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sudden sharp pain in her back that knocked her over and sent her tumbling down
into the null itself, screaming curses. In the same time that it took Boday to
fall, the arrow struck low into the Stormrider's giant.
The laughter stopped abruptly, and there was a sudden, piercing scream from
the giant. Instantly, creature and rider were turned into a giant ball of
flame like a miniature orange sun, and what happened next was so fast that
Charley could not follow it. It seemed as if the sun raced towards her, and
she fell on her face and felt a burning sensation and then there was nothing
but a terrible crackling sound and a monstrous roar of thunder so close it
rattled her eardrums and knocked her senseless.
Dorion was out in seconds with the horses. He didn't wait for Charley to
recover, but picked her up and somehow got her on the horse, where she sat,
stunned and confused, only half-aware. He led the horses and their lone rider
down into the null, stopping just inside.
Boday was still cursing, and he helped her up. "Are you hurt?"
"Boday's ears are stuffed with cotton!" she screamed, although it was no
longer necessary to do so. "She is bruised and sore and perhaps hurt, but not
as much as that flying son of a bitch!" Unsteadily, she mounted the same horse
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as
Charley and held on to her. Dorion led the procession, with Charley's horse
carrying only a dazed and very tired Shadowcat out into the null mists.
The riders were now very close, and some could be seen in the distance. There
was no time to waste and Dorion knew it. No matter what, they had to ride like
blazes across the null and hope that something decent came up before the
riders caught them.
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8
A Chase Down Memory Lane
Yobi held up potion up, studying it. "Interesting stuff," she muttered in her
raspy voice. "There's some real creative people there."
Kira gasped, horrified, as the old witch suddenly drank a small portion of the
memory-erasing potion. "No! Wait!"
A toothless grin spread over Yobi's face. "Smooth . . ." she whispered. "Good
stuff. Oh, don't worry, my dear. I just want to see what it does and where it
goes. I'm in perfect control of it. It's a foreign substance by my spell and
will."
They waited for what seemed interminable minutes in the darkness.
"Fast," said the witch. "They must have put it in her morning breakfast juice
or something. It'd knock you over before you knew what hit you, and men it
goes for the jugular, as it were. Forces the victim to cooperate with it, it
does.
Fascinating. It sort of gets to know you. Then it finds your lowest common
denominator, as it were, and allows those feelings and impulses to remain
while it blocks all nonessential memory, anything keyed to 'self.' It appears
to actually displace, even replace, certain chemicals or enzymes in the brain
itself. It has a very long life and it doesn't get thrown out as a foreign
invader, but eventually it does wear out, but not before the new pattern is
reinforced and there's been some rewiring, as it were. It establishes Misa as
the mind, the identity, then it wires in a whole new set of connections so
that only those things relating to 'Misa' as 'self are referenced. By the time
it's learned 'Misa' and worn away, there's no connection with the old self.
Needed memories language and the like, common sense about not sticking your
hand in the fire, all that are duplicated as new 'Misa' information and then
the old references are replaced by the potion. When it wears away, there's no
more connection to the old. Fascinating."
Kira nodded. She didn't follow all the mechanics of it but she got the general
idea. "In other words, whatever they tell her she is when she wakes up is what
the potion takes as true. It then takes whatever the new personality needs
from the old and cuts off the rest. It almost sounds alive."
"No, no, merely a wonder of modern chemistry, my dear. Dangerous, too. You
could make an army of devoted, soulless killers with the same stuff. I hope
Old
Hornass hasn't got hold of this." She sighed. "Well, it's gonna be rough. The
tricky part is that the only thing that's holding any of her to her old self
is the potion. We can get rid of the potion easy enough but then we'll just be
stuck with Misa. If we leave it we just get Misa because it's blocking. The
worst part is, we can't wait. There's been damage done now, and every day that
passes does more. I hope the mighty Akhbreed sorcerer who bills himself as
nearly a god can figure a way around this 'cause I sure can't. The only reason
we got any crack at it at all at this stage is that marriage spell, which only
a magician's court can fully dissolve and provides a connection of sorts with
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the past, and the link to the Storm Princess. But even they wouldn't matter if
she'd been there another couple of months. Better call out the gods on this
one!"
"I'm afraid I'll have to do," came a pleasant man's voice, sounding slightly
hollow with a trace of echo. It came from even further into the darkness, and
from no clear fixed source.
" 'Bout time you showed up, Smartass," Yobi commented.
"I was here. Your analysis was just so interesting I didn't want to interrupt.
Kira, give her half the antidote and let's bring her up to a trance state. I
can't deal with a zombie and, frankly, that mental blankness only makes that
potion's work easier."
Kira got it, poured to the measure in a small cup, then went over to the
apparently sleeping fat girl. "Open your eyes, take this cup, and drink all of
its contents," she instructed.
"Misa's" eyes opened, she took it, and drank obediently. While they waited for
it to circulate through the system, Boolean discussed the problem.
"It appears that we have to take what's left in there and replace that potion
with something equally good that doesn't block. If we can, then she may be
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permanently and others temporarily the brain's pretty good at finding
alternate routes if given half a chance and some time but she'll be basically
back. You have the formula?"
"I think so," Yobi told him. "Here catch!" Blue-white sparks flew from her
head into the darkness, yet did not illuminate anything around them.
Boolean whistled. "Wow! No human mind ever worked out something that
complicated on its own, I'd bet on it. This was developed somewhere in the
upper Outplanes, out where they have very big computers for our nasty-minded
people to use. It could take months to break this sucker down and understand
what's doing what!
We're going to have to try some desperation patches, slow and easy, trial and
error, and see what we can get. The only way we're going to break through is
for her to do it herself. Maybe try and convince Misa that she needs this
information. Well, let's see what we can do. Kira, open her up to us."
Kira knelt down. "Misa, listen to me. Just after I say your name again, you
will hear two other voices. Hear both voices, answer, and obey them as you
would Crim or me."
"Yes, ma'am," came the slightly slurred response.
"Misa now."
"Hello, Misa," said Boolean gently.
"Hello, sir," she responded, not sounding as blank as before she had the
antidote.
Boolean allowed Yobi to repeat the process, then asked, 'Who are you, Misa?
Tell us about yourself?"
"Ain't much t'tell," she responded. "We be peasant girl. We helps t'plant
things
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