The Practice Effect

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?”