The Wizard of Karres

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.