Trapped

At last we reached a point where we could see behind the giant Lucifer. The electric cables from the turbines hooked up to a device that had to be the main controller for the laser cage. It was bigger than I expected: a box of black metal and plastic the size of a privy-shack. The box even had doors-one opening out into the cavern and another into the prison cube. Looking at it, I realized the shack was more than just a machine that controlled the lasers; it served as a sort of airlock that would let Keepers enter the cage to retrieve the lightbulbs and other things produced by the captive beast.

Again I shuddered at the idea of harvesting electric gadgets from the monster's dust-body. What prevented the Lucifer from devouring any Keeper who entered the cage? Or even worse, from planting black grains in the Keeper's robes, in the lightbulbs, in the toasters, smuggling bits of itself to freedom? But the Sparks would undoubtedly be prepared for such attempts. Anyone passing through that airlock shack must surely be scanned by both science and sorcery. Any nuggets of Lucifer trying to escape would be detected and eliminated.

As long as electricity kept flowing through the cables. Now that the power was cut, the small airlock shack might be a death chamber.

Standing by the door of that shack, his back pressed against it, was Sebastian Shore. We saw him as soon as we came around the edge of the cage-the boy leaned back like a man with nothing to fear, even if the door fell open and dropped him into the prison cube.

In his arms a girl snuggled against his shoulder, her lips nuzzling his neck. But the girl didn't look like Rosalind; it was my lovely cousin Hafsah, harem pants and all.

Dreamsinger.

For a moment I just stared dumbly: had Dreamsinger snared the boy with some love/lust enchantment, despite his psionic protections? No, of course not; this was the work of that irksome Chameleon spell Dreamsinger still wore. When Sebastian looked at the Sorcery-Lord, he saw the most beautiful woman he could imagine-his own dear Rosalind. Somehow Dreamsinger had swapped herself with Jode, replacing one false Rosalind with another.

That raised the question of where Jode was now. If we were lucky, Dreamsinger had vaporized the accursed Lucifer; but I doubted even a Sorcery-Lord could have pulled that off without Sebastian noticing. Whatever she'd done, it would have to be quick and quiet while the boy's attention was elsewhere-perhaps when he was slaughtering the Keepers behind their gun-slits. During those few seconds, Dreamsinger had somehow removed Jode and put herself in the alien's place.

Once again, I remembered our chancellor's story about the Lucifer in the tobacco field. Opal said Vanessa of Spark had tapped the alien's severed parts with a small rod that glittered red and green; the pieces had vanished ‹BINK›, as if ejected from our plane of existence. If Dreamsinger possessed a similar ‹BINK›-rod and used it on Jode when Sebastian wasn't looking… could it be the alien was gone, gone, gone? Dispatched to a different somewhere, removed from our lives forever?

No. I didn't believe it. Nothing was ever that easy. The alien would return; I could feel it in my bones. For now though, we had only Sebastian and the Sorcery-Lord to worry about… which was plenty enough.

The Caryatid and Impervia didn't hesitate after sighting the boy and Dreamsinger. My friends continued boldly forward, striding within five paces of the lovey-dovey couple and planting themselves side-by-side where they couldn't possibly be missed.

"Sebastian," said Impervia.

"Dear sister-in-sorcery," said the Caryatid.

The boy and the Spark Lord turned, their heads almost touching. Dreamsinger's face was dark with warning: her fierce glare suggested she wanted to rip us into component atoms. Lucky for us, the Sorcery-Lord couldn't behave so un-Rosalind-like.

Sebastian's expression was no more friendly than Dreamsinger's. "Didn't I tell you to stay away? I know you aren't who you look like."

I sighed with relief: he hadn't murdered us instantly. The boy's conscience allowed him to slay Keepers-people armed to the teeth, shooting at him and his beloved-but he balked at destroying someone who looked like one of his teachers, especially when she offered no threat. Better still, the Rosalind in his arms wasn't Jode… who would have been screaming, "Kill them!" to keep us from giving away the truth.

"We are who we look like," Impervia said. "We discovered you were missing a few hours after you left. In Dover, we found you'd chartered a boat named Hoosegow and sailed in this direction. We realized you were headed to Niagara Falls-to this building here. So we followed."

"I don't believe it," Sebastian said. "Rosalind says you're just doppelgängers created by her mother's sorcerers. Bags of skin filled with pus." He paused as if he was beginning to doubt his own words; then his face cleared. "It's true. That copy of Sir Pelinor was all gucky."