Gwen stood stiffly, staring at her youngest as the realization flooded through her, the shattering discovery of how deeply he had fallen in love. For a moment she had to fight down blind rage and the urge to tear the sleeping woman to bits for having manipulated her son's affections so callously.
The vixen had put her in a devil of a predicament. Even if she turned the witch over to the Queen's Justice, Gregory would be heartbroken by her death—but if she let the woman go free, she would twist and warp his heart until he could no longer love. The only course of action that would not hurt Gregory deeply was curing Finister completely so that she could become a worthy mate for her son, if she had it in her, or be compassionate enough to turn him down gently if she did not fall in love with him.
"I shall cure her, Gregory," she promised. "I shall find a way."
The lad folded. The tenseness went out of him so suddenly that he stumbled, almost falling, and Cordelia dashed to embrace him, hiding the need to prop him up. "Beware, my brother. For all our mother's good intentions, even she may not be able to work so great a spell."
Gregory straightened again, his face settling into lines of resolution. "I shall brace myself for it—but it is kill or cure, and I shall accept what Fate brings."
That was a new title for her, Gwen thought sardonically— Fate. Then she realized that every mother was just that, her children's fate, or at least the greatest single factor in the making of their destinies. No wonder the Fates were pictured as women!
She pushed the thought aside, recognizing it as the refuge and the procrastination it was. She turned to the unconscious woman, kneeling and reaching out to touch her temple. Her eyes glazed and the sunlit meadow blurred and ceased to register on her senses as an avalanche of emotion swept her, anger and bitterness, fear and discord, pathetic yearning and despair all mingled together as the events of the woman's life cascaded through her mind in a shattering kaleidoscope.
Moraga's own reflected mind stroke felled her, memory faded to the blankness of unconsciousness, and Gwen withdrew her hand with a shudder.
"Is it so bad as that, Mother?"
Turning, Gwen saw Cordelia at her side, hands on Gwen's arm, holding her up, and wondered if she had cried aloud, and what the words had been, if any. She said nothing of it though, only nodded. "She would indeed prefer the course of life, even if I remake her memories so vastly that she does not recognize herself, and will be long rediscovering herself, learning that she has still the same identity. Indeed, I find a yearning there, and I think it is for nothing so much as a humble but joyous life. Let us attempt it."
"How are we to begin?" Cordelia asked, intimidated by the magnitude of the task she had proposed.
"More to the point, how are we to end?" Gwen asked tartly. She turned to her son. "As I understand it, this plan of yours depends on you yourself becoming her ideal man, not some stock made of witch-moss."
Gregory blushed and lowered his gaze.
"That.. . that was our notion," Cordelia said with misgiving.
"What will you offer her when she awakens, then?" Gwen challenged. "What qualities will you gain that will make you a fit mate for so beautiful and talented a woman?'
"Have I no talents of my own?" Gregory returned.
"Great talents," Gwen answered, and let a brief smile of pride show. "But you have only cultivated the gifts of the mind, Gregory, and those are only part of what an intelligent and sensitive woman needs. What else have you to offer?"
"A loving heart," Gregory said simply.
"And how shall she know that?" Gwen demanded. "Are you a poet, that you can spin a spangled net of images and resonances in which to catch her fancy?"
"I shall become so," Gregory averred.
"Well begun," said Gwen, "but only begun. Can you also become a romantic, ever thinking of ingenious gestures to express your love, weaving always about her the magical web of romance?"
"I shall learn it if I must read every romance ever written!"
"A better beginning, but there are many more books you must read if you would know enough of women's thoughts to entice her." Gwen smiled, amused. "I need not ask her if you can read her mind, as every woman wishes, for that is the saving grace of the male telepath—but can you understand the desires that you read therein, so that you will fulfill their spirit, not their form alone?"
"If you will tell me what her desires are, I may succeed," Gregory said.
"That she must do," Gwen told him, "even as she sleeps—in fact, most assuredly while she sleeps. Come, sit in my place." She rose in a single fluid motion, gesturing at the place where she had sat. "Touch her temples and read her thoughts. Some will appall you, some will disgust you, but you must know her as she is to understand what she may become, and the cavernous yearning that underlies her needs."
Gregory sat promptly, saying, "I shall give her all that she wishes!"
"Do not," Gwen said. "Give her what she needs—and fulfill only her greatest wishes. Now study her mind, and learn to tell the one from the other." She stepped back, surveying him with a critical eye.
Gregory stiffened in surprise but withstood her inspection.
"There is also the matter of physical attributes."
Gregory sighed with weary patience. "I know, Mother— you were ever telling me that I should have exercised more."
"The hour for telling is past," Gwen said.
Cordelia intervened. "We have spoken of this, Mother, and we shall summon Geoffrey to see to the building of his body. We shall do it by telekinesis as well as exercise, of course."
"You will wish you had heeded me and done this over the years," Gwen warned her son. "Bringing it about in a matter of days will be torture."
"It will, at least, be honest and open," Gregory said stubbornly. "If Magnus could withstand the tormenting of his heart, I can surely endure the agony of the flesh."
Gwen wasn't sure Magnus had really withstood that torture, but he had at least survived it. For a moment she had second thoughts about curing his torturer and saving her life, but she consoled herself with the thought that if she succeeded, Finister would scarcely be the same person as the one who had mangled her son. She would become her true self, shedding layers of bartered affection and frustrated striving for approval, of denigration and insult, of frustration and abasement. Perhaps the core of her identity would blaze with beauty and goodness—or perhaps, when all Gwen's efforts were done, she would still be the same homicidal vampire she had been before.
Gwen put aside the possibility; it was extremely unlikely that Finister had been born a sadist and assassin. "If I succeed in this salvage," she told her son, "the woman will emerge with a heart that is quite fragile for some months. She will try you in every way she can imagine before she risks giving you her trust; she will attempt to drive you away again and again before she lets herself begin to believe you will stay. She will need a man of infinite patience, of extreme empathy, and of great emotional strength to support her through those perilous first days."
"Empathy?" Gregory asked in surprise. "I have always thought my ability to feel what others felt was my curse, for even before I uttered a syllable, I began to imagine how my words might sting others' feelings!"
"So that is why you have spoken less and less as you grew older," Cordelia said thoughtfully.
"Is not such empathy so extreme as to be a weakness?" Gregory demanded. "Do I not feel others' pain out of all proportion to good sense?"
"You must allay sympathy with judgement, of course," Gwen said slowly, "but I would hate to think caring to be weakness."