Echoes from My Past Lives (Spell Weaver) Read Free Page B

my head.
    What is it people say about questioning your sanity proving you are sane? Was I actually beginning to think I was sane, and did that mean the craziness had finally gotten me? Would I ever see my parents again? Stan? Eva? And, more frighteningly, what if I saw them and didn’t know who they were? Or what if I knew who they were but said or did things that convinced them I was hopelessly and completely nuts?
    I jumped a little when Taliesin patted me on the shoulder. “Good job, lad! For a moment I wasn’t sure you were going to help me.”
    “For a moment neither was I.”
    Taliesin smiled just a little. “Nonetheless, you did, and that’s what matters. Well, that and the fact that you really aren’t ‘nuts.’”
    The good feeling faded quickly. “I don’t like you getting in my head like that.”
    Taliesin actually laughed, not a belly laugh but at least a cheerful one. Then he gestured at the scenery around us.
    “Given where we are, Tal, how can I really avoid ‘getting in your head’?”
    Well, he had me there.
    “What was that…that red thing?” I asked, wanting to change the subject as much as I really wanted an answer to the question.
    Taliesin sighed. “I fear the answer will not be any more to your liking than anything else I have said. Do you promise to hear me out this time? No interruptions, no shouting, no denial.”
    “All right,” I said reluctantly. I hated to buy further into whatever delusional fantasy my brain had cooked up, but denying what I was experiencing did not make it any less real. I had found that out the hard way the first time I had felt someone’s death.
    Taliesin looked around. “To give us a place to talk, I have been pulling this image out of my memory and…projecting it to you, but it is so elaborate it is rather taxing to maintain for such a long period. Would you mind if we switched to a little more confined environment? It would be easier for me to keep a smaller scale illusion going.”
    Aside from the fact that I had seen the landscape almost disintegrate earlier, I had to admit that it did seem real. When I had fallen earlier, I had seen every blade of grass, had felt grass beneath my hands. I could feel the warm breeze against my skin. I could see the sunlight sparkle on the water of the rippling surface of the lake and on the more distant snowy mountain peaks. If the circumstances had been different, I would have accepted it all as real without question. To think that Taliesin was somehow conjuring the whole scene up would have been truly impressive—if Taliesin had been real.
    “Sure,” I said in a neutral tone, “give yourself a rest.”
    The great outdoors dissolved, replaced by what was obviously a room in a castle. At least, the stone walls around us and the heavy oak door certainly looked like my idea of a castle. There was a small window, so I walked up and looked out of it. Yeah, definitely a castle. Looking down I could see the stone walls and realized that we were several levels up from the ground. A moat glistened darkly at ground level. Looking up I could see a great distance across villages, fields, and forests. This time, though, the detail work on these distant views was not quite as good. They had a fuzzy quality, almost as if I were viewing them through a mist. Taliesin must have been getting tired.
    “I thought it was best to conserve my strength,” said Taliesin, doubtless reading my mind again. “Please have a seat.”
    There was a very large table with not particularly comfortable looking wooden chairs around it. I pulled one out and plopped down in it. Taliesin sat on the other side after taking off his sword and putting down his instrument. Looking around the room, it seemed simple for one in a castle. Aside from the table, there was a not very comfortable looking bed, some shelving, a mirror, a basin, a few other instruments, quite a few scrolls and books, some yellowed with age. On the whole, I would have expected more