first. Instantly he knew what had happened. 'Sorcery again is gone,' he mumbled. 'Canthor's soothing charms are no more.'
He looked quickly around the tent, hoping to see what he wanted. 'Delia!' he exclaimed as her slender form caught his eye. He felt his heart race with a surge of pleasure. 'You are here, as I suspected. And Drandor-'
Jemidon stopped short as he looked more closely at the trader, now standing beside a small lantern and a scatter of transparent images on the floor. One arm dangled at his side, flat and shapeless, like an empty glove. His face sagged to the side, lips curving down to where the firm line of the jaw should have been; the cheek was only a loose bag of flesh.
Jemidon's eyes darted back to Delia and scanned her body from head to toe, searching for additional disfigurements. But except for the vacant stare produced by the animation, she was apparently whole. She wore the same gown in which he had seen her last. A band of iron still circled her left wrist. He let out his breath and finally looked back at Melizar as the strange one put away his cube.
'What has happened to him?' he asked, pointing at Drandor. 'Was he exposed to the fighting as well?'
'My helpers, my manipulants,' Melizar responded, accenting the last word. 'No, they are too precious to waste in such a manner. But negligence cannot go unpunished.' He swept his arm in Delia's direction. 'This second one should never have been allowed to get away. Nor did the pets I gave him thrive under his care.'
'By all the laws,' Drandor slurred, 'stop him before he does more. The cave beneath the tent, the sleepers, the sucking! I can feel the dissolving inside. Stop him before there are more.'
'Silence,' Melizar commanded. 'Silence, or the manipulants shall have fresh marrow before it is needed.' He turned and faced Jemidon. 'You spoke of apprenticeship. There is more than one way that you can serve.'
Jemidon rose groggily to his feet. Something significant had just happened. It was another fact to add to the other thoughts that his insides insisted were important. 'Your sorcery with the animations,' he said. 'Now it has the basis of law, and not the other.'
'This woman was the first to experience it,' Melizar said. 'The enactment was simple, but it was sufficient to tip the scales.'
Another moan pierced the canvas walls of the tent. Jemidon thought of what it must be like to have pain suddenly return. The first crisis must have been in surprise as much as in anguish. As Melizar said, a simple performance of the animation and then sorcery was no more.
Jemidon sucked in his breath at the thought. First must have come Drandor's performance, and then afterward there was no more sorcery. Just as Canthor had flung the rocks before there was any effect. Animation preceding the Rule of the Threshold. Blinding with pebbles because the words did not yet work. The action and then the law.
Suddenly everything fell into place. The whirling events of the past marshaled in step and left him with no doubt.
'Contradictions,' he said. 'You speak of contradictions and which ones are the least. When things are drifting, when somehow the laws are cut loose, the seven that will be chosen will be those that best explain what is happening-the seven which leave the least contradictions outside their scope. The node of the lattice will be the one which best fits the happenings around it. Enactments of others become exceptions and wither away.
'And you performed the unlocking with the cube,' Jemidon rushed on. He had to articulate it all before the thread faded from his grasp. 'Yes, an unlocking, a release of the grip which holds the laws as they are. With the cube, you control when the change has an opportunity to take place. Only when you set the conditions can the various laws compete for dominance.
'The unlocking is easier when you are near the power of the crafts, but once it is done, you want it the other way. Otherwise things will remain exactly as they are. On Morgana, you must have decoupled during the performance for the prince; and then at the celebration afterward, when all the masters were filling themselves with ale, Drandor enacted his animations on the beach. It was what I saw from the cliff top-a single glamour that would have power according to the new law, but far closer to you than any sorceries is Procolon across the sea. It was the least contradiction; the law that explained more then was the Rule of the Threshold, not the Rule of Three.
'And in the grotto, you had Trocolar add the additional tokens to the vault holdings so that the strength of magic would be stronger and the disconnection easier to make. Many magic tokens; that is why you had Drandor seek the sorcerer's prize. But before Holgon walked through his ritual, the pumps were stopped and al! the tokens safely secured in chests out of sight, so that no one could see. Again the new magic was the one that held sway.
'Later, when I returned with the sword, you were sure to have three instances of the Maxim of Perturbations to two for that of Perseverance.'
'You are not speaking like a manipulant,' Melizar said. 'You have thought about things too much.'
'And these first attempts have no real power at all.' Jemidon ignored the interruption. 'Drandor's initial screening used some natural property of the eye to simulate motion; Holgon's sleight of hand in the vault moved the dove. They were contrived to be as close to the new laws as possible, even if they were shadows of what would come to pass. They were boosts to shove things from one node in the lattice in the direction you wanted, rather than in a random drift you could not control.
'And even Canthor in the pass! You unlocked the laws when Ocanar and Pelinar met. That was responsible for the drifting feeling I felt-the feeling I experienced each time the laws could be shifted from one node in the lattice to another. Only this time you planned to wait until after the insurrection had spread before nudging the transition on its way-until the practice of thaumaturgy had fallen to a low enough level that the shift could be easily made. But by chance, Canlhor's attempted glamour came first. His words and the tossing of the sand were an example of a traditional charm. Without the planned animation, of the Rule of the Threshold there was none. The Rule of Three dominated, and sorcery was restored.
'It fits, it fits, all of it. There is a second metalaw. The, the-the Axiom of Least Contradiction, you probably call it. Yes, the rule follows from the example. That is how you have manipulated all the transformations that have swept sorcery and magic away.'
Jemidon paused for breath. His skin tingled with excitement. Coming to Melizar directly had not been such a bad idea after all. The closeness of the cold one and the swing back to the Rule of the Threshold together had catalyzed the synthesis that had been building in his mind all along.
'You asked to be an apprentice,' Melizar said in a whisper that Jemidon could barely hear. 'Perhaps it is indeed better that you serve.' He waved his arm over his head, and imp light twinkled into tiny points of brilliance. The air in the tent grew chillingly cold. 'I demand complete obedience. When lithons soar close to one another, there is no margin for less. The three metalaws are for my concern. You must forget the two you have learned.'
'Your plan is to change them all, isn't it?' Jemidon asked. 'One by one, until only your minions can perform any of the crafts. The thaumaturges, the alchemists, the magicians, the sorcerers, the wizards, even the archmage, all will be powerless against you. Despite what Canthor says, it is not men-at-arms who hold the balance in their hands. One who has exclusive command of unknown crafts would rule the world against the sharpest blades.'
'This world, the stars, your whole universe,' Melizar said. 'Ocanar sulks in defeat; but for me, the battle has accomplished almost as much as I planned. I now know why the animations did not work and have no great sorcerer with whom to contend. Tomorrow, with the help of some simple animations, the villagers will believe in a setback of the royal troops, despite whatever else this Kenton may say. The timing is right; the passions will be inflamed. In a fortnight's time, the plains will vibrate to the stomp of thousands of scythes and flails. More than four companies from Searoyal will have to come. And with the harvest stopped, thaumaturgy will be easy to push aside.
'I will have gone from a single greedy trader, from a dozen men-at-arms, to a whole kingdom at my command. Alchemy will be next and wizardry after that. In the end, everything will be mine.'
Melizar paused and jabbed Jemidon on the shoulder. 'Yes, be my apprentice. The choice is a wise one. Serve without failure and you will be rewarded well.'
Jemidon held his breath. The goal that motivated his coming to the tent had been achieved. Even more, he now understood not one metalaw but two. But the disquiet that had impeded him before was still there.
He looked at Delia, who was still staring blankly into the distance, and fingered the coin around his neck. He thought of his father sleeping on the downslope and what the old man would say. With one decision, he could exorcise all the ghostly burdens and be close to what he wanted for himself as well. Perhaps with time, when
