the thin fine line of
touch, not pain yet, as it sliced flesh. Then pain burned through my
ribs and I felt hot blood, and I wanted to kill Rakhal, wanted to get my
hands around his throat and kill him with them. And at the same time I
was raging because I didn't want to fight the crazy fool, I wasn't even
mad at him.

Miellyn flung the door open, shrieking, and suddenly the Toy, released,
was darting a small whirring droning horror, straight at Rakhal's eyes.
I yelled. But there was no time even to warn him. I bent and butted him
in the stomach. He grunted, doubled up in agony and fell out of the path
of the diving Toy. It whirred in frustration, hovered.

He writhed in agony, drawing up his knees, clawing at his shirt, while I
turned on Miellyn in immense fury--and stopped. Hers had been a move of
desperation, an instinctive act to restore the balance between a
weaponless man and one who had a knife. Rakhal gasped, in a hoarse voice
with all the breath gone from it:

"Didn't want to use. Rather fight clean--" Then he opened his closed
fist and suddenly there were _two_ of the little whirring droning
horrors in the room and this one was diving at me, and as I threw myself
headlong to the floor the last puzzle-piece fell into place: Evarin had
made the same bargain with Rakhal as with me!

I rolled over, dodging. Behind me in the room there was a child's shrill
scream: "Daddy! Daddy!" And abruptly the birds collapsed in midair and
went limp. They fell to the floor like dropping stones and lay there
quivering. Rindy dashed across the room, her small skirts flying, and
grabbed up one of the terrible vicious things in either hand.

"Rindy!" I bellowed. "No!"

She stood shaking, tears pouring down her round cheeks, a Toy squeezed
tight in either hand. Dark veins stood out almost black on her fair
temples. "Break them, Daddy," she implored in a little thread of a
voice. "Break them, _quick_. I can't hang on...."

Rakhal staggered to his feet like a drunken man and snatched one of the
Toys, grinding it under his heel. He made a grab at the second, reeled
and drew an anguished breath. He crumpled up, clutching at his belly
where I'd butted him. The bird screamed like a living thing.

Breaking my paralysis of horror I leaped up, ran across the room,
heedless of the searing pain along my side. I snatched the bird from
Rindy and it screamed and shrilled and died as my foot crunched the tiny
feathers. I stamped the still-