Galt winced. "We don't use that name. He doesn't like it." He looked at
Trevor. "What's the matter, Earthman? Why so green? You were laughing
once, remember? Where's your sense of humor now?"
He caught Trevor abruptly by the shoulders and turned him around so
that he faced a great sheet of polished glassy substance set into the
wall. A mirror for giants, reflecting the whole huge room, reflecting
the small dwarfed figures of the men.
"Go on," said Galt, pushing Trevor ahead of him. "Take a look."
Trevor shook off the Korin's grasp. He moved forward by himself, close
to the mirror. He set his hands against the chill surface and stared at
what he saw there. And it was true.
Between his brows a sun-stone winked and glittered. And his face, the
familiar, normal, not-too-bad face he had been used to all his life,
was transformed into something monstrous and unnatural, a goblin mask
with a third, and evil eye.
A coldness crept into his heart and bones. He backed away a little from
the mirror, his hands moving blindly upward, slowly toward the stone
that glistened between his brows. His mouth was twisted like a child's,
and two tears rolled down his cheeks.
His fingers touched the stone. And then the anger came. He sank his
nails into his forehead, clawing at the hard stones, not caring if he
died after he had torn it out.
Galt watched him. His lips smiled but his eyes were hateful.
* * * * *
Blood ran down the sides of Trevor's nose. The sun-stone was still
there. He moaned and thrust his nails in deeper, and Shannach let him
go until he had produced one stab of agony that cut his head in two
and nearly dropped him. Then Shannach sent in the full force of his
mind. Not in anger, for he felt none, and not in cruelty, for he was no
more cruel than the mountain he was kin to, but simply because it was
necessary.
Trevor felt that cold and lonely power roll down on him like an
avalanche. He braced himself to meet it, but it broke his defenses,
crushed them, made them nothing, and moved onward against the inmost
citadel of his mind.
In that reeling, darkened fortress all that was wholly Trevor crouched
and clung to its armament of rage, remembering dimly that once, in a
narrow canyon, it had driven back this enemy and broken free. And then
some crude animal instinct far below the level of conscious thought
warned him not to press the battle now, to bury his small weapon and
wait, letting this last redoubt of which he was yet master go untouched
and perhaps unnoticed by his captor.
Trevor let his hands drop limply and his mind go slack. The cold black
tide of power paused, and then he felt it slide away, withdrawing from
those threatened walls. Out of the edges of it, Shannach spoke.
"Your mind is tougher than these valley-bred Korins. They're well
conditioned, but you--you remember that you defied me once. The contact
was imperfect then. It is not imperfect now. Remember that, too,
Trevor."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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