Jemidon followed the sweep of her arm. On a large sled with rounded runners that fitted the curves of the floor he saw six humanoid forms, dressed only with loincloths and all lying prone in apparent slumber. They were tall and slender, more suited for the dance than for wielding blades. Their skin was an almost translucent gray. Beneath the tough elasticity, Jemidon could see the course of the major arteries and veins. Half wore massive ornamentation, nose rings, necklaces, and anklets, their fine black hair coiled in elaborate swirls. Sharp planes of bone defined blocky faces. Filmy lids covered deep-set eyes. Below the bulge of the nose, each had large pinkish lips that looked like the suction cups of an octopus or squid. Cupped in each left hand was a can with holes in the lid. On a chain from the waist dangled small picks like those used in gemstone mines.
'I have seen them before,' Jemidon said, 'on Morgana, in Drandor's animation the night of the storm, the one that shifted the Rule of Three to the Rule of the Threshold.'
'Too close,' one of the nearest sprites interrupted Delia's reply. 'First you move away, barely maintaining contact. Now you press in on my space, my innermost core. Back whence you came, prickly one. I would rather you not support my flank than push with so much pressure against my chest.'
'Poxblisters,' the sprite above Jemidon's head shot back. 'For you there is no distance that pleases. You would be better off as a solitary. Always bickering, trying to force the swarm to your own natural harmonics. Never just accepting what resonates with the entire clutch.'
'You are no better, mintbreath,' the other replied. 'Your wings must have been unbalanced in the egg. They have vibrated your brains to mush. You have no fre- quency that stands above the noise. You keep flitting like a djinn in heat around the soft and golden one-and not even your master.'
'Vibration is what makes the lips quiver and the foolish noises issue forth,' Delia said. 'It is strange that you would be one speaking of balance.'
A high-pitched whine bounced around the room. Jemidon guessed that the other sprites were twittering at what she had said. The demon directly ahead snapped shut his mouth and, except for the hum of wings, the pit plunged into silence.
For a moment, nothing more happened. Then one of the manipulants suddenly stirred and crawled from the sled, sluggishly groping over the dimpled floor. Like a newborn puppy, he seemed to flounder instinctively toward food and comfort. The manipulant bumped against Drandor. With uncoordinated jerks, it closed around the trader's boneless forearm. Drandor's eyes flickered and his face contorted into a mask of strain. With glacial slowness, he struggled to crawl away, but the manipuiant was slightly quicker and pinned him where he lay.
In staccato bursts of motion, the left hand with the shaker positioned over the trader's elbow. Jemidon saw a fine powder fall onto the pliant flesh, and then, after several misses, the large lips contacted the glistening surface. A loud slurping noise blended with the demons' hum. Drandor's entire body trembled; he opened his mouth with an ear-piercing scream.
'As Melizar would look without his hood,' Delia said. 'They suck the marrow through the skin after somehow dissolving the bone. That must be what keeps them alive as they wait. Apparently this place is so warm that they languish like lizards in a desert sun.
'Melizar let me remain awake so that I could avoid the manipulants,' Delia continued. 'He did not suspect that I would influence one of the sprites as well.' Her voice shrank to a whisper. 'I could have dragged the trader away, just as I did you. But each time I think of it, I also remember his crude sketches of my disfigurement, his tongs and pinchers, and the fact that it is because of him that I am here.'
Jemidon hesitated, wondering what he should do. Drandor had released the beasts after them on Morgana. He had abducted Delia to this oppressive tomb. Jemidon looked again at the trader's mutilations. He felt the line of his own jaw and then the reassuring firmness of his forearm. He saw Delia shudder and instinctively drew her close. She did not resist, but rested her head on his shoulder. The touch of her cheek was cold.
While Jemidon wavered, the manipulant suddenly released its grip with a loud pop, like that of a bursting bubble. Drandor struggled away to collapse in the bottom of an adjacent sphere. His eyelids snapped firmly shut. His chest resumed its slow and steady cadence. The manipulant groped over the cupped floor, bumping into Drandor a second time and then one of the walls. Eventually it found the sled and crawled sluggishly back into its space.
'Their needs are minimal,' Delia explained. 'It will be another week before that one ventures forth again. Drandor is safe until the next arouses in perhaps the length of a day.'
Jemidon let out his breath and patted her reassuringly on the shoulder. 'Do not build a pit of guilt in which to trap your thoughts,'he said after a moment. 'Believe me, they can be a stronger master than any other.'
'I am in command of my own spirit. Nothing would be served by succumbing to despair.'
Jemidon looked into Delia's eyes and then back around the entombing rock. 'That is a spirit I must admire,' he said. 'There are few who could keep their minds intact when faced with such as this.'
Delia rubbed his hand on her shoulder. 'And when I was summoned above and saw it was you, I felt the first real hope since I was confined.'
Jemidon smiled. 'It has been an eventful quest,' he said. 'Let me tell you what I have learned while we were apart.'
Quickly he related all that had happened. To his surprise, he found that mentioning Augusta made him feel awkward. With a wave of his hand, he passed on to talk in more depth about meeting Melizar and the discovery of the two metalaws.
Somehow as the words came out, the driving force of his quest seemed to be more for Delia and less because of his hunger for the robe. But she listened quietly and did not contradict. With an intense concentration, she absorbed everything that he said.
'And now that you have rejected Melizar,' she whispered when he was done, 'how can you hope to achieve what you truly seek?'
Jemidon shook his head to calm the rattle of conflicting thoughts. He had wanted the mastery of a craft above all else. And yet, when faced with the choice, he could not submit to the one with the power to guide him to his goal. A few months ago, such an act would have been unthinkable. The quest for the robe was everything; his entire life had been bound up in it. But now there were other goals, other values that tugged on which way he should go.
Jemidon sighed. He should have followed his original instincts all along. There was no doubt Melizar must be stopped. The cold one admitted that no less than complete control of everything was his plan. The universe, he had called it-this world and all the others in the sky. And if he succeeded, the oppressions of Kenton and the other nobles would be nothing compared with what could transpire. As Jemidon had first decided in Pluton, he must aid the forces opposing the changer of the laws.
'We must escape and convince the masters the world over,' Jemidon said at last. 'Convince them to exercise the remaining laws to their fullest extent. Melizar has to be prevented from changing any more.'
'I agree. Melizar must be thwarted,' Delia said, 'but that is not the answer to my question.'
Jemidon frowned. He clutched the coin about his neck. What was it he truly sought? Saving a world from the domination of one such as Melizar was far more important, to be sure. But still, if not a master, what could he possibly-
Suddenly a flicker of light near the ceiling broke Jemidon out of his reverie. He watched one of the small imps appear through the solid rock and the rockbubbler in the center of the cluster rise to meet it.
'Curse the binding,' it grumbled as it rose. 'With any normal master, my decisions would be my own while he slumbered. But no, I am to bounce like a ball every time an imp flits into view. Such was his last command before he drifted into slumber.'
Jemidon watched a column of rock seem to rise beneath the ascending bubble and a hemispherical void push into the ceiling. At the apex, a tiny iris of black widened into a larger, circle. Through it, Jemidon caught glimpses of stacked crates and flickering light beyond.
'Another compartment of the tent,' he mumbled as he recognized some of the contents. 'The one behind the counter where we first met. This pit was beneath it all along and I did not suspect.'
Delia grabbed his arm and pointed at the opening. Jemidon saw two boots drape over the edge to dangle into the void and then the rest of another body crash down into the sphere. The sprite increased the beat of its wings in response to the load. Slowly it reversed its direction, settling back to the same level as the others.
Jemidon shook himself out of what remained of his lethargy. He groped his way from one circular depression to the next, reaching the slumped form and turning him face up. 'Burdon,' he said over his shoulder as Delia
