This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2004 by Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint and Dave Freer
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com
ISBN: 0-7434-8839-3
Cover art by Stephen Hickman
First printing, August 2004
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lackey, Mercedes.
The wizard of Karres / Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint, Dave Freer.
p. cm.
'A Baen Books Original.'
ISBN 0-7434-8839-3 (hc)
1. Interplanetary voyages--Fiction. 2. Space ships--Fiction. 3. Witches--Fiction.
4. Circus--Fiction. I. Flint, Eric. II. Freer, Dave. III. Title.
PS3562.A246W56 2004
813'.54--dc22
2004009766
Distributed by Simon and Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH
Printed in the United States of America
In this series:
The Witches of Karres by James H. Schmitz
by Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint and Dave Freer
CHAPTER 1
The shrill screaming from inside made Captain Pausert open the cabin door with some caution. Not that screaming was necessarily unusual around his present company—just that it was a good idea to meet screaming with due care.
He ducked reflexively as something went whizzing past his head. Vermilion splattered all over the wall of the
In the center of what had once been an ankle-deep pale cream carpet was the perpetrator of the ghastly destruction.
The Leewit, the younger of the two witch girls of Karres aboard the ship, stopped drumming her heels on the floor, sat up and glared at him. 'What are you doing here, stupid?' she demanded, weighing the next paint bottle in her hands.
Like the sound of sunlight, like seeing a scent, he was aware of the insubstantial thing somewhere in the room: a thumb-sized vatch, filling Pausert's head with tinkling vatch-giggles. Then he saw it. Around the light, a sheet of paper dragged by that tiny piece of impossible blackness fluttered like a demented moth.
Throw it at the Big Dream Thing! squeaked the vatch, inside his head, its silvery eyes wide with delight. Throw, throw!
'Shan't!' said the Leewit, changing her mind.
Spoilsport! Throw at me again, then! The vatch swooped down at her, fluttering what had obviously been the Leewit's artistic endeavor inches from the Leewit's nose.
The Leewit snatched at it furiously, nearly dropping the paint bottle. 'Mine! Give it!'
The vatch and the picture twitched away from her fingers, and then disappeared, and then reappeared—in four different localities at the same time.
Life with vatches was interesting. So was life with Karres witches. Life with both was . . .
Captain Pausert's life had been very, very complicated for some time now.
The Leewit impotently threatened the dancing vatch quartet with the paint bottle. Then she turned on the captain. 'You! You can even handle a giant vatch. Get my picture back from the stinkin' little thing!'
'Seeing as you asked so nicely, child, I will.' Captain Pausert was careful to keep a straight face. It amused him to see the Leewit persecuted, for a change, since the Leewit was ever so capable of doing a fair amount of persecuting herself.
Still, vatches were too capable of creating havoc for him to leave one on the loose here. Forming hooks of the invisible stuff that was klatha force, Pausert began to reach with them for the tiny vatch . . . or vatches.
