The Practice Effect

by David Brin

  The remaining tools on the rack had been left because they couldn’t be kept employed. Most had begun to look like props from a low-budget Hollywood caveman feature.

  Arth lay back on the porch, hands clasped across his chest, snoring.

  Linnora painfully removed her shoes. In spite of the intense practice of the past two days, they still weren’t appropriate for rough country. She had picked up several terrible blisters, and for the last day she had been limping on a twisted ankle. She had to be in great pain, but she never mentioned it to either of her companions.

  Dennis heavily got up to his feet. He shuffled around the corner of the house to the well, and dropped the bucket in. There was a delayed splash. He pulled the bucket out, untied the cinch, and carried it, sloshing and leaking, back to the porch.

  Arth roused himself long enough to take a deep drink, then sagged back again. Linnora drank sparingly, but dampened her kerchief and dabbed at the dust streaks on her face.

  As gently as he could, Dennis bathed her feet to wipe away the dried blood. She winced but did not let out a sound. When he finished and sat down next to her on the dusty porch, Linnora rested her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes.

  They had been dodging patrols for almost three days, eating small birds Dennis brought down with a makeshift sling, and fish scooped from small streams by Linnora’s quick hands. Twice they had almost been spotted—by men on horseback one time, and again by a swift, nearly silent glider. The Baron, or his regent, certainly had the countryside in an uproar looking for them.

  Linnora nestled comfortably below his chin. Dennis breathed in the sweet aroma of her hair, knotted as it was from three days in the wilderness. For a short time they were at peace.

  “We can’t stay here, Dennizz.” Arth spoke without moving or opening his eyes.

  On the evening of the escape, he had wanted to hang around the outskirts of Zuslik until it was safe to sneak back into town. Arth wasn’t comfortable out in the open. But the fuss that was being raised and the thoroughness of the search had persuaded him at last to go along with Dennis and Linnora—to try for the land of the L’Toff.

  “I know we can’t, Arth. I’m sure the Baron’s men have been here already. And they’ll be back.

  “But Linnora’s feet are bleeding, and her ankle’s swollen. We had to go somewhere for her to rest up, and this was the only place I could think of. It’s deserted and it’s in the direction we wanted to go.”

  “Dennis, I can go on. Really.” Linnora sat up, but her slender body began to sway almost at once. “I think I ca—” Her eyes rolled upward and Dennis caught her.

  “Give a yell if the army comes,” he told Arth as he gathered her into his arms. He stood up unsteadily and managed to nudge the door open with his foot. It creaked loudly.

  Dust was everywhere inside the house. Dennis could almost feel the love and taste Stivyung Sigel and his wife had practiced into this home, and now it was well on its way to reverting to a hovel of sticks and thatch and paper.

  He wondered what had become of the tall farmer, and Gath, the bright young lad who had wanted to be a wizard’s apprentice. Did they survive their adventure in the balloon? Was Sigel even now searching for his wife in the forests of the L’Toff?

  Dennis carried Linnora down a narrow hallway to the Sigels’ bedroom and laid her gently on the bed. Then he half collapsed into a chair nearby.

  “Jus’ gimme a minute,” he mumbled. Exhaustion was like a heavy blanket weighing him down. Once he tried to get up but falled.

  “Aw, hell.” He looked at the young woman now sleeping peacefully nearby. “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to work the first time the hero gets the beautiful Princess into bed.…”

  In his half sleep, Dennis’s mind wandered. He found himself thinking about Pix and the robot … imagining how a passerby would have seen them some weeks back, the little pink creature with the bright green eyes, and its companion, the alien machine, together invading the human-filled streets of Zuslik, scuttling among the roofs and culverts, spying on the denizens of the town.

  No wonder there had been rampant rumors of “devil-spawned critters” and ghosts.

  Linnora had told him that the “Krenegee beast” shared with humans the ability to imbue a tool with Pr’fett, yet they weren’t tool users themselves, nor apparently even truly sentient.

  Sometimes a wild Krenegee established a long-term rapport with a human being. When this happened the human’s practice became tremendously powerful. A month’s improvement might be accomplished in a few hours’ time. Even the L’Toff, whose mastery of the art of practice was unsurpassed, could not match the accomplishments of a man accompanied by a Krenegee, especially if the combination resulted in an occasional true practice trance.

  But the Krenegee were notoriously fickle. A human counted himself lucky if he saw one once in his lifetime. A rare person who made lasting acquaintance with one was called a maker of the world.

  Dennis imagined the pixolet roaming the city roofs on the back of an automaton, pushing it ever toward perfection at its programmed function—a function Dennis had originally given it. The results had been amazing.

  Fickle Pix might be, but Dennis had wronged it in calling it a useless creature.

  He couldn’t help feeling guilty over the robot, though he knew he shouldn’t. He saw it in his imagination, bravely holding off the guards on the night of their escape.

  Dennis slumbered fitfully, dreaming of green and glowing red eyes, until a hand came down to shake his shoulder.

  “Dennizz!” The hand shook him. “Dennizz! Wake up!”

  “Whazzat?…” Dennis sat up quickly. “What is it? Soldiers?”

  Arth was a silhouette in the dim room. He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I heard voices out on the road, but no animals. I scooted before they opened the gate.”

  Dennis got up heavily and went over to look through a gap in the curtains. The dusty, yellowed window looked out on the farmyard. At the right edge of his field of vision he saw a flicker of movement. There were footsteps on the wooden porch.

  The only way out was through the living room; they would have to face whoever it was. And the three of them weren’t fit to take on a pack of drugged Cub Scouts.

  He motioned Arth over behind the door and picked up a small chair. The footfalls were in the hall now.

  The latch slid and the bedroom door squeaked slowly open. Dennis raised the chair high.

  He swayed and almost overcompensated when the door swung wide to reveal a stocky, middle-aged woman. She saw Dennis and gasped as she hopped back at least four feet, almost knocking over a small boy behind her.

  “Wait!” Dennis called.

  The woman grabbed the boy’s arm, dragging him frantically for the front door. But the small figure resisted.

  “Dennz! Ma, it’s only Dennz!”

  Dennis put down the chair and motioned for Arth to stay put. He hurried down the hall after them.

  The woman paused uncertainly at the open front door. Her grip was white on the arm of the young boy Dennis had met early in his stay on this world. Dennis stopped at the hallway entrance, his empty hands raised.

  “Hello, Tomosh,” he said quietly.

  “ ’lo, Dennzz!” Tomosh said happily, though his mother yanked him back when he tried to come forward. Suspicion and fear still filled her eyes.

  Dennis tried to remember the woman’s name. Stivyung had mentioned it several times. Somehow, he had to convince her he was a friend!

  He sensed movement behind him.

  Damn Arth! I told him to stay back! One more strange man in the house will be enough to spook this woman!

  Mrs. Sigel’s eyes opened wide. But instead of fleeing, she sighed.

  “Princess!”

  Dennis turned and couldn’t help blinking a little himself. Even with disheveled hair, sleepy-eyed and standing on bloody, bare feet, Linnora managed to look regal. She smiled graciously.

  “You are r
ight good woman, though I don’t believe we have ever met. I must thank you for the hospitality of your beautiful home. My gratitude, and that of the L’Toff, are yours for all your days.”

  Mrs. Sigel blushed, and curtsied awkwardly. Her face was transformed, no longer hard at all. “My home is yours, your Highness,” she said shyly. “An’ your friends, of course. I only wish it were more presentable.”

  “To us, it is as fine as the greatest palace,” Linnora assured her. “And far nicer than a castle where we have recently been.”

  Dennis took Linnora’s arm to help her to a chair. She caught his eye and winked.

  Mrs. Sigel made a great fuss when she saw the condition of the girl’s feet. She hurried to a corner of the room and pried up a floorboard to reveal a hidden larder. She brought out clean, decades-old linen and a jar of salve. She insisted on immediately attending to Linnora’s blisters, pushing Dennis to one side gently but irresistibly.

  The boy Tomosh came over and hit Dennis affectionately on the leg, then began a torrent of eager, uncoordinated questions. It took ten minutes for Dennis to get around to telling Mrs. Sigel that he had last seen her husband two hundred feet in the air, riding a great balloon.

  Eventually he had to explain what in the world a “balloon” was.

  2

  “We could try to arrange a hiding place for you here,” Surah Sigel told Dennis much later, after the others had gone to bed. “It’d be dangerous for sure. The Baron’s mobilized the militia, an’ his men will be back here again soon. But we could give it a try.”

  Surah looked as if she had little faith in her own suggestion. Dennis already knew what the problem was.

  “Sniffers,” he said simply.

  She nodded reluctantly. “Yah. Kremer’ll have them out in force, huntin’ for you. Sniffers can find a man anywhere by his scent, given ’nuff time.”

  Dennis had seen a kennel of the big-nosed animals while he resided in the castle. They looked like distant relatives of dogs, but Dennis could think of no real analogs on Earth They were slower than bloodhounds but had three times the sensitivity. Arth had told him there were ways to stymie sniffers in town, but out in the country they were unstoppable.

  Dennis shook his head. “We have to be going as quickly as possible. You’re as generous and brave as Stivyung described you, Surah. But I can’t be responsible for what would happen to you and Tomosh if Linnora and I were found here.

  “We’ll leave the day after tomorrow.” Privately, Dennis dreaded waiting even that long.

  “But the Princess’s feet won’t have healed by then! Her ankle is still swollen!”

  Mrs. Sigel had offered earlier to take Linnora to her sister’s and to try somehow to disguise her. But Linnora would hear none of it. It wasn’t just her unwillingness to put innocent people in danger. She was also determined to deny Kremer even the possibility of ever using her as a hostage. And her people had to be warned of Kremer’s new weapons. She would climb the western mountains even if she had to crawl.

  “I’d not even stay the extra day,” Dennis said. “But I have to try to make something … something that will enable us to take Linnora along even if her feet haven’t healed.”

  Mrs. Sigel sighed in acceptance. A wizard was a wizard, after all. She had listened to Arth’s stories about Dennis’s miracles with wonderment. “All right, then. At first light I’ll go fetch those tools you need from Biss’s house. Tomosh’ll watch the road and warn you if soldiers come. I’d draw you a map to show you the way to the L’Toff, but you’ve got the best guide in the world, so I don’t suppose you’ll need it.”

  Linnora and Tomosh had retired after a Spartan but nourishing meal from the Sigels’ secret hoard. Arth snored softly in a chair, practicing it in return for his hostess’s hospitality. Although he wasn’t much of a smoker, Dennis puffed diligently at one of Stivyung Sigel’s pipes for much the same reason.

  Surah told Dennis about her own adventure, from which she had only just returned—her journey into the mountains of the L’Toff. Her eyes seemed to light up as she spoke of her travels.

  Stivyung had often spoken of his career in the Royal Scouts. Brought up in a society that still rigidly controlled the options open to women, Surah had thrilled to her husband’s stories of adventure in the wild border reaches, of encounters with strange peoples including, of course, the mysterious L’Toff.

  From his descriptions she knew that they were not fairies or devils but people on whom the gods had bestowed some mixed blessings. Since their exodus during the reign of Good King Foss’t, they had lived pretty much to themselves in their mountain retreat. After the fall of the old Duke, their last strong protector in the west, the only Coylians who had regular contact with them were a few traders and the Scouts.

  When the Baron’s men took Stivyung away, Surah suddenly found herself behaving as she never had imagined before. She ran to her sister’s and told her to pick up Tomosh. Then she threw together a pack and headed west with no definite plan in mind, thinking only to find some of Stivyung’s former comrades and beseech their help.

  She did not recall much about her journey into the mountains, except being frightened most of the time. Though she had grown up on the edge of the wilderness, she had never spent nights alone under the trees before. It was an experience she would never forget.

  The first sign she was in L’Toff country came when she encountered a small patrol of stern, fierce men, whose spears had the burnished look of deadly practice. They were agitated and questioned her closely. But eventually they let her proceed. Only later, when she passed through the outer hamlets and finally came to the main village of the L’Toff, did she learn that Princess Linnora had disappeared.

  That explained the anxiety of the border guards, certainly. Surah began to realize that her own problems were small eddies of a larger storm brewing.

  Linnora’s father, Prince Linsee, ruled a virtually independent realm, answerable only to the King of Coylia himself. This irritated the great lords and the temples. But like the isolation of their mountain home, it was for the tribe’s protection.

  In return, the crown monopolized the trade in rare treasures whose Pr’fett had been “frozen” into a permanent state of practice. Each item generally cost some L’Toff a measure of his vital force—a week, month, or a year out of his or her life. The frozen goods were very rare—and coveted greedily.

  Relations between the L’Toff and the great nobles had grown worse since the demise of the old Duke, and especially as Baron Kremer’s cabal of gentry and guilds prepared to confront the King.

  Obviously the aristocrats would be well served if they had a lever on the L’Toff, the King’s strongest allies in the west. If they had a hostage to ensure Prince Linsee’s neutrality, they could turn their attention fully to investing the cities of the east, with their royalist, antiguild rabble.

  Fate had delivered Kremer his hostage against the L’Toff the very same day that soldiers had come to take Surah’s husband away.

  When Surah arrived in the mountains, the L’Toff were searching far and wide for their beloved Princess. Linnora had slipped away from her maids and escort nearly two weeks before, claiming in a cryptic note that she had sensed “something different” come into the world.

  While everyone respected Linnora’s fey powers, Prince Linsee had feared the results of his daughter’s impetuousness. He suspected she had fallen into the Baron’s hands.

  So, too, thought Demsen, the tall, homely leader of a detachment of Royal Scouts that had arrived just before Surah. Demsen was sure that Kremer was holding Linnora in secret, until a hostage was needed to keep the L’Toff passive at his rear.

  Surah found out all of this because she was right there in the thick of it. Since she knew something of the situation in Zuslik, Surah was invited to sit at table with Linsee and Demsen and the captains and elders, all of whom attentively listened as she nervously answered their questions.

  At the assembly, young Prince Proll
had demanded permission to storm Zuslik and rescue Linnora by force of arms. Proll’s courage and charisma influenced many. The younger L’Toff could think of nothing but their beautiful Princess languishing in prison.

  But Linsee knew that Kremer’s forces were more than a match for his own in open battle, especially since the perfection of the Baron’s terrifying glider corps. It would take years of dangerous experimentation to duplicate that accomplishment. Long before then, the war would begin.

  Linsee had sent a delegation, led by the Chief of the Council of Elders, and Prince Proll, to visit Kremer and inquire. It would probably accomplish nothing, but it was all he could do. Reluctantly, he ordered the defenses strengthened, such as they were.

  Surah listened to all of this and came to a numb realization that she would find no help here for her own, personal crisis. If the L’Toff and the Royal Scouts could do nothing to save Linnora, what could they do about a simple farmer—even a retired scout sergeant—whom Baron Kremer had seized on a whim?

  Prince Linsee gave her a donkey and some provisions and wished her well. Except for the border guards, no one even noticed when she left.

  She returned to find the countryside in an uproar. Preparations for war were well under way, and the area was being scoured for important fugitives.

  Life had to go on, whatever the magnitude of great affairs around her. She retrieved her son from her sister’s house and headed home to keep up the farm as best she could, against the hope that Stivyung would someday return to her.

  And at home she found the fugitives hiding in her own bedroom.

  Surah Sigel sighed and refilled Dennis’s cup with hot thah.

  “I’ve not had a big voice in th’ happnin’s of the time,” she said in conclusion. “I’m just a farmwife, for all of Stivyung’s teachin’ me to read an’ all.

  “Still, it does seem to me that I’ll have witnessed an’ had a small part in the events.” She looked up at Dennis with an idea. She spoke a little timidly, as if speaking an idea she was afraid he would laugh at. “Y’know, maybe someday I’ll write a book about what I saw an’ tell about all the people I met before th’ war began.