rucksack. 'The seeds for your planting, my queen,' he said. 'May your thoughts grow and prosper.'
Nimbia's eyes widened in surprise and then she smiled. She said nothing, but pointed to the ground at her feet where Astron was to dump his burden. Astron removed the pack from his back and glanced again at the opening into Prydwin's realm. He saw the dancelike battle continue with an almost glacial slowness. A few spans away, the hunched figure of Finvarwin squinted at the motions with what looked like unwavering concentration.
'You see the vitality of the combat, my high king,' Prydwin said. 'It intensifies rather than diminishes.'
'Enough,' Finvarwin rumbled. 'Let us see the offering of the cloaked ones who come from far away.'
'Yes.' Prydwin waved the demon ring to opaqueness. He stared at Nimbia's cloaked form and smiled. 'I too have curiosity about this new creation-indeed, the creation and creator both.'
Nimbia tugged at the corner of her hood and turned away. While everyone watched, she took a position in front of the ring. After a moment, she gestured that she was ready. Astron saw her drop to the ground, coiling into a tight ball and pulling her arms around her knees. Without speaking, she began rocking herself back and forth. For more than a hundred heart beats, nothing happened. Then a tiny spark of painfully brilliant red burst into being in the precise middle of the ring.
Nimbia screamed as if in pain and then forced a hearty laugh from deep within her chest. The amplitude of her rocking increased as more peals rang from her lips. She tossed back her head and the hood fell away to reveal her golden curls.
Astron felt a twinge in his stembrain. There could be no doubt about who she was. He saw two of Prydwin's sentrymen snap to alertness and step forward with daggers drawn. But their hillsovereign waved them to be still. With the broad smile still on his face, he struck an exaggerated pose of complete ease.
Nimbia's agitation increased. With a violent tug, she flung aside the cape and rose to her feet. Her laughter turned to tears. With violent sobs that racked her body, she raised her arms toward the ring, imploring the grayness to dissolve away.
She had known that the disguise would not long be effective, Astron realized in a flash. Her identity could not be hidden when so much passion was required for what she must do. There had not been time to create before the judging. It had to be done while all the others watched. And yet, she had come, rather than slink away to safety in the brush when her underhill was attacked. It was her duty, she had said, her duty to those over whom she was the queen. Astron shook his head. Such a thought would be completely foreign to the prince to whom he owed his fealty.
The pinpoint of light expanded sluggishly into a small disk, pushing against the gray void. The circumference seemed to tremble in a series of spasmodic expansions and contractions, oscillating in a complex rhythm, but slowly growing in diameter. When the disk had become the size of a small melon, Nimbia nodded to Astron, pointing at the pollen at his feet and then the disk.
Astron grabbed one of the harebell grains and lofted it at the vibrating circle. The aim was good, and it struck near the center, but bounced back at his feet. Of course, he thought quickly, transporting solid matter between the realms was a hard task for even the strongest of djinns. It was the reason why Elezar had sent him to the realm of men in the first place.
He motioned to Phoebe to pick up the pollen and try where he had failed. Phoebe frowned in confusion at first, but then understood what must be done. Her lob struck the disk near the edge, but apparently close enough to what Nimbia desired, because the circle exploded into a blaze of color, expanding to banish all of the gray.
'An empty palette,' Prydwin called to Finvarwin. 'There is nothing there. As soon as Nimbia releases the pressure of her thoughts, the creation will collapse back into the void.'
'Nimbia, here?' Finvarwin turned his attention for an instant away from the ring.
Nimbia ignored the taunt and directed Phoebe to continue tossing the pollen into the ring. The wizard hurled another grain and then, with increasing speed, began throwing more.
Astron watched the orbs as they sailed through the ring and seemed to strike the disk of red. Each seemed to transform as it flew. The prickly spines grew and bent at right angles, forming transparent squares of yellow; the bulbous central body wasted away so that only the boxes remained. Like checkerboards with some of the cells cut away, each pollen grain deposited a haphazard pattern of connected squares in the new realm, some with only two or three components, others with dozens or more.
Then, after the last grain thrown had been transformed, there was a sudden pulse of light. The plane of red shifted to a brilliant blue. But more importantly, Astron noticed, the patterns of squares had all simultaneously transformed as well. Some had vanished; new ones had appeared. The background pulsed a second time, shifting back to red and then again oscillating to blue. With each shift, the patterns of boxes transformed- some dying entirely, others growing in grotesque and complex ways, seemingly spawning children that evolved on their own.
Astron watched fascinated as the patterns unfolded. He concentrated on the simple ones that cycled through a series of repeating shapes and then suddenly saw the law that governed the behavior. He looked at Nimbia in admiration, struck by the clean simplicity of what she had done. Each square lived or died in the next cycle, depending on the number of its neighbors. With two, it remained from one oscillation to the next; otherwise it vanished. New squares were born according to a similar rule.
The elegance of the creation swept through him. He felt a great longing to plant a seed grouping of cells himself and see what would happen and to watch the pattern live and die. It was exactly the type of thing that would satisfy the cravings of the fey. Nimbia had created a most unique realm with a vital life force all its own. Surely Finvarwin would see the merit of what she had done.
Astron looked back at Nimbia and saw her collapse into a heap. 'I call this the realm of the conways,' she panted in almost total exhaustion. 'It is a universe based upon-'
'I apologize for the wasting of your time with meaningless competition,' Prydwin interrupted. 'This is no better, Nimbia, than your offering the last time you were called forth.'
'It is worse.' Finvarwin squinted into the ring of djinns. 'I see nothing but the dull repetition of red and blue. A well-defined realm, it is true, but one that bores after the briefest of inspections.'
'But it is indeed my best!' Nimbia tried to regain her feet, but could not find the strength. 'Look at what is there, Finvarwin. How can you so lightly dismiss what I have done?'
'Nimbia.' Prydwin smiled. 'Surely, even with the cloak, you must have known I would suspect-an unknown hillsovereign who mumbles to the high king only the minimum necessary to be granted a turn to present, an unknown hillsovereign indeed!'
Prydwin turned to Finvarwin. 'You have already granted me the boon of Nimbia's underhill, venerated one,' he said. 'What additional might I expect now that I have won the wager doubled?' He turned and called back up the hill. 'Sentrymen, seize them. This time she will not escape.'
Astron looked at Finvarwin but saw that the old one was unmoved. He swayed slightly on unsteady limbs but otherwise did nothing to explain his decision.
'No!' Nimbia cried out. 'A second punishment will only add injustice to the first. It is not the fault of those who have dwelt in my underbill that these creations have failed to find your favor, Finvarwin.' Slowly she extended her arms trembling from exhaustion, offering her wrists for bondage. 'If any payment is to be made, it is the duty of their queen and no other.'
'What, this is Nimbia?' Finvarwin said. 'The hooded queen and she are one and the same?'
Astron watched Finvarwin's squint deepen as Nimbia struggled to stand. The hunched figure reminded him somewhat of Palodad, physically infirm yet continuing as he had for perhaps eons before. Age should have brought increased wisdom and the ability to judge better what his senses presented to-
Astron stopped in midthought. The explanation burst upon him. 'He cannot see!' he shouted to Nimbia. 'He can no longer discern detail-only large movements and general shapes. Finvarwin has judged your creations inferior because he never noticed the structures of what was really there.'
Astron's thoughts raced. Just as in his experiments, sharpness of vision in a living being was a matter of lenses and bending light. He remembered the book of thaumaturgy and the many interesting diagrams it contained. Dropping to the ground, he began pawing rapidly through the contents of his pack, looking for what might give Nimbia one last chance.
With a surprising nimbleness, he fashioned some bits of copper wire into two small circles, connected them with an arc of metal and then attached longer straight segments on either side. He grabbed at one of the large flat leaves near the stream bank and tore it into two disks that fit over the rings of copper, hoping the oozing sap
