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of deep emotions, and she realized that she was completely
incapable of dealing with Louise's grief. 'They, they . . .' she
mumbled.
`Cassie is still alive. You can be sure of that,' stated the
Doctor flatly. Mel hadn't even heard him approach. 'If she
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weren't, this whole son et lumière performance would have
come crumbling down around us.'
If the Doctor's words were meant to be a comfort, they
were a failure. Louise swung her legs off the table and stood in
front of him.
Then she slapped him round the face. 'You bastard! You
could have saved them, you could have saved both of them!
But no, you were too frightened to use your powers. So, thanks
to your selfishness, Barry is dead and Cassie is in the hands of
that maniac!' She went to slap him again, but the Doctor
grasped her wrist.
`I made a decision, Louise, the consequences of which you
and I will have to live with for the rest of our lives. And
believe me, that could be a very long time in my case. But
Cassie is still alive; help me to find some way to defeat the
Archimage, and we might stand a chance of saving her life.'
Mel had never heard the Doctor sound so full of guilt and self-
recrimination, and her heart went out to him.
Louise nodded, and then started to sob quietly. But it was
clear that the Doctor's words had sunk in. Mel leaned over to
him and whispered: 'How are you feeling?'
He smiled wearily. 'I've been better.' Then he nodded at the
book. 'Find anything?'
`There's a small section on polarity '
`Excellent. Mark it up and give it to Alane.' He indicated
the thaumaturg in the shadows, carrying a similar pile of books
to Gargil.
`It might help if I knew what was going on,' she
complained. This wasn't an uncommon occurrence the
Doctor holding all the cards to his chest but it still annoyed
her.
`All right, all right,' he said, holding his hands up. 'Very
quickly, though. This Great Kingdom is based on three very
different laws of physics: those indigenous to this universe;
those of Saraquazel who hails from the universe that follows
this one, and those of Yog-Sothoth the Great Intelligence
who is a survivor of the cosmos that existed before the Big
Bang. Thanks to Chapel and Anne's meddlings in forces
beyond their comprehension, all three sets of laws are fused
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into an unstable equilibrium. I've got to unbalance that
equilibrium, but, at the same time, ensure that all the pieces fall
back into the same place that they were to begin with.' He
huffed. `Satisfied?'
`All the pieces?' She cocked her head at Louise.
The Doctor lowered his voice. 'I'm afraid not. Although it is
possible to use quantum mnemonics to manipulate individual
strands of reality, that would demand a far greater knowledge
of the subject than I possess. And if I tried, I might make
matters incalculably worse.' He laid a hand on her shoulder.
'I'm sorry, Mel, but Barry and all the other poor unfortunates
who've perished during this sorry incident are dead. And
Cassie, well, she'll revert to her original physical form.'
Mel shook her head sadly. 'That just isn't fair,' she
muttered.
`The universe rarely is,' he whispered. 'That's why I'm
here.' He paused for a moment, an indecipherable look on his
face. And then he smiled. 'Now, carry on reading. We've got a
lot to do, and very little time left.'
The Archimage stopped at a crossroads and tried to get his
bearings. It seemed like hours since he had entered the
Tabernacle, but there was still no sign of the central chamber
of the Gods. Whatever Saraquazel was doing, it had
completely rearranged the internal architecture of the
Tabernacle.
Hoping that a direct route to the chamber still existed, the
Archimage chose one of the routes on offer and set off down it.
`Is this it, Doctor?' asked Mel wryly, looking at the huge
pile of books that Alane was placing on the table. 'Are you sure
that you've got enough there?' Then again, to her credit, she
had read all of them from cover to cover, and each one was
carefully bookmarked to indicate the sections covering 'the
polarity of magic'.
The Doctor nodded his thanks to Alane and sat at the table.
'Thanks to your skilful use of the Labyrinth's indexing [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]