The Wizard of Karres

CHAPTER 28

"No, I don't think so," said Goth's voice, out of the darkness.

"But don't ask us where we are . . . because we don't know," said the Leewit. The Leewit didn't sound grumpy, as she usually did when things went wrong. Just a little scared.

"What I do finally know," said Goth, "is what caused that swimming-though-jelly feeling, Captain. It went away just as soon as you joined us. But the power you poured into that pattern and the changes—it was like riding a runaway bollem. I got no idea what happened or even where we are."

Embarrassment flooded the captain. The other Karres witches had grown up with witch magic. They had instructor patterns in their minds to guide their development. Pausert, a one time citizen of the stuffy and conservative little Republic of Nikkeldepain, had no such special advantages. He just had to muddle along with klatha. He did achieve some spectacular results, some time to time, though they were rarely the results trained operatives would achieve. But his uncontrolled klatha pooling had disturbed all the adult witches when he'd been on Karres, and even the adolescents.

"You mean I might have been causing the problems with the Sheewash Drive?"

"Pretty sure, Captain. The feeling was the same."

Hantis spoke from the darkness. "Have you been concentrating on the patterns for the drive, all this time?" she asked.

"Er. Yes. I felt I nearly had them . . ." Pausert heard his own voice trail off.

"Foolish churl," growled Pul. "Haven't you been told that klatha powers come in their own time?"

If the darkness had been mere absence of light, then Pausert was sure the others could have seen the dull red glow he was sure that his face was putting out. "Yes. But, well . . . I thought I could help. And I felt I nearly had it."

"Instead you were dragging like a dead weight at those who did have it," said Hantis. "At least we understand what was wrong, then."

"Yeah," said the Leewit. "Now all we need to know is what went wrong with the Egger Route. And where we are."

"This isn't the Egger Route, then?" asked Pausert.

"Nope," said the Leewit. "Not like it at all." In a small voice: "Can you get us out of here, Captain?"

"Well," said the captain. "I'd like to. But how? Like I did with those shields? Tracing it backwards?"

"If that worked at all, we'd be right back under fire from Imperial cruisers," pointed out Goth.

"Anyway, I don't know if I can," admitted Pausert. "The pattern. Well. I sort of changed things as I went along, because it was hurting, and I'm not sure I can visualize it."

Then suddenly he relled vatch.

So there you went! said a cross little voice. How did you get here, Big Real Thing? And why did you run away from me? Did you think I wouldn't find you? There was a trace of plaintiveness in the voice.

For the first time ever, Captain Pausert was truly glad to see those tiny, slitty silver eyes peering at him. One of the reasons he was so glad about it was that they could be seen at all. There appeared to be no other form of light, and his attempts at moving hadn't succeeded. He wasn't really sure if they were actually talking with sound and words. It didn't feel as if his lips were moving. Actually it didn't feel at all.

"I never thought I'd be glad to see a vatch," said the Leewit. "Hey! Leggo, you little beast!"

Where are we, little vatch? asked Pausert.

You mean you don't know?

Tell us. Please?

Might. If I feel like it. What are you going to do now, Big Real Thing?

Pausert didn't tell it that what he really wanted to do right now was wring the little silvery-eyed vatch's neck, if it had a neck and if he could have come to grips with it. Nothing interesting, he said. Sit here and be boring.

The vatch made a rude noise. Can't do that. The wave of everything is coming.

Wave of everything? Pausert wondered if it was worth fashioning klatha hooks. Of course he could only tickle this one, but maybe he could tickle it into telling them. Tickling was not that far removed from torture, after all.

Yes. You're outside of everything. The only thing that's here is your ship. Even time hasn't got here yet. It's a strange place to come.

Well, can you get us out of here? Or tell us how to get out of here?

I don't think I will, said the vatchlet petulantly. Last time I did something for you I got sick. And then when I went to play in all the other ships so they'd leave you alone, you ran away.

Inwardly, Pausert groaned. If there had been any doubts in the minds of the captains of Imperial Space Navy ships that the Venture was indeed chock full of the notorious witches of Karres and should definitely be destroyed on sight, he was sure it wasn't there anymore.

But here, outside of everything, that seemed a minor problem. Oh, well. I suppose you can't do anything, anyway.

Can too! snapped the little vatch, and vanished.

Sitting in the darkness, Captain Pausert had time to wonder if he'd handled it right. And time to try to reconstruct the pattern he had used, inside his head. He was sure if he could just get up and redraw it, he'd have it.

"I've been thinking, Captain," said Goth.

"Careful! You know what happened last time you did that," said the Leewit, snippily.

"You're lucky I can't move," grumbled Goth.

In the interests of peace, Pausert intervened. "What, Goth? Have you some idea of how we can get out of here?"

"Well, no. But I think I have some idea of how we got in here. You remember you said you had changed some things in the pattern?"

"Yes," admitted the captain. "They . . . well, they just didn't seem right. It felt as if my changes would stop all the vibrations."

"And it did," said Goth, thoughtfully. "Never heard of that with the Egger Route, before. But we—the Leewit and me—were also using that same klatha pattern. And so I think we didn't end up where any of us were heading."

"So you mean we could just do it again?" asked the Leewit.

"Doubt it," answered Goth. "It might do something else entirely. Anyway, I've tried all sorts of klatha stuff. It doesn't work. There is just nothing here, except us. Or nothing here yet. Looks like only vatches can handle this place, though I don't know why that should be true."

Goth was sounding very like her mother, Toll, now. The captain wondered whether it was her Toll-pattern speaking, and wished, yet again, that he could have such an instructor.

"It also means," she continued, "that to reverse it we'd probably have to work together."

"Uh-oh!" interjected the Leewit. "I'm relling vatch again. Big vatch."

It was a big vatch. A huge one—and it was in hot pursuit of little Silver-eyes, who didn't seem in the least bit amused about anything. Downright scared, in fact.

The huge eyes were green, at the top of a mountain of tumbling black energy, roiling and twisting klatha force. The vatch paused abruptly in its chase, its eyes fixed on Pausert and his crew.

HOW DID THEY GET HERE? HOW ODD. The big vatch laughed thunderously. NO—HOW DELIGHTFUL! WELL, I'M GLAD I FOLLOWED YOU AFTER ALL, YOU LITTLE NUISANCE.

Pausert hastily began fashioning klatha hooks in his mind.

They're mine! All mine! hissed the little one, buzzing around the big vatch and then hastily retreating.

Before Captain Pausert could react, he was plucked, no, hurtled, out of the Venture. He was dimly aware of the passage of enormities of time and space. And then of sitting down, hard, onto blue-green spongy stuff.

His first realization was that he'd actually felt that landing. The next was that, far from the darkness of a few moments before, his senses were almost drowning in colors. The horizon was pricked by towers. Improbably slim towers, elfin and beautiful, and very white against a sky that was definitely a shade of primrose. Somewhere in the middle distance a waterfall splashed.

He glanced around hastily. To his immense relief, he saw that the whole crew of the Venture had come with him and were sitting on the same spongy material. Above them, parasol-like trees stretched feathery red leaves towards an alien sun. The air was full of strange but almost intoxicating scents.

"Where are we?" asked Vezzarn, warily. "Boy, I really hate this witchy stuff."

Hantis answered, in an almost dreamy voice. "We're on Nartheby. Nartheby in her golden age." She pointed to the towers on the horizon. "The towers of fabled Delaron were destroyed during the final phase of the quarantine wars. We lacked the skills needed to rebuild them. They are partly creations of klatha force."

Pausert knew that time and space were not limiting to vatches, particularly large ones. He was also grimly aware that this was a game to them, an entertainment played with what they considered to be phantasms of their minds. And that a vatch loved to test its phantasms, to see if the pieces in its mind-games had a role in the dream-drama.

True, there was usually a way out for pieces of quality. Although not always—the vatch who had placed them on the Worm World had fully expected them to be destroyed. The immensely powerful and capricious living klatha creatures were quite capable of maneuvering players into hopeless situations, just to watch the drama of their doomed efforts to escape.

And even if there was a way out, there was usually only one. Not for the first time, the captain wished that vatches would just leave him alone. Of course, that wasn't likely. Klatha use attracted the creatures; the Venture must have stood out like a lighthouse.

"What do we do now, Captain?" asked Vezzarn, looking nervously around.

Pausert did rather wish that people wouldn't keep asking him that. He really had no idea. This vatch was undoubtedly watching, but from beyond the range at which the Karres witches could rell it.

And there seemed to be a more immediate problem, anyway. By the deep-throated rumble issuing from Pul, there was something else watching them too. Pausert felt the hairs on his neck rising the way they had when the Sheem war robot had been stalking up behind them. He stood up, turning as he did so.

Of course. The vatch would not have chosen a safe, comfortable place to deposit its play pieces.

No. They just had to be in trouble.

Hantis had turned from her rapt contemplation of the towers and was now looking in horror at what Pul was growling at. "Gnyarl!"

The creatures that were staring at them from the fernlike undergrowth were sinuous, reptilian and gray. Their eyes, however, flamed a particularly disquieting shade of orange.

"Hantis," said the captain quietly, warily watching the statue-still creatures. "What are they? What do we do about them?"

"We are on some High Sprite's lands. These beasts are his guard. We can do nothing, so far as I know. They have been extinct on Nartheby for many centuries, but I have been told gnyarl were nearly impossible to kill and equally difficult to shake off. We can split up. Maybe they won't get all of us."

"How do they do on direct blaster fire?" asked Pausert grimly. Of course it would help if he had a blaster snugged to his hip. Hulik always carried her slimline Mark 7 model. But the captain's weapons were safely locked up in the Venture. And the Venture was somewhere beyond the edge of nowhere.

Vezzarn proved that once a rogue . . . always a weapon-carrier. The little thief had a military RV special, out and at the ready. "I don't know, Captain. But I can try them on this."

One of the gray reptilian forms darted forward, snaking its long neck towards them. Vezzarn fired. The gnyarl's head was engulfed in flame. The creature blinked, shook its long beak-nose, and spat a gout of fire back at Vezzarn. Only being nimble on his pins saved the old spacer.

The other three gnyarl had taken advantage of the distraction to split up and begin flanking them.

The Leewit looked hard at the advancing creatures—and whistled. The sound was like a wet finger being skimmed around the edge of a delicate wine glass, but many times as loud.

Everybody, from Pausert to the grik-dog, cringed. The gnyarl backed off a bit, rubbing their ears with black-taloned paws, blinking those flame-orange eyes. They looked puzzled. Obviously, nothing much had ever given them pause, before.

"Right, let's head out," said Pausert. "Keep together. And the Leewit had better be ready to whistle again."

Watching the gnyarl, they began moving away up the hill. Silently, keeping to the cover, the creatures followed. Sometimes all they saw was a sinuous streak of gray through a gap in the undergrowth. The clearing they'd landed in, with its distant prospects, had narrowed into a path that wound upwards through a defile. The way grew ever steeper and narrower.

"I don't like this," said Goth, who was an accomplished huntress herself. "It's almost as if we're being herded."

"I guess we should just be grateful they're not eating us," said Vezzarn, who had tucked away his RV and was looking to be on the edge of panicky flight.

Very distantly, just on the edge of perception, Pausert could rell vatch. If he could get klatha hooks into the creature . . .

"Stinkin' vatch," said the Leewit.

Pausert agreed this time. But the big one was keeping out of range.

The feathery trees had thinned. Ahead stood a stalked building. That was the best way Pausert could describe it. It looked rather like a giant piece of broccoli, though it was plainly stone. There were high, round windows looking down on them. Flicking a glance at her, Pausert could see that Hantis was biting her lower lip with those slightly odd-shaped, very white teeth of hers. She looked to be almost in pain.

Behind them, one of the dragonish gnyarl hissed.

The Leewit must have been waiting for the slightest provocation from them. She turned around immediately and whistled again. The pitch was too high to hear. But not too high to feel! The captain felt his teeth ringing.

The gnyarl had a lot more teeth—and they were on the directional receiving end of that whistle. The Leewit could target things rather precisely.

The lead gnyarl yowled like a cat that had had its tail stood on. Then, scrambled back hastily, wrinkling its long nose-snout, and attempting to squint at its snaggled teeth. The other three also retreated.

Goth took Hantis' elbow. "Should we go somewhere else? It doesn't look like you like this place much."

Hantis gave a low, musical laugh. "It's no use going anywhere else, my dear. This is where we were meant to go. And it's not that I don't like this place. I love it, as does Pul. We know it well. But seeing it like this hurts."

"We'll make them fix whatever it is they've done wrong, then," said the Leewit, using her Mistress of the Universe tone.

"Nothing is wrong, children. This is my home. This is where I was born. But Castle Aloorn, in our time, has few inhabitants. And I am afraid it is not in the best repair. This is the golden age of Nartheby, when our star-empire was at its height and the Sprites' culture was in full flower."

A swinging platform was being lowered slowly down from the broccoli-head of the building. The platform looked as if it were glass, and made by some Old Yarthe baroque-style glass-smith. It was transparent yet ornate, full of gilt and green curlicues and spikes. On top of it, on an angular throne, was a statue. A haughty-looking perfectly realistic male Sprite, but only half Hantis' size.

Captain Pausert had assumed it was a statue, because it was all one color, even the hat—a pearly white. And then, it moved. He was no statue. He'd just been sitting as still as one.

The captain looked at Hantis to see her reaction. And suddenly realized that she was no longer next to them. She was using her klatha powers now, to levitate. And she was speaking, but not in Universum.

"What's she saying?" whispered Goth to the Leewit.

"She's just greeted the Lord of Castle Aloorn. Real flowery stuff. Huh! Never heard Hantis talk like that before!"

The half-pint Sprite spoke.

"He wants to know who she is that dares to trespass on the lands of house Aloorn."

Hantis replied.

"She said she has the hereditary right to visit her own lands and home. She said some words that I don't think mean anything."

The haughty looking Sprite looked as if he was about to fall off his throne. He raised his hands and began jabbering furiously.

"Oh. They must be like a password or something. He says . . . he wants to know who betrayed his house. Oh, that's nasty, what he just said! You oughta wash his mouth out with soap, Captain."

By the widening of the Leewit's eyes, Hantis' reply was even more educational. "Oh, boy. I think we are in trouble. The two of them are mad clear though. I've never heard anyone say anything like that. Not even the Agandar's pirates."

Somewhere in the distance was a hint of huge vatchy laughter. The captain didn't like this situation at all. Other glassy platforms were beginning to be lowered down from the bulbous castle above. Behind, the dragonish gnyarl still hemmed them in. The Leewit's whistle had put them off, true, but would it stop them in a truly determined rush? And this was definitely playing the game the way the vatch wanted. They had to break out of its pattern.

The small Sprite's earlier cool and haughty air was gone. His face-color no longer matched his attire. He'd have had to change into purple robes to do that. And Pausert did not need the Leewit to understand that the next words out of the half-pint's mouth were something along the order of: Guards! Seize them!

The furious Lord of Castle Aloorn wasn't prepared for one of the Leewit's shattering whistles, though. The small Sprite's glassy platform exploded in a very satisfying shower of bright-colored shards and spilled the Sprite onto the ground fifteen feet below.

But the Sprite Lord displayed that he too had klatha skills. He caught himself, just before an undignified landing, and levitated—straight for Hantis. It was plain that he thought that she had done it to him.

Pausert realized just how lucky he'd been that Hantis had simply been amused when, thinking it was Goth playing a light-shift trick, he'd lifted the Sprite's hat and veil. The red-maned Sprite's grass green eyes were narrowed with fury. A nimbuslike halo of energy hung around the two of them as they dueled. The issue, however was not decided by klatha powers. Hantis doubled her elegant six-fingered hand into a fist and punched the other Sprite in the gut. His hat flew off, revealing hair as flame-red as hers.

But the captain had no time to watch any more. Battle was joined. The Sprites might be small, but they were inhumanly strong. There were also an awful lot of them. And the gnyarl were charging.

* * *

When Pausert woke up, he noticed that his bed had become very lumpy. And whatever he'd drunk the night before had given him a splitting headache.

Gradually, he realized it wasn't anything he'd drunk the night before, and that the ache in his head was probably related to the bumps it had acquired. He opened his eyes, cautiously. He was lying on the floor . . . trussed up like a roast. Looking around, he could see that the others were also lying around the room. All of them were virtually wrapped from head to foot in silky looking cord. It was an oddly bulbous room, but very elegant and beautifully proportioned—for a prison. The mirrors on the wall were odd too, as were the huge convex butterfly-shaped windows.

Not like the last prison he'd been in, but still a prison. Associating with the witches of Karres seemed to result in the captain spending a lot of time in durance vile. To think he'd once been a respectable person, not a wanted criminal—as he seemed to end up being these days, no matter how respectably he tried to behave.

Right now he could use some of the escapology skills of the Great Aron, even if it got him laughed at. But his little silver-eyed assistant wasn't around, and the big vatch was staying out of reach. This Big Windy enjoyed playing with humans, but was lot more wary than the last one had been. Maybe it had encountered a vatch-handler before.

Pausert settled for rolling over and trying to sit up against the wall. His Lambidian iguana boots had great traction, so it was not impossible, just very awkward.

The Leewit was gagged but conscious. She was making frantic squirmings towards him. The other four—Goth, Vezzarn, Hantis and Pul—were trussed up and still. For a grim moment, Pausert knew fear bordering on panic. Goth had long since made her way into his heart. Well, the Leewit too. But surely they wouldn't have tied them up if they were dead. Last he'd seen, Goth had been fighting off a small sea of Sprites, and giving a good account of herself.

The Leewit managed to wriggle herself close to him. The captain was upset to see just how pale she looked. Pale and very small. He set to work on her gag with his teeth. While he was busy, both Goth and Vezzarn stirred. Just those little movements were very comforting, but someone was going to pay for this. Witches didn't take kindly to captivity, and he especially didn't take kindly to anyone beating up these particular witches.

He'd just gotten the cloth to start tearing, when Hantis sat up.

She blinked as if trying to get her eyes to focus. Then she looked around. The strange elfin face looked thoroughly woebegone.

Pausert went on tearing at the fabric of the gag, and was rewarded by an "Ow!" The cloth gave and the Leewit's mouth was free again.

Which, of course, was a mixed blessing. "You! Clumping cud-chewer!"

But her ill-temper was brief. "Where are we, Captain?" asked the Leewit, after licking her lips.

Hantis answered in a kind of dreamy, singsong voice. "In the hall of the crystals, which is also called Imnbriahn-des-sahrissa—the place of heavenly late afternoon lights. It is, or was, Castle Aloorn's execution chamber. It was largely destroyed during the rule of an ancestor of mine, he who came to be called Arvin Warmaker, the destroyer of the Golden Age." She shuddered. "The blame for the fall of the towers of fabled Delaron has been laid at his feet as well as much of the destruction done to Castle Aloorn. Many other evils, also."

Hantis sighed. "I am afraid that the vatch served us a truly nasty turn, Captain. It sent us back in time to meet one of the greatest villains in Nartheby's history. I am sorry. When I realized whom I was dealing with . . . I let my anger overpower me. I have been brought up to hate this man, hate and despise him for what he did not only to Nartheby, but also the shame he brought to the Clan Aloorn. I should have been more tactful. Now we are trapped."

"Not for long," said the youngest witch. "The captain can do his shield trick on us. I never thought I'd ask him to do that, but it'll deal with these ropes all right."

Hantis grimaced. "Not these ropes, dear. Remember that klatha skills are quite common among the Sprites. The captain can make a shield cocoon around you, and that would work, but the ropes would remain inside it."

Hantis looked out of the windows. "No. All we can do is wait for the sun to go over the zenith. And then the sun will shine in through the windows and we will all die."

"Why?" asked Pausert, wriggling across the floor to Goth. She was stirring now, and groaning softly.

"Because of the crystals and the mirrors. When the sunlight shines in through those windows the facets inside the crystals will shatter it into prisms. This will become a place of hundreds of rainbows, and then, as the sun gets into line and the outer facets focus the light—a place of death. The ropes will burn away and this beautiful place will become a place for us to dance. You see, the crystals and the mirrors act as focus-devices and accumulative multipliers. As the heat builds up inside them they change facets. The light will blast from one, then another, in a pattern which is supposed to have been unique each time . . . a terrible choreography of laser-lights."

Looking at the floor now, the captain could see that what he'd taken for lumps in his bed when he had been coming to, were actually crystals. Multifaceted crystals. Thousands of them.

Goth groaned again. "There. It's all right, Goth," comforted the captain. She quieted at his voice and burrowed against him. Moaned as she hit a bruised spot, lay still for a bit and then opened her eyes.

One eye, rather. She could only open the other a crack—she'd have a magnificent black eye if she lived through the afternoon.

Since he'd promised that it would be all right, he'd better get free of these bonds. He strained. He noticed that Vezzarn was also trying to sit up.

"What's happened, Captain?" asked Goth, muzzily.

He explained.

She tried to sit up, and managed on the second attempt. "I guess you'd better get whistling," she said to the Leewit. "You won't get a chance to break this many things again." She looked at the Nartheby Sprite. "Sorry, Hantis. I can't see any other way to deal with it."

"It is the one place in Castle Aloorn that I was glad that Arvin Warmaker destroyed," said Hantis, grimly. "The windows and mirrors are not true glass though. They are strong but flexible organics, like the castle itself."

"I'm not so good on things that bend," admitted the Leewit.

"But the crystals aren't flexible. Arvin destroyed many of them."

"Well, he'll have to make them again first if he's going to destroy them this time," said Goth. She nodded at the Leewit. "Go to it. Break as much as you like."

The Leewit scowled. "It's not as much fun when you've got permission."

"I promise you that the current owner is going to be as mad as a wet desert bollem about it," said the captain firmly.

The Leewit cheered up immediately. "Okay, then." She pursed her lips, focused her gray eyes on one of the larger crystals. There was a thin high-pitched sound and a series of little clinking noises, rather like the hull metal around a cooling spacedrive.

The crystal fell slowly in on itself.

The Leewit picked out another.

Vezzarn groaned and rolled over. By the time the littlest witch was onto her twenty-third crystal, the little spaceman, safe-cracker and spy was awake. "Captain," he asked weakly, "is there any reason we have to stay tied up?"

Pausert shook his head. "Other than the fact I can't get loose, no."

"I've got a small vibro-razor hidden in my bootheel, Captain. Along with lockpicks and some electronic gear. If I could get to it . . ."

Pausert smiled for the first time in quite a while. "Hantis—these ropes. They're klatha proof. But can you cut them?"

Hantis blinked. "Possibly. They muzzled poor Pul. That could be why."

Captain Pausert thought they probably did that to stop the grik-dog biting them, but he held his tongue. Instead he said: "Goth, do you think you could 'port that razor into my mouth? As we can't even use our fingers?"

"Sure, Captain." She smiled wickedly. "Open wide."

He did. And the tiny tool arrived neatly between his lips like a little cigar. And abruptly disappeared. "Sorry, Captain. Wrong way round. If you'd clicked it on then you could have taken out your tonsils."

A moment later, the hilt was held by his teeth. He felt around the ported vibro-razor with his tongue until he found the click-switch. The vibro-razor starting buzzing like an angry gnat under his nose. Very cautiously, he touched it to Goth's silky rope-wrapping. It frayed. He went on, trying not to cut her. The rope might resist klatha, but it was no match for Imperial technology. By the time that the Leewit had dealt with nine more crystals, Goth was shrugging off her rope-cocoon.

After that, freeing all of them was a quick job.

The sun had moved directly above Castle Aloorn and the room was already full of dancing rainbows. Vezzarn got awkwardly to his feet, rubbing life back into his arms and hands. "Let me see if I can master an alien lock, Captain. If I can find the door, that is."

"It is there, behind the mirrors in the corner," said Hantis, pointing. "But it isn't intended to be opened from the inside."

"Milady, I've even dealt with a safe like that," said Vezzarn with a lopsided grin. He walked over to the far corner and began examining the smooth surface with the tiniest folding magneto-calipers the captain had ever seen.

"What about guards?" asked the captain. "Where would they be?"

Hantis waved her slim elfin hands. "In my day there was no need for guards. Aloorn is a peaceful, friendly place where any visitor would be welcome."

The captain grimaced. "Well, this kind of welcome I could skip. What about a way out, Hantis?"

The Sprite wrinkled her sharp nose. "That . . . could be difficult. Of course it is not a problem if you can levitate. But there is no walkway down. And we are about one hundred and twenty of your feet off the ground."

"What about those platform things?" asked Goth.

Hantis shrugged. "Every set of chambers has a hoist. Most of our people use them rather than levitating, which takes a great deal of effort. In my time we could have gone to an unoccupied chamber, swung the hoist arm out and dropped down. But it would appear to me that Castle Aloorn is very well populated right now. To get to a hoist you would have to break into some Sprite's home. And we are, as a species, able to scream telepathically. Someone has been trying to probe me since we have been trapped in here. Fortunately, I have very good shields."

"Haven't felt anything," said Goth, warily.

"That is not surprising," said Hantis. "I am a better-than-average telepath among my own kind, and I can barely pick up the general drift of human thoughts. Our minds are very differently constructed. That is why the captain's klatha use does not affect me the way it does other adults."

Over in the corner, Vezzarn sighed. "Sorry, Captain. But it's not working. The mechanism itself is simple enough. But there is something else there. It's not mechanical and not hyperelectronic. It's some kind of energy construct. I can't budge it. The door is open except for that."

"Klatha lock," said Hantis.

"Can you do anything about it?" asked Captain Pausert. The Leewit was still crumbling crystals, but there were a lot of them, and the mirrors were full of rainbows. All of them were bathed in the multicolored light. It made the Nartheby Sprite look even more alien.

Hantis shook her head. "No."

Then, the mirrored door swung open. They all stared at it. Even the Leewit stopped her whistling. Peering cautiously back at them was a wizened Sprite, a knife in his hand. He put his finger to his lips. Some gestures obviously crossed both species and time lines. He beckoned and said something.

"He'd come to cut us loose. He wants us to go with him," said the Leewit. "He has the hoist ready back in his master's chambers. He will help us to escape, he says."

"Something about this smells wrong to me," said Goth.

Pausert felt the same way. He remembered Hantis' klatha skills. "Is he telling the truth?"

Hantis nodded. "But you need to remember, Captain, that truth-hearing only extends to the limits of what the speaker knows. He might not be aware that he is lying. Some of the great truth-hearers of our history have been fooled thus."

"We better chance it anyway, Captain," said Vezzarn nervously. "We need to get out of here, before these folks see what the little Wisdom has done to their precious crystals. I reckon they're not going to be pleased."

The captain could see his point. Even if the Sprites of Castle Aloorn had been planning to kill them, they were going to be mad about the destruction the Leewit had wrought. They might as well go and find trouble as wait for it. And the Leewit was looking tired. "Come on, brat," he said, snagging her and hoisting her up onto his back.

"Don't need to be carried," she said, peevishly.

"But I need you to have lots of spare breath for whistling."

The Leewit thought about that. " 'Kay," she said and wrapped her arms around his neck.

The party walked towards the beckoning Sprite . . . and Pul paused. "Nanites," he growled. "He's been near Nanites."

Hantis stopped too. "Is he possessed?"

Pul sniffed. "No. He's just touched something that had their exudates on it. But there is a trace of Nanite in these corridors."

Pausert wasn't aware of the Nanite smell, but he could just rell that big vatch again, along with a feeling of being laughed at. "Even more reason to get out of here," he said. "Come on. Our guide is getting nervous."

They swung the door to click shut behind them. The Sprites were in for something of a shock when they opened their execution chamber. The destruction, and the absence of dead bodies, would give them something to think about. All the captain could hope was that it frightened them out of pursuit. Not that he was too sure where he was going, except that it should be somewhere else. Then, somehow, he must try to catch that wary vatch, get back to the Venture and back to their mission.

They went past numerous round doors. The passage was empty, which seemed a little odd, seeing that it was mid-afternoon. Perhaps the Sprites slept during the daytime. Hantis didn't, herself, but she had spent a lot of time among humans. The captain enquired about it, as they hurried after their scurrying guide.

Hantis shook her head. "It is a little odd. I'll ask our guide." She did so, in a quick exchange.

"He says they are at a council-of-war meeting. His master sent him to rescue us now as everyone would be there. He would have come earlier, otherwise."

They went up several spiral ramps, very steep and difficult to climb, and came at last to a larger round door, covered in ornate embossed-work—a pattern that looked like complex multipetaled flowers. Their guide touched one of these with a wide open palm.

"I wonder whose rooms these are? It's a pretty posh door," said the Leewit, who still had breath for talking. The captain would have asked too, except that his lungs were gasping from the climb.

"This . . . part . . . of the castle had been destroyed, in my day," said Hantis, trying to catch her breath. There was something reassuring about the fact that even the alien had found the climb hard going.

Inside, the room was still more ornate. In what Pausert was now beginning to realize was typical Sprite taste, there was a great deal of translucent and different colored glass. There was a table made of a thin section cut through an enormous amethyst crystal. It had been delicately fractured and the myriad cracks infiltrated with gold.

And, by the frantic wrinkling of Pul's nose, the place was rotten with the stench of Nanite.

"Whose chambers are these?" growled the grik-dog at the wizened little Sprite-servant.

The servitor looked puzzled. The grik-dog spoke again, but remembered this time to do so in the Sprite tongue.

The wizened little man drew himself up proudly, and answered.

"He says Lord Nalin, the advisor of young Lord Arvin. And he says we must go quickly. The hoist is through there. His master says we should head for Delaron."

Hantis, however, had stopped dead in her tracks. "You smell Nanites here, my Pul?"

The grik-dog pawed its snout. "The place reeks!"

Hantis turned to the others. "You should all flee. But my duty is clear. I must remain. I think," she said grimly, "I have made a great and grave mistake. History is not always as accurate as we would like it to be. I began to get that feeling when I saw just what the Leewit had destroyed in the hall of the crystals." She looked at the Leewit. "You will be glad to know that you never got the blame for that."

"Oh. You mean . . ."

Hantis nodded. "History was wrong about that. This period was a violent and much disrupted one. Records are poor. But there is no record that Nanites made it to the surface of my world. They certainly never survived through the troubles. So: I am going to the great council chamber of Aloorn—the Hall of Stars, it is called—to try to take steps to eliminate this plague." She smiled impishly. "I am less afraid of Arvin than I was. He was always described as a giant among my kind, instead of a vain little shrimp."

In the distance, the captain could rell vatch. Still far off, but closer and more intense than before. This, he suddenly realized, was why they'd been brought here. This was the vatch's game. "I think we should all stay. I think the Nanite smell in here was why things smelled wrong when the wrinkled retainer offered to let us out—but I don't think it was just the smell of Nanites."

The little man jabbered something in Sprite, again, and pointed frantically.

Captain Pausert shook his head. "I don't think so, old fellow. I think what you're saying is hurry and go. I also suspect you'd get killed, pretty soon after our escape, to hide your boss' Nanite tracks. Come on, Hantis. Let's all go to your great council chamber."

Hantis nodded. "I don't think we need a guide for that, either. I can find our way."

It was just as well. The terrified servitor had obviously worked out that they weren't going, and had bolted.