Posted by Parsifal Pankarow on February 10, 1997 at 21:27:42:
In Reply to: Comments on this new ending to "Demon Princes"? posted by Michael Reynolds on February 09, 1997 at 13:16:42:
Brilliant! This is how Vance should have written it. Mr. Reynolds is to be congratulated.
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: Alice put her hands on Gersen's shoulder. "And now, what of you?"
: "What of me, how?"
: "You're so quiet and subdued! You worry me. Are you well?"
: "Well enough."
: But he did not tell Alice all that was in his mind. How could he? His interminable quest, it seemed, had reached an end. He had traversed the galaxy and Beyond. And for what? Revenge, to be sure. Revenge on the five Demon Princes who had blighted his boyhood, and then his adulthood. One by one, he had smitten them, the assassins of Mount Pleasant. He alone, Kirth Gersen, had taken his vengeance on them. All, all of them--vile Lens Larque, the unspeakable Kokkor Hekkus, Treesong now, and Viole Falushe, and...
: Gersen realized with a horror allayed only by his unuttterable weariness that he had actually forgotten the name of the other Demon Prince, the first one of that fell congerie that he had tracked down and slain.
: Years of my life spent pursuing that monster, he mused, and now to not even recall his name!
: But turning to Alice, all he said, all he could bring himself to say, was "I have spent my youth on my enemies and now they have deserted me."
: She looked at Gersen curiously, but he spoke no more that day.