See Prologue (A) for Disclaimers

The Ancient One smiled at Ricenne.  "And I offer the same choice to you, child.  It's the least I can do.  End your pain, repay you for your service."

Ricenne stared at him.  "Service?"

The spirit nodded.  "I would not have known of such a break in the traditions if you had not told me of them."

Sharak turned to her, dimly noting her look of shock over his own dismay.  "Ricenne?"

The brown-haired sorceress looked at him with wide eyes.  "No," she whispered.  "Sharak, I swear, I didn't --"

"Love can make one do such strange things," the Ancient One said almost musingly.  "Even betray the very one you love."

Ricenne turned to her teacher.  "Please --  Don't do this . . ."

Sharak looked at her, confused.  The Ancient One chuckled.  "You never told him, I take it," he said, steepling his fingers as he observed them.  "Unrequited love.  The worst kind, I think.  Hurts all the more.  Dear Ricenne is quite in love with you, Sharak.  You're a bad influence, I believe."

Sharak looked at him, then back to Ricenne.  "You --  But --"  His voice and eyes turned hard with anger and bitterness.   "Why, Ricenne?!  Why betray us?  So you would have a chance at my heart?  You were our friend,  my friend!  I  trusted you!"

"Sharak, I --"

"I dare say that friendship wasn't enough," the Ancient One cut in.  "Nothing more frustrating.  You should be proud of her for coming forward as she did--"

"Stop it!!" Ricenne screamed at him.  "Why are you doing this?!   You know that's not what happened!"  She turned to Sharak desperately.  "I swear to you, Sharak, it wasn't like that!  I would never betray you!  I didn't know -- I didn't mean for him to know!  You have to believe me!"

"I don't see why he should," the Ancient One commented.  He smiled pleasantly as Sharak stared at Ricenne, doubt and hurt in his eyes.  "I warned you, my students, that love is a terrible thing.  Now.  Make your choice, Ricenne.  Love and its pain, or the promise of your chosen path."

Ricenne turned to him, her eyes blazing.  "To lose my memory of love and become like you?  I think not.  I choose to live, not to die inside."

The Ancient One shrugged.  "So be it.  Sharak?"

The shape-shifter dragged his gaze away from Ricenne and glared at his old mentor.  "You know my answer."

The spirit smiled.  "Yes, but your punishment will be different.  You are the cause of all this trouble."  The Ancient One gathered a web of magick in his hands; both sorcerers could sense it although it was invisible.  "You will live forever as an example of the foolishness of defying the laws, and surrendering to love."

The web spun out towards them, focusing on Sharak.  Before it could reach him, Ricenne let out a shout and threw up her hand.  She fed the counter-spell all the energy she possessed -- more than she had ever before placed in a work of magick.  It left her shaking, but the Ancient One's magick rebounded off the blast.  Ricenne turned to Sharak, her face pale from the expenditure, as the Ancient One stumbled back a few steps from sheer surprise as well as the energy she had cast.  "Go!" she yelled.  "Get Amerys and  go!"

Sharak stared at her in shock for a moment, but obeyed, discarding his robes quickly and running towards the widest end of the courtyard before changing form.  His shape seemed to flicker for a moment, as if two sides were arguing, and then a great black eagle was there instead of a man.  Sharak gave a scream of defiance and gratitude as he gained altitude.

Below him, the Ancient One recovered his balance and turned to Ricenne with the power of a storm behind his eyes.  "You," he hissed, pointing a long, bony finger towards the still-shaky sorceress.  "You dare defy me?!"

Ricenne stared at him, refusing to give ground, but some part of her mind was present enough to feel something like terror now.  The Ancient One snarled, his craggy features twisting with rage as the woman who had deflected his magick continued to stand up to him.  With a yell of unadulterated rage, he waved his hand.  The wash of pure energy slammed into her with the force of a tsunami.  Ricenne let out a cry of surprise and pain as it picked her up and hurled her through the air.

Sharak, unwilling to simply abandon his friend, turned slightly in the air-currents above the courtyard and watched the attack.  Ricenne landed several yards away and didn't move.  Sharak screamed again and dove towards the Ancient One in fury.

The spirit looked up at him and smiled coldly.  "You chose this form, you will remain in it for eternity.  Your feet will never touch the ground, and you will never again know your lover's touch or smile."  He ducked as Sharak swooped down over him.  When he stood, he cast out a web of magick.

The invisible strands settled around the shape-shifter and shone briefly in his second-sight.  Sharak screamed and dropped to the ground as he felt the magick settle into his very blood and bones.  He flapped his great wings and shifted to human form . . . or rather, he tried to.  He attempted it again, and again, despair and fear growing as each attempt failed.  His form was still that of an eagle.  He looked at the Ancient One and gave a short scream as he demanded silently,  What have you done?!

The Ancient One only laughed.  "As I said, dear Sharak.  Love hurts.  Now . . . say goodbye.  I have another troublemaker to deal with."

Sharak looked over at where Ricenne lay, her wild hair fanning out around her head and shoulders, eyes closed, her slender form suddenly looking all the more vulnerable.  He screamed again, this time in denial and pleading.  Before the sound ended, her form shimmered and disappeared from the courtyard.  He looked towards the Ancient One.

"She always did wish to see the top of the world," the spirit said.  "And I seem to recall you wished to see the jungles."

The world flickered and spun.  When it came into focus again, Sharak was in the middle of a dense forest.  The eagle screamed in fury and denial, and launched himself towards the sky.  It would be a long journey, but he swore he would find the Ancient One, find Amerys and make her remember.  And though he still didn't know whether or not to believe the Ancient One's words, he would find Ricenne and repay her for the sacrifice she had been willing to make for him.

The top of the world, the Ancient One had said.  He doubted the spirit would simply let Ricenne die there; there was no great punishment in that.

~*~*~*~

Ricenne came awake slowly, her senses reeling.  Pain still radiated through her, seeming to center in her head, but quickly encroaching on that pain was cold.  Intense, bone-shattering cold.  Ricenne's eyes snapped open and she looked around wildly, suddenly very clearly aware of the temperature around her.

White.  Everything was white.  Even the sky seemed to hold a greater percentage of that color than blue.  Her brain fought past the haze of shock and cold to realize that she was at --

"The top of the world," the Ancient One's voice commented pleasantly from thin air.  He materialized a few feet away from her.  "You always wanted to know what it was like.  So glad I could oblige you."

Ricenne sat up with difficulty and turned towards his voice, shivering violently.  She was clad for summer, her long dress thin and sleeveless.  She automatically started to bespell a better wardrobe, but stopped as she found that place in her memory empty.  She frowned and searched desperately through her memory for a spell -- any spell -- but everything was gone.  She knew it should be there, but . . . it wasn't.  Neither was all the power she had gained in nearly a century of life.  She looked at the Ancient One with wide eyes.  "I can't remember," she whispered.  "Why can't I remember?!"

Her teeth were chattering, her whole body shaking with cold.  The Ancient One smiled, completely unaffected by either the cold or her distress.  "That was your choice.  That, I know, you  do remember.  Love, over power and the knowledge of a sorceress.  And then you attacked me to save your Sharak from his fate."

Ricenne stood slowly, hugging herself and forcing the words out through her teeth.  Snow was starting to fall now, drifting around them in lazy patterns.  "What have you done to him?" she demanded.

The Ancient One chuckled and lifted his hand.  Light flared at his fingertips and created an image.  A great black eagle, as familiar to Ricenne as Sharak's human form, drifted on the air currents above a deep canopy of jungle.  Ricenne stared at the image, then turned to the spirit, confused.  "That will be his shape for eternity," the Ancient One told her.  "His feet will never again touch the ground.  And, as you know, in eagle form he has the mind of a man -- but not the power of a sorcerer."

The much-wrinkled spirit cocked his head and leaned forward, dismissing the image with a flick of his fingers as Ricenne's eyes filled with icy tears.  "Tell me, my dear student, was it worth it?  You can still go back, change your mind.  I can restore your memory and power, and take away your knowledge of love."

"Like you did to Amerys."

The Ancient One nodded.

"Did you tell her what Sharak's fate was to be,  teacher?"  The word was an epithet now.  "Did you tell her what price he would pay for giving her love, before she chose to forget him?"

The Ancient One smiled.  "You always were clever.  Not as powerful as my dearest Amerys -- never were and I'm afraid you never would have been, though your spell in the courtyard did surprise me.  You and Sharak put together could not equal the power she will one day hold.  I would not let something like  love jeopardize that."

"If she had known," Ricenne concluded, "she would have told you to go to the nether-reaches."

The Ancient One chuckled.  "She is quite strong-willed.  And to my surprise, so are you.  All the better, I suppose.  It will make your eternity all the more of a punishment."

Ricenne frowned at him through the snowfall.  "What?"

"Oh, come now. You didn't think your punishment was simply to be stripped of your power, did you?  What kind of example would that be?"  He smiled.  "No.  I have given you the same . . . gift . . . as I gave Prince Sharak.  Immortality."  The Ancient One chuckled again as Ricenne's face showed her comprehension.  "Enjoy it, little one.  Every moment of it.  Especially when you remember that Sharak believes it was you who consigned him to this fate."

"Why?" she asked.  "Why not just kill us?  Why the pain of these lies?"

The Ancient One smiled.  "Oh, but is it a lie?  Did you really believe, my dear girl, that the law was not real?  Or did you perhaps want him to suffer for not loving you instead of her?"

Ricenne shook her head fiercely.  "No!  That wasn't what happened!  I came to you because I trusted you!  I thought of you as a father!"

"Love makes fools of us all, my dear Ricenne," the Ancient One said with a shrug.

Then he vanished, leaving her alone in a wasteland of endless white.  The wind became stronger, rushing around her with knives made of cold and snow.  Ricenne turned her face out of its path and looked towards the sky.  In her mind, she could still see the image of Sharak in his eagle form, gliding over dense jungle.  "Someday," she whispered.  "Someday, Sharak . . .  I will find you, my friend, my love.  And I will release you from this curse.  I don't know how, but I will find a way.  I promise you.  I promise. . ."

She turned a slow circle, scanning the slopes of glistening, deadly white.  Nothing was what it seemed: the wasteland had to have an end and she would find it.  Ricenne ducked her head against the wind, wrapped her arms close about herself, and started walking.

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