tall enough for her to stand. All sides of the chamber, including the floor, had a green tint except for the black portal she had just stepped through. The cube was centered precisely at the center of Professor Layton’s lab. Snow was waiting for her in the chamber. Connie heard a whirring sound, like a fan. Within two breaths of stepping into the chamber, she felt invigorated and energized, nearly to the point of euphoria, as the chamber was filled almost entirely with pure chlorine, which was equivalent to a person on Earth breathing pure oxygen. Connie realized in an instant that the plexiglass walls of the chamber were not tinted green at all, but rather, what she saw was the concentration of pure chlorine within the cube.
Professor Layton and a sullen-looking Alyndia stood outside the chamber. Standing behind them with a look of utter astonishment on her face was Connie’s sister, Joy. Snow unfolded a Box of Tongues. A soft rainbow of light projected from the box. It mingled softly with the green of the chlorine gas in the chamber.
The professor raised the handset of a cordless microphone to his mouth. “Welcome to Earth,” the professor’s voice called to his guests through a speaker. “I hope the environment is suitable for you inside the chamber.”
Connie spotted a microphone lying on the floor inside the chamber. Snow had ignored it or not noticed it upon entering the chamber, perhaps too interested in the view of Professor Layton’s lab. The sorceress likely didn’t even know what a microphone was, and why would she? Any purpose that microphone could serve, she could easily perform with a spell.
Connie picked up the microphone. “The atmosphere in here is wonderful, professor,” Connie said. Then she took another deep breath. The effect of breathing pure chlorine was almost intoxicating, like breathing pure oxygen on Earth.
“Good,” the professor said.
Joy walked up to the cube, seemingly mesmerized by the sight. She placed her hands against the Plexiglas wall. Connie knelt next to Joy. “Hi, Joy.” Connie said.
Joy said something to Connie, but Connie heard only a faint mumble through the glass. The whirring of the ventilator fan did not help either.
The professor gave Joy the microphone. “Constance? Is that really you?” she asked.
“Yes, Joy. And this is my mentor, Snow.” She turned to the celestial sorceress who stood behind her. “Snow, this is my younger sister, Joy.” Snow gave Joy a slight bow.
“I cannot believe this,” Joy said in wonderment. “This chamber was empty a moment ago. Then you two appeared. How did you get in there?”
“I’ll tell you later,” Connie said, taking the easy way out.
Joy stared into the cube, still unable to believe her eyes. “Mom passed away,” she said out of the blue.
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“I know that. Alyndia told me.”
“Did she tell you everything?”
“I don’t want to know everything.”
Connie clenched her teeth. She had thus far avoided Alyndia’s attempts to talk to her about her mother. So this is what I’m in for on Earth? she thought.
“Just let it go, Joy,” she continued. “I don’t want to know. As far as I know, I never knew my mother.”
“That’s my point.”
Connie responded with a volley of Cerinyan expletives. She did not care whether the Box of Tongues translated them or not.
Snow took Connie’s wrist and gently pushed the microphone in Connie’s hand out of the fan of light radiating from the box so that those standing outside the chamber could not understand them.
“That’s your sister?” the sorceress asked.
“Yes. And did you hear that? She called me ‘Constance,’ like she’s ready to drag me off to church with her!”
Snow laughed. “Now I see why you’re so moody every time your spirit returns from visiting Earth,” she said. “And just think—all that time I thought it was a side effect of the spells we cast.”
“May I cast one last spell before I go?”
Snow gave Connie a wry smile. “Calicus says it is not ethical to cast spells through the ether like that—although I would not tell anyone if you did.”
Connie considered casting some painful, debilitating spell on her sister when a wave of inexplicable sadness washed over her. She caught some movement outside the cube through her peripheral vision. Alyndia was weeping inconsolably in Professor Layton’s arms. Connie could not hear what Alyndia was saying to him through the thick Plexiglas, but she sensed it was something heartfelt.
Snow spoke into the microphone as she had seen Connie do. “Alyndia, are you ready now?” Her voice came out hard and clinical-sounding. “It is time for you to give back to Connie what you have taken from her.”
The professor consoled Alyndia a moment longer. He walked over to Joy and gently took the microphone from her.
“Yes, Alyndia is ready to do the exchange.”
Connie looked over at the tearful Alyndia. She knew profoundly that Alyndia didn’t want to part with Professor Layton, but this was what had to be done. Connie knew they had spent the evening expressing their goodbyes. She had been barely able to sleep the night before because of the sensations that Alyndia had inadvertently transmitted to her over the ether; they had made love several times.
Professor Layton pointed to the airlock booth where Connie and Alyndia could clasp each other’s hands for the physical contact that would be needed for the transfer. Alyndia stepped up to the tiny airlock, opened it, and inserted her hand. Next, the professor twisted the lever on the airlock, and the panel on Connie’s side slid away. Snow pulled out her fairy wand and whispered an incantation.
“Go ahead, Connie,” Snow said, waving the wand over Connie’s head in a circular pattern.
Connie knelt in front of the airlock. But instead of inserting her hand, Connie withdrew from her robe Maris’s poem-letter that she’d found inside the romance novel. She unfolded the paper and pressed it up against the glass of the chamber so that Alyndia could see it. At first, Alyndia didn’t seem to recognize what it was, then her eyes widened, and she gasped.
“Yes, I know all about it,” Connie said to her.
Alyndia’s expression darkened. Connie wasn’t sure what she saw in Alyndia’s eyes. Was it anger? Remorse? Something else? Both the professor and the sorceress, who stood nearby, watched the interaction with puzzled expressions.
“What is that?” Snow asked Connie.
“Nothing. Just a bad memory,” she replied obliquely, folding the paper and putting it back into her robe. Then she turned to look at Snow, but she didn’t speak.
“Is something troubling you, Connie?”
“This might sound strange, but I think I’m going to miss my life on Cerinya.”
“It wasn’t really your life. Your place is back on Earth.”
“I know. But I’m going to miss you, too.”
“Are you saying you don’t hate me like you used to?”
“Of course not. You know that very well. And I want to thank you for everything you’ve done for me. You really are the best.”
The sorceress smiled slightly on hearing her say this. “You know, I myself kind of regret you’re leaving. I could really use some help at the temple. Every other visitor wants a fertility spell these days.”
“Maybe Alyndia can help you with that when she comes back.”
“Alyndia? Ha! I would never choose her work with me. Besides, Calicus got word from the Council yesterday that she’s going to be banned from practicing magic.”
“She is?”
“Yes. For seven years.”
Connie glanced over at Alyndia, who was watching them on the other side of the glass but could not hear them. “Poor Alyndia.”
“Don’t pity her. It’s her own fault,” Snow quipped with icy indifference. “All right. It’s time for you to go. I wish you a pleasant life on Earth.”
“Thank you.”
The two women embraced, and then Connie pulled up her sleeve. She took a deep breath.
“Here we go.”
Connie inserted her hand into the airlock and clasped Alyndia’s hand. The warmth of her earthly body on her alien skin made her feel queasy. The sensation caused her to shudder. Then, spirit energy like warm honey began flowing through her arm into her body. At first, it pooled into her legs, making them feel hot and tingly and then numb. The lack of sensation rose to her hips.
Suddenly, a bright white light flashed in her eyes, and she found herself tangled in a twisted mass of silver wire that looked like so much string. Then another life flashed before her senses as their spirits merged across the physical path. This life began when she woke up in a hospital bed. She remembered standing in her apartment bedroom with MacGregor. She recalled her long days in a psychiatric ward, long conversations with her sisters, and even battling herself in the Wild. She relived every second, each passing instantly and yet inexorably slowly. Her emotion fluttered and alternated unbridled with the incredible quickness of a banner flapping in a strong wind.
At one point, Connie found herself standing at a bedside in a dimly lit hospital room. The face of her dying mother filled her eyes. At once, she realized that this was one of Alyndia’s most vivid memories—it was the memory of her mother’s death. Now, to Connie’s horror, she was experiencing the memory firsthand. Alyndia! No! her mind cried out. Connie tried to resist recalling the memory but found she could not.
Pamela Bain took her estranged daughter’s hand and pressed it against her pallid cheek. “Constance, I never thought I would see you again,” she said, her voice almost a cry.
Connie found herself speaking the words to her mother that Alyndia had spoken: “It has been a long time. But I have come back to you.” These words left her lips, not of her own volition. Connie realized these were words that Alyndia had spoken. She was only remembering them as though she had spoken them herself.
“There is something I’ve wanted to say to you all these years, my love. It is about your father. I know you loved him very much.”
“Yes, Mom. I did,” Connie heard herself say.
“But I was wrong for the way I treated you. You see, Constance, there is something I never told you. It is something I have never shared with anyone. It is something I could scarcely admit to myself. More than anything, it is something I must share with you before I leave this world.” Pamela started into a fit of coughing.
Connie gave her a sip of water from a clear plastic cup at the bedside. Pamela’s breathing became abruptly unsteady. Her face winced and twitched. Connie saw that her mother was in a great deal of pain. She clutched Alyndia’s hand tightly with her withered hand.
“Mom, you don’t have to say anything to me at all.”
“No, I must tell you,” Pamela insisted. “The night your father died, he admitted to me that it was he who suggested you have the abortion. I could not believe what he said. I was so angry at him for giving you permission to do what I felt was wrong. I told him I would leave him for that. Though he pleaded with me, I would not listen. While we lay in the darkness, I told him he would burn in hell, then I rolled over. I could not bear to look at him. That was the last thing I said to him that evening. The last thing I heard before I fell asleep was his quiet sobbing. But I had no pity for him. The next morning, when I went to rouse him, I found he was dead.” Pamela began to cry. “Do you realize what I did, Constance? I broke the heart of the man I loved.”
Connie, through Alyndia’s eyes, stared at Pamela, utterly speechless.
Pamela continued through her tears. “All those years, Constance, I never told you what happened. I couldn’t face the fact I had killed the one I loved most in the world. I used you as a scapegoat instead. I took it all out of you. I was cruel. In the end, I lost you too. May God help me!” Pamela squeezed Connie’s hand again. Connie felt the wetness of Pamela’s tears against her fingers. “I’ve wanted to tell you this for so long, but by then you were gone.”
“Mom? What can I do?”
“Constance, look into my eyes. Can you ever forgive me for what I did to you? Can you ever? Tell me the truth.”
Connie’s heart was liberated with these words. “Mama!” Connie cried into the ether. These were Connie’s words. “Mama! I forgive you!”
“Yes, Mom. I forgive you,” Alyndia said. “And I would forgive you a thousand times!” Alyndia embraced Connie’s mother. Connie felt her mother’s fragile, emaciated frame in her arms. She felt tears in Alyndia’s eyes.
Connie felt years of sadness and animosity melt away like warm rain on snow. Thank you, Alyndia. Thank you, and God bless you for what you’ve done.
“Constance!” Pamela gasped with sudden vitality while in Alyndia’s embrace. “I see him! I see him!”
“Who do you see?”
“I see your father. And he’s smiling at me. Look, he’s holding out his hand to me! He’s saying something to me—he says he loves you, Constance. Oh, Constance—he’s so beautiful!”
Connie gazed at Pamela. Her eyes were wide with excitement as she stared at something up at the ceiling. Connie looked up but saw nothing but the featureless hospital ceiling.
“I don’t see him,” she said to Pamela, staring into the ceiling.
Pamela did not respond. Connie looked down at her. Her mother’s eyes were now closed, a blissful look on her face.
“Mom?” Connie called again, but the woman no longer breathed. Now alone in the room, she wept at the bedside.
At that moment, Connie had had enough. She opened her eyes. She saw a strange double vision; she saw images of herself and Alyndia superimposed on top of each other on the plexiglass chamber, surrounded by loops of silvery cord. Snow still stood behind her in the chamber, waving the wand slowly in a circular motion over Alyndia’s head. The spiritual transfer was nearly complete.
Fighting off the mental fog that had taken hold in her, she sought to regain control of Alyndia’s body on the chlorine side of the chamber. Alyndia seemed to know what Connie’s intentions were. Immediately, her spirit eagerly reversed course and flooded back into Connie’s earthly body.
Now, having regained some use of Alyndia’s hand, Connie reached back and plucked the enchanted dagger from Snow’s belt. Before Snow could react, Connie severed the entangled silver cords that bound her spirit with Alyndia’s. The cord vanished instantly. Connie instantly felt a tremendous, congestive, crushing pain in her chest. She dropped the dagger while continuing to hold the hand of her earthly body as long as she could—her last link with the home of her birth.
“Connie! What have you done?” Snow shouted.
No longer able to control her body, Connie released her grasp on her earthly form and collapsed to the floor of the chamber. As she did so, her arm slipped out of the airlock. Alyndia, appearing dazed but again in control of Connie’s earthly body, removed her hand from the airlock and took a few steps back from the chamber before she too swooned and crumpled to the floor. An alarm went off as concentrated chlorine gas flowed out of the open airlock into the lab. Prepared for such a mishap, Professor Layton, who had already donned a gas mask, quickly slipped one over Alyndia’s face. He grabbed another mask for Joy, but the sister had already gotten a whiff of the noxious gas from the chamber and was now screaming and choking her way to the doorway that led outdoors.
Connie’s spirit stood in the chamber over her unmoving body, expecting that the body would recall her at any moment just as it always did when she traveled in the Wild. The pressure between the Earth’s atmosphere and pressure in the chamber quickly equalized, and now oxygen-rich earthly atmosphere began to flow in. Snow, wheezing and choking, dragged Alyndia’s body back to the portal. The Box of Tongues and her wand that she’d dropped when Connie cut the cords burst violently into flames. Black smoke quickly filled the chamber.
Connie shouted to Snow from the ether. “Run, Snow! I’ll return to my body in a moment. Just save yourself!”
The celestial sorceress did not appear to hear her. Seconds later, overcome by the toxic Earth atmosphere, she collapsed beside Connie, gasping for breath.
“Snow!” Connie screamed.
The professor shut the airlock, flipped on a ventilator, and tended to Alyndia, who lay on the floor. She quickly came to, and he helped her to her feet. She went back to the chamber and pressed both hands against the wall of plexiglass. At once, she tore off the gas mask. Connie saw that her eyes were flooded with tears, either from emotion or the chlorine gas. She shouted something, but Connie could not hear her. After a few seconds, she covered her nose and mouth and broke into a fit of coughing. The professor pressed the gas mask back onto her face.
Now that the airlock had been shut, the chamber again filled with chlorine, displacing the noxious Earth atmosphere that had entered. The fresh chlorine revived Snow. Still choking and coughing, the sorceress rose unsteadily to her feet and dragged Alyndia’s limp body toward the point of green light at the other end of the aperture.
Connie watched Snow, knowing she had to follow. Just before she left the chamber, she looked back to see Alyndia with her hands against the glass wall of the chamber, now weeping, the glass smeared with her tears, and the professor gently trying to pull her away from the chamber.
“Farewell, Alyndia,” Connie said to her.
Alyndia did not respond, appearing unable to see or hear her, and taking her by the arm, Gerald gently led her away from the chamber.
Connie caught up with Snow just as she was dragging Alyndia’s body through the portal back into Cerinya. The passage to Earth collapsed and vanished forever the instant Connie’s spirit itself passed through.
In contrast to when she left, Calicus’ lab now appeared to Connie in black and white, and she could not hear a single sound from all the frantic commotion taking place. Everything seemed slightly sped up. It was like a silent movie—only without the tinkling piano.
She watched Rahl check for a pulse at her neck. Evidently finding none, he began performing CPR on her as he had done once before. Connie began to feel that something had gone wrong. She tried slipping back into her body as she had done perhaps a dozen times before on the return trip from Earth. To her horror, she found she could not. Her spirit passed through Alyndia’s old body as though it were an inanimate object.
“No!” she shouted. “This can’t be!” She heard her own voice when she spoke, but it sounded acoustically dead, as though she were speaking in a room full of pillows.
Snow sat wheezing on the floor of Calicus’ lab. She pressed her hand over her chest as though she were trying to calm a racing heart. She appeared to be trying to explain something to Calicus. He began shouting at her and looked as though he might strike her with his staff. Connie stood directly in front of Snow’s face so that the sorceress could see her. Snow looked through Connie as if she didn’t exist.
“Snow! Tell me this can’t be!” Connie shouted into the ether.
Calicus was not saying something to Rahl. Give up—she’s gone, the wizard seemed to be saying to him. Snow shouted something to Rahl. He yelled something back at her and continued the CPR. Sind watched the unfolding events in horror. He slowly backed away from the scene. Abruptly turned and ran from the room.
Now, the image of Calicus’ tower chamber began to fade. The images became fuzzy, indistinct, like a badly focused black-and-white movie. She felt something happening to her, and she knew it wasn’t good. She realized she needed to think fast. She gazed at her hands. To her surprise, they were coated with a white haze of pure celestial energy. She realized she was dying, but for the moment she still had access to some residual celestial power. But what could she do with it?
Then she remembered the celestial spell Snow had taught her, the spell they cast that had loosened the bond between body and spirit so that her consciousness could traverse the Wild. Snow had once told her that for every spell that existed, an opposite always existed. Connie had no idea what the opposite of this spell was. They never needed it because the underlying bond between her astral spirit and her material body would always draw her back when the spell expired. She figured that this bond had somehow been broken when she cut the silver cord. Now she was in a fix; she was a spirit without a bond to her still-living physical body. She was a ghost—a dying ghost. Somehow, she had to restore the bond.
Connie saw that Rahl still had not given up on her, but he looked as if he was getting tired. She had to think fast. Although she did not know the exact spell that reaffirmed the bond between spirit and body, she could try an inversion of the spell that loosened the bond. Maybe that would be enough. But inversions were tricky to cast; even Snow avoided doing them whenever possible. Nor did they always work. But Connie felt, in this case, that she had no choice. She gazed at her hands again. Can it be done? She noticed that even the whiteness of her celestial energy was beginning to fade to a pale yellow. The window of opportunity was closing quickly.
Connie focused her mental energy on the inversion of the spell. She started the incantation and gestures. Halfway through the casting of the spell, she realized she was doing it wrong. She started again. After the spell was complete, she waited. Nothing at all happened. She panicked for a moment. What am I going to do?
She decided to try the inversion one more time. This time, she occupied the space within the body she tried to repossess. With the dwindling of her energy, she began to feel drowsy. She fought off the feeling. This is it, she thought. Then she remembered Snow’s words: Make your last spell your best. Connie cast the inversion one last time, focusing the remainder of her ebbing life energy into the spell for all it was worth. The flux of energy moved around and within her…
Tremendous pain in her chest hit her like a ton of bricks. In a heaving gasp, she drew a long-delayed breath of life-giving chlorine into her strained lungs. By the gods! she heard Rahl say.
“She lives?” Calicus asked, sounding genuinely surprised.
“Indeed, she does,” Rahl replied, out of breath.
As the pain subsided and Connie came to her senses, she felt herself cradled in Rahl’s arms. She wanted to return his embrace, but for the moment she was too weak even to open her eyes.
“Connie?” came Snow’s voice beside her. “Are you there?”
“Yes, I’m here,” Connie managed to say.
Her tongue felt thick and leathery, but it was wholly her tongue, as was the rest of the body. She opened her eyes. The room somewhat of a blur, but at least it was in color. Snow knelt next to where she lay, looking vexed.
“That was foolish of you to cut the cord,” Snow said, admonishing her. “Why did you do that? The transfer was going well. Just another few seconds and it would have been complete. Why did you cut the cord, Connie? Why?”
“I cannot explain it to you now, Snow. Maybe another time.”
“Do you realize that now you can never get your old life back?”
“Never?” she asked with feigned naiveté.
“No, Connie,” she said with finality. “You can never go home again. You will live in Cerinya until the day you die.”
With that comforting thought in mind, Connie weakly raised her arms until she now reciprocated the embrace of Rahl the Swordbearer, who still cradled her. She gazed up at him. He smiled tenderly at the sorceress in his arms. Snow’s words resounded in her ears: You will live in Cerinya until the day you die. At that moment, she could think of nothing she wanted more.
THE END