To her it must have seemed as if Colin had teleported. One moment he was in the middle of the glade; now he was next to her.
She raised her wand and began to chant another curse. He put the card away, or made it disappear, and once again, her eyes went blank a moment.
That moment was enough. Colin closed the distance and now had his hands around her throat.
With brutal force, Colin struck her head against the bole of the tree. There was a sickening sound.
When she slumped away from the point of impact, bloodstains trailed behind her hair. Whether she was stunned or dead, I could not see.
Four comely women stepped from the boles of four trees in the circle around us. Each was more beautiful than the last, soft-eyed, soft-voiced, folds of emerald gowns falling and flowing around long legs and trim ankles. Each was dark-haired, with skin as pale as parchment, eyebrows delicate dark streaks above eyes like glittering black amethysts, lips smiling red cupid's bows.
Each had a willow wand in her slim-wristed and well-shaped hand.
One pointed her wand at Colin, cooing in a voice mild yet clear as cool water: 'Phobetor, I call you by your true name. Red blood drips from your woman-slaying hands and cries out for vengeance. How will you account for the death of Parthenope, the wounds of unloved Oenone?
Those hands I, death-defying Cyane, now call upon to do our work; seize the girl, Phaethusa, rob her powers from her.'
Colin raised his hand. Reality hiccuped. My higher senses were dead. I could no longer see the magic boiling around us; there was nothing I could do to interfere.
Another nymph spoke. Her voice was rippling music: 'Heart and sense and soul, cruel Phobetor, you have devoted to ruthless murder. I, Apostate Ethemea the Proud, now make your eyes as blind as your black heart.'
Colin, though blind, still tried to attack. He ran toward the sound of the girl, his arms windmilling and wild.
As he ran, the grass and leaves began to swirl around him, and the sun was blotted out by cloud.
The air seemed to tremble; Colin's wrath was growing thick around him, becoming visible.
He was fast on his feet, and he seemed not to need his eyes to sense where the girl stood. He grabbed the nymph who cursed him by one arm. He threw her to the stones with a violent cry. I heard bones break.
A third nymph cooed: 'Panic and wrath you unleash into the darkening air. Murderer, I, Lara, whose voice Lord Hermes grants me nevermore be stilled, bestow on you the calmness and grave-peace into which you have thrown the women you have killed.'
The swirl of leaves dropped and died. The sun came out.
The fourth one said, 'Such strength, oh muscles, oh nerves, you used against us, I, Sagaritis, hated of the dread goddesses, now take from you. I turn your limbs to stone.'
Colin staggered and fell to his knees.'
He was next to the guitar I had bought him. My higher senses were not working, but I am sure that black guitar was the center of a snake's nest of magical strands and ropes.
What had ever possessed me to buy that dumb thing in the first place? Maybe my wits had been dulled by magic and adverse fate. How can you beat a foe who can make you stupid?
The woman he had struck against the tree, the first one, rose to her feet, unhurt. There was no sign of blood on her. She said, 'Your authority over dream, abnormal, abortive, unclean, do I, Oenone, reave from you, just recompense for wicked deeds both done and dreamt. Dark powers of Dreaming, begone. You cannot overmatch, dream-shadows, these gentle hands which once refused to heal the traitor Paris, and wove, instead of bridal veil, the silken noose to hang me from a yew-wood tree: Lord Trismegistus me uprooted from unsacred grave; me power over Darkness gave!'
She stepped daintily forward and tapped Colin's kneeling body with her wand. He cried out, a great, horrible, strangled cry, and fell prone.
I blinked. I saw something glittering in the trees above. It was lit up with usefulness.
My upper senses were coming back. I tried to look in the other dimensions aside from the normal three. I could not, not yet. In a moment or two, the nymphs might realize that, by turning off Colin's powers, they had turned off their ability to stop mine.
But none of them was looking toward me. The woman who had blinded him now rose up, broken bones healed and whole, unharmed, her coiffure and gown unmussed, unwrinkled, untorn. She tapped Colin's motionless, screaming body with her wand, saying, 'Murderer, who had sent our sisters down into the eternal sleep of death, a lesser sleep I put on you. Move not, stir not, speak not, but wait in all helplessness, awaiting the knife stroke which shall sever your false throat.'
Colin's screaming stopped. I could see his body, fallen along the grass-covered stones,
