He ran his hands over the gears and levers of the ceiling, pulling at protrusions and trying to break something free. Each object he could reach he studied in turn, grasping for some idea that would help his plight.
But try as he would, all his thoughts were leaden. Evidently he was too tired from the labor to think anything more than the obvious. With the certainty of failure, he went through the motions, making the escape attempts that every cage occupant probably tried.
Finally he turned his attention to his own possessions. He ran his hands over his newly purchased tunic, now deeply creased and smelling of sweat. As he touched his pockets, he felt the reassuring lumps of their contents; his purse of gold, Benedict's changer, and the various curios of his seven years of wandering were still there. In the haste to have him confined, no one had bothered to take anything away.
One by one, he removed the items, trying to couple them with something else in the cage. When he reached the changer, he idly thumbed piles of coins into his palm and poured them back into the slit in the top.
As the metal disks slid into the opening, Jemidon could hear the soft click of some sorting apparatus that directed them to the various columns. But the output of each was a jumble-gold, silver, copper, and steel, diameters of all sizes, coins with central holes and those without, all mixed when a dispensing lever was depressed.
Almost hypnotically, Jemidon cycled the coins, letting the soft jangle soothe the soreness from his limbs and back. He found himself watching the pattern of types as they emerged and trying to guess what the next might be. Silver, he thought, fingering the lever for the leftmost column. Silver again; he smiled when his choice proved correct. 'And again,' he muttered half aloud when he was right a second time. 'Perhaps, even without magic, the box can still sort, if given enough tries.'
Five silver coins in a row fell from the column before a brass dranbot ended the string. 'An interesting puzzle,' Jemidon mused, putting the device aside as he tried to visualize what the internal mechanism must be. After a moment's thought, he lifted the changer again. With a rapid series of motions, he emptied the entire contents of coins onto the ground. Then he selected one copper and inserted it in the slit. Trying the dispensing levers one by one, he found that the third column had received the coin.
Two coppers in sequence were partitioned into columns three and four. And if they followed a silver, they went instead to two and five. In a rapid series of experiments, Jemidon used longer sequences of coins, trying to deduce the rule by which they were distributed. He inserted runs of all one coin and then two types, interleaved in pairs. Cycles of four, mixed triplets, groups of seven-the various combinations filled his thoughts as he struggled to assemble all the results into a coherent whole.
The sky dimmed into night, and then the first stars twinkled into view. The moon streaked pale shadows of the cage bars onto the ground, but Jemidon continued on unheedingly. He divided the coins into distinct piles that he could locate by feel in the darkness. 'Suppose we limit the problem to five of each type,' he muttered. 'And the challenge is to choose the order so that in the end they all will be sorted. Yes, I will call it Benedict's problem. The path each one takes from the slit depends not only on its type but on what the columns already contain as well. It cannot be done in one pass. When four coppers are in column one, unless a silver is in both two and three, the last will go to five instead. So one must carefully remove some from the bottom and intermix them with those remaining to be added at the top. Only then can there be a chance.'
'With the setting of the moon! Pass it along.' A whispered voice broke Jemidon's concentration sometime later. He had not noticed that another of the harvest cages had moved to barely ten feet away.
'With the setting of the moon. Do not sleep. Pass it along,' the voice repeated. 'The message comes from one of the Pelinad's band. Kenton expects him only to touch the fields on the east, if at all. But it will be tonight. Here. They will make the attempt.'
Jemidon shook himself alert. He frowned at the scatter of metal disks that lay in front of him. He looked at the sky, now quite different from when he had last noticed it. 'What have I been doing?' he gasped aloud. 'Frittering away time on a meaningless puzzle, and one of my own making at that. I must be more tired than I thought.' Disgustedly he scooped up aU the coins and inserted them in the changer. He shook his head, confused about his actions, and thrust the device away. The visions of sliding mechanisms and clinking coins began to fade. He wrinkled his brow and forced his thoughts back to his immediate plight.
'Wait,' he said to the occupant of the other cage. 'The setting of the moon. Pelinad's messenger. What do you mean?'
'The reward justifies the risk. With common laborers too tired to lift a sword, there was no reason for taking the chance. But two new ones were added to the cages today-and one is a sorcerer from Morgana.'
'I am no sorcerer,' Jemidon said. 'I was only on a visit to the island to learn the craft.'
'Not you, dolt. The big man farther down the line. Now pass it on, before the guardsmen hear your chatter and come to investigate.'
Jemidon started to ask more, but the other cage began to move away. Silently, he cursed himself for not noticing sooner that the message was close at hand. Sorcerers and Pelinad's rebels, he thought. They were far more important than the tinkle of a few pieces of metal. Determined, he made up his mind to recover the time he had lost. He checked the ground to ensure that all the coins had been retrieved and then began to push his cage in the direction of the next in line.
And at the next, rather than returning to his own position, he offered to carry the message farther down the row. At each stop, as he whispered the words, he stared into the darkness, trying to recognize a familiar face. The practice of sorcery in Arcadia had been confined to Morgana. A master sorcerer would have to come from there. But it would not be tradition-bound Farnel and certainly not Gerilac. And why would any of the other masters journey to the wheatlands?
A dozen stops produced nothing, and Jemidon felt his fatigued legs begin to tremble from the effort of pushing over the ruts that ran alongside the lines of wheat. But the memory of his mental lapse goaded him on, and he continued to the next. He lost track of how many cages he visited. The end of the line finally came within sight.
As he approached the fourth from the last, a sudden scream jerked him alert. A drum sounded to the left, and the guard fires sprang back to life. Shouts of alarm came from all along the line. Steel clanged against steel three cages away. In a matter of moments, Jemidon saw dark figures running from cell to cell and keying open the doors. He heard the jangle of freedom in the back of his own cage and tugged with an energy he was surprised he still had to free himself of the melal belt.
He bolted so quickly to the outside that he nearly knocked down the man racing from the adjacent cell. Together, they flailed to regain their balance in the dimness. As they spun about, the moon on the horizon caught the other man's features. Jemidon's mouth dropped open in sudden recognition.
'Canthor!' he exclaimed. 'Canthor, the bailiff of Morgana Island. Why are you here? You are no more a sorcerer than I!'
Jemidon looked around the campfire in the small bowl framed by the rising hills. He tried to stretch himself into a more comfortable position. His linen tunic was now bunched in thick creases beneath a vest of stiff leather. The equally fine leggings hung in tatters beneath his knees. There had been no pursuit for over two days. And now Pelinad's band was high enough in the foothills so that the lookouts would be able to spot any activity out of Kenton's castle on the plain below. The slopes rapidly merged into the higher mountains in the east, and escape was possible in a dozen ways. Not that flight was the only option. Before the attack, Pelinad's brigands had numbered about sixty. Now they were three times the number. Not a single one of the bondsmen or freetoilers had elected to stay. Even the troop from Searoyal would find the rebels more than a mere nuisance.
In small groups of three and four, they huddled around the sprinkling of morning fires. Some sprawled exhausted, still asleep despite the cold and rocky ground. Others talked with loud animation, slapping the arms of old acquaintances and testing the feel of the newly supplied hide-covered shields. Behind them, the silhouettes of craggy spires were just barely discernible in the brightening sky. Slightly north of where the sun would rise, Jemidon saw the dark crestline dip into the deep notch that was Plowblade Pass.
Jemidon watched Canthor return from a huddled conference with Pelinad and his lieutenants around one of the fires to the left. The bailiff squinted off into the distance, then looked at Jemidon and smiled.
'Farnel's tyro,' he said as he approached. 'Who would have guessed it? Returned to his homeland, no doubt to seek his fortune the same as an old soldier who knows that where there is turmoil, there is also the opportunity for gain.'
