1

It was getting monotonous, this waking up not knowing where you were, feeling like something dragged in from a refuse heap.

He could tell without even opening his eyes that he was back in the dungeon again. Sharp bits of straw stabbed his naked back, thwarted only where bandages covered his worst cuts and bruises.

Still, someone in authority apparently had decided to keep him alive for the present. That was something.

Strangely, in spite of the greater severity of his welts—and they seemed really to have worked him over this time— Dennis felt better than he had on the other occasions when he had been beaten up here on Tatir This time, at least, he had gotten his own licks in. The brief memory of Baron Kremer tipping over like a fallen tree seemed to lessen the pain.

He shivered and sat up slowly, wincing, and gingerly examined himself until he was fairly certain nothing had been permanently damaged.

Yet, he reminded himself.

From somewhere down the dank hallway he heard a faint “thunking” sound. . . like someone chopping something with a sharp object. Perhaps the headsman was practicing his ax.

Time passed, measurable only by his sparse meals, by his thoughts, and by punctuated screams from some poor devil down the hall.

Dennis passed some of the time wondering at his bandages, which seemed never to need changing. They breathed easily, remained clean, and were comfortable to wear. Of course, he realized, they were probably well practiced. No doubt the baron gave his people free emergency care during peacetime so the medicinal supplies would be up to par when war came along. Here in the castle the dispensary would have dressings hundreds of years old.

It was a peculiar thought.

Bandages were among the things he would bring home to Earth if he ever got the chance—not gemstone tools, or works of art that would presumably only decay once they were released from the field of the Practice Effect, but things whose properties could be analyzed and then duplicated by the making wizards of Earth.

In the dark hours he made lists of things to take back. To help pass the time, he rehearsed the report he would give to the dubious folks back home.

He concluded that even if he ever did escape this place, and somehow managed to fix the zievatron and get home, he had better bring back some pretty convincing novelties. Otherwise nobody would ever believe him.

They fed him a thin gruel at infrequent intervals. Dennis lost all track of time. For a day or so the screams from down the hall ceased. Then some unfortunate new victim seemed to have been recruited to practice certain specialized tools.

Dennis tried to do anomaly calculations in his head. He brought up long-untended memories of home. He listened hard for anything to relieve the monotony.

Once he heard the jailers talking excitedly out in the corridor.

“. . . first here, then high in the tower, then out in the yard, and now down here again! And nobody knows what it is!”

“It’s a monster is what ‘tis!” the other retorted. “It’s the spawn of that great demon who struck down the Baron four nights ago. I tell you it’s unlucky to keep wizards and L’Toff under a roof! I can’t wait ‘til the Baron’s recovered and makes a judgment. . . .”

The voices passed down the hallway.

Dennis got up to grab the bars in his door’s tiny window. “Guard!” he called. “Guard! Did you say Kremer lives?”

The jailers had answered none of his questions before, but this pair sounded different. Perhaps they had just been rotated down to the dungeon.

They looked at each other in the flickering light from a wall cresset. One of the jailers shrugged and gave Dennis a snaggle-toothed grin. “Yeah, Wizard. No thanks to that demon you conjured up to drop rocks on his Lordship. Baron Kremer should be up an’ aroun’ in a few days. Til then Lord Hern’s in charge.”

Dennis nodded. So. He had figured that these cavemen never even invented the sling. It was a miracle they had bows and arrows. Probably no one but Kremer himself knew exactly what Dennis had done.

Everyone else quite correctly blamed him for the Baron’s condition, but for the wrong reason, thinking he had managed it by metaphysical means. They wouldn’t do anything further to him until Kremer was ready to choose an appropriate fate himself.

Dennis didn’t doubt it would include a protracted visit to the technicians down the hall.

He scratched his stubble and asked the guards if he could have a razor in order to shave.

They grinned at each other as if they had read his mind. “Naw, Wizard,” the snaggle-toothed one said, grinning. “Even Lord Hern don’t forgive incomp’tents who let a prisoner take the easy way out.”

The other jailer smiled. ‘Tell ya’ what, though. We’ll letcha have some brandy”—he said the word with hushed reverence— “if you’ll promise to keep us safe from those devil-spawned critters you’ve let loose around here. I got a friend on the still detail, an’ he sneaks me some.” He held up a flask that sloshed.

Dennis shrugged as the man poured a cupful and passed it between the bars. He hadn’t the slightest idea what the fellow was talking about. Devil-spawned? Critters? It sounded like a load of superstitious nonsense.

He took a swallow of the wonderfully vile liquor. After the fire had settled warmly into his stomach, he asked the guards about Arth.

They told him the little thief had been placed in charge of the distillery. Dennis suspected Arth had actually bribed the guard to pass the entire flask on to him.

Another swallow of the horrible stuff made him cough. But he swore he’d make it up to Arth someday.

The jailers knew nothing of Linnora. Mention of the L’Toff Princess made them nervous. They made small warding motions with their hands and claimed pressing duties elsewhere.

Dennis sighed and returned to the straw pallet. At least the spot where he lay was getting slowly more comfortable. It had to.

He tried practicing a small stone into a chisel, to pry apart the stones of his cell. But he knew he was really only practicing the dungeon itself. The pebble wasn’t anywhere near as good at chiseling as the wall was at being a wall. No doubt it was an old story on this world. Unless he came up with something unusual, a prisoner was stalemated.

2

He awakened suddenly from a dream about monsters.

There was a feathery touch of vague horror to the images that clung to Dennis’s mind as he blinked in the darkness. . . scrabbling shapes and sharp, ominous claws. For a long time after waking, he felt filled with a heavy lethargy.

In the dark silence he thought he heard something. Then, for a time, he dismissed the faint scratching sound as a lingering remnant of his nightmare.

Then it changed and became a soft hissing.

Dennis shook his head to free it of mental cobwebs. He turned in the gloom and then blinked. A fiery spark had appeared at one corner of the door to his cell, a bright speck in the almost total blackness.

The spark climbed slowly, leaving a glowing line behind it, until it reached a height of about two feet. Then the hot glow jogged right. Faint light from the hallway shone through the charred trail the flame left behind.

Dennis backed away, suddenly remembering what the jailers had said about “devil-spawned critters” loose in the castle. They had blamed him, but Dennis knew he had nothing to do with demons. Something was cutting its way into the cell, and it was not of his liking!

The burned trail turned another right angle, descending at an even pace toward the floor. Dennis clutched his sharpened stone as the wooden segment finally fell away, leaving an opening in the door just above the floor.

Dennis tried to call out, to summon the guards—anybody— but he couldn’t find his voice.

For a moment the new opening was dark and empty. Then -two gleaming red eyes appeared in the smoking opening— eyes larger than ought to belong to any living thing. They shone at him in the dimness for several heartbeats.

Then the thing that owned them moved slowly forward into the cell.

In his half-starved condition, with the catalepsy of sleep still in his muscles, Dennis felt far from ready for a fight. Against his will he closed his eyes, holding his breath as the softly chittering monster approached.

Then it stopped. He could sense it poised only a few feet away, muttering slowly to itself.

Dennis waited. Then his lungs started to burn. He couldn’t hold his breath any longer. He opened one eye to look, ready for anything. . .

. . . and exhaled in a long sigh. “Oh, lord-“

There, waiting patiently on the cool stones, was his long-missing Sahara Tech exploration ‘bot. It sat complacently, its sensors whirring quietly, ready—at last—to follow his instructions, to report.

Even in the dim light he could tell that the thing had changed. It rode lower, sleeker, with a sly pattern of coloration on its back. It had been . . . practiced . . , become better at the job he had assigned it. His most recent instructions, shouted briefly several weeks ago, had been to come and report to him. No Earthly robot could have managed it. But here it was, hardly “Earthly” anymore.

The thing must have followed his trail ever since that escapade on the rooftops of Zuslik, patiently working past obstacles until it overcame them, one by one.

But how? A tool had to have a user to benefit from the Practice Effect, didn’t it? Could he really be thought to have been using the ‘bot when it was out of sight and mind?

This played havoc with the theory he had formed, that the Practice Effect was at least partly a psi power exercised by humans on this world.

Then he remembered. The last time he had seen the robot it had been accompanied by a living thing—someone who loved to watch tools being used, the more complicated the better.

“Come on in, Pix,” he whispered. “All is forgiven.”

Two bright green eyes appeared in the little gap in the door. They blinked, then were joined by a Cheshire grin of needle-sharp teeth.

The little animal launched itself into a short glide and landed on Dennis’s lap. It purred and snuggled as if it had left him only hours ago.

Dennis sat there, stroking the little creature’s fur and listening to the quiet hum of the robot. Unexpectedly, tears welled. Hope seemed to fill him suddenly. After so long alone in the dark, to have companions and allies again. . . for a few minutes it was too good to be endured.

In the corridor outside, he found one of the jailers sprawled unconscious next to a bench. Dennis stripped the man of his clothes and left him inside his own cell, bound and gagged. He propped the rectangular piece of doorway into place. It was crude, but it was all he could do.

There was a bowl of stew and a slab of bread by the guard’s bench. Dennis wolfed them down while he hurried into the jailer’s clothes; they were too tight around the shoulders for him and too wide around the girth. When he finished, the pixolet took its old place on his shoulder, grinning at everything.

The robot had originally been equipped with a small stunner to acquire specimens of animal life. Apparently it had improved the device through practice and now was capable of knocking out anyone who stood between it and its job. Undoubtedly that ability would come in handy during the hour’ ahead.

Dennis knelt and spoke clearly and carefully to the machine.

“New instructions. Take note.” The ‘bot hummed and clicked in response.

“You are to accompany me now, and zap unconscious anyone I point at like this.”

He demonstrated, cocking his thumb and miming a pistol firing. It was a pretty complicated concept, but he was wagering the machine had grown sophisticated enough to comprehend.

“Indicate if you understand and are capable of carrying out this function.”

The green assent light on the machine’s turret winked. So far so good.

“Secondary orders. Should we become separated, you are to preserve your existence and make every effort to discover my whereabouts again and report.”

Again the light flashed.

“Finally,” he whispered, “should you find that I am dead, or in any event after three months, you will go back to the zievatron and await anyone from Earth. Should such a person arrive, report what you’ve observed.”

The robot assented. Then across its tiny display screen came a request to begin its encyclopedic report on the denizens of Tatir. The ‘bot seemed quite anxious to discharge its duty.

“Not yet,” Dennis said. “First we have to get out of here. I’ve got friends to rescue. Or at least one friend—and someone else I’d very much like to have as my friend. . . .”

He realized he was babbling. Hope was a mixed blessing. He found he was capable of being afraid once more,

“Okay, then. Everybody ready?” His two little companions didn’t look like awfully formidable allies in an assault on a fortress. The pixolet would likely desert upon the first sign of danger, anyway.

He straightened his guard’s uniform and pulled the cap down low, then set off with his strange crew.

He didn’t even have to help the robot with the stairs. The thing was, indeed, a marvel.

I must get it home to Earth when all this is over and find out what’s happened to it! he thought.

Princess Linnora had little choice but to use some of the beautiful things in her room.

She sat before the ancient vanity table and looked at her reflection in the centuries-old mirror. She didn’t want to help practice her captor’s property, but there was so little else to do,  trapped alone in the elegant room.   She found that brushing her hair helped to pass the time.

At first she had tried to give Kremer nothing, not even the benefit of her good taste. She refused to pay attention to her environment, lest her appreciation of subtleness and beauty help make Kremer’s palace a little nicer for him.

The room had formerly been occupied by one of Kremer’s mistresses. The peasant girl’s tastes had made a heavy impression on the furnishings. After the first month of her captivity, Linnora had had enough of the bright, garish colors and flashy decorations. She took down the worst and began concentrating on her own image of the room.

It had been a subtle sort of setback, using some small fraction of her powers to make her imprisonment a little more tolerable. Kremer obviously intended to break her down a little at a time. And Linnora wasn’t at all certain she could prevent it. His will was strong, and he had her life in his hands.

She picked up the lovely antique brush and stroked her hair, watching her reflection in the mirror, trying to imagine a way to stay out of Kremer’s bed once he recovered, or to prevent being used as a hostage against her own people.

She concentrated on seeing Truth in the mirror It was a form of fighting back. The next person to look into the mirror would see more than just flattering images of themselves.

She looked at a young woman who had made mistakes. From that day when she had gone off riding on her own, far from her brother Proll, in search of the strangeness she had felt come into the world—from that day when she was captured by the Baron’s men at the small metal house in the forest—she had committed errors.

She recalled how Dennis Nuel had’ looked at her, those days after the banquet and before the sky monster appeared. She had been convinced by Deacon Hoss’k’s logic that the wizard could only be an evil man. But might other logic than the obvious apply to someone from so very far away?

What if there were other ways to create the alien essences than the trapping into them of life forces? Could an evil man have been so gallant, fighting her enemy when her need was greatest? On the night of the sky monster,  the wizard had done battle with Kremer. Linnora was still confused over what had happened. Had Dennis Nuel conjured up the great glowing air-beast on seeing Kremer attack her? She wanted to believe it was so, but then why had he been forced to throw stones to bring Kremer down at last? And why did the monster fly away then, leaving its master to be overcome?

She put down the hairbrush, shaking her head at her reflection in the mirror. She would probably never learn the answers. Her guards had said the wizard was as good as dead in the Baron’s dungeon.

She picked up her klasmodion and plucked its strings idly, letting the soft notes come one at a time and in no particular order. She didn’t feel much like singing.

There was a tension in the evening quiet of the palace, as if something strong was about to happen. She felt a sense of danger in the night, and it was intensifying! She stopped playing, her senses suddenly alert.

From outside her door came a strange, high-pitched sound. Then something fell with a thump in the hallway. Linnora stood. She laid down the instrument and picked up her hairbrush, the only thing handy that was heavy enough to serve as a weapon.

There came a faint knock at her door Linnora edged back into the shadows. There was something familiar in the presence in the hallway, like that faint feeling she had had a week ago that had seemed to say that Proll had briefly been nearby.

There was also something out there so alien that just the hint of it made her shiver.

“Who is it?” She tried to keep her voice steady and regal, It came out sounding merely young. “Who is there?”

A voice in the hallway whispered hoarsely, “It’s Dennis Nuel, Princess! I’ve come to offer you a chance to get away from here, if you’re interested. But we’ve got to hurry!”

Linnora ran to the door and opened it.

The aroma of unbathed male was almost overwhelming. Filthy, bruised, and unkempt, Dennis Nuel smiled, holding the bunched waist of an oversized guard’s uniform.

It was more than enough to surprise a girl. But Linnora gasped when she saw the thing in the hallway behind him.

The hairbrush fell clattering to the floor as she fainted.

Well, Dennis thought as he rushed forward to keep her from falling, a guy could get a less flattering reception. I wish I could be sure it was gratitude that’s overcome her, and not BO.

He knew he must be a treat for the senses. His bruises were a still brilliant shade of purple, and he hadn’t bathed in two weeks.

Behind him the Sahara Tech ‘bot poked at the fallen guards. While it awaited farther orders it proceeded with its second priority and took tiny blood samples from the unconscious soldiers for comparison purposes.

Fainting princesses were fine—in storybooks. But slender or not, Linnora felt heavy to Dennis in his weakened state. He carried the girl into the room and laid her on the bed.

“Princess! Linnora! Wake up! Do you recognize me?”

Linnora blinked, recovering quickly. She got up on one elbow. “Yes, of course I recognize you, Wizard. . .and I’m happy to see you alive. Now would you please release my hand? You’re squeezing much too hard.”

Dennis hurriedly let go. He helped her sit up.

“Is escape truly possible?” Linnora asked. She assiduously avoided looking at Dennis’s companion in the hallway. If it was one of his demons, it surely wasn’t about to consume her, she assumed.

“I’m not sure,” Dennis answered. “I’m on my way to the tower to find out. I stopped here to offer you a chance to come along. I don’t suppose either of us has anything to lose.”

Linnora managed an ironic smile. “No, we do not. One moment, then. I will be right back.”

She stood and hurried quickly to a closet.

Dennis dragged the supine guards into the room. It had been a harrowing climb from the dungeons to the storerooms, to the kitchens, and beyond, constantly ducking from shadow to shadow. He and his companions had made it to the second story before being spotted. A pair of guards saw him entering a stairwell. They called and hurried after in chase.

As Dennis had expected, the pixolet deserted the moment it came to any action.

But the robot was stalwart. It waited with Dennis just inside the stairwell until the two soldiers sped through between them. Dennis heard the second guard slump to the floor before he was half finished throttling the first into unconsciousness. He left them both bound and gagged behind the staircase, and then they hurried on.

Five minutes later he had a chance to witness the robot in action.

From the stairs he pointed pistol-like at the two guards standing watch outside Linnora’s room. The little machine had sped out into the hall, faster and more quietly than Dennis would have believed possible. The guards barely had time to turn before it scuttled up to them and touched each on the leg. They groaned in brief surprise and collapsed to the floor.

Dennis was just a little in awe of what the Earth machine was becoming.

While Linnora gathered a few things, he tied up the guards. Of course, someone was sure to notice they were missing. But he couldn’t just leave them in the hall.

“I’m ready,” Linnora announced. “I found a cloak that might fit you.” She handed him a thick, hooded garment of lustrous black material. He noted with approval that she had changed from her accustomed white into dark clothing.

“Also, this is yours, I believe. I hope I did it no harm looking at it. Its purpose is a mystery to me.”

“My wrist-comp!” Dennis cried out as he took it.

The Princess watched in amazement as he put it on his arm. She had never seen a crimp clasp before.

“So that is what those little straps were for!” she said.

“I’ll show you the rest of what the comp can do if we ever get out of here,” Dennis promised. “Now we’d better be going. If Arth isn’t still in his room in the tower, this is going to be an awfully short trip.”

3

When Arth heard thumping noises outside his room, he opened the door with a cudgel in his fist, ready for anything. But he grinned broadly when he saw the young woman and the wizard standing there, an unconscious guard slumped at their feet.

Arth just about reopened Dennis’s wounds, slapping him on the back. The normally quiet and taciturn thief could barely restrain himself.

“Dennizz! Come in! You too, Princess! Y’know, I figured you’d show up at some point. That’s why I stayed here even when Lord Hern promoted me to distillery manager. Come on in an’ have some brandy!”

Arth kicked the guard’s limp body aside to make room for Linnora to pass. Then the little thief stopped as he spied the robot whirring quietly behind them. He gulped. The glassy eyes stared back patiently.

“Uh, is that a fren’ of yours, Dennizz?” Arth spoke without taking his eyes away.

“Yes, it is, Arth.” Dennis ushered Linnora inside and pulled Arth along when the man lingered to stare.

Linnora was glad to get inside, away from the glint of bright lenses. Although she had watched the robot in action in the dark hallways, helping Dennis overcome two more pairs of guards on their way here, she still glanced at the machine nervously.

She had begun wondering what kind of man kept such strange familiars. Never before had she encountered anything that reeked so of both Pr’fett and essence as this “robot.” It felt like a thing. . . yet it moved and acted as if it were alive!

Dennis ordered the robot to keep watch outside and closed the door.

The room was a clutter of bits of wood and leather and cord—piles of lumber and rough cloth, and flimsy contraptions that would have done a kindergartner on Earth proud.

“Hey, Dennizz,” Arth said, pouring three cups of brandy from a brown bottle, “I’ve been tryin’ my hand at makin’, like you do! Can I show you some of my projects? I think I’ve figured out a real good way to trap mice, for instance.”

“Umm, I don’t think we have the time, Arth. The alarm should be out any time now.”

Linnora coughed. Her cheeks flushed and she stared at the cup in her hand. She sniffed at the liquor, then attempted another sip.

The thief nodded. “I suppose you’ll want to see the glider, then.”

Dennis had been afraid to ask. “You did it! I knew you could!”

“Aw, t’wasn’t no big thing.” Arth reddened. “Th’ slippery oil made it a snap. It’s over here under this pile of rubbish. They let out quite a fuss when they found it missing. But with the Baron out of action they never got a good search together.”

Dennis helped him pull the debris off Soon a neatly folded roll of silky fabric and slender wooden struts came into view. “It’s a good thing you made it up here tonight,” Arth mused critically, “Another couple of weeks an’ the thing would have lapsed back into being a kite. I guess you won’t have any trouble flyin’ it now, though.”

From your mouth to my ear, Dennis thought as he helped Arth carry the heavy, two-man glider out the doorway and up to the palace roof.

Dennis had to reassemble the thing almost by himself in the moonlight. The others tried to help, but Linnora was frightened by the great, flapping wings, and Arth kept making irrelevant suggestions and needlessly urging him to hurry.

The rising wind pulled at the fabric, frequently tugging it almost out of Dennis’s hands. He managed to get the glider’s wings extended and was searching for the locking mechanism when the alarm finally sounded below. It began in one corner of the castle, down near the bottom story, and spread until the night was filled with a chaos of bells, shouts, and running feet.

They must have found one of the sets of guards he and the robot had knocked out.

He found the latch at last. The cloth wings, which had been flapping in the stiff breeze, suddenly snapped taut with a loud report.

From two parapets below Dennis heard worried queries. Of course Arth’s guard failed to answer. Soon there were footsteps not far below.

“No time for experimentation,” he muttered. “Arth! Slip into the rear saddle to anchor it down!”

The big glider bucked and hopped until Arth had settled in. Even then it would not stay still. Dennis motioned for the robot to come.   He knelt,  still holding the  edge of one flapping wing.

“Instructions!” he told the little automaton. “Go below and delay those who are approaching until we are gone. After that, attempt to survive and follow however you can. We’ll try to head west by southwest!”

The ‘bot’s green acceptance light flashed. It swiveled and sped away, swiftly negotiating the plank ramp they had used to climb onto the roof.

Dennis heard booted footsteps on the stairwells below this level. They didn’t have much time.

Arth was in his place in the strap saddle, as Dennis had showed him. Arth looked completely confident. He had seen the “balloon” soaring through the night and knew now that Dennis could manage flying things. The distinction between a balloon and a glider was inconsequential to him.

“This is a two-man glider,” Dennis said, “but you two don’t weigh much more than one big man. Linnora can ride with Arth on the rear seat. All we have to do is make it out of town, anyway.”

But Linnora clutched her cloak around her, staring at the great flapping wings. She looked at Dennis, all her doubts brought back at once.

I don’t blame her, Dennis thought. She’s a savvy lady, but she’s not prepared for this.

All three of them could die in this attempt. Some might say that what Kremer had in store for her would be worse than death. But while one lived there was always a chance.

She held her klasmodion to her breast as the gusty wind tugged at the great kite, almost dragging Dennis and Arth along the roof. The glider was like a powerful bird, straining at a tether—eager to be airborne.

Suddenly there were thuds and dismayed shouts from the landing below. The robot was making its stand at the head of the stairs.

Dennis looked at the L’Toff Princess, and her eyes met his. He could tell she wanted to trust him. But this was all too sudden, too alien for her.

He couldn’t drag her along by force. But neither could he bring himself to leave her behind.

Linnora caught sight of it first,  when the small figure appeared clambering over the ledge. She gasped and stared to the left. Dennis swiveled quickly and saw a tiny face—a pair of small green eyes and two rows of grinning, sharp teeth.

“A Krenegee!” Linnora said with a sigh.

The pixolet grinned. It scrambled onto the roof, then launched itself into the breeze. With outspread wing membranes it sailed lazily to Dennis and landed on his shoulder. Tiny claws bit into his cloak and jabbed his skin underneath.

Dennis had to struggle with his skidding feet, grappling with the bucking glider,  cursing the wind and the stupid, irritating creature purring by his ear.

But Arth stared with superstitious awe, and when Linnora spoke, Dennis could barely hear her over the wind.

“The Krenegee chooses whom it will—and those whom it chooses make the world . . .” she said.

It sounded like a litany. Perhaps the pixolet’s species was some sort of totem for her people. Maybe Pix might do some good for somebody after all!

He held out his hand to Linnora, and this time she stepped forward and took it readily, as if in a daze. He guided her into the rear saddle, in front of Arth, and told the thief to hold on to her as he would his life.

There came a series of screams and loud crashes from below as another group assaulted the head of the stairs.

He felt a little guilty leaving the robot to face all that alone. It was only a machine, of course. But here on Tatir, that only wasn’t as easy an excuse as on Earth.

The soldiers were getting organized. Dennis heard officers shouting and what had to be entire platoons trooping quickly up the stairs. It wouldn’t be long now.

The wind rose again. Dennis had to fight down a wave of uncertainty as he looked out upon the rough, dimly perceived terrain. The spires of Zuslik town lurked against the hulking mountains beyond. The twisting, moonlit river glistened. Jagged outlines told of ship masts by the docks.

He looked back at his passengers. The pixolet purred and Linnora’s eyes now shone with a confidence he could not understand, though it felt good.

Somewhere below, a captain with a shrill voice was haranguing his men for a charge. It was definitely time to go.

“All right,” he told Arth and Linnora, “now I want you all to think up very hard, lean the way I lean, and jump with me when I say the magic word—‘Geronimo!’”

4

The very instant they were airborne, Dennis was filled with a not unreasonable wish he could go back and try to think of something else.

“DennizzI Watch out for that spire!”

A high tower appeared out of the darkness, directly in their path. Dennis swung his weight leftward in the hanging saddle. “Lean hard!” he shouted, hoping Arth and Linnora would try to mimic his actions.

The glider tipped slowly. The top story of one of Zuslik’s higher buildings passed a scant two meters to their right. Through a brightly lit window Dennis glimpsed a scene of merriment. Some sort of celebration was in progress. There was a brief sound of high laughter. None of the partiers noticed a dark, swift shape whistle past their window.

Dennis fought to realign the glider. The bank had dropped them into a layer of turbulence. The craft bucked and fluttered as it followed the hillside down to the city proper.

Behind them the castle was in an uproar. Searchlamps cast sharp beams from every peak and parapet. Dennis didn’t dare look back, but he did hope the robot had managed to scuttle away at the end.

Zuslik’s wedding cake towers passed swiftly below them. The outer wall of the town lay less than a mile ahead, and beyond it the river. They were still losing altitude. It would be close.

Behind him Dennis could hear Arth’s teeth chattering. But Linnora’s grip on his waist was firm. Good girl. She wasn’t even trembling!

The glider surged as they passed through a pocket of warm air rising from a chimney. By the time Dennis regained control the town’s outer wall was coming toward them fast.

“Come on!” he urged the glider. “Come on, baby! Lift!”

He was talking to his craft, as almost every other pilot had.

But in this case the entreaties might actually do some good. Any additional practice the glider got couldn’t hurt.

The pixolet gripped his shoulder with its front claws and spread its wing membranes wide so its hind legs trailed behind. Was the darned thing actually trying to help for a change? It grinned, watching Dennis’s every move as the neophyte glider pilot threaded the higher towers toward the wall.

Hey! I’m not so bad at this! Dennis thought, grinning as the glider swooped around the steeple of a Coylian temple. A fellow could get to enjoy this.

A minute later he changed his mind. Were not going to make it,

Zuslik was a maze of twisting streets and pointed structures. In the darkness there was no way he could pilot the glider to a safe landing down there. He had brought them all to this predicament. Now it looked as if only the pixolet, with its built-in parachute, would escape catastrophe.

Suddenly the streets opened up, and the city wall loomed. It was at least a couple hundred yards ahead and now only a few meters below, waiting to flick them out of the air.

He glanced at Arth and Linnora. The little thief grinned back. In his adrenaline rush he looked like he was having the time of his life, totally confident in Dennis’s magical abilities.

Linnora’s eyes were closed, a peaceful expression on her face as she whispered quietly. Though her face was hardly a foot from his own, Dennis could not make out the words over the rushing wind.

Her chant seemed to resonate with the purring of the tiny animal on Dennis’s shoulder. For an instant she opened her eyes. She smiled at Dennis happily.

The pixolet purred louder.

Dennis piloted the glider past the last obstacle, and the stretch before the wall was ahead.

“Come on!” he urged the flying machine.

The ground swept past. Linnora’s chant and Pixolet’s purring seemed to meld with Dennis’s concentration. Reality seemed to shimmer around him. The struts and cables shuddered with a faint, musical thrill, almost as if the glider were changing under his very fingers. It felt familiar, somehow.

Dennis blinked. The wall was only twenty yards away now. Soldiers walked along the parapet carrying torches, their attention on the ground below,

Maybe. . . Dennis began to hope.

The glider seemed to hum excitedly. From the L’Toff Princess there streamed a feeling of power. And a great amplified echo seemed to come from the creature on his shoulder!

The glider felt electric under his hands, and the faintest shimmering light seemed to run along its cables. The taut fabric rippled with only the faintest luffing as the wall passed a bare man’s height below them. One guard stared up, slack-jawed. Then the wall was behind them, swallowed by the night.

Suddenly they were over the river. Faint starlight reflected from its surface.

The brief felthesh trance was fading. It had gotten them over the wall alive, But Dennis realized that no miracle of practice could get them across the water. Limited to a glider’s essence, their craft could only fall in the cool air, no matter how efficient it became.

To the left were the cluttered masts of the docks. He doubted they could clear them and get to the farmland beyond.

“Can everybody swim?” he asked. “I sure hope so, ‘cause we’re going in.”

The wharves were dark. Only a rare light gleamed through a window here and there. “Cut loose your straps!” he told Arth. “Drop when I tell you to!”

The thief obeyed at once, his knife slashing the leather harness. Linnora wrapped her klasmodion in her cloak and nodded that she was ready.

Dennis tried to angle their descent parallel to the docks. The water swept past only two meters below, a blur under their feet.

“Now! Let go!”

Linnora gave Dennis a quick smile, then she and Arth jumped. The glider jounced and Dennis fought with it. It had been practiced to carry more weight, and the center of mass had shifted.

Centroid, Dennis reminded himself as he pushed backward. Where’s your centroid now? He heard two splashes behind him, then he was busy trying to negotiate his own landing.

It was too late to jump. He had to ride it out. He fumbled with his own strap and got it loose just as his feet began dragging through the water.

As he raised his legs he realized the pixolet was gone. Somehow it didn’t surprise him at all.

Suddenly his knees were plowing furrows in the river. The glider settled around him as the water pulled him into a wet embrace.

5

“Dennizz!”

Arth rowed as quietly as he could. He had muffled the oars of the skiff they had stolen. Even so, he hated having to row out into the open river. Search parties had already sallied forth from the castle—horsemen and infantry patrols would soon be scouring the countryside.

“Can you see him?”

Linnora peered into the darkness. “Not yet. But he must be out this way! Keep rowing!”

Her clothes were plastered to her body, and the valley winds blew along the water. But her only thoughts were on the river and her rescuer.

“Wizard!” she called. “Are you out there? Wizard! Answer me!”

There was only the soft squeaking of the oars and, in the distance, the shouts of the Baron’s troops.

Arth rowed.

Linnora’s voice cracked. “Dennis Nuel! You cannot die! Guide us to you!”

They paused to listen, barely breathing. Then out of the darkness came a faint sound. “That way!” She grabbed Arth’s shoulder and pointed. He grunted and pulled at the oars.

“Dennis!” she cried. She heard faint coughing somewhere ahead. Then a rough voice called back.

“The terrestrial has sblashed dowd. . . fortunately, my ship floats. Are you guys the local Coast Guard?”

Linnora sighed. She didn’t understand more than a word or two of what he had said, but that was all right. Wizards were supposed to be inscrutable.

“I’b gonna have to find a way to phode hobe,” the voice in the darkness muttered. Then a loud sneeze echoed over the water.

Dennis clutched the floating frame. A great bubble of air kept the glider afloat, though it was leaking out quickly. Onshore the search parties were getting closer. Against the distant flicker of lanterns he finally made out the moving shadow of the rowboat.

When Arth pulled up alongside all he could see of the little thief was his grin. But he couldn’t mistake Linnora’s outline as she bent to reach for his hand. In spite of his situation, Dennis had to appreciate what the water had done to her gown.

He shivered as he clambered into the boat. She wrapped some sailcloth around him. But as Arth moved back to the oars, Dennis stopped him.

“Let’s try to salvage the glider,” he said, trying to overcome his stopped-up sinuses. “It’d be best if they wered’t completely sure how we got away. I’d rather they suspected it was magic.”

Linnora smiled. Her hand was on his arm.

“You have an amazing way with words, Dennis Nuel. Who in the world would think that what we have just been through was anything but magic?”

9

Discus Jestus

1

The farm had begun to deteriorate.

From the open gate Dennis looked down the walk to Stivyung Sigel’s house. The home that had looked so comfortably lived-in a couple of months back now had the appearance of a place long abandoned to the elements.

“I think the coast is clear,” he told the others. He helped Linnora lean against the fence post so she could take her arm off of his shoulder. The girl smiled bravely, but Dennis could tell she was almost done in.

He motioned for Arth to keep watch, then hurried across the yard to look into the house through one of the yellowing windowpanes.

Dust had settled over everything. The fine old furniture within had begun to take on a rough-edged look. The decay was sad, but it meant the farm was deserted. The soldiers combing the countryside for them hadn’t set up an outpost here.

He returned to the gate and helped Linnora while Arth carried the disassembled glider. Together they slumped exhausted on the steps of the house. For a while the only sound other than their breathing was the hum of the insects.

The last time Dennis had sat on this porch, he had been bemused by a row of tools that seemed partly out of Buck Rogers and partly out of the late Stone Age, Now Dennis saw that more than half of the implements were missing from the rack by the door. . . the better half, he noted. The wonderful tools that Stivyung Sigei had practiced to perfection were probably with young Tomosh at his aunt’s and uncle’s, along with the Sigels’ better household possessions.

The remaining tools on the rack had been left because they couldn’t be kept employed. Most had begun to look like props from a low-budget Hollywood caveman feature.

Arth lay back on the porch, hands clasped across his chest, snoring.

Linnora painfully removed her shoes. In spite of the intense practice of the past two days, they still weren’t appropriate for rough country. She had picked up several terrible blisters, and for the last day she had been limping on a twisted ankle. She had to be in great pain, but she never mentioned it to either of her companions.

Dennis heavily got up to his feet. He shuffled around the corner of the house to the well, and dropped the bucket in. There was a delayed splash. He pulled the bucket out, untied the cinch, and carried it, sloshing and leaking, back to the porch.

Arth roused himself long enough to take a deep drink, then sagged back again. Linnora drank sparingly, but dampened her kerchief and dabbed at the dust streaks on her face.

As gently as he could, Dennis bathed her feet to wipe away the dried blood. She winced but did not let out a sound. When he finished and sat down next to her on the dusty porch, Linnora rested her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes.

They had been dodging patrols for almost three days, eating small birds Dennis brought down with a makeshift sling, and fish scooped from small streams by Linnora’s quick hands. Twice they had almost been spotted—by men on horseback one time, and again by a swift, nearly silent glider. The Baron, or his regent, certainly had the countryside in an uproar looking for them.

Linnora nestled comfortably below his chin. Dennis breathed in the sweet aroma of her hair, knotted as it was from three days in the wilderness. For a short time they were at peace.

“We can’t stay here, Dennizz.” Arth spoke without moving or opening his eyes.

On the evening of the escape, he had wanted to hang around the outskirts of Zuslik until it was safe to sneak back into town. Arth wasn’t comfortable out in the open. But the fuss that was being raised and the thoroughness of the search had persuaded him at last to go along with Dennis and Linnora—to try for the land of the L’Toff.

“I know we can’t, Arth. I’m sure the Baron’s men have been here already. And they’ll be back.

“But Linnora’s feet are bleeding, and her ankle’s swollen. We had to go somewhere for her to rest up, and this was the only place I could think of. It’s deserted and it’s in the direction we wanted to go.”

“Dennis, I can go on. Really.” Linnora sat up, but her slender body began to sway almost at once. “I think I ca—“ Her eyes rolled upward and Dennis caught her.

“Give a yell if the army comes,” he told Arth as he gathered her into his arms. He stood up unsteadily and managed to nudge the door open with his foot. It creaked loudly.

Dust was everywhere inside the house. Dennis could almost feel the love and taste Stivyung Sigel and his wife had practiced into this home, and now it was well on its way to reverting to a hovel of sticks and thatch and paper.

He wondered what had become of the tall farmer, and Gath, the bright young lad who had wanted to be a wizard’s apprentice. Did they survive their adventure in the balloon? Was Sigel even now searching for his wife in the forests of the L’Toff?

Dennis carried Linnora down a narrow hallway to the Sigels’ bedroom and laid her gently on the bed. Then he half collapsed into a chair nearby.

“Jus’ gimme a minute,” he mumbled. Exhaustion was like a heavy blanket weighing him down. Once he tried to get up but failed.

“Aw, hell.” He looked at the young woman now sleeping peacefully nearby. “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to work the first time the hero gets the beautiful Princess into bed. . . .”

In his half sleep, Dennis’s mind wandered. He found himself thinking about Pix and the robot. . . imagining how a passerby would have seen them some weeks back, the little pink creature with the bright green eyes, and its companion, the alien machine, together invading the human-filled streets of Zuslik, scuttling among the roofs and culverts, spying on the denizens of the town.

No wonder there had been rampant rumors of “devil-spawned critters” and ghosts.

Linnora had told him that the “Krenegee beast” shared with humans the ability to imbue a tool with Pr’fett, yet they weren’t tool users themselves, nor apparently even truly sentient.

Sometimes a wild Krenegee established a long-term rapport with a human being. When this happened the human’s practice became tremendously powerful. A month’s improvement might be accomplished in a few hours’ time. Even the L’Toff, whose mastery of the art of practice was unsurpassed, could not match the accomplishments of a man accompanied by a Krenegee, especially if the combination resulted in an occasional true practice trance.

But the Krenegee were notoriously fickle. A human counted himself lucky if he saw one once in his lifetime. A rare person who made lasting acquaintance with one was called a maker of the world.

Dennis imagined the pixolet roaming the city roofs on the back of an automaton, pushing it ever toward perfection at its programmed function—a function Dennis had originally given it. The results had been amazing.

Fickle Pix might be, but Dennis had wronged it in calling it a useless creature.

He couldn’t help feeling guilty over the robot, though he knew he shouldn’t. He saw it in his imagination, bravely holding off the guards on the night of their escape.

Dennis slumbered fitfully, dreaming of green and glowing red eyes, until a hand came down to shake his shoulder.

“Dennizz!” The hand shook him. “Dennizz! Wake up!”

“Whazzat?...” Dennis sat up quickly. “What is it? Soldiers?”

Arth was a silhouette in the dim room. He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I heard voices out on the road, but no animals. I scooted before they opened the gate.”

Dennis got up heavily and went over to look through a gap in the curtains. The dusty, yellowed window looked out on the farmyard. At the right edge of his field of vision he saw a flicker of movement. There were footsteps on the wooden porch.

The only way out was through the living room; they would have to face whoever it was. And the three of them weren’t fit to take on a pack of drugged Cub Scouts.

He motioned Arth over behind the door and picked up a small chair. The footfalls were in the hall now.

The latch slid and the bedroom door squeaked slowly open. Dennis raised the chair high.

He swayed and almost overcompensated when the door swung wide to reveal a stocky, middle-aged woman. She saw Dennis and gasped as she hopped back at least four feet, almost knocking over a small boy behind her.

“Wait!” Dennis called.

The woman grabbed the boy’s arm, dragging him frantically for the front door. But the small figure resisted.

“Dennz! Ma, it’s only Dennz!”

Dennis put down the chair and motioned for Arth to stay put. He hurried down the hall after them.

The woman paused uncertainly at the open front door. Her grip was white on the arm of the young boy Dennis had met early in his stay on this world. Dennis stopped at the hallway entrance, his empty hands raised.

“Hello, Tomosh,” he said quietly.

“’lo, Dennzz!” Tomosh said happily, though his mother yanked him back when he tried to come forward. Suspicion and fear still filled her eyes.

Dennis tried to remember the woman’s name. Stivyung had mentioned it several times. Somehow, he had to convince her he was a friend!

He sensed movement behind him.

Damn Arth! I told him to stay back! One more strange man in the house will be enough to spook this woman!

Mrs. Sigel’s eyes opened wide. But instead of fleeing, she sighed.

“Princess!”

Dennis turned and couldn’t help blinking a little himself. Even with disheveled hair, sleepy-eyed and standing on bloody, bare feet, Linnora managed to look regal. She smiled graciously.

“You are right good woman, though I don’t believe we have ever met. I must thank you for the hospitality of your beautiful home. My gratitude, and that of the L’Toff, are yours for all your days.”

Mrs. Sigel blushed, and curtsied awkwardly. Her face was transformed, no longer hard at all. “My home is yours, your Highness,” she said shyly. “An” your friends, of course. I only wish it were more presentable.”

“To us, it is as fine as the greatest palace,” Linnora assured her. “And far nicer than a castle where we have recently been.”

Dennis took Linnora’s arm to help her to a chair. She caught his eye and winked.

Mrs. Sigel made a great fuss when she saw the condition of the girl’s feet. She hurried to a corner of the room and pried up a floorboard to reveal a hidden larder. She brought out clean, decades-old linen and a jar of salve. She insisted on immediately attending to Linnora’s blisters, pushing Dennis to one side gently but irresistibly.

The boy Tomosh came over and hit Dennis affectionately on the leg, then began a torrent of eager, uncoordinated questions. It took ten minutes for Dennis to get around to telling Mrs. Sigel that he had last seen her husband two hundred feet in the air, riding a great balloon.

Eventually he had to explain what in the world a “balloon” was.

2

“We could try to arrange a hiding place for you here,” Surah Sigel told Dennis much later, after the others had gone to bed. “It’d be dangerous for sure. The Baron’s mobilized the militia, an’ his men will be back here again soon. But we could give it a try.”

Surah looked as if she had little faith in her own suggestion. Dennis already knew what the problem was.

“Sniffers,” he said simply.

She nodded reluctantly. “Yah. Kremer’ll have them out in force, huntin’ for you. Sniffers can find a man anywhere by his scent, given ‘nuff time.”

Dennis had seen a kennel of the big-nosed animals while he resided in the castle. They looked like distant relatives of dogs, but Dennis could think of no real analogs on Earth.

They were slower than bloodhounds But had three times the sensitivity. Arth had told him there were ways to stymie sniffers in town, but out in the country they were unstoppable.

Dennis shook his head. “We have to be going as quickly as possible. You’re as generous and brave as Stivyung described you, Surah. But I can’t be responsible for what would happen to you and Tomosh if Linnora and I were found here.

“We’ll leave the day after tomorrow.” Privately, Dennis dreaded waiting even that long.

“But the Princess’s feet won’t have healed by then! Her ankle is still swollen!”

Mrs. Sigel had offered earlier to take Linnora to her sister’s and to try somehow to disguise her. But Linnora would hear none of it. It wasn’t just her unwillingness to put innocent people in danger. She was also determined to deny Kremer even the possibility of ever using her as a hostage. And her people had to be warned of Kremer’s new weapons. She would climb the western mountains even if she had to crawl.

“I’d not even stay the extra day,” Dennis said. “But I have to try to make something. . . something that will enable us to take Linnora along even if her feet haven’t healed.”

Mrs. Sigel sighed in acceptance. A wizard was a wizard, after all. She had listened to Arth’s stories, about Dennis’s miracles with wonderment. “All right, then. At first light I’ll go fetch those tools you need from Biss’s house. Tomosh’ll watch the road and warn you if soldiers come. I’d draw you a map to show you the way to the L’Toff, but you’ve got the best guide in the world, so I don’t suppose you’ll need it.”

Linnora and Tomosh had retired after a Spartan but nourishing meal from the Sigels’ secret hoard. Arth snored softly in a chair, practicing it in return for his hostess’s hospitality. Although he wasn’t much of a smoker, Dennis puffed diligently at one of Stivyung Sigel’s pipes for much the same reason.

Surah told Dennis about her own adventure, from which she had only just returned—her journey into the mountains of the L’Toff. Her eyes seemed to light up as she spoke of her travels.

Stivyung had often spoken of his career in the Royal Scouts. Brought up in a society that still rigidly controlled the options open to women, Surah had thrilled to her husband’s stories of adventure in the wild border reaches, of encounters with strange peoples including, of course, the mysterious L’Toff.

From his descriptions she knew that they were not fairies or devils but people on whom the gods had bestowed some mixed blessings. Since their exodus during the reign of Good King Foss’t, they had lived pretty much to themselves in their mountain retreat. After the fall of the old Duke, their last strong protector in the west, the only Coylians who had regular contact with them were a few traders and the Scouts.

When the Baron’s men took Stivyung away, Surah suddenly found herself behaving as she never had imagined before. She ran to her sister’s and told her to pick up Tomosh. Then she threw together a pack and headed west with no definite plan in mind, thinking only to find some of Stivyung’s former comrades and beseech their help.

She did not recall much about her journey into the mountains, except being frightened most of the time. Though she had grown up on the edge of the wilderness, she had never spent nights alone under the trees before. It was an experience she would never forget.

The first sign she was in L’Toff country came when she encountered a small patrol of stern, fierce men, whose spears had the burnished look of deadly practice. They were agitated and questioned her closely. But eventually they let her proceed. Only later, when she passed through the outer hamlets and finally came to the main village of the L’Toff, did she learn that Princess Linnora had disappeared.

That explained the anxiety of the border guards, certainly. Surah began to realize that her own problems were small eddies of a larger storm brewing.

Linnora’s father, Prince Linsee, ruled a virtually independent realm, answerable only to the King of Coylia. himself. This irritated the great lords and the temples. But like the isolation of their mountain home, it was for the tribe’s protection.

In return, the crown monopolized the trade in rare treasures whose Pr’fett had been “frozen” into a permanent state of practice. Each item generally cost some L’Toff a measure of his vital force—a week, month, or a year out of his or her life. The frozen goods were very rare—and coveted greedily.

Relations between the L’Toff and the great nobles had grown worse since the demise of the old Duke, and especially as Baron Kremer’s cabal of gentry and guilds prepared to confront the King.

Obviously the aristocrats would be well served if they had a lever on the L’Toff, the King’s strongest allies in the west. If they had a hostage to ensure Prince Linsee’s neutrality, they could turn their attention fully to investing the cities of the east, with their royalist, antiguild rabble.

Fate had delivered Kremer his hostage against the L’Toff the very same day that soldiers had come to take Surah’s husband away.

When Surah arrived in the mountains, the L’Toff were searching far and wide for their beloved Princess. Linnora had slipped away from her maids and escort nearly two weeks before, claiming in a cryptic note that she had sensed “something different” come into the world.

While everyone respected Linnora’s fey powers, Prince Linsee had feared the results of his daughter’s impetuousness. He suspected she had fallen into the Baron’s hands.

So, too, thought Demsen, the tall, homely leader of a detachment of Royal Scouts that had arrived just before Surah. Demsen was sure that Kremer was holding Linnora in secret, until a hostage was needed to keep the L’Toff passive at his rear.

Surah found out all of this because she was right there in the thick of it. Since she knew something of the situation in Zuslik, Surah was invited to sit at table with Linsee and Demsen and the captains and elders, all of whom attentively listened as she nervously answered their questions.

At the assembly, young Prince Proll had demanded permission to storm Zuslik and rescue Linnora by force of arms. Proll’s courage and charisma influenced many. The younger L’Toff could think of nothing but their beautiful Princess languishing in prison.

But Linsee knew that Kremer’s forces were more than a match for his own in open battle, especially since the perfection of the Baron’s terrifying glider corps. It would take years of dangerous experimentation to duplicate that accomplishment. Long before then, the war would begin.

Linsee had sent a delegation, led by the Chief of the Council of Elders, and Prince Proll, to visit Kremer and inquire. It would probably accomplish nothing, but it was all he could do. Reluctantly, he ordered the defenses strengthened, such as they were.

Surah listened to all of this and came to a numb realization that she would find no help here for her own, personal crisis. If the L’Toff and the Royal Scouts could do nothing to save Linnora, what could they do about a simple farmer—even a retired scout sergeant—whom Baron Kremer had seized on a whim?

Prince Linsee gave her a donkey and some provisions and wished her well. Except for the border guards, no one even noticed when she left.

She returned to find the countryside in an uproar. Preparations for war were well under way, and the area was being scoured for important fugitives.

Life had to go on, whatever the magnitude of great affairs around her. She retrieved her son from her sister’s house and headed home to keep up the farm as best she could, against the hope that Stivyung would someday return to her.

And at home she found the fugitives hiding in her own bedroom.

Surah Sigel sighed and refilled Dennis’s cup with hot thah.

“I’ve not had a big voice in th’ happnin’s of the time,” she said in conclusion. “I’m just a farmwife, for all of Stivyung’s teachin’ me to read an’ all.

“Still, it does seem to me that I’ll have witnessed an’ had a small part in the events.” She looked up at Dennis with an idea. She spoke a little timidly, as if speaking an idea she was afraid he would laugh at. “Y’know, maybe someday I’ll write a book about what I saw an’ tell about all the people I met before th’ war began.

“Now, wouldn’t that be somethin’!”

Dennis nodded in agreement. “It would at that.”

She sighed and turned to stir the coals.

3

It had been years since Dennis had done any useful carpentry, and the tools he used now were unfamiliar. Nevertheless, he started work early the next morning.

He trimmed two long, stout poles from a pair of half-practiced hoes he had found on the porch, then he cut out several flat planks from one of the hay cribs. When Mrs. Sigel returned from her sister’s farm with better tools, Dennis drilled four holes in the sides of a light-framed watering trough, and slid the poles through the holes.

Perched on a stack of hay, her feet swathed in white bandages, Linnora worked on a leather harness. She deftly used an awl to punch holes in straps of hide, in places where Dennis had made marks, then fastened them together with thongs. She hummed softly and smiled at Dennis whenever he looked up from his work. Dennis grinned back. It was hard to feel tired when encouraged like that.

Arth puffed into the barn, carrying a small chair Surah Sigel had donated to the project. He put the chair down and examined the contraption Dennis was building.

“I get it!” The little thief snapped his fingers. “We put the chair in the tub an’ the Princess rides inside. Then we grab those poles an’ lift! I heard of those things. They call ‘em ‘litters.’ When the Emperor from across the big sea came to visit our King’s father years back, I hear he was carried aroun’ in somethin’ like that. A couple of our big nobles tried to copy the idea an’ almost had riots on their hands before they gave up.”

Dennis just smiled and kept working. Using a beautiful saw with a serrated gemstone edge, he cut four identical round disks from a flat slab of wood. They were about a meter diameter and an inch thick.

Arth thought for a minute, then frowned. “But we’d need four men to carry this thing! There’s just you an’ me an’ the L’Toff donkey Surah’s given us! Who’s gonna support the fourth side?” He scratched his head. “I guess I still don’t get it.”

Dennis used a sharp-bitted drill carefully to cut a small circular hole out of the center of each disk.

“Come on, Arth,” he said when he had finished. “Help me with this, will you?”

Under Dennis’s direction, the bandit leader lifted one of the poles penetrating the sides of the trough. Dennis slid one of his disks over the end, then removed it to trim the center hole a little wider. When he tried again, it wedged into place a few inches down the shaft. He pounded it farther with a cloth-muffled hammer.

Arth lowered the tub. It lay canted at an odd angle, propped up at one corner by the upended disk. Linnora put down her work and edged forward on the hay to watch.

“What is it, Dennis?” she asked.

“It’s called a wheel,” he replied. “With four of these in place and with the help of Surah’s donkey, we should be able to carry you out of here tomorrow night almost as fast as if you could walk. Of course, it’ll force us to use the roads at first, but there’s no helping that. The road’s the only way over the pass, anyway.”

Dennis directed Arth to lift one corner at a time. He pounded a wheel onto each.

“This whole device is called a cart. Back in my homeland, this crude thing wouldn’t last more than a few hours, at best. I imagine at first it’ll scrape along little better than if we were dragging the trough on its belly. There’s no bearing between the axles and the holes in the body, for one thing. That’ll play hell with the rolling friction coefficient. Of course, with practice we can expect a lubrication effect to come into play eventually. . . .”

Arth and Linnora glanced at each other. The wizard was getting opaque again. They had grown used to it by now.

“I could’ve made a better starter,” Dennis said as he drove the last wheel firmly into place. “But there’s no time. Right now they’re ranging all over the countryside looking for us, but once the sniffers find our trail, they’ll concentrate. We’d better be well into the mountains by that time.

“We’re going to have to count on the Practice Effect to fix this wagon up. Tonight Arth and I will take turns pulling it around the farmyard. By tomorrow maybe. . .”

Dennis stepped back and looked at the cart. He saw bewilderment on Arth’s face. But Linnora wore an expression of deep concentration. Her eyes were narrowed and she moved her hand as if trying to visualize something she had never seen before.

Suddenly she clapped her hands and laughed out loud.

“Push it! Oh, Dennis, push it and make it move!”

Dennis grinned. Linnora did not have the mind of a caveman. Her ability to envision the way things worked was just short of amazing, considering her background.

He lifted his foot and gave the back of the cart a shove.

Groaning loudly, it rattled and rolled down the gravel path and out the barn doorway.

Someone shrieked, and there was a loud thump outside. Dennis hurried out and found Surah Sigel seated on the ground, staring wide-eyed at the contraption. It had rolled to a stop a few feet away. Beside her a cloth bag of provisions lay open, its contents half scattered.

“I thought it was alive when it came out at me like that!” She blinked at the cart.

“It’s just a machine,” Dennis reassured her as he helped her up. “It’s what we’re going to use to carry the Princess. . . .”

“I can see that!” Surah brushed his hands away and straightened her clothes stiffly. She started gathering the provisions— dried meats, fruit, and sacks of cornmeal—and shooed Dennis away when he tried to help.

“Tomosh just came back with word from my cousins down the road,” she said. ‘They’ve been quartering four of the Baron’s troopers for a week. And now the soldiers are saying they’re going to move out the day after tomorrow. They won’t say where, but my cousin thinks its westward.”

Dennis cursed softly. He and the others had to be through the pass before the troops entered the mountains. If they waited until tomorrow night they would still be on the road when the main force reached the gap!

“Tonight, then,” he said. “We’ve got to go tonight.”

Tomosh came running out of the house. He stopped and stared at the little wagon.

Arth supported Linnora as she hobbled over to take her seat in the cart. She laughed as Arth and the boy pushed it slowly about the farmyard.

Dennis shook his head. The little red wagon I had as a child would be more useful, he thought, than that creaky thing will be on its first da.

They started out soon after nightfall, while the moons were still down. The donkey snorted uncomfortably as it pulled the rickety cart. When it stopped at the gate and threatened to balk, Linnora strummed her klasmodion and sang to the restive animal.

The donkey’s ears moved, its breathing slowly settled as the girl’s melody calmed it. Finally, it responded to Arth’s gentle tugs and pulled at its awkward burden. Dennis helped push until they were out onto the road proper. There they stopped to bid the Sigels farewell.

Linnora whispered to Tomosh while Dennis shook hands with Mrs. Sigel,

“Good luck to y’all,” Surah said. “Tell Stivyung we’re fine if you see him.” Surah looked at the motley party dubiously. Dennis had to admit that they didn’t look like much of a force to take on Kremer’s patrols.

“We’ll do that,” Dennis said, nodding.

“You’ll be back ag’in, Dennizz!” Tomosh promised as he whacked the Earthman on the thigh affectionately. “You ‘n my pop an’ the Royal Scouts’ll come back an’ fix old Kremer once and for all!”

Dennis tousled the boy’s hair. “Maybe so, Tomosh.”

Arth clucked to the donkey. The crude cart squeaked up the dark, sloping road. Dennis had to push for an uphill stretch. When he looked back, Surah and her son were gone.

Except for the narrow, mirror-focused beam of their small oil lantern, the night was black all around them. The wind brushed through the trees lining the highway. Even on the smooth, superresilient highway, the cart thumped and bumped and shook. Linnora bore it bravely. She plucked her klasmodion softly, with a dreamy, distant expression on her face.

She was already hard at work, using her L’Toff talents to help the cart practice.

On Earth the rickety contraption could be expected to fall apart anytime from a few minutes to a few hours after construction. Here, though, it was a race between wear and practice. If only it lasted long enough, the thing would get better. Maybe.

Dennis pushed the noisy cart, wishing the pixolet was around to help.

4

Murris Demsen, commander of the Green Lion company of the Royal Scouts, poured another cup of winter wine for Prince Linsee, then looked to see if anyone else wanted a refill.

The boy from Zuslik, young Gath, nodded and grinned. The winter wine of the L’Toff was about the best thing he had ever tasted. He was already well on his way toward getting tipsy.

Stivyung Sigel held his hand over his goblet. He knew the potency of the stuff from his days in the Scouts.

“The latest word is that Kremer’s patrols have been applying pressure all along the border,” Demsen said. The gangly scout commander put down the beautiful, ancient decanter and pulled a sheaf of notes from a folder. “There are also reports that the baronies of Tarlee and Trabool are mobilizing, and setting up outposts in L’Toff territory. Even Baron Feif-dei appears to be getting ready for war”

“That is indeed bad news,” Prince Linsee said. “I had counted him a friend.”

Stivyung Sigel stood slowly. He bowed to Prince Linsee, to Demsen, and to Linsee’s son, the brown-haired Prince Proll.

“Sirs, I must ask once again for permission to return to my home. You say my wife is no longer here. Therefore I must go to her and my son. And once I see that they are safe, there are friends I must try to help, who at this moment languish in the tyrant’s dungeons.”

Prince Linsee looked to Demsen, then back at Sigel. He sighed. “Stivyung, have you heard nothing? The border is closed! Any day now we expect to be under attack! You can’t make it over the pass while it’s choked with troops!”

Demsen agreed. “Sit down, Stivyung. Your place is here. I need you, Prince Linsee needs you, your King needs you. We can’t let you throw your life away.”

At the end of the table Prince Proll slammed his own goblet down. “And why stop him?” the young man demanded. “Why should you stand in his way?”

“My son. . .” Linsee began.

“He, at least, is willing to take chances—to dare all to rescue those he cares for! Meanwhile, we let Linnora suffer in the clutches of that amoral spawn of tree lizards, Kremer! Tell me, what good will waiting do when the forces of all the baronies west of the Fingal march on us? Oh, for the gods’ sakes, let Sigel go! And let me strike while they can still be taken one at a time!”

Linsee and Demsen shared a look of exasperation. They had been through this too many times of late.

“We shall strike, my son,” Linsee said at last. “But first we must prepare. Stivyung and Gath have brought us this ‘balloon’ device of the alien wizard’s—“

“Which is nothing compared with the weapons the alien has given Kremer! What good is it, anyway? It was ripped to uselessness when Sigel landed!”

“It was damaged, yes, Prince,’ Demsen said. “But it is almost repaired. Duplicates are being made and practiced. Why, this may be the very thing we have been looking for—a way to counter Kremer’s gliders! I will grant that I do not yet see how it will be used, but what we most need is time. My scouts and your companies must buy Prince Linsee time!

“Meanwhile, young Gath and Sigel, my old comrade-in-arms, must do their part in supervising the making of more balloons—“

“Making! What can you accomplish by making?” The young prince turned and spat on the fire. He sank back into his chair.

“My son, do not blaspheme. Making is as honorable as practicing, for according to the Old Belief, did we not once have the power to make life itself? Before the blecker threw us down to savagery?”

Proll stared at the fire, and finally nodded. “I will try to control my temper, Father.”

Still, they all knew Proll had a point. It took time to make things. And even among the L’Toff it took more time still to practice them. Time was something Kremer wasn’t about to give them.

In all their minds, also, was the dread of how Kremer intended to use his hostage. Would he display Linnora at the battlefield? The effect on the morale of the troops could be devastating if Kremer timed his move right. And Kremer was a past master of timing.

Conversation lapsed. Finally Demsen unrolled the grand map, and he and the Prince examined still more ways to distribute their meager forces against the hordes they expected soon.

Young Gath paid little attention to the talk of strategy. He was not a soldier. But he was an. . . an engineer, Dennis Nuel had taught him that word, and he liked the flavor of it.

Gath felt certain that the key to saving the L’Toff—and eventually rescuing Dennis and Arth and the Princess—lay in perfecting the balloons. So far Gath had been kept busy just supervising the repair of the original and the construction and practice of new models. But that didn’t keep him from turning his mind to new design problems.

Such as how to use them in battle! How could one make the balloon go where one wanted it to go and then keep it there? It had been almost impossible to maneuver the first balloon in their escape from Zuslik. Only a small miracle of wind had taken it into the mountains where he and Stivyung wanted to go. From their landing site it had taken days to seek out the fastness of the L’Toff.

Somehow there must be a way, he thought.

Paper was much too valuable for casual doodling. So Gath dipped his finger in the wine and traced out sketches on the beautifully ancient, varnished tabletop.

5

Baron Kremer sat in bed, a pile of reports spread wide on the silky, ancient coverlet. He worked doggedly, reading messages from the other great lords of the west, who were due to arrive soon for a meeting he had called.

Those messages were satisfying to read, for not one of the western barons and counts had demurred.

But the rest of this garbage! There were reams of lists of accounts to be paid for war materiel. There were bills from hundreds of freeborn practicers, requisitioned for the duration, and complaints from the guilds over his demand of even greater subsidies for his campaign against the liberal King.

The pile was daunting. Paperwork was the one thing in this world that Kremer feared.

If anyone noticed that the Baron’s lips moved as he read, nobody said anything. The three scribes who assisted him also carefully averted their eyes from the purple welt that discolored their overlord’s left temple.

Kremer slammed down a long scroll.

“Words, words, words! Is this what it means to carve out an empire? To conquer, only to wade neck deep into a storm of paper?”

The scribes looked down, knowing their Lord’s questions were rhetorical.

“This!” Kremer shook a roll out. It spread like a long, thin flag to float out over the floor. The fine sheet was in itself worth nearly a peasant’s yearly income. “The guilds cavil over a pittance! A pittance that will win them security and me a crown! Do they want Hymiel and his rabble to have their way in the east?”

Kremer growled and shoved the stack aside. Reports flew out across the floor. The scribes scuttled to recover them.

Taking a moment’s satisfaction, Kremer watched them stack the sheets and rolls. But it was a poor distraction from the nagging little irritations that seemed to abound on the very eve of his triumph!

The guilds were useful, he reminded himself—besides serving as rich allies. For instance, the monopoly of the paper guild kept their product rare and expensive. If the stuff were cheap, the number of reports would probably double, or even triple!

Kremer chafed. He had been told to stay in bed by the palace physician—an old gentleman who had treated him as a child, arid one of the few men alive whom he respected. He had to be healthy in a week’s time, when the main campaign against the King was to begin. Without good cause, he couldn’t justify breaking the doctor’s advice. The advance against the L’Toff was a sideshow that his commanders were competent to handle without his presence.

Everything seemed to be going according to plan. Still, he half hoped for an emergency just to have an excuse to get out of here!

Kremer’s fist pounded on his thigh. The tension brought back the twinge in his temple. He winced and brought up a hand to touch the spot, gingerly.

Ah, there will be an accounting, he thought. There will be much to pay for this. A certain individual owes much.

From under his pillow he drew out Dennis Nuel’s metal knife, now practiced to a razor edge. He contemplated the shiny steel while his scribes waited silently for him to return from wherever he had gone.

What pulled the Baron back from his feral reverie was an explosion that blew the curtains about like cracking whips. The delicate windows bowed and rattled in their frames as the detonation pealed like thunder.

Kremer threw aside the coverlet, sending the papers flying again. He strode quickly between the blowing curtains onto the balcony and looked out onto the courtyard. He saw men running toward an area just under the wall out of view. Shouts carried from the site of the commotion.

Kremer grabbed his two-hundred-year-old robe. The senior physician was not present, but his assistant protested that the Baron was unready, yet, to venture outside.

Being picked up by the shirtfront and thrown halfway across the room changed the fellow’s mind. He quickly pronounced his Lordship ambulatory and scuttled away.

Kremer hurried downstairs, his bedrobe flapping about his ankles. Four members of his personal guard, all intensely loyal clansmen from the northern highlands, clicked into step behind him. He strode quickly downstairs and out into the courtyard. There he found the scholar Hoss’k poking through a pile of charred wood splinters and pottery shards.

Kremer caught up short, staring at the wreckage of the distillery Dennis Nuel had built. Steam rose from twisted, blackened tubing. The deacon stood in the midst, coughing and waving smoke away. The scholar’s resplendent red robes were singed and soot-coated.

“What is the meaning of this!” Kremer demanded. At once the soldiers who had been gawking at the wreckage turned and snapped to attention. The slaves who had been in charge of the distillery dropped to their bellies in abasement.

Except for three who took no notice of him. One of the latter was clearly dead. The other two cringed not from him, but from their own badly seared hands and arms. Pantrywomen were working to bandage the wounded.

Hoss’k bowed low. “My Lord, I have made a discovery!”

From his appearance, Hoss’k must have been here when the disaster occurred. Knowing Hoss’k, that implied the man had caused all this somehow, by meddling with Dennis Nuel’s beverage manufacturing device.

“You have made a catastrophe!” Kremer shouted as he looked about at the ruins. “The one thing I was able to squeeze out of that wizard—before he betrayed my hospitality and made off with a valuable hostage—was this distillery! I had counted on its products to bring me great wealth in trade! And now you, you and your meddling—“

Hoss’k held up his hand placatingly. “My Lord. . . you did instruct me to study the essence of the alien wizard’s devices. And as I was stymied by most of his other possessions, I decided to see if I could discover how this one works,”

Kremer regarded him, his expression ominous. Onlookers glanced at each other, making silent wagers over the scholar’s expected life-span.

“You’d better have discovered the essence behind the still,” Kremer threatened, “before you destroyed it. Much depends on your ability to rebuild it. You might find it hard to practice your fancy clothes without a head on your shoulders.”

Hoss’k protested, “I am a member of the clergy!”

At one look from Kremer, Hoss’k ducked down and nodded vigorously. “Oh, be not concerned, my Lord. It will be easy to rebuild the device, my Lord. Indeed, the principle was devilishly clever and simple. You see, this pot here—er, what is left of the pot—contained wine that was made to boil slowly, but the vapors from the boiling were restrained—“

“Spare me the details.” Kremer waved the man to be silent. His headache was getting worse. “Consult with the crew. I want to know how long it will take to get it running again!”

Hoss’k bowed and hurriedly turned to talk to the surviving members of the distillery gang.

The Baron stepped over an injured soldier. The palace midwife who had been tending the moaning man’s wounds scuttled to get out of his way.

Even as he walked through the ruins, Kremer’s mind was turning back to his main preoccupation—how to distribute his forces to recapture the wizard and Princess Linnora, and how simultaneously to begin his campaign against the L’Toff.

The alliance was shaping up well. A squadron of his gliders had gone on tour, impressing the gentry for a hundred miles to the east, north, and south, and cowing the restive peasantry by playing up to the traditional superstition regarding dragons.

All the great lords would be here shortly for a meeting. Kremer planned an impressive demonstration for them.

Still, the barons would not be enough. He would need mercenaries, too, and it would take more than demonstrations to acquire those!

Money, that was the key! And not this paper trash that kept its value by an artificially maintained scarcity, but real, metal money! With enough money Kremer could buy the services of free companies and bribe every great noble in the realm! No demonstrations or rumors of magical weapons could match the effect of cool, hard cash!

And now this idiot deacon had destroyed the number one money-maker Kremer had been counting on!

“Uh, my Lord?”

Kremer turned. “Yes, scholar?”

Hoss’k bowed once more as he caught up with the Baron. Hoss’k’s black hair was coated with soot.

“My Lord, I did not intend, in experimenting with the still, to destroy it. . . . I—“

“How long will it take?” Kremer growled.

“Only a few days to begin getting small quantities—“

“I don’t care about the making! How long will it take until the new still is practiced to the level of performance the old one had reached this morning?”

Hoss’k looked very pale under his sooty coating. “Ten— twenty—“ His voice squeaked.

“Days?” Kremer winced as the twinge returned. He clutched his head, unable to speak. But he glared at Hoss’k, and it seemed that only his unspeakable headache was extending the deacon’s life.

Just then a runner hurried through the palace gateway. The boy spotted the Baron, ran over, and saluted snappily.

“My Lord, the Lord Hern sends his compliments and says to tell you that the sniffers have found the fugitives’ scent!”

Kremer’s hands clasped each other. “Where are they?”

“In the southwest pass, my Lord. Runners have been sent to all the camps in the foothills with the alert!”

“Excellent! We shall send cavalry, too. Go and order the commander of First Spears to gather his troopers. I will be there shortly.”

The boy saluted again and sped off.

Kremer turned back to Hoss’k, who was clearly making his peace with his gods.

“Scholar?” he said quietly.

“Y-y-yes, my Lord?”

“I need money, scholar.”

Hoss’k gulped and nodded. “Yes, my Lord.”

Kremer smiled narrowly. “Can you suggest a place where I can get a lot of money in a very short time?”

Hoss’k blinked, then nodded again. “The metal house in the forest?”

Kremer grinned in spite of the ache in his head. “Correct.”

Hoss’k had suggested, earlier, that the metal house might have some intrinsic value far beyond its huge content in metal. The foreign wizard had been very clear in insisting that it be left alone if he was to do any work for Kremer.

But Dennis Nuel had betrayed him, and Hoss’k no longer had much to say around here.

“You leave with a fast troop of cavalry at once,” he told the portly churchman. “I want all that metal back here in five days.”

One more time, Hoss’k merely swallowed and nodded.

6

A day and a half after setting off from the Sigels’ farm, Dennis had almost begun to hope they might make it through the cordon undetected.

All through that first night on the road, the small party of fugitives had passed the flickering light of encampments in the hills—detachments of Baron Kremer’s gathering western army. Arth and Dennis helped the little donkey pull, while Linnora did her part by concentrating, practicing the cart to be silent.

Once they stole nervously past a roadblock. The militiamen on duty were snoring, but in Dennis’s imagination the cart was barely quieter than a banshee until they passed beyond the next fringe of forest.

Come morning they were high in the pass. They had left behind the main units of the army poised to invade the lands of the LToff. There were probably only a few squads of pickets between them and the open country.

But to proceed during daylight would be madness. Dennis pulled his little group off into the thickets beside the mountain highway, and they rested through the day, alternately sleeping, talking quietly, and sampling from the picnic basket Mrs. Sigel had prepared for them.

Dennis amused Linnora by showing her some tricks on his wrist-comp. He explained that there were no living creatures inside, and demonstrated some of the wonders of numbers. Linnora caught on very quickly.

They must have been more tired than Dennis thought, for when he finally awakened, it was dark again. Two of Tatir’s small moons were already high, making the forestscape eerily and dangerously bright.

He roused Arth and Linnora, who sat up quickly and stared in surprise at the darkness. They arose and loaded the little wagon once again. Dennis insisted that Linnora continue to ride in the cart. Although her feet were better, the Princess clearly wasn’t ready yet to walk very far.

The shadowy hillsides hulked around them as they set out. They pushed on silently.

Dennis recalled the last time he had been through this pass, three months ago. Back then he hadn’t any idea what lay ahead. He had imagined the river valley filled with amazing alien creatures and still more amazing technology.

The truth had turned out to be even more bizarre than anything he had imagined. Even now, from time to time he felt a faint recurrence of that sense of unreality, as if it were hard really to believe that this amazing world could exist.

He thought about the probability calculations he had set up back in Zuslik. With his wrist-comp he just might be able to work out the odds of such a strange place as Tatir—and its even stranger Practice Effect—coming into being.

But then, Dennis thought as they trudged under a dark canopy of trees, wasn’t Earth a strange place when you came right down to it? Cause and effect seemed so straightforward there, yet entropy always seemed to be conspiring to get you!

Dennis hardly knew three or four engineers back home who didn’t secretly, in their hearts, devoutly believe in gremlins, in glitches, and in Murphy’s law.

Dennis couldn’t decide which world was the more perverse. Perhaps both Earth and Tatir were improbable in the grand picture. It hardly mattered. What was important right now was survival. He intended to use the Practice Effect to the hilt, if that’s what it would take.

He helped push the little cart. Already it seemed much easier. The wheels didn’t seem to squeak much anymore. Linnora was no longer jostled and tossed like a sack of potatoes as they rolled along.

The Princess looked up at him in the moonlight. Dennis returned her smile. Everything would be all right, if only he could get Linnora safely to her people in the hills. No matter how great Kremer’s strength, the L’Toff could surely hold out long enough for Dennis to whip up some Earth magic to save the day.

If only they could make it in time.

Dawn came earlier than he expected.

Ahead, in the growing light, was the crest of the pass. Dennis switched the donkey to hurry it along. He felt sure there would be an outpost up here.

But when the road peaked without any sign of trouble, he began to hope. The pass flattened out in a mist of early-morning haze. Dennis was about to call a rest when there came a sudden shout from their left.

Arth cursed and pointed. Up on the hill to that side was a small red campfire they had missed, in spite of their watchfulness. In the dawning light they could see bustling movement and the brown uniforms of Kremer’s territorial militia. A detachment was already beating their way toward them through the underbrush.

The road ran slightly downhill ahead, around the flank of the mountain. Dennis slapped the tired donkey’s flank.

“Get going, Arth! I’ll hold them off!”

Arth stumbled after the cart, mostly carried along by inertia. “All by yerself? Dennizz, are you crazy?”

“Get Linnora out of here! I can handle them!”

Linnora looked back at Dennis anxiously. But she was silent as the muttering Arth led the donkey at a trot around the bend in the road.

Dennis found a good spot and planted himself in the center of the highway. Fortunately, the territorials weren’t the best troops Kremer had—mostly drafted farmers led by a smattering of professionals. Most of them would undoubtedly rather be at home.

Nevertheless, this would have to be a pretty good bluff.

When the patrol tumbled out of the brush onto the road, Dennis saw only swords, spears, and thenners. Fortunately, there were no archers. A good bowman was rare in these parts. A practiced bow required a lot of attention, and few had that kind of time or energy to spend on weapons.

His plan just might work.

He waited in the center of the road, fingering a handful of smooth stones and a strip of silky cloth.

The gathering soldiers seemed nonplussed by his behavior. Instead of charging, they came forward at a walk, urged by a growling sergeant. Apparently they had heard who the chief fugitive was, and they weren’t exactly boiling over with excitement at the idea of attacking an alien wizard.

When they were within a hundred feet, Dennis dropped a stone into his sling. He whirled it three times and flung.

“Abracadabra! Oooga booga!” he shouted.

In the dense packing of militiamen, he couldn’t miss. Someone howled and dropped a clattering weapon to the ground.

“Oh, demons of the air!” he invoked the sky. “Teach these fools who dare to try to thwart a wizard!” He whirled and flung another stone.

Another soldier clutched at his stomach and sat down, groaning.

A few of the militiamen began melting away from the rear, suddenly developing an intense interest in the breakfast they had left behind.

The others stopped uncertainly, their eyes wide with superstitious dread.

A sergeant in a gray cloak began shouting at the men, and commenced kicking a few rumps. After a moment, the line began to approach again raggedly.

Dennis couldn’t let this continue. Sure, he could make them pause again with another stone. But if they became habituated to his attack they would soon see that only a few men were getting hurt—and only getting the wind knocked out of them, at that. They would see that in a massed charge they could easily overwhelm him.

Dennis put down his sling and pulled from his belt a long leather thong. At one end was tied a hollow piece of hardwood he had whittled back at the Sigels’.

“Flee!” he called out in his best deep movie voice. “Do not make me call forth my demons!” He advanced slowly and began whirling the thong over his head.

The hollow tube bit into the air, and began to let out a rumbling, groaning sound. He hadn’t had much time to practice the bull roarer. It would have to do as he had made it. In a moment he had it moaning loudly, though, an eerie, hackles-raising noise.

It was a chancy business, certainly. Dennis wasn’t even sure Coylians were unfamiliar with the device. Just because he had never witnessed one in use and Arth had never heard of it didn’t mean none of these men had.

But the soldiers began to swallow nervously and back away as he advanced. Several more dropped out from the rear of the troop and hurried away.

The sergeant cursed and shouted again. His voice had the accent of Kremer’s northmen. But the rising growl of the bull roarer seemed to fill the forest with reverberations. It sounded as though there were animals out there, in the half light beneath the branches. The echoes were like strange creatures’ voices, answering the summons of their master.

Dennis concentrated on making the noisemaker better, though he knew he lacked the talent to cause things to change so quickly. Only a talented L’Toff could occasionally purposely manage a rare felthesh trance—or a fortunate man who won the help of a fickle Krenegee beast. Still, the groaning noise rose until the hairs on the back of his own neck stood on end.

The militiamen were backing up now, staring about themselves fearfully in spite of the northman’s curses. Finally the sergeant seized a spear from one of his frightened soldiers. With a yell he cast it toward Dennis.

Dennis watched the spear sail toward him. But he kept a smile on his face and advanced evenly. To turn and run, or even step aside, would put heart into these men. He had to seem not to care, and to trust that the sergeant was too nervous himself to be much of a marksman!

The spear slammed into the ground inches from Dennis’s left foot. It vibrated musically as he walked past it.

His legs felt like water. He laughed—though, to be honest, it felt more hysterical than humorous to him.

At the sound of his laughter, the soldiers moaned in terror almost as one. They threw down their weapons and fled.

The sergeant offered a brief grimace of defiance. But when Dennis shouted “Boo!” he spun about and followed his men, rushing pell-mell down the road to Zuslik.

Dennis found himself standing there in the misty morning light, whirling his little noisemaker, amid a scattered pile of shiny, abandoned weapons.

Finally he was able to make himself bring his arm down and stop the infernal racket.

When he hurried down the road, calling out their names, Arth and Linnora pulled out of a dark hole in the trees. Arth looked Dennis up and down, then smiled sheepishly, as if ashamed ever to have doubted him. Linnora’s eyes shone, as if to say that she at least had never worried.

She plucked at her klasmodion as they resumed their march. Only by accident did Dennis, a short time later, glimpse her nudge Arth and hold out her hand. Arth shrugged and handed over a small wad of ragged paper bills.

7

Soon they were passing the flint quarries Dennis had observed during his first week here. Now he understood why he had seen nobody back then. The preparations for war had already cleared the mountains. And here on Tatir, when people evacuated an area they took all their practiceable possessions and left nothing behind.

They made good time. The cart was clearly improving with use. As the morning passed, however, Dennis still worried. Surely the fleeing militiamen would have reported in by now. Kremer would have better troops sent after them.

They arrived at a fork in the road. Ahead of them the highway continued along the flank of the mountains, westward toward the big flint mines of the Graymounts.

Linnora got up and hobbled over to the less-used fork, the one heading south. “This is the trade route. It is the way I first came when I felt the presence of the little metal house come into the world.”

She frowned and scuffed the side trail, as if unhappy over its level of practice. Trade had been particularly poor during the past few years. If the neglect lasted much longer the beautiful surface would start to fade away to a dirt track.

Dennis turned and looked to the northwest. Out there, a couple of days’ foot march north of the main highway, lay his “little metal house.”

If he could be at all sure he could pull it off—slap together a new zievatron and practice it up sufficiently in time—he would be willing to take the gamble. He would offer to take Linnora and Arth away from this violent madness, to a world where everything was difficult, but sensible.

But there was no time, and anyway they had other obligations. With a heavy sigh he took the donkey’s bridle and led it onto the southward trail. “All right. We have another big climb ahead of us and another pass to get through. Let’s make tracks.”

The highland vale dropped behind them satisfactorily. Under Linnora’s gentle urging, with Arth’s and Dennis’s help, the little cart had begun to turn itself into something really quite useful. The axles spun in narrow grooves in the body of the wagon, apparently lubricating themselves much as the runners of the Coylian sleds did in the native roads. The leather straps Dennis had contrived for Linnora to pull seemed to grow better and better at steering the front wheels around tight switchbacks behind the donkey, as Dennis and Arth pushed.They were only a mile or so from the verge of the higher southern pass when Arth touched Dennis’s shoulder “Look,” the small man said, pointing behind them.

Below, and about two miles back, a column of dark shapes moved quickly on the trail under the trees. Dennis squinted, wishing for his monocular.

“They are runners,” Linnora told them, rising in her seat to bring her sharp eyes to a level with theirs. “They wear the gray of Kremer’s northmen.”

“Can they catch up with us?”

Linnora shook her head, indicating uncertainty. “Dennis, these are the troops with which Kremer’s father defeated the old Duke. They run tirelessly, and they are professionals.”

Though Linnora clearly admired Dennis for his exploits, among other things, she also clearly knew he had his limits. These were not peasants, to be frightened with stones and a little noise.

She stepped out of the cart. “I think I had better walk now.”

“You can’t! Your feet will start swelling again!”

Linnora smiled. “Climbing uphill, you all cannot pull me as quickly as I can hobble. It is time I started doing my own part.” She took Dennis’s arm.

Arth clucked at the donkey, who pulled gamely at the lightened cart.

Dennis glanced back at the line of dark figures behind and below. They seemed larger already. The soldiers jogged on, and sunglints flashed from their weapons.

The fugitives turned and continued their climb toward the heights of the southern pass.

Both pursuers and pursued slowed as they approached the crest.

Now that Linnora was walking after a fashion, Dennis considered cutting loose the cart, or at least abandoning the little glider that lay bundled in the back. But although it would lighten their burden, for some reason he relented. A lot of practice had been invested in those things. They still might be useful.

The limit to their speed was Linnora’s pace, anyway. She knew this. Her face grew hard as she forced herself onward. Dennis dared not interfere or force her to rest. They needed every moment.

His own legs hurt, and his lungs complained in the thinner air. The ordeal dragged on for what felt like hours.

It took them by surprise when, suddenly, a new vista opened before them to the south—a new watershed. Worn out, finally they slumped to the ground at the crest of the high pass.

Linnora looked out over the chain of mountains, like stalwart giants glowering in an arc to the south. This side of the peaks lay in shadows as the afternoon sun sank slowly to their right.

“There,” she said, pointing to a series of glacier-girdled peaks. “That is my home.”

To Dennis, the mountainous realm of the L’Toff looked like they might as well be as far away as the gentle hillsides of Mediterranea, back on Earth. How could they ever make it that far, pursued as they were?

Dennis stood in contemplation for a moment, catching his breath as Arth and Linnora sipped from one of the canteens Surah Sigel had provided.

Dennis looked at the twisting road that fell away before them to the south, along the flanks of the mountain. He turned and looked at the little cart that had served them so well so far. He whistled a faint tune as he felt an idea begin to emerge.

Could it work? It would be a desperate gamble, for sure. Probably it would get them all killed in a short time.

He glanced at his compatriots. They appeared almost done in. They certainly couldn’t outmarch the troopers who were only a little way behind them.

“Arth,” he said, “go keep a lookout.”

The little thief groaned. But he got up and limped back up the road a piece.

Dennis poked under the nearby trees until he found a pair of stout sticks. He cut some rope from a coil Surah had given them and set to work attaching the sticks to the cart, along the railing just above and ahead of the rear wheels. He had hardly finished when there was a cry.

“Dennizz!”

Arth waved frantically from the northern edge of the pass. “Dennizz! They’re almost here!”

Dennis cursed. He had hoped for just a little more time. The Baron’s northerners were certainly fine troops. They must be pushing their human limits to maintain such a pace.

He helped Linnora into the cart even as Arth tumbled back to them. Arth began tugging at the exhausted donkey’s tether, shouting imprecations as the animal became stubborn.

“Leave it alone,” Dennis told him. He went over and cut the tethers, setting the creature free. Arth stared in surprise.

“Get in, Arth, there in back,” Dennis told him. “From here on, we all ride.”

8

The commander of the Blue Griffin company of the Zuslik garrison puffed alongside his troops. An ache tore at his side, where his laboring lungs complained in agony. The commander clamped down hard. He was determined not to be left behind by his men, most of whom were young volunteers from noble families, few over the age of twenty.

At age thirty-two, he knew he was getting too old for this. Perhaps, he thought as he wiped away the sweat clouding his eyes, perhaps he should arrange a transfer to the cavalry.

He spared a moment to glance at his men. Their faces were strained and sweaty, too. At least a dozen of his two score had fallen out already and were lying, gasping, by the side of the road all the way down the mountain.

The commander allowed himself a faint smile even as he fought for every new breath of thin air.

Maybe he would put off that transfer for a little while yet.

The minutes of agony seemed to crawl by. Then, at last, the pass crested under them. His feet felt feather-light as the slope flattened. He almost collided with the man ahead of him, who slowed down and pointed.

“There. . .! Just... ahead. . .!”

The commander felt jubilant. Baron Kremer would be generous to the one who reclaimed the foreign wizard and the L’Toff Princess. His reputation would be made!

At the summit a clump of his soldiers, hands on their knees, were breathing raggedly and staring downhill. The commander, too, stopped there and blinked in surprise when he came into view of the southern slope.

Only a few yards away a little donkey grazed contentedly, leather straps hanging loosely from its harness.

Down the road, only a hundred yards or so, three people sat closely together inside a little box. He could tell at once that they were the fugitives he was after. They appeared to be just sitting there, helplessly waiting to be captured!

Then the commander noticed that the box was moving! No animal was pulling it, yet it moved!

How. . .?

He realized suddenly it had to be the wizard’s work, “After them!” He tried to shout but managed only a croak. “Up! Get up and after them!”

About half of his men got raggedly to their feet and staggered after him down the road.

But the little box was only speeding up. The commander saw the smallest fugitive—the little thief he had heard was instrumental in the escape from the castle—glance backward and flash them a sudden,, malicious grin.

The box swung swiftly around a bend and out of sight.

9

“Watch out for that turn!”

“I am watching out for the damned turn! You just pay attention to the brakes!”

“Breaks? The cart’s broken? Where!”

“No! Brakes! Those two sticks. . . When we’re coming near a turn.. . twist those sticks so they rub against the rear wheels!”

“Dennis, I seem to remember a very tight turn just ahead—“

“What did you say, Linnora? Where? Oh, no! Hold on!”

“Dennizz!”

“Dennis!”

“Lean hard! No! The other way! Princess, I can’t see! Get your hands off of my eyes!”

With a shuddering hum that vibrated their very bones, the cart squealed around the hairpin, then shuddered and swept on down the sloping highway. Rough scrub bushes and scraggly trees whizzed by them.

“Hooeee! Izzit over yet? Can I leggo these broken stick things? I don’t feel so good. . ..”

“How about you, Linnora? Are you all right?”

“I think so, Dennis. But did you see how close we came to that precipice?”

“Uh, fortunately no. Look, will you check on Arth, please? I think he fainted.”

The road ran straight for a little while. Dennis managed to get the cart running stably.

“Umm. . . Arth is coming around now, Dennis, though I think he looks a little green.”

“Well, slap him awake if you have to! We’re starting to speed up again, and I want him riding those brakes. You’d better help him by practicing them as well as you can!”

“I’ll try, Dennis,”

Dennis fought the bucking cart around the mountainside. Just in time, he felt Arth back on the brakes. The little thief was cursing foully, indicating a return to health.

“Thanks, your Highness,” Dennis sighed.

“You’re welcome, Dennis. But I ought to tell you. . . I think there is another switchback just ahead.”

“Wonderful! Is it as bad as that last one?”

“Umm, worse, I think.”

“Oh, lord, you’re right! Hold on!”

When, the downgrade finally ended they nevertheless coasted several hundred yards, and even climbed a little way up the opposite slope. By now the wagon’s bearings were practiced to almost frictionlessness—a small blessing during that downhill careen.

They finally rolled to a stop in the middle of a narrow mountain vale—a summer pasturage. An abandoned shepherd’s shack stood not far from the roadside. Momentum carried the little cart to within a few meters of its door

Arth set the brakes securely, to lock the cart in place. Then he leaped out and fell to the ground, laughing.

Linnora followed, a little less nimble but just as delirious. She, too, collapsed to the lush grass, holding her sides as her bell-like laughter rolled. Tears streamed from her eyes.

Dennis sat at the front of the cart, quivering, his hands still wrapped in the biting thongs with which he had steered for ten or twenty of the most terrifying miles of his life. He cast a withering sidelong glance at Arth and Linnora. Though they were his friends and comrades, it was just as well he didn’t have the energy or balance to get up, walk over to where they lay, and strangle them right there!

Like children, they whooped it up, making zooming motions with their hands. They had been like that ever since those first terrifying moments on the downslope. Once they realized that the “wizard” had done it again, it never even occurred to them to be frightened.

Their joyful shrieks had almost made him lose control a half-dozen times, nearly sending them over razor-edged cliffs!

Slowly, carefully, Dennis unwrapped the steering thongs. Returning circulation brought on a wave of intense pain. The “cart sickness” that had almost overwhelmed him during the wild ride came back. He stood up unsteadily, and stepped carefully out of the crazy little contraption, holding onto its side.

“Oh, Dennis.” Linnora limped over to grab his arm. She had barely stopped laughing. “Oh, my Lord Wizard, you made such fools of them. And we flew fester than the very wind! You are wonderful!”

Dennis looked into her gray eyes, seeing in them the love and admiration he had often longed to find there—and came suddenly to realize that there were priorities that came before even a dream come true.

“Uh.” He gulped and swayed. “Hold that thought.”

He pulled away from her then, and stumbled quickly over behind a clump of bushes to become very sick.

10

Sic Biscuitus Disintegration

1

It was an evening demonstration, performed by moonlight and the flickering luminence of a hundred bright torches. The noble observers watched with growing nervousness as preparations were made. Rank upon rank of troops filed into place in the parade yard. Then the rumbling drums fell silent.

There was a long pause, then the sudden quiet was split by a loud, terrifying sound. The crashing explosion was followed by another silence as the guests stared in stunned amazement at what had happened. Then a thousand men let out a single, bloodthirsty roar of approval.

Sergeant Gil’m turned and marched smartly back toward the dais. Out on the parade ground, at the end of the execution aisle, there was a new hole in the outer wall. A bloody stump stood where only moments before a defiant L’Toff prisoner had shouted epithets at Baron Kremer and his noble guests.

Kremer accepted the needler from his sergeant. He turned back to his peers, the great lords of the west, who had gathered to discuss the final alliance against the King’s authority.

The counts and barons were pale. A couple looked like they just might be ill. Yes, Kremer thought, the demonstration has been effective.

“Well, my lords? You have seen my aerial corps in action. I have shown you my far-warning box. And now you know what my most precious new weapon can accomplish. Are there any now among you who doubt my plan?”

The Duke of Bas-Tyra frowned and shook his head. “We cannot but be impressed, my Lord Kremer. . .although it would be good actually to meet this foreign wizard who created these wonders for you, and of which so much is rumored,”

He looked at Kremer expectantly. But the Lord of Zuslik merely waited, saying nothing, watching under darkly hooded brows.

“Ah, well,” the Duke continued, “we are certainly in agreement that our Lord King Hymiel must needs be taught a lesson in the rights of his vassals. Still, some of the methods you propose . . .”

“You still seem not to perceive the true situation,” Kremer said with a sigh. “You will have to be shown.”

He turned to his cousin, Lord Hern. “Have them bring out the special prisoners,” he commanded.

Lord Hern passed on the order.

The great lords muttered among themselves. Clearly they were deeply disturbed. This was getting to be more than they had bargained for. A few eyed Baron Kremer nervously, as if they had begun to suspect what he had in mind.

Lord Hern’s messenger arrived at the postern, and soon a chain of bound men were led out into the courtyard, their guards yanking on their tethers.

There was a gasp from the assembled notables,

“Those are Royal Scouts!”

“Indeed. So it is war, like it or not!”

“And look! A Kingsman!”

Amid the chain of Scouts was a man wearing the blue and gold of a royal commissioner—a Kingsman—who had the power of royal writ.

“Kremer!” the man shouted. “You dare to treat the very body of the King in this way? I came out here as an emissary of peace! When my royal Lord hears of this he will have your—“

“He will have my fist!” Kremer roared, interrupting the commissioner’s defiance. His troops, as one, shouted a cheer.

Kremer turned back to the assembled noblemen. He gestured to the prisoners.

“Hang them,” he said.

The stunned Duke of Bas-Tyra said, “Us? You want us to hang royal messengers? Personally?”

Kremer nodded. “Right now.”

The nobles looked at each other. Kremer saw a few eyes drift to glance at the gliders circling overhead in the torchlight, at the thousand disciplined troops—a fraction of his might—and at the needler in his hand. He saw the light dawn on them.

One by one, they bowed.

“As you wish. . . your Majesty.”

One by one, they moved to obey. Kremer watched them descend, each to take a doomed man in tow.

That left only the mercenary captains on the dais with him. He turned and regarded them—six hardened veterans of dozens of scrappy little wars. These ones had no lands or property to think of. Able to have their forces simply melt away under threat, they had far less to fear from gliders and magical weapons. If in doubt, they would simply move on.

Kremer needed them if he was to put under siege the cities of the east and their “democratic-royalist” rabble.

And to keep them over a long campaign, he would need money.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “would any of you care for some more brandy?”

2

“Dennis?”

“Hmmph? Wha—what is it, Linnora?” Dennis lifted his head. He had to rub his eyes to see. It was still dark outside. Across the floor of the little shepherd’s cabin, Arth snored softly.

Linnora had slept curled next to Dennis, under the same blanket. Now she sat up, gray eyes blinking in the pale moonlight.

“Dennis, I just felt it again.”

“Felt what?”

“That sense that someone or something has come into the world. Like the time I knew your little metal house had arrived, many months ago. . .and when I felt you, as well, arrive on Tatir.”

Dennis shook his head to dear it. “You mean someone’s using the zievatron?”

Linnora didn’t understand. She merely stared into the night.

He wondered. Could Linnora really tell when the zievatron was operating? If she could, then did that mean someone else had just stepped through the reality transfer machine, following him onto this world?

Dennis sighed. He pitied the poor sucker, whoever it was. There was nothing he could do to help the fellow right now, that was for sure. The guy was in for one series of rude shocks.

“Well, no sense worrying about it,” he told the Princess. “Come back and get some sleep. It’ll be a busy day tomorrow.”

3

As the dawn light spread across the upland meadow, the little alien house shone with the colors of a King’s ransom in metal. The scholar Hoss’k whispered for his guards to keep still.

Hoss’k eyed the little house speculatively. The gods only knew how he was going to take the damnable thing apart. There had been a reason he had refrained from harvesting the whole thing months back. And it hadn’t only been the need to get the captured Princess back to Kremer as quickly as possible.

Anyway, the whole question might be moot. Just like the last time, Hoss’k had arrived only to find somebody here ahead of him! A solitary figure paced impatiently about the clearing, muttering softly and carrying boxes out of the little metal house.

In the dim light, Hoss’k could half imagine that it was the foreign wizard himself! After all, the metal house was one of the obvious places to look for the fellow.

Perhaps Nuel could be made to disassemble the house for him! In any event, capturing and returning the wizard to Kremer would do a lot to relieve the warlord’s wrath.

Hoss’k was disappointed when the growing light revealed the intruder to be a light-haired man. It wasn’t Dennis Nuel at all, although the fellow did seem rather tall, like the wizard.

And as he and his guards listened from the cover of a nearby copse of trees, it seemed the fellow did speak with the same outrageous accent. Hoss’d strained to pick up the words as the foreigner mumbled to himself.

“. . .bloody mess!. . .return mechanism torn apart. . .stuff strewn around on the ground. . . crazy note about local intelligent beings!” The foreigner snorted as he picked through a pile of items pulled from crates on the ground.

“. . .getting even with me, that’s what he’s doing. Just because I went to N-Mart for his gear instead of that expensive wilderness store he picked. . .probably decided to go play explorer, and really did a number on the damned zievatron just to make certain nobody else could fix it. . .must’ve known Flaster’d pick me next. . . .”

Hoss’k had heard enough. One wizard would do in place of another. Maybe this one would be more tractable!

He motioned for his guards to spread out to surround the unsuspecting alien.

4

“Watcha doin’, Dennizz?”

Dennis looked up from his work. In the predawn half light he felt tired and irritable. Arth was supposed to be with Linnora, helping prepare breakfast for their busy day ahead. “What does it look like I’m doing, Arth?”

“Wellll. . .” Arth rubbed his chin in what he had adopted as his “engineer’s” stance. He clearly thought Dennis’s question was Socratic, not sarcastic.

“Uh, it looks to me like you’re attachin’ the glider to th’ cart, makin’ its wings into sails, like on a boat.”

Dennis shrugged.

Arth snapped his fingers. “Sure! Why not? There’s lots o’ wind up in these heights. Might help us along some o’ those uphill stretches ahead!” He turned and called back to the shack, where cooking smells were beginning to waft.

“Hey, Princess!” Arth shouted, “come lookit what th’ wizard’s come up with!”

Dennis sighed and worked steadily. They would have to get out of here soon. They had gained a good head start yesterday afternoon. But Kremer’s troops couldn’t be tar behind them. He only wished he were really as sure as Linnora and Arth were that he could get them out of their next jam. He would hate to see the disappointed looks on their faces when he finally let them down.

5

“Father, the attacks have begun!”

Prince Linsee looked up from the great map table as his son, Proll, strode into the conference room.

“Where have they struck?”

“All of the passes to the east are under assault by Kremer’s toady allies. The attacks were synchronized by messengers riding his accursed gliders. We expect another major force to hit us along the northern trade route within a day at most.”

Linsee looked to Demsen. The leader of the Royal Scouts detachment shook his head. “If all the western lords have joined Kremer, I cannot get a message out to the King, especially not when those gliders are aloft. The plains of Darb are too broad to cross in a single night, even on a fast horse.”

“Perhaps with a balloon?” Linsee suggested.

Demsen shrugged. “And risk the few we have? Sigel and Gath are doing their best, but unless one of your people can lure a coven of Krenegee to help, I doubt the flotilla will be ready in time.”

Prince Linsee looked downcast. There seemed to be little hope.

“Don’t worry, old friend.” Demsen clasped Prince Linsee’s shoulder. “We shall give them a fight. And something may come up.”