Chapter 8

I turned toward the next Cyclops only to find it holding a massive poleaxe. Well, that might double its reach, but it was going to slow him down. My speed gave me an advantage that I had no intention of surrendering. I was already only a couple of steps from him, so I was inside the clear zone of his weapon’s blade.

I smashed the shaft of his poleaxe with my left hand to get it out of the way. I then hit him up on his breast bone about even with his heart with my right hand formed into a fist. My blow caved in his chest and must have driven a piece of broken rib into his heart because of the small amount of blood and the fact that he died so quickly. I still don’t understand why he didn’t attack me sooner when he was at the right range for his weapon. Maybe one of the other Cyclops was in his way. I won, so I sure was not going to worry about it.

The last Cyclops was using the standard weapon of a club that I would have had trouble wielding because of its weight. He was holding the massive club in both hands, which attested to its weight. His entire torso was exposed to attack because he had both arms raised to hold the club over his head. He looked as if he planned to drive me into the ground like a spike by hitting me on top of my head. How foolish could he get?

The Cyclops must have taken me for an ordinary man and had not been aware of how agile and fast I was. There was no way he could have hurt me because of the magic shields that were protecting me, though he might have driven me into the ground if he had hit me hard enough.

Anyway, I grasped quickly enough what he was trying to do, and I was almost curious enough to let him hit me just to see what would have happened. However, I was smart enough not to bow to that temptation and hit him as hard as I could in the belly with my fingers locked into a the shape of a stabbing blade. Frankly, I was curious as to what kind of effect that sort of blow would have, since I had never used it before.

Oh, my God! You can bet that I will never try that again! My hand penetrated his abdomen as far as my wrist, and blood and gore of all sorts was sprayed everywhere. I was covered with the mess, and enough hit me in the face that I was blinded by the goop. I had to use a filthy piece of cloth from a demon before I could rightly see again.

Eglos later told me that she had killed the last demon that she could see, and she was turning toward me just as I prepared to strike the Cyclops. As a result, she had seen exactly what I did and the result of my action. Eglos apologized for not helping me clean up, but she was laughing too hard to manage anything as

complicated as that. She said that it was indeed unfortunate that I could not have seen the episode as it happened.

I was so pissed off that I was in no mood for friendly conversation at that moment and demanded that she teleport me to our tent so that I could be cleaned off right away. Her final insult was, “Linc, if you are going to continue to fight that way, you should ask the wizard for a charm or ring so that you could teleport yourself back to the tent to get clean!” I didn’t respond because I wondered if her suggestion would work for me.

Once I got cleaned up, and that only took a few seconds after I entered the magic tent, I figured that Eglos had a good idea. It was kind of a nuisance for me to have to depend on Eglos whenever I wanted or needed to be teleported. With that in mind, I wasted no time in visiting the wizard.

“Ah, Master Linc, to what do I owe the joy of your visit?”

I couldn’t help chuckling at that question, but I quickly got to the point of my visit. “I wonder if you can supply me with charms that can teleport Mistress Eglos and me from place to place the way she does and can provide for me the kind of far-seeing ability that she has. I am willing to do the amount of learning and practice necessary to approach her level of skill.”

“Yes, I think that I can do what you request. I can do the far-seeing charm right away, but the teleportation charm will take some work. It would cut down on the time necessary to come up with the necessary spell if Mistress Eglos will allow me to examine her ring’s spell. I will do nothing to harm or modify the spell, but I can save a lot of time, both yours and mine, if I know exactly what you are looking for and how that was achieved.”

“I’m sure that won’t be a problem, but I do need to discuss it with her before going and further. I’ll let you know what she has to say about that by tomorrow afternoon. How much will you charge for those two charms?”

“I don’t know about the teleportation spell until I have a chance to study Mistress Eglos’ ring. All I can say at the moment is that it will be more expensive than the far-seeing charm. I think that I will charge you one gold coin and one silver coin for the far-seeing charm. Is that acceptable?”

“That is a bit more expensive than what I had in mind. Perhaps, we can agree on a single gold coin for the far-seeing charm?” Well, that precipitated a bargaining session that might have gone on for an hour, but Eglos showed up before then and settled on a price of one gold piece and 35 coppers. That was less than I had offered, but the wizard must have been swayed by Eglos’ arguing style.

The wizard said that I could have the far-seeing charm in about 20 minutes if I were willing to wait that long. That was fine with me, so the wizard moved to his workshop while I explained about letting him study her Ring of Teleportation to Eglos before he tried to make a charm for me. She agreed without having to think about it. After all, the idea of me having such a charm had originally been her idea. That was what I expected from Eglos, but I did not press that information on to her.

The wizard was back in less time than he had originally promised and placed it on the counter. I got the money from my fanny pack, so I did not have to count it, and the wizard was courteous enough not to bother to count it either. That was how much we both trusted our fanny packs.

He said that I only had to carry the charm in my pocket for it to work for me, and I took his word for it. According to the wizard, all I had to do was to think about what I wanted to see, and it would be in my vision. I gave it a try, and I could see Hell Mouth exactly as I had seen it earlier that day. I tried a couple of other spots, and I could see them too. Everything was fine so far.

The wizard also said that I could see things in the past as well as I could see in the present, but the future was very difficult to see. He explained that the future was in a state of complete flux as the actions of many people caused the details of the future to change, so there was no way that he could guarantee that what I saw in the future would actually happen as I saw it. He also told Eglos that her ring had that same property of showing the past and future as my charm did. Her eyes lit up at that revelation, but I had no idea what she had in mind. I found out that night.

She left her Ring of Teleportation with the wizard when we left the shop. He had said that he could tell us how much longer he would need the ring after he had some time to study the spell. We should check back with him tomorrow afternoon for his answer and for his price. I figured that he would spend some time on studying the ring tonight, since it was all new to him, and he was very interested in the ramifications of the spell.

It was nearly time for supper, so Eglos and I followed our usual evening routine of supper followed by some sexercise. We were lying in the bed recovering from our bought of sex when I found out about Eglos’ afternoon brainstorm.

“Linc, do you remember my reaction to the wizard’s comments about seeing the past with our far-seeing magic?”

“Yes, I do, and I was very curious to hear your idea, whatever it was.”

“Well, my idea was this. Suppose you try watching how you happened to be on that road the day you and I met? I tried, but I was blocked. Perhaps you could do better simply because you were the person affected by what happened. Possibly you could see what happened, and you could tell me what you saw.”

“Eglos, that is absolutely brilliant. Let me get my charm, and I will give it a try.” I jumped from the bed, pulled the charm from my pocket, and got back into bed to lie beside Eglos. “Okay, here goes.” Dammit, no matter how much I tried, I could not penetrate some sort of barrier in time just as I found myself standing on that roadway. I told Eglos that, but I also told her that I was not going to give up!

I spent close to two hours than night trying to find a way to break through that barrier that was keeping me from seeing before that moment that I was born on this time and place. No matter how I tried to twist and turn the situation, I just could not get to any moment before that instant that I appeared. It was as if, for practical purposes, I had not existed before that one moment when I showed up standing on that road.

Of course, Eglos was working with me as I tried to break the barrier. She was using her own Ring of Far-seeing to try to see what I was experiencing. Her experience was nowhere, or maybe I should say “nowhen” like my experience. She had no trouble moving back and forth through that interval, and could do it as many times as she wished.

However, every time she moved through that time, she saw the same thing: at first the road was empty, and then I was there! The time I showed up was at exactly the same time for each of her observations, so we had no doubt that I really did appear at a specific time that was not open to variation. We didn’t know why, but we both felt that had to be important. At least there was one thing that was not open to argument—I did not sneak to my place on the roadway and then suddenly stand upright. I was not there, and then I was there.

To further complicate matters, I was able to view other places with no trouble at any time before, during, or after the time of my appearance. I just could not see myself before I materialized on the road. Eglos looked very carefully and our arrival points when she had teleported us, and the two situations were not comparable. If one watched the end of a teleportation episode, the item being teleported, a flesh and blood person or an inanimate lump of solid matter formed from just a shadow suggesting what was coming into a complete object, and it was possible to watch the whole thing if you had a stomach strong enough to watch a human materialize. The view was indeed unsettling.