The Practice Effect

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.