Free The Book of Jhereg by Steven Brust Page B

heard Daymar’s pseudo-voice say, “
Mind if I help?
”
    I didn’t answer, trying to cope with more psychic energy than I’d ever had at my disposal before. I had a brief urge to answer, “No!” and hurl the energy back at him as hard as I could, but it wouldn’t have done more than hurt his feelings. I observed my own anger at this unasked-for-interference as if it were in a stranger.
    Any spell, no matter how trivial it really is, involves some degree of danger. After all, what you’re really doing is building up a force of energy from your own mind and manipulating it as if it were something external. There have been witches whose minds have been destroyed by mishandling this power. Daymar, of course, couldn’t know this. He was just being his usual helpful, meddlesome self.
    I gritted my teeth and tried to use my anger to control the forces we had generated, to direct them into the spell. Somewhere, I felt Loiosh fighting to hold on to his control and take up what I couldn’t handle. Loiosh and I were so deeply linked that anything that happened to me would happen to him. The link broadened, more and more power flooded through it, and I knew that, between the two of us, we’d either be able to handle it, or our minds would be burned out. I would have been as scared as a teckla if my anger hadn’t blocked it—and the rage I felt was sustained, perhaps, by my knowledge of the fear underlying it.
    It hung in the balance, and time stretched to both horizons. I heard Cawti, as if from a great distance, chanting steadily, strongly, although she must have felt the backwash of forces as much as I. She was helping, too. I had to direct the energy into the spell, or it would find release some other way. I remember thinking, at that moment, “
Daymar, if you’ve hurt my familiar’s mind, you are one dead Dragaeran
.”
    Loiosh was straining. I could feel him, right at his limit, trying to absorb power, control it, channel it. This is why witches have familiars. I think he saved me.
    I felt control had come, and fought to hang on to it long enough to throw it into the spell. I wanted to rush through the next part, but resisted the temptation. You do
not
rush through any phase of a witchcraft spell.
    The hairs were burning; they merged and combined into a part of the steam and smoke and they should still be tied to their owner. I fought to identify exactly which isolated puff of smoke held the essence of those burning hairs and therefore was an unbreakable bond to my target.
    I lifted my arms until my hands were at the outermost perimeter of the grayish-white cloud. I felt the fourway pull of energy—me to Daymar to Loiosh to Cawti and back. I let it flow out through my hands, until the smoke stopped rising—the first visible sign that the spell was having an effect. I held it there for an instant and slowly brought my hands closer together. The smoke became more dense in front of me, and I flung the energy I held at and through it. . . .
    There is a cry of “charge” and five thousand Dragons come storming at the place the Eastern army is entrenched. . . . Making love to Cawti that first time—the moment of entry, even more than the moment of release; I wonder if she plans to kill me before we’re finished, and I don’t really care. . . . The Dzur hero, coming alone to Dzur mountain, sees Sethra Lavode stand up before him, Iceflame alive in her hand. . . . A small girl-child with big brown eyes looks at me and smiles. . . . The energy bolt, visible as a black wave, streaks toward me, and I swing Spellbreaker at it, wondering whether it will work. . . . Aliera stands up before the shadow of Kieron the Conqueror, there in the midst of the Halls of Judgment, in the Paths of the Dead, beyond Deathsgate Falls. . . .
    And with it all, at that moment, I held in my mind everything I knew about Mellar, and all of my anger at Daymar, and above it all, on top of everything, my desire, my will, my