The Spell-Bound Scholar Read Free Page B

offensive action against Moraga, anything she tried to do to him would instantly be done to her instead.
    Of course, he would still take her to Runnymede, Their Majesties' capital, would still escort her to meet the royal witches—not to apply for membership, but for trial.
    He recited a mantra and relaxed into his trance, letting images of quanta rise into his mind—but they kept being overlaid with images of the real and natural Finister as she saw herself in her mirror, a sight that she found repulsive but whose beauty Gregory could only admire. With it came a sensing—only that, a vague mental perception, not even a hunch or a clear thought coming to the surface of her mind and certainly not images, only glimpses of tattered ghosts— but he suspected that there were qualities in Finister that she fought to deny and ignore, a tenderness and ability to empathize, a caring for others that she had been taught to regard as vulnerability and weakness and had consequently suppressed, hardening herself in denial. She had been instructed to use her sensitivity to others' feelings as a means of finding their weaknesses, had been taught that her natural sensuality meant she was born to be a slut and had worth only as a sexual being. Her teachers had told her she could rise above whoredom by using her sexuality as a weapon and becoming an expert assassin, both emotionally and physically.
    Gregory's heart wrung with sympathy for the sweet, loving child of whom he gained such furtive glimpses; he was strongly tempted to probe more deeply in an attempt to learn more, perhaps even to cure—but even the ethical penetration

    of an enemy's mind had its limits, and Finister had not yet shown evidence of being so dangerous as to justify such an invasion—at least, not very dangerous to himself.
    Besides, Gregory was afraid of causing more trauma than he might cure. Firmly putting temptation behind him, he turned his mind away from Moraga and concentrated on his favorite mantra, the reconciliation of general relativity with quantum mechanics and the search for an equation that would unite the two.
    Moraga woke before dawn, amazed that she had slept so deeply and so well. She stretched, then remembered her current mission and sat up, stretching again as luxuriously as possible, chin up, back arched, arms reaching backward. She glanced at Gregory out of the corner of her eye but saw him in profile, glassy eyes gazing steadfastly ahead. If he had seen her at all, it was only out of the corner of his eye.
    Piqued, she pulled her robe on over her shift, a shift far more clinging than any true peasant would have worn—after all, it had been made with artificial fibers spun by a very advanced technology—and went off into the bushes to perform her morning ablutions. When she came back, she found Gregory as she had left him and reflected that she really need not have risked a poison ivy rash—she had only needed to step around behind his back.
    That thought made her toy with the notion of giving herself a sponge bath where she had slept, at the corner of his eye— but no, Moraga was supposed to be modest, if not truly innocent. That would have to wait.
    On the other hand, Moraga was no virgin and, being a normal, healthy young woman, might very well have normal, healthy appetites—perhaps even more than normal. She stood eyeing Gregory, letting her face and form adjust a little farther toward their natural state. She might feel herself heavy and distasteful, but she knew by experience that men thought just the opposite, no doubt because of the sensuality she projected into their minds. Besides, she had to admit that her natural figure was voluptuous and her mane of blond hair was her glory. Her face she would have characterized as goggle-eyed,

    snub-nosed, fat-lipped, and frog-mouthed, but she had learned that men wished to kiss those fat lips and lose themselves in those goggling eyes. She didn't understand it, really, but she knew how to