The Wizard of Karres wok-2

by Mercedes Lackey

  * * *

  Pausert woke up in the darkness, and relled vatch. Hello, Big Real Thing! it saluted him cheerfully.

  For once, he was happy to salute it back. Hello, Silver-eyes, he thought at it. I have a question for you.

  Oh, a question! Now I know you're a real thing. Dream things don't ask questions.

  He thought about asking the vatch if it was different from other vatches, but realized that was a stupid question and would deserve a stupid answer. After all, if the vatch had asked him if he was different from other humans, he'd answer "yes," of course. Any human would.

  Do all vatches get bigger and smarter when they eat vatch stuff? he asked instead.

  Silver-eyes laughed—a new difference. It used to giggle. Bigger, sure. Not always smarter, though. A lot of the big ones are really stupid.

  But you do get smarter and bigger?

  Of course. That's why I want more vatch stuff. Being smarter is a lot more fun than being stupider.

  Are there more vatches who can do that? If he was going to run into a plague of uncontrollable vatches, he wanted to know about it.

  Not many. And when we get smart enough, we can go to the (*) place.

  The thought of (*) seemed untranslatable. But the clear sense Pausert got was that it was a place that was very desirable—and very much "not here." He decided not to ask Silver-eyes any more questions about it. It probably wouldn't mean anything to him, and it just might be one of those strange klatha things that would turn his head inside out if he did understand it.

  I've thought about something you can do for me, then. I'd like it if you can make trouble for the dream things that start to make trouble for us. Not the ones that only pretend to make trouble, he added hastily, like the ones in that show-story that the others and I play in, or the way the clowns toss the Leewit around. I mean real trouble.

  Like when you were trying to hide Little and Teeth? That was a neat trick, the way you twisted light around! I never would have thought of it myself until I saw you do it.

  What Pausert got along with the words "Little" and "Teeth" were impressions of Hantis and Pul that concentrated on the Nartheby Sprite's relative height and Pul's formidable jaws. Pausert thought about trying to get the vatch to identify them by their names, but it was probably a lost cause.

  Yes. If that sort of person is going to make trouble, I'd like you to make their lives as difficult for them as possible. For once, he reflected, he was not going to have to worry about people seeing impossible things. This was a circus, and anything that appeared impossible would, without a doubt, be chalked up to smoke and mirrors and stage-trickery.

  I might, agreed the vatchlet. Since that was probably the most he was going to get out of the creature, the captain left it at that. It had already promised not to make trouble for them, which was more than he had ever gotten out of a vatch before this.

  Feed me?

  Can you bring me something to feed you with? he countered.

  Think so.

  Its presence faded away, and he started to drift back to sleep again, when he suddenly relled something big, and right on top of him!

  With a muffled, startled yell, he formed klatha hooks and sank them into the thing. The vatch was almost as startled as he was, even more so when it knew it had been caught. It literally ripped itself off his hooks and vanished.

  Silver-eyes appeared the instant it was gone, and he sensed it dancing with impatience when it "saw" the bits of vatch stuff clinging to his hooks. Feed me!

  Once again, Pausert realized, Silver-eyes had lured a big vatch into the area. He was irritated at the little vatch—it could have at least given some warning!—but he gave it what it wanted. And, once again, saw it growing just a tiny bit bigger.

  I'll watch, it said then, in a "voice" that seemed a bit more mentally resonant. Then it faded away again. Unable to make up his mind if he had done a good or a bad thing, Pausert turned over, and finally got back to sleep.

  * * *

  There seemed to be no immediate fallout from the agreement the next day. Which was just as well, since the theatrical company was now in rehearsal for a second play in the morning, while continuing the performances of Romeo and Juliet in the evening, and one of the works they'd already had in their repertoire in the late afternoon. That one was called Twelfth Night and required a much smaller cast.

  Contrary to Himbo Petey's glum predictions, the audiences here seemed to have no objections to a play that ended in tragedy, but Richard Cravan decided that the second play put into performance with his augmented cast should be a comedy. He chose A Midsummer Night's Dream in order to use Hantis and Pul. Pul, Goth and the Leewit were creatures called Fairies with fairly extensive speaking roles; Hantis was the Puck-creature that Cravan had mentioned by name, and Hulik played one of the two romantic parts, a girl by the name of Helen. As usual, Cravan himself acted as well as directed, playing King Oberon; Ethulassia was Titania, his Queen.

  Even Vezzarn was pressed into service this time. This was a play with an enormous cast, even bigger than Romeo and Juliet, and Cravan recruited people from all over the showboat for non-speaking roles. If they were able to come in on cues and "hit their spots," had interesting faces or could dance a little, they would find themselves filling a place in crowd scenes.

  And Pausert found himself playing the clown Bottom against Dame Ethulassia.

  Now that put him in an extremely uncomfortable position, for Ethulassia was supposed to fall in love with him thanks to a magical love potion administered by Puck. He couldn't tell if her flirtatious manner onstage was part of her act, or some not-so-subtle attempt to get his attention offstage. Maybe he was enjoying his performances as Mercutio a little too much, and this was the Fates' way of getting back at him. And the more he, as Bottom, tried to evade Ethulassia's cooing caresses, the more she pursued him.

  Cravan found this interpretation to be hilariously funny. So, evidently, did almost everyone else in the company, for many of the cast members congratulated him on an original "take" on the character. Goth simply gave him sidelong, opaque looks, saying nothing. The Leewit, on the other hand, taunted him with scathing remarks under her breath whenever he was just within earshot. Hantis and Hulik were amused; Vezzarn couldn't understand why he wasn't following up on Ethulassia's flirtations. Only Pul seemed to sympathize with him.

  And he had not forgotten Silver-eyes, either. Though, if the little vatch was around, it was staying so far out of his way that he couldn't rell it at all. He finally cornered both the girls, and told them what had happened the last time it had come around.

  "So now I think maybe I've gotten us deeper in trouble than we were before," he said worriedly.

  The Leewit shook her head. "I don't know—" she began, but Goth let out her breath in a hiss.

  "Huh," she said. "I just thought of something, Captain. What if the vatches we see are all—oh, in a coma or something. They aren't stupid, they're just brain-damaged. That's why they think we're dreams. And the ones like Silver-eyes are the ones that are going to wake up, if they can just get enough vatch stuff put together. Maybe they need it to get their brains back on-line."

  Now Pausert felt guilty as well as worried. "That's horrible!" he replied. "If that's true, then I'm beating up on—"

  Goth waved her hand at him. "We don't know that," she reminded him. "We don't really know anything much about vatches. And anyway, they don't have any guilt over making our lives miserable, so I don't see why you should feel guilty about what you're doing. Maybe it'll teach some of them not to mess us up."

  "Besides," the Leewit said firmly. "Silver-eyes is one of the kind that you can't control. The sooner you get it out of our universe and into some place else, the better!"

  Well, he could agree with that, but it just didn't make him feel any better.

  CHAPTER 15

  Sedmon the Sixth, Daal of feared and blood-soaked Uldune, looked at the exquisite little jewel box inset with chalcosites and pieces of pe
acock-blue Lepida Pua nacre. It was a pretty little trinket—not to mention a very expensive one. But would the intended recipient like it? With that person, it was hard to know.

  And, more to the immediate point, where was she? Where were the rest of them, for that matter? He knew the Venture had had little air, a leaking airlock, and very little fuel when it had evaded destruction at the hands of the Imperial Navy off Pidoon.

  Despite these rather unpromising circumstances, he was fairly certain they'd have gotten away. In the hexaperson's youth, Sedmon had once made the mistake of taking Karres lightly. Threbus and Toll had given the Daal—and a goodly portion of his space fleet—a polite but firm lesson. Two witches . . . and he almost hadn't had much of a fleet left. Ever since, Uldune had bent over backwards not to irritate the witches. And, ever since, Sedmon had been careful not to underestimate them and to wear his telepathy disturbing skullcap when they were around.

  It had been made abundantly plain to him that if worse came to worst, the witches could do without spaceships or even spacesuits.

  Hulik do Eldel couldn't. Neither could his former spy, Vezzarn, though that did not trouble him much.

  And, he privately suspected—although he had no proof—neither could Captain Pausert. But Pausert might be one of the Karres witches. You never could be absolutely sure. Sedmon hoped not—because he was very sure that the little Wisdom with Pausert would not abandon him, which would probably mean keeping Hulik alive too.

  But there was no trace of the blasted ship! If they'd only used the drives inside an atmospheric envelope, the detectors wouldn't have picked that up. Unless they were dead, or had used some form of Karres witchery.

  * * *

  Light-years away on Uldune, the other Sedmons concurred. They used the House of Thunders' elaborate astrography equipment to look for possible destinations for ships low on air and fuel.

  Vaudevillia came up on top of the probability list. Since they had no better leads, the Thunderbird left for the planet—on the same day, as it happened, when the Pidoon vidcasts were trumpeting the demise of the infamous Nairdoo Sheyan, pirate murderer of Coolum's World, along with two of her criminal associates.

  * * *

  The trail might have run cold on Vaudevillia—except that a lucrative offer got a freighter captain to remember that someone had been trying to scrounge fuel and air. The captain also recalled some radio-squalling about a vagabond hitching a ride on a very unwilling lattice ship.

  For the first time in many days, the Sedmons smiled. They were aware of the habit of lattice ships of using old hulks for airtight holds. Such a maneuver would confound most of the people pursuing the Venture, sure enough. For a time, at least.

  Sedmon nodded to Sedmon. "Pausert. He's a cunning one. We'll need a trace on as many lattice ships as possible."

  Uldune and her operations had many agents. And subradio meant the news could be sent, fast.

  * * *

  Two days later, the Sedmons were in pursuit of the Petey B.

  CHAPTER 16

  By the time that Cravan had all four of the new plays in production, most of the free money on Hanson's Reach had found its way into the coffers of Petey, Byrum, and Keep. The silver-eyed vatch had lured two more victims within the reach of Pausert's klatha hooks and had gotten fed twice more, despite Pausert's feelings of lingering guilt. Then the Petey B took to space again, and Pausert felt that he was finally going to be able to relax for a while.

  Well . . . from having to look for spies and agents around every corner, at any rate. He suspected that with more free time on her hands, Dame Ethulassia was going to become a bit of a problem.

  As, indeed, she did. But Pausert was able to evade that danger in a generally satisfactory manner. Although, on one occasion, he apparently didn't extract himself from her company quite quickly and smoothly enough. At least, the captain assumed that it had been Goth who teleported a still alive and wriggling jellysnail into his soup.

  * * *

  They set down again on another agro-world, this time not quite as primitive as the last—which was not, in Pausert's opinion, an advantage. Tornam was not backwards and isolated. It had a real spaceport that saw more than the occasional slow-freighter and desperate trader. There were five other spaceships already on the field when the Petey B set down on it.

  Tornam also had an ISS office.

  Hulik tried to reassure him that it was just a little backwater of a place; and that, even if the agents in charge had even heard of the Venture and its crew, they would hardly look for them snugged into a showboat. They would expect such desperate criminals to be trying to hide, not starring in a play.

  It didn't help. In truth, the only reason Pausert wasn't starting at every sound and looking over his shoulder constantly was that, irrational as it was, he had begun to trust the little Silver-eyes. Or, perhaps, he just trusted that the vatch had come to realize that there was great deal more amusement to be had from helping Pausert and his crew than from trying to trip them up at every turn. But he still had the nervous certainty that disaster of some sort was just around the corner, a feeling of a metaphorical storm just below the horizon.

  * * *

  Yet, when disaster came, it had nothing to do with Pausert and the others. It didn't even happen in or around the showboat itself.

  It happened when the second lead of Cravan's company, Ken Kanchen, was in Bevenford, the largest town on the planet. Kanchen took the part of Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet, of Horatio in Hamlet—pretty much any male part that required a handsome face, athletic ability, solid if not inspired acting, and the ability to memorize a part in two days,

  He wasn't even there to do anything that could have conceivably gotten him into trouble. He was running a simple errand, visiting a local bookshop. Unfortunately, he stepped back into the street just at the wrong time. Traffic laws on Tornam were haphazard. Kanchen ended up under a floater, and then in a hospital, with more broken bones than anyone wanted to think about. He was just lucky that he was still alive—and that his handsome face was still untouched.

  Not even Sir Richard could manage to act the part of Tybalt in a full body cast.

  Himbo Petey had Kanchen brought back aboard the Petey B as soon as possible, of course. A ship the size of a showboat usually had a sick bay as good or better than anything a provincial planet could provide, and the Petey B was no exception to that. Besides, the showboats had a long tradition of taking care of their own—even people not as well-liked as Kanchen was by virtually everyone in the company and crew. The poor man was guaranteed better round-the-clock nursing as well as superior medical care; his problem would not be a lack of care and company, but a surfeit of it.

  But the thespians were without their Second Male Lead. They were stretched so thin now that there was no understudy. Cravan was beside himself.

  "There's no help for it," he said at last, after a meeting of the full company determined that there wasn't anyone able or ready to step into Ken's shoes. "I'll have to call for outside auditions. You'll all have to help me; otherwise we'll never find someone we can lick into shape in any reasonable period of time."

  A groan went up. "Dick!" cried Alton. "You're going to kill us! The last time we had to hold a cattle call, on Plankelm, I was ready to slit my wrists before it was over!"

  "Yes, but that cattle call netted us Trudi," Cravan countered, "and she's the best Female Character I've seen in—well, longer than I care to think."

  Pausert glanced over at the plump, middle-aged woman who played Juliet's Nurse; she shrugged, but smiled.

  "Tornam is more populous than Plankelm," Trudi commented. "A lot. Double the population in this city alone."

  "Double the number of clueless idiots who think they can act," Alton groaned.

  "It could be worse," Cravan pointed out ruthlessly. "We could be looking for a Juvenile. Then we'd have stage-mothers to contend with."

  "If you dare inflict that on us, I will slit my wrists!" Alton started clawing at t
he prop dagger at his waist.

  "Right. I want panels of four," Cravan continued, ignoring him. "Each one headed by an experienced Lead, which, Miss Hulik, I regret to say does not include you. Alton, Lassia, Trudi, myself, Hembert, Doeen, and Killary. That's six for initial auditions, with my panel making final judgment. Panel heads, pick your teams—you newcomers, please do not be offended if we don't select you. We need people who are dedicated thespians who are going to be living with this actor for a very long time, and we all know very well," here he bestowed a kindly smile on Pausert, Hulik, and Hantis, "that as soon as you can, barring that you decide differently, you are leaving us."

  Was it that obvious? Pausert sighed. Not that he wanted to be on any blasted panels, listening to people stumble their way through speeches—not after the way that Alton had been carrying on.

  * * *

  For two days, during which the theater was dark, the panels held nonstop auditions in any little space that would hold a table and four chairs. The pickings were thin, though the applicants were legion—in two days, only three candidates were passed up to Cravan's panel waiting in the theater. At the end of the two days, however, about the time that the panel members were beginning to look haggard and despairing, Vonard Kleesp appeared.

  Trudi's panel passed him on to Cravan after only five minutes of audition. By the time he took his place on the stage in front of Cravan's panel, rumor had spread through the showboat like wildfire in pure oxygen. Everyone who could get away was trying to get into the theater to see him. Pausert was no exception, though, by the time he got there, Vonard had already gone through two major soliloquies with impressive ease.

  What he saw up on the stage as he squeezed in between Hulik and Vezzarn was a man who, like Cravan, had a very memorable face. It was not, strictly speaking, handsome. The face was too saturnine for that, there was too much of an ironic lift to his eyebrows, and a cynical twist to his lips. But it was memorable, which was what a Second Lead needed. And the man moved like a cat. Just as Pausert got there, he was demonstrating that he even knew how to use a sword properly.