doubt it was because you didn't try.

“And good Dostagio… not a bright fellow, but none of his kind is. Still, he was useful to me.”

“I didn't kill him, damn it all!” Finn came off his stool, sending it clattering to the stone floor. “Why would I do a thing like that?”

“Sit, Master Finn…”

The words barely brushed the edge of his mind, but Finn felt their fiery kiss. And, more frightening still, he knew the seer hadn't spoken at all.

Finn didn't bother to sit. He leaned wearily against the cold wall, getting his breath again.

“I know you didn't murder Dostagio. You haven't done anything but drop from your damned balloon and stumble about, causing chaos everywhere you go.”

“I've done nothing of the kind-!”

Oberbyght raised a restraining hand. “Your presence is all that was needed, Finn. Why the Fates have done this thing, I cannot say. The point is, you have stirred up a pot that was already bubbling here. You have tossed in the peppers, and we don't like peppers in our stew. You have muddied the broth, you have soured the sauce… “

“Are we cooking something? I fear you lost me with the sauce.”

“Do not try my patience. I have let your japes, your waggery, your wit, your foreign-tainted quips go by more than once without plucking out an eye or perhaps some manly part. Do not push. Merely listen, do I make myself clear?”

Finn didn't answer. His mouth was too dry for that.

“There are dark events here, deadly deeds, dreadful schemes and dangers undefined. It is not your business to know of these things. Still, I tell you that a dire drama unfolds in Heldessia Land. All this palace is a stage, and every creature an actor on it.

“You aren't even in the play, Finn, yet you've mucked about through every act, tossing in your own bloody lines, knocking over the sets.

“Before your innopportune arrival, the brew was only a'simmer, bubbling a bit, but no real threat. Now, the pot's boiling over, the curtain's going up, the game's afoot.

“Damn you, Finn. Why didn't you and your Mycer and your loathsome machine simply stay where you belonged? We don't need your kind here!”

Finn waited. Understanding at last, that even when this fellow was done, when all the sauce was finished, all the lines spoken, all the villains dead, he might simply start all over again.

“Well, do you intend to sit there, staring at me like a loon? You always have something to toss in the kettle, whether it's worthy or not.”

Finn heard a peculiar sound, then looked past the seer to a bookshelf swelling with the weight of ancient tomes, tracts, royal acts and boring decrees. Even as he watched, a stack of homilies groaned, and tumbled to the floor.

“May I ask a question? You won't drill me with a spell?”

“Certainly not. What do you think I am?” “You won't like me asking it again. Will Letitia be harmed?”

“I gave you the answer to that.” “Your pardon, but that's not so.”

“All right. She won't be harmed. Next question, Finn.”

“When I was at the Fractured Foot, you could have knocked me silly then. Why did you let me go?”

“I miss sometimes. Not often, but I do. If I had crisped one of those fat Snouters, every farmer in town would be screaming for my hide. I do a good business in agricultural spells. I don't have to, but it's expected if you're in the magic trade. What else?”

“I don't guess you mind if I ask, for you know what I've seen. I'd like to hear about the Deeply Entombed.”

Obern Oberbyght grinned, a grin of such dimension that his chubby cheeks swelled and his eyes squeezed shut. His lips disappeared, and every tooth was on display.

“That, my foolish friend, is the question I've been waiting to hear. It isn't that I'm slow, or dense, or feeble in the head, for none of that is true. The question was ever there, and I could have pushed it some, but I have a sense of order, of the end, of the termination of events. I wanted you to come to it on your own.”

Finn felt a sudden chill. “When the sauce is done. When it's time for Act Three.”

“Exactly, you have it now!”

Obern Oberbyght sprang to his feet, quicker than Finn imagined the fellow to be. He thrust both his hands out wide, encompassing the invisible sky. The room began to tilt, waver, quiver and shake. Red veins of lightning scurried across the floor, scampering like frightened spiders, drunken centipedes.

Everything melted, everything oozed. Time ran down the walls like syrup, with the sound of sleepy bees.

Finn threw up or threw in, he couldn't tell which. He floated, bobbled, pitched dizzily about somewhere or somewhen…

And, when the world stopped spinning, he opened his eyes and stared at the sky, at the endless dome of golden light that stretched out longer than forever overhead…

Not exactly endless, Finn decided, and clearly not the sky. More like a great, colossal, impossible bell…

FIFTY

One can be jailed, locked up, closely confined,” said Julia Jessica Slagg. “I see how this might happen when one point of view simply clashes with another, no harm in that.

“Still, to shackle, fetter, bodily restrain one's adversary, that is improper to every extent. That is damned impolite!”

“It is,” Letitia said. “I'd be the first to agree, for I am under severe restraint myself. At least I won't strangle now, for that poor fellow has freed my neck, but that will do little good if my arms and my legs fall off. I'm afraid Maddigern didn't fully follow the seer's advice. I am still quite tightly bound.

“Julia, I don't like to complain, but if you could possibly hurry over there… “

“… and talk a great deal less, I know. Finn tells me this all the time. What no one seems to understand- including the learned Master Finn-is that I am a superbly functioning mechanical device with a quick and cunning brain. Unlike Newlie folk and humankind, I can perform a multitude of functions and speak at the same time.”

“How is your eyesight, Julia? Can you see that my arms and legs are a ghastly shade of blue? Can you-Julia, are you listening to me?”

“Listening, but not talking, you'll note. That was your complaint, I believe.”

Letitia sighed. Julia, she knew, was doing the best she could. Perhaps, if she had not severely bitten, slashed, maimed the Badgie guards who tried to catch her, they would not have hung her by her tail in a cage.

“Still,” she muttered beneath her breath, “I can't fault her for that. She was trying to help me get away.”

That was the thing about lizards, or at least such a unique and marvelous lizard as Julia Jessica Slagg. Other lizards Finn had made swept up debris, kept a musket clean, and stamped out perfect little biscuits at a very rapid pace.

None of these devices had a brain, so none was encumbered with the power of reason and speech, and an ego the size of “… well, in truth, the size of Finn's, for I fear she mirrors him in a startling number of ways.”

Oh, Finn, my dear, I am not complaining, for I love you just the way you are, and I pray you are well and I know we'll soon be together again

“I don't know that at all,” she said, certain her flesh was turning from blue to a horrid shade of gray. “But I will not think of you in any other way!”

“Letitia. Letitia Louise.”

“What?” Letitia looked up with a start. Julia's iron cage was swaying rapidly back and forth on its chain, drawing bizarre shadows on the wall.

“Julia, what are you doing? If you strike the wall with that thing, those louts will be in here on us in a minute!”

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