By the widening of the Leewit's eyes, Hantis' reply was even more educational. "Oh, boy. I think we are in trouble. The two of them are mad clear though. I've never heard anyone say anything like that. Not even the Agandar's pirates."
Somewhere in the distance was a hint of huge vatchy laughter. The captain didn't like this situation at all. Other glassy platforms were beginning to be lowered down from the bulbous castle above. Behind, the dragonish gnyarl still hemmed them in. The Leewit's whistle had put them off, true, but would it stop them in a truly determined rush? And this was definitely playing the game the way the vatch wanted. They had to break out of its pattern.
The small Sprite's earlier cool and haughty air was gone. His face-color no longer matched his attire. He'd have had to change into purple robes to do that. And Pausert did not need the Leewit to understand that the next words out of the half-pint's mouth were something along the order of: Guards! Seize them!
The furious Lord of Castle Aloorn wasn't prepared for one of the Leewit's shattering whistles, though. The small Sprite's glassy platform exploded in a very satisfying shower of bright-colored shards and spilled the Sprite onto the ground fifteen feet below.
But the Sprite Lord displayed that he too had klatha skills. He caught himself, just before an undignified landing, and levitated—straight for Hantis. It was plain that he thought that she had done it to him.
Pausert realized just how lucky he'd been that Hantis had simply been amused when, thinking it was Goth playing a light-shift trick, he'd lifted the Sprite's hat and veil. The red-maned Sprite's grass green eyes were narrowed with fury. A nimbuslike halo of energy hung around the two of them as they dueled. The issue, however was not decided by klatha powers. Hantis doubled her elegant six-fingered hand into a fist and punched the other Sprite in the gut. His hat flew off, revealing hair as flame-red as hers.
But the captain had no time to watch any more. Battle was joined. The Sprites might be small, but they were inhumanly strong. There were also an awful lot of them. And the gnyarl were charging.
* * *
When Pausert woke up, he noticed that his bed had become very lumpy. And whatever he'd drunk the night before had given him a splitting headache.
Gradually, he realized it wasn't anything he'd drunk the night before, and that the ache in his head was probably related to the bumps it had acquired. He opened his eyes, cautiously. He was lying on the floor . . . trussed up like a roast. Looking around, he could see that the others were also lying around the room. All of them were virtually wrapped from head to foot in silky looking cord. It was an oddly bulbous room, but very elegant and beautifully proportioned—for a prison. The mirrors on the wall were odd too, as were the huge convex butterfly-shaped windows.
Not like the last prison he'd been in, but still a prison. Associating with the witches of Karres seemed to result in the captain spending a lot of time in durance vile. To think he'd once been a respectable person, not a wanted criminal—as he seemed to end up being these days, no matter how respectably he tried to behave.
Right now he could use some of the escapology skills of the Great Aron, even if it got him laughed at. But his little silver-eyed assistant wasn't around, and the big vatch was staying out of reach. This Big Windy enjoyed playing with humans, but was lot more wary than the last one had been. Maybe it had encountered a vatch-handler before.
Pausert settled for rolling over and trying to sit up against the wall. His Lambidian iguana boots had great traction, so it was not impossible, just very awkward.
The Leewit was gagged but conscious. She was making frantic squirmings towards him. The other four—Goth, Vezzarn, Hantis and Pul—were trussed up and still. For a grim moment, Pausert knew fear bordering on panic. Goth had long since made her way into his heart. Well, the Leewit too. But surely they wouldn't have tied them up if they were dead. Last he'd seen, Goth had been fighting off a small sea of Sprites, and giving a good account of herself.
The Leewit managed to wriggle herself close to him. The captain was upset to see just how pale she looked. Pale and very small. He set to work on her gag with his teeth. While he was busy, both Goth and Vezzarn stirred. Just those little movements were very comforting, but someone was going to pay for this. Witches didn't take kindly to captivity, and he especially didn't take kindly to anyone beating up these particular witches.
He'd just gotten the cloth to start tearing, when Hantis sat up.
She blinked as if trying to get her eyes to focus. Then she looked around. The strange elfin face looked thoroughly woebegone.
Pausert went on tearing at the fabric of the gag, and was rewarded by an "Ow!" The cloth gave and the Leewit's mouth was free again.
Which, of course, was a mixed blessing. "You! Clumping cud-chewer!"
But her ill-temper was brief. "Where are we, Captain?" asked the Leewit, after licking her lips.
Hantis answered in a kind of dreamy, singsong voice. "In the hall of the crystals, which is also called Imnbriahn-des-sahrissa—the place of heavenly late afternoon lights. It is, or was, Castle Aloorn's execution chamber. It was largely destroyed during the rule of an ancestor of mine, he who came to be called Arvin Warmaker, the destroyer of the Golden Age." She shuddered. "The blame for the fall of the towers of fabled Delaron has been laid at his feet as well as much of the destruction done to Castle Aloorn. Many other evils, also."
Hantis sighed. "I am afraid that the vatch served us a truly nasty turn, Captain. It sent us back in time to meet one of the greatest villains in Nartheby's history. I am sorry. When I realized whom I was dealing with . . . I let my anger overpower me. I have been brought up to hate this man, hate and despise him for what he did not only to Nartheby, but also the shame he brought to the Clan Aloorn. I should have been more tactful. Now we are trapped."
"Not for long," said the youngest witch. "The captain can do his shield trick on us. I never thought I'd ask him to do that, but it'll deal with these ropes all right."
Hantis grimaced. "Not these ropes, dear. Remember that klatha skills are quite common among the Sprites. The captain can make a shield cocoon around you, and that would work, but the ropes would remain inside it."
Hantis looked out of the windows. "No. All we can do is wait for the sun to go over the zenith. And then the sun will shine in through the windows and we will all die."
"Why?" asked Pausert, wriggling across the floor to Goth. She was stirring now, and groaning softly.
"Because of the crystals and the mirrors. When the sunlight shines in through those windows the facets inside the crystals will shatter it into prisms. This will become a place of hundreds of rainbows, and then, as the sun gets into line and the outer facets focus the light—a place of death. The ropes will burn away and this beautiful place will become a place for us to dance. You see, the crystals and the mirrors act as focus-devices and accumulative multipliers. As the heat builds up inside them they change facets. The light will blast from one, then another, in a pattern which is supposed to have been unique each time . . . a terrible choreography of laser-lights."
Looking at the floor now, the captain could see that what he'd taken for lumps in his bed when he had been coming to, were actually crystals. Multifaceted crystals. Thousands of them.
Goth groaned again. "There. It's all right, Goth," comforted the captain. She quieted at his voice and burrowed against him. Moaned as she hit a bruised spot, lay still for a bit and then opened her eyes.
One eye, rather. She could only open the other a crack—she'd have a magnificent black eye if she lived through the afternoon.
Since he'd promised that it would be all right, he'd better get free of these bonds. He strained. He noticed that Vezzarn was also trying to sit up.
"What's happened, Captain?" asked Goth, muzzily.
He explained.
She tried to sit up, and managed on the second attempt. "I guess you'd better get whistling," she said to the Leewit. "You won't get a chance to break this many things again." Sh
e looked at the Nartheby Sprite. "Sorry, Hantis. I can't see any other way to deal with it."
"It is the one place in Castle Aloorn that I was glad that Arvin Warmaker destroyed," said Hantis, grimly. "The windows and mirrors are not true glass though. They are strong but flexible organics, like the castle itself."
"I'm not so good on things that bend," admitted the Leewit.
"But the crystals aren't flexible. Arvin destroyed many of them."
"Well, he'll have to make them again first if he's going to destroy them this time," said Goth. She nodded at the Leewit. "Go to it. Break as much as you like."
The Leewit scowled. "It's not as much fun when you've got permission."
"I promise you that the current owner is going to be as mad as a wet desert bollem about it," said the captain firmly.
The Leewit cheered up immediately. "Okay, then." She pursed her lips, focused her gray eyes on one of the larger crystals. There was a thin high-pitched sound and a series of little clinking noises, rather like the hull metal around a cooling spacedrive.
The crystal fell slowly in on itself.
The Leewit picked out another.
Vezzarn groaned and rolled over. By the time the littlest witch was onto her twenty-third crystal, the little spaceman, safe-cracker and spy was awake. "Captain," he asked weakly, "is there any reason we have to stay tied up?"
Pausert shook his head. "Other than the fact I can't get loose, no."
"I've got a small vibro-razor hidden in my bootheel, Captain. Along with lockpicks and some electronic gear. If I could get to it . . ."
Pausert smiled for the first time in quite a while. "Hantis—these ropes. They're klatha proof. But can you cut them?"
Hantis blinked. "Possibly. They muzzled poor Pul. That could be why."
Captain Pausert thought they probably did that to stop the grik-dog biting them, but he held his tongue. Instead he said: "Goth, do you think you could 'port that razor into my mouth? As we can't even use our fingers?"
"Sure, Captain." She smiled wickedly. "Open wide."
He did. And the tiny tool arrived neatly between his lips like a little cigar. And abruptly disappeared. "Sorry, Captain. Wrong way round. If you'd clicked it on then you could have taken out your tonsils."
A moment later, the hilt was held by his teeth. He felt around the ported vibro-razor with his tongue until he found the click-switch. The vibro-razor starting buzzing like an angry gnat under his nose. Very cautiously, he touched it to Goth's silky rope-wrapping. It frayed. He went on, trying not to cut her. The rope might resist klatha, but it was no match for Imperial technology. By the time that the Leewit had dealt with nine more crystals, Goth was shrugging off her rope-cocoon.
After that, freeing all of them was a quick job.
The sun had moved directly above Castle Aloorn and the room was already full of dancing rainbows. Vezzarn got awkwardly to his feet, rubbing life back into his arms and hands. "Let me see if I can master an alien lock, Captain. If I can find the door, that is."
"It is there, behind the mirrors in the corner," said Hantis, pointing. "But it isn't intended to be opened from the inside."
"Milady, I've even dealt with a safe like that," said Vezzarn with a lopsided grin. He walked over to the far corner and began examining the smooth surface with the tiniest folding magneto-calipers the captain had ever seen.
"What about guards?" asked the captain. "Where would they be?"
Hantis waved her slim elfin hands. "In my day there was no need for guards. Aloorn is a peaceful, friendly place where any visitor would be welcome."
The captain grimaced. "Well, this kind of welcome I could skip. What about a way out, Hantis?"
The Sprite wrinkled her sharp nose. "That . . . could be difficult. Of course it is not a problem if you can levitate. But there is no walkway down. And we are about one hundred and twenty of your feet off the ground."
"What about those platform things?" asked Goth.
Hantis shrugged. "Every set of chambers has a hoist. Most of our people use them rather than levitating, which takes a great deal of effort. In my time we could have gone to an unoccupied chamber, swung the hoist arm out and dropped down. But it would appear to me that Castle Aloorn is very well populated right now. To get to a hoist you would have to break into some Sprite's home. And we are, as a species, able to scream telepathically. Someone has been trying to probe me since we have been trapped in here. Fortunately, I have very good shields."
"Haven't felt anything," said Goth, warily.
"That is not surprising," said Hantis. "I am a better-than-average telepath among my own kind, and I can barely pick up the general drift of human thoughts. Our minds are very differently constructed. That is why the captain's klatha use does not affect me the way it does other adults."
Over in the corner, Vezzarn sighed. "Sorry, Captain. But it's not working. The mechanism itself is simple enough. But there is something else there. It's not mechanical and not hyperelectronic. It's some kind of energy construct. I can't budge it. The door is open except for that."
"Klatha lock," said Hantis.
"Can you do anything about it?" asked Captain Pausert. The Leewit was still crumbling crystals, but there were a lot of them, and the mirrors were full of rainbows. All of them were bathed in the multicolored light. It made the Nartheby Sprite look even more alien.
Hantis shook her head. "No."
Then, the mirrored door swung open. They all stared at it. Even the Leewit stopped her whistling. Peering cautiously back at them was a wizened Sprite, a knife in his hand. He put his finger to his lips. Some gestures obviously crossed both species and time lines. He beckoned and said something.
"He'd come to cut us loose. He wants us to go with him," said the Leewit. "He has the hoist ready back in his master's chambers. He will help us to escape, he says."
"Something about this smells wrong to me," said Goth.
Pausert felt the same way. He remembered Hantis' klatha skills. "Is he telling the truth?"
Hantis nodded. "But you need to remember, Captain, that truth-hearing only extends to the limits of what the speaker knows. He might not be aware that he is lying. Some of the great truth-hearers of our history have been fooled thus."
"We better chance it anyway, Captain," said Vezzarn nervously. "We need to get out of here, before these folks see what the little Wisdom has done to their precious crystals. I reckon they're not going to be pleased."
The captain could see his point. Even if the Sprites of Castle Aloorn had been planning to kill them, they were going to be mad about the destruction the Leewit had wrought. They might as well go and find trouble as wait for it. And the Leewit was looking tired. "Come on, brat," he said, snagging her and hoisting her up onto his back.
"Don't need to be carried," she said, peevishly.
"But I need you to have lots of spare breath for whistling."
The Leewit thought about that. " 'Kay," she said and wrapped her arms around his neck.
The party walked towards the beckoning Sprite . . . and Pul paused. "Nanites," he growled. "He's been near Nanites."
Hantis stopped too. "Is he possessed?"
Pul sniffed. "No. He's just touched something that had their exudates on it. But there is a trace of Nanite in these corridors."
Pausert wasn't aware of the Nanite smell, but he could just rell that big vatch again, along with a feeling of being laughed at. "Even more reason to get out of here," he said. "Come on. Our guide is getting nervous."
They swung the door to click shut behind them. The Sprites were in for something of a shock when they opened their execution chamber. The destruction, and the absence of dead bodies, would give them something to think about. All the captain could hope was that it frightened them out of pursuit. Not that he was too sure where he was going, except that it should be somewhere else. Then, somehow, he must try to catch that wary vatch, get back to the Venture and back to their mission.
They went past numerous round d
oors. The passage was empty, which seemed a little odd, seeing that it was mid-afternoon. Perhaps the Sprites slept during the daytime. Hantis didn't, herself, but she had spent a lot of time among humans. The captain enquired about it, as they hurried after their scurrying guide.
Hantis shook her head. "It is a little odd. I'll ask our guide." She did so, in a quick exchange.
"He says they are at a council-of-war meeting. His master sent him to rescue us now as everyone would be there. He would have come earlier, otherwise."
They went up several spiral ramps, very steep and difficult to climb, and came at last to a larger round door, covered in ornate embossed-work—a pattern that looked like complex multipetaled flowers. Their guide touched one of these with a wide open palm.
"I wonder whose rooms these are? It's a pretty posh door," said the Leewit, who still had breath for talking. The captain would have asked too, except that his lungs were gasping from the climb.
"This . . . part . . . of the castle had been destroyed, in my day," said Hantis, trying to catch her breath. There was something reassuring about the fact that even the alien had found the climb hard going.
Inside, the room was still more ornate. In what Pausert was now beginning to realize was typical Sprite taste, there was a great deal of translucent and different colored glass. There was a table made of a thin section cut through an enormous amethyst crystal. It had been delicately fractured and the myriad cracks infiltrated with gold.
And, by the frantic wrinkling of Pul's nose, the place was rotten with the stench of Nanite.
"Whose chambers are these?" growled the grik-dog at the wizened little Sprite-servant.
The servitor looked puzzled. The grik-dog spoke again, but remembered this time to do so in the Sprite tongue.
The wizened little man drew himself up proudly, and answered.
"He says Lord Nalin, the advisor of young Lord Arvin. And he says we must go quickly. The hoist is through there. His master says we should head for Delaron."
Hantis, however, had stopped dead in her tracks. "You smell Nanites here, my Pul?"
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