would hold them firm. With a last segment of wire he punched a tiny hole in the center of each of the green disks.
'Here, try these.' He raced up to Nimbia's side, extending his construction forward for Finvarwin. 'Place them astride your nose and over your ears. The scene will be dim but a pinhole works as well as the finest correcting lens. I have tested the effect in Nimbia's underhill and seen how sharp the focus can be.'
Astron's hood flew backward as he ran, but he was too excited to care. Finvarwin must see Nimbia's creation as it was meant to be viewed.
'The demon,' Prydwin shouted suddenly in recognition. 'The one who kept Nimbia from me, as was my due at the last competition. Challenge him, pipers, make him submit to our collective will.'
Astron grimaced. The memory of his last ordeal sprang frightfully into his mind. And within their circle, there would be no way he successfully could resist.
'Like this.' Astron demonstrated with the glasses and then thrust them into Finvarwin's hand. He started to say more, but felt a sudden compelling jolt. Staggering under crushing pressure, he sagged to his knees.
Through glazed eyes, he watched Finvarwin, with agonizing slowness, bring the strange object to his face. Astron pushed forward a resistance against the mental onslaught; but deep in his stembrain, he knew he would fail. His thoughts became sluggish, compressing in ways that were distasteful and bizarre. He saw the sentrymen racing closer, and among them Kestrel pounded down the hill with the rest.
'This is most amazing!' Finvarwin exclaimed. 'There is more to your creation, Nimbia, than I first suspected. Yes, look at it-most clever, far more elegant that what Prydwin has offered to be compared.'
'What is the ultimate precept?' Astron skrieked. 'What law is supreme over all the rest? How does one start a fire in the realm of daemon? The prize for winning-the answers I must know.'
'No, I am the winner.' Prydwin swiped at Finvarwin's glasses, knocking them to the ground. 'Do not be misled. It is some sort of demon trickery.' He looked quickly about the glen. 'Yes, there are four altogether. Get them all, the one still hooded and the other sprinting down the hill. Get them all while I reestablish contact with my realm of reticulates. Look again as you have before, my high king, and you will see.'
Astron struggled to think what he should do, but he felt his being compressed into nothingness, all the sharp corners of his essence being smoothed away. With a dull thud, his head sagged to the wet earth. In a strange detachment, he noticed Kestrel being shoved to earth near his rucksack and Phoebe thrown beside it.
'Be careful, Prydwin,' Astron dimly heard Finvarwin say. 'Even a hillsovereign must abide by the decisions of the high king.'
'I will accept no punishment for the likes of this,' Prydwin growled.
'First, a competition that has been fairly won deserves its just reward,' Finvarwin continued, 'and then we will see what additional judgments are appropriate besides.'
The high king paused briefly and cleared his throat. 'Realities are no more than bubbles,' he said. 'That is the most profound truth that I know. If there is an ultimate precept, then somehow that knowledge must be a component part.'
Astron tried to pull meaning from Finvarwin's statement but he could not. All he could do was focus on Prydwin's strident voice.
'There shall be no reversals of opinion, I say. If I cannot have Nimbia, then neither shall she have me. Quickly, sentrymen, I command you-all of them through the flame.'
Phoebe's scream blotted out what Finvarwin said next. The last thing that Astron remembered was a sensation of being lifted and then being hurled through the air.
PART FOUR
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
KESTREL shook his head, trying to force his thoughts to order. The disorientation was not as great as the first time he had travelled between realms, but it was there, nonetheless. He felt Astron's pack slide from his grip and crunch into a sea of sand that surrounded him as far as he could see. Vaguely, he remembered grabbing at the pollen sack as he was hoisted from the ground by Prydwin's sentrymen and bodily tossed at the ring of djinns. When he hit the plane of the vertical circle, he had felt a tremendous deceleration, like a ball of cotton hurled into a vat of thick molasses. The pack was almost wrenched from his grasp, but somehow he had held on and burst through to the scene that lay beyond.
He sat at what looked like the edge of a desert oasis. Astron lay crumpled at his side apparently unconscious. By Kestrel's feet was a placid circle of clear water with a diameter about twice the height of a man. He felt the rough bark of a tree at his back and saw five more arranged around the periphery at the vertices of a perfect hexagon. Phoebe wallowed to alertness in front of the tree directly opposite his own, trying to get her bearings. Next to the wizard, Nimbia slumped in a disarray of tunic, leggings, and cape.
A path of crushed white stones radiated away from each of the trees into the distance, across a featureless gray plane, vanishing in an indistinct horizon that blurred the separation of ground and air. A gentle breeze bathed the left side of his face and, just as in the realm of the fey, he could see no sun, only a diffuse light that seemed to come from all directions.
Kestrel cursed himself for being so impetuous. But then what else could he have done? When Prydwin called his sentrymen down to Finvarwin's rock, there had been no option but to bolt from cover to offer what aid he could. Phoebe had been in danger, and he could not just idly stand by.
But there had been too many. Like a sack of flour, he had been hurled through the circle of djinns into the realm of Prydwin's creation. Dazed from the jarring impact, he had watched helplessly as the others followed. Before any of them could stir, the portal back to the realm of the fey clouded and then closed.
Kestrel started to rise in order to see farther from the oasis, but felt a great weight that resisted his motion pressing downward on his back and legs. He increased his effort and managed to stand, although his body twitched from side to side from the buffet of small unseen forces.
'Stop,' Phoebe cried from across the pool. 'Stop whatever you are doing. Somehow you are pulling me upward. I cannot move freely on my own.'
Kestrel looked again at Phoebe and saw her more or less erect but hunched forward and grasping toward the ground with empty hands. He felt his own fingers suddenly start to wiggle. Then, when Phoebe flung her arm backward to clutch at the tree behind her, his own body followed in an almost perfect imitation. Kestrel frowned and released the tension in his legs. He collapsed to the ground and saw that Phoebe did the same in unison.
'Somehow we are bound together,' he said in amazement. 'There is great resistance when our motions do not imitate one another. What kind of strangeness is this?' He glanced quickly to his side. 'Astron, wake up! Explain what is going on.'
Kestrel saw the demon stir slightly and, out of the corner of his eye, Nimbia move as well.
'It is the realm of reticulates,' Kestrel heard Nimbia say in an exhausted voice. 'Prydwin considers it one of his two masterpieces, despite the eternal strife and pain.' She drew in a deep breath. 'The effort to create is exhausting. Give me a moment to regain my strength, and I will explain more.'
Astron coughed and raised his head. Kestrel saw his nose wrinkle in puzzlement and then his dark eyes dart about the gray landscape. 'Symmetries,' he muttered, 'like the hexagon of trees and the four of us at opposing vertices.'
'Yes,' Nimbia said. 'This realm abounds in things that look the same under reflections, rotations, and other complex rearrangements. That is the way it was constructed. Actions that build symmetry are reinforced; those that break them are strongly retarded.'
