The Serpent Mage by Greg Bear

Author:Greg Bear [Bear, Greg]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: Science Fiction, Fantasy
ISBN: 9780441759101
Google: CBIxf4JYoOsC
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 774416
Publisher: Ace Books
Published: 1986-01-01T13:00:00+00:00

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Chapter Twenty-Two

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Michael stood in the hallway, alone and angry and as still as the marred plaster walls around him. Why did I do that? he asked himself, relaxing his clenched fists and arm muscles. Because I am a coward? Afraid to submit to a higher personality?

“No,” he said. He felt his strength returning—that strength which had been growing, unaided, since he had returned from the Realm, since he had dropped out of the complex picture of machinations between the Sidhe and Waltiri and Clarkham. The strength returned, but not his confidence. The talk with the Serpent Mage had been so interesting—and for it to come to such an unexpected and painful end, because of his own rebellion, was agonizing.

In a way, he had been waiting for just such a conference for months.

“I’m a renegade,” he said. If he was out of the picture completely, with no hope of returning, then he was free to act as he chose…

Which was what he seemed to be doing anyway.

He turned to look at the rectangle of darkness. When he had first passed through, following the old Breed female, he had felt the nature of the region beyond as a kind of tingling against his palms. He could feel that same tingling now. The unspecific gate led to nowhere in particular—it was an open exit with no fixed destination. To someone with no training whatsoever—the soldiers and police in the streets below, for example—it would be simply a blank wall, darkened as if by a polarized filter. For someone with inadequate training, it could be very dangerous. It could put Michael into a between-world as complex and delusive as a nightmare… Or it could take him where he wished to go.

To the Realm.

To seek out Tonn’s wife, the skull-snail, if she was still alive.

Toh kelih ondulya, med not ondulya trasn spoon not kod…

So Eleuth had told him in the Realm, before bringing back a beetle from Earth. “All is waves, with nothing waving across no distance at all.”

“The Sidhe part of a Breed,” she had explained, “knows instinctively that any world is just a song of addings and takings away. To do grand magic, you must be completely in tune with the world—adding when the world adds, taking away when the world takes away.”

Did he feel that instinct clearly? When he had last stood on the top of the Tippett Hotel, looking out over the city, he had felt in touch with the inhabitants of the Earth for miles around—and he had felt even more in touch later, lying in bed in the Waltiri house. But the inhabitants were not the world itself. He needed to make that final link.

It was certain no one else would do it for him. He was working alone now, without support from any faction or quarter. He had to lift himself up by his bootstraps.

For an instant, he felt a sense of despair and defeat that left him dizzy. How inadequate he was, how ill-trained and ignorant…

And yet…

And yet, he was capable.

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