blood or clear fluid.
Victor had no face. His one forehead-socket was empty. I saw he had perched his one eye on her breastbone, to get a better look at the situation, and it had grown dozens of strands of fiber-optic cable, and these glassy strands had sent little camera-eyes snaking into all her major veins and organs.
I heard the hissing noise of a bone saw.
It was a disgusting sight, much worse than my earlier imaginings.
Quentin was muttering: 'Oh, dear sweet Jesus, save her life. Gods of Heaven, of wood, of Hell, save my Vanity, I pray you, if you have ever loved or known love, or if you ever knew horror and pain and fear you wished to flee.'
The shadowy cat thing must not have been entirely dead or dissolved, because the black stain on the planks under Quentin's feet now spoke up: 'Son of the Gray Sisters, I will restore your dying whore. Merely say the words, my soul is thine.'
Quentin gritted his teeth. A look of madness grew in his eyes, brighter and brighter. He said,
'Spirit, my's-'
Victor said in a voice of infinite calm: 'Leader, please do not be precipitous. Vanity's body is just a broken machine. Fix the machine; she's fixed. There is nothing to it. Give me another three minutes at the outside.'
Quentin struck the stain with his wand, 'Damned spirit, I suck dry thy last bit of life and grant it to my friend and comrade; let the blood of my lady, shed by you, torture you in darkness forever if you say other than 'I will.' Do you agree?'
Something too dark to see, but reddish around the edges, snakelike, trembled down the wandshaft and embedded itself into the stain.
Screams, screams, screams of pain filled the air. Mingled with the screams must have been the words I will because a shower of energy points flowed along the moral lines connecting Colin with Quentin.
Quentin said, 'Here is life! Colin, take some as well. Use it on yourself and Amelia.'
Colin tightened his grip around me. Suddenly, impossibly, my extra wings and limbs and tendrils were no longer here, and hence no longer in pain. He stroked my face and hair, and brushed the blood away. He stroked my arms and legs, belly, breasts, and thighs, and wherever his hand passed, the blood passed away, too, and the pain was gone. I had had a hole in my lungs with a hypervolume larger than the volume of my whole 3-D body, but that was gone, too, wished away by Colin.
As swift as waking from a dream, and with as little sense or reason to it, the pain was gone. I was hale and whole again.
Victor closed up Vanity. A black fluid, like a swift amoeba, wriggled over her flesh, knitting cell to cell. The wounds closed with no suture and no scar.
Victor picked up his eye in his hand. A blue spark flashed from the iris and struck Vanity's skull.
Victor said, 'I return bodily controls to you. Wake.'
Vanity sat up, stretched, yawned, looked around with her huge green eyes. 'What's going on? I've had a bad dream___Quentin... ?'
Quentin said, 'I am afraid it was real.'
I had been lying here for several seconds, while Colin continued to caress my naked breasts and run his hands along my inner thigh.
'Hey!' I shouted, slapping him hard across the cheek.
'Ow!' He shouted back, 'Wounded man here!'
'Get your filthy hands-'
'Part of the medical procedure. I am summoning inspiration.'
'I'll inspire you, you sick jerk-'
'Madam, I am a trained professional. Now then, for the next part of the process, you are required to start pulling down my zipper with your teeth.'
The impending murder of Colin Iblis mac FirBolg was interrupted by a loud noise.
Crash. The first steel door, high above us, had just given way.
Crunch. The second one, too.
Something very fast was coming down the shaft after us.
The Shield of Lady Wisdom
Deck after deck whizzed past us as the platform fell. Some of the decks were crowded with boxes and crates, warehouses. Others held corridors lined with small oval doors and hatches.
Then we started passing decks filled with museum displays, library shelves, rows of obsidian coffins. One deck was a greenhouse, set with water fountains, stretching back as far as the eye could see. Another that flashed past was an observatory, with scores of complex telescopes pointed out a score of portholes and crystal domes, each window
