"What is it you want, Stuart?"
"Nothing from you! Just let me go on living. I'll do my own fighting. There'll be time enough to take a powder when the axe falls. I'm asking you simply this—keep me alive until I've had another crack at the Aesir!"
A pause. "It is dangerous. Dangerous for us. But—"
"Well?"
"We will take the risk. But understand—we must leave you if the peril grows too great. And will—inevitably."
"Thanks," Stuart said, and meant it. "One thing. What about Kari? Who is she?"
"A hundred years ago she was human. Then she was brought here, and the Aesir possessed her—as we possess you. She has grown less human in that time, as the alien grows stronger within her. She has only faint memories of her former life now, and they will vanish soon. Contact with the Aesir is like an infection—she will grow more and more like them. Perhaps, eventually, become one of them."
Stuart grimaced. "If the Aesir should withdraw from her—"
"She would die, yes. Her own life-force has been sapped too far. You and she are kept alive only as long as the bond of possession holds."
Nice, Stuart thought. If the Aesir were destroyed, Kari would die with him. And if he faced doom, he too would die, as the Protectors withdrew to avoid sharing his fate.