out of sight of anyone involved with the contest, she allowed her shoulders to sag.
'I should have warned you,' she said. 'No one's fighting fair. If they're not using spells to puff themselves up, they're using them to knock others down.'
I frowned. 'What do the rules say?'
'Strictly forbidden,' she told me. 'No magik of any kind to enhance your talent or beauty, or to attack others.
But they're not stopping it In fact, I think the judges are enjoying it'
'What about protective spells'?' I asked.
'Not mentioned,' Bunny said. 'I guess they'd never believe that anyone capable of using enchantments wouldn't use everything they've got. A lot is at stake here. The Bub Tube is unique throughout the dimensions. At least now.'
'Well, if they're not enforcing the rule, then we're free to use magick, too,' I said. 'Ill do everything I can, and leave you free to concentrate on winning.'
'Touuuuu-cccchhhh meeeee, it's so eeeasy to leeeee-eeve meeeee ...'
An Imper female in a tight evening dress belted out the climactic melody of her song, sounding like a dragon in heat. The sound went right through my head and out the other side. I gritted my teeth but applauded politely, because her entourage was watching the audience carefully, and I didn't want to draw negative attention to Bunny.
'Cats,' Bunny murmured, half to herself.
'Not a chance,' I whispered back. They never sound as horrible as that.'
Day Two was the talent contest. So far we'd seen contestants juggle—fire, plates, clubs, balls, and themselves— dance, in every style from slow country dancing to spastic jerking that I thought signaled mass magikal attack on the woman onstage; art; acting; declamation; twirling a shiny metal stick; bird song imitations; bird flight imitations; standup comedy; dragon-taming; knife-throwing; and a thinly disguised striptease act in which the Pervect female started a seductive dance fully clothed while a salamander crawled along the hem of her dress, burning it away in a spiraling strip. The Gnomish female did conjuring, an act that caused smug grins among the contestants until the judges determined that she wasn't using any power at all. Each of her tricks was pure prestidigitation, sleight of hand. I was really impressed. If anyone was serious competition for Bunny, it was she. Maybe, once this was over, I could find her and ask her to teach me some of those illusions—useful to impress one's opponent in situations where lines of force were scarce.
The judges were as stone-faced a group as I'd ever met on the other side of a card table, or, I ought to say, metal-faced. Trofians resembled Klahds but with shiny skin in metallic hues. A copper man, a bronze woman, a silver man, and a platinum woman flanked a slender gold-skinned female who was the chief adjudicator. When a question arose, the four all deferred to her. Ushers and assistants of every metal I'd ever seen ran back and forth to the dais with scoring sheets, beverages, and messages. A brassy young female seemed to have taken a shine to me, and winked a gleaming eyelid every time she went by our seats.
This competition wasn't free of sorcerous interference, either. Just as the Imper woman reached her high note, she developed a cough, and the orchestra had to finish the maudlin tune without her. She looked furious as she stalked off the stage. The gold judge shook her head and made a mark on her sheet. The silver man and platinum woman exchanged glances and entered their own scores. The next act went on.
Bunny clutched my hand. I held it tightly while watching the next act. The Klahd female who tripped up onstage kept on going, tripping over her feet with a wild yell and sliding face first all the way across into the opposite wings. She never reappeared. I sensed at least six spells that pushed her over. The pent-up force of so many enchantments was what drove her so far. A Deveelish dancer appeared next in a tiered lace dress, hard metal plates bolted to the bottom of her hooves. The tapping as she stepped rhythmically grew louder and louder until the judges themselves called a halt to her performance. She stomped deafeningly off stage, snarling at her fellow contestants.
Bad will escalated from there. The next Imper woman attempted to draw caricatures of the judges. First her paintbrushes caught fire, then the lines she produced with a charcoal pencil rearranged themselves into such scurrilously rude drawings that the judges' faces glowed with embarrassment. So did the contestant's. She burst into tears and fled off stage. She was succeeded by a multi-limbed creature with a small dummy that she set on one of her many knees and tried to throw her voice. By the look on her face, the things it said were not in the script. A tiny Salamander girl writing poetry in flames on the air was extinguished by the sudden descent from the catwalk of the fire bucket and its contents. It hissed its way off stage while the judges scribbled their notes down.
Bunny was next. She'd rehearsed her act with me in my room at the inn the night before, and if nothing went wrong she'd knock the judges off her feet. I'd never known she was so talented. She danced with a partner who was no more than a broomstick in men's clothes. The bristly end was the figure's head, gloves were attached to the end of the tunic's sleeves, and shoes were sewn onto the bottom of the hose. And as they danced, they sang a duet. Bunny did both parts, singing in her normal tone for her lines, and pitching her voice down low for her partner's.
'It was the closest to boys we had at Madam Beezel's Academy for Girls,' she said apologetically. 'My parents were very strict.' I thought it was a terrific act, and I told her so. She squeezed my arm for good luck before the host called her name.
She swirled out onto the stage with her partner in her arms, and the music began.
'We two,' Bunny sang. 'We two are like one / When we're on the dance floor / Out on the town having fun / You are me and I am you / Whenever we are close I see you and me / we two, we two are like one ...'
I enjoyed it. It reminded me a lot of what Aahz called 'vawdvil.' I even saw one or two of the judges moving their heads in time with the music.
It took a little while for the others to catch on to what her act was about, but when they did, the attacks came from every direction. Gusts of wind blew her long skirt up over her head, showing tiny blue unmentionables underneath. Her feet slipped on invisible oil slicks or white patches of ice that appeared on the stage floor, then vanished without a trace. I threw defensive spell after defensive spell around her. They were bombarded by hostile magik. A few spells slipped through my protection. Bunny's 'partner' grew extra arms and legs. Its face changed into a hideous mask and started to sing.
'Boo hoo, you hopeless dum-dum! / You dance with a pushbroom / we all assume you're insane / *& %$ you ...' Bunny flagged, not knowing what to do next.
This I could help with. I tore energy from every force line I could reach, and covered the horrible face with a handsome male visage, and filled in the raucous noise with my own voice. Suddenly, instead of dancing with a broom, Bunny seemed to be in the arms of a handsome man.
'Do you mind if I cut in? / Go on with your song / you're beautiful...'
Over its shoulder she shot me a look of such gratitude I could feel my ears burning. I let her go on singing. Now the contestants turned their attention to me, but I was ready for them. I'd had to concentrate on doing spells while a baby dragon licked my face or while an angry Pervect yelled or while armies of heavily armed men and horses charged straight at me. What had I to fear from a thousand angry women?
Plenty, it turned out. Since I wasn't onstage, out of reach, they mobbed me, scratching, kicking, and even punching. A swipe from a felinoid female drew blood from my cheek. The Salamander burned through my boot top and singed my feet. The Perv woman cocked her arm back to throw an uppercut. I dodged her fist, and tumbled straight into the claws of the Deveel contingent, who got in a few licks of their own. Floor stewards came hurrying over to see what was the matter, but they were thrown back across the room. I hunched over in a tight ball, protecting my eyes with my arms. Whatever else happened, I couldn't let the illusion drop. Bunny's score, and her mission, depended on it.
'All right, enough!' a man's voice over my head shouted. 'Ladies, back to your places or you'll be disqualified!'
The feet kicking my back withdrew, and I uncurled. A hand grabbed my arm and helped me get to my feet.
'You're not the only one who can throw your voice,' Bunny said. Faces glared at me over Bunny's shoulder, but hers was the only one I cared about. She looked tired.
'How did it go?' I asked.
