The Practice Effect Part 20

If I were one of Shakespeare's characters I'd consider it worthwhile to die for a lady's virginity, he thought. Or at least her honor.

Dennis's shoulders sagged. Most of Shakespeare's characters had been poetic idiots. Even if he succeeded in striking down Kremer, it would only buy Linnora a respite. At the cost of his own life.

It wasn't worth it. Not when he might be able to get her out of here tomorrow if he were patient. He was willing to risk his life for her, but he would not throw it away uselessly.

There was the sound of ripping cloth.

He turned away so he wouldn't have to witness it. At least by forcing the guards to follow him, he could spare the girl an audience to her humiliation. He walked away quickly, shoulders hunched. The guards chuckled as they followed.

He got ten paces, then a hint of motion in the sky caught his eye.

Dennis stopped. He looked to the south.

Something in the southern sky was blocking a small patch of stars.

It moved in the night, faster than a cloud and more regular in outline, growing larger as it came closer. He squinted, but with his night vision ruined by the tower torches, he couldn't make it out.

Then a smile came unexpectedly. Could it be. . . ?

At the southern edge of the encampment there was a sudden outcry, then a clamor of anxious shouts. Men came running out of the barracks, struggling into armor as an alarm bell began to clang.

Out of the night gloom, into the light of the tower torches, a giant round shape suddenly loomed. It had two great eyes that s.h.i.+mmered and glared angrily. At the bottom of the huge, looming face was a great maw. A fire burned within.

"Ha-ha!" Dennis jumped and struck at the air with his fist. "Kremer didn't catch the others! They practiced it, and it flies! It really flies!"

A giant globe of fabric and hot air hissed and cobbed over the outer wall, slowly gaining alt.i.tude. In a wickerwork gondola below the globe, the dim shapes of his friends were vague shadows against the flames.

Still, something seemed to be wrong with the balloon. It wasn't rising as fast as Dennis would have hoped. And worse luck, it was headed right for Kremer's castle! It looked like it would barely clear the palace peak!

"Come on, guys," he muttered while his guards pointed fearfully, their eyes outlined white in fear. "Up! Rise up and get out of here!"

Dennis stared hard at the balloon, practicing it at climbing.

And it did seem to rise faster now, gaining slowly. Tiny faces peered from the gondola down into the courtyard below. A few soldiers threw spears and stones but none quite reached the majestic, silent craft.

Dennis turned to see how Kremer was taking this. It would be great for something to stick in the tyrant's imperturbable craw, The Baron had let go of Linnora, who huddled against the wall, rubbing her bruised arms and weeping silently.

But unlike his men, Kremer did not appear frightened at all.

Instead, a smile spread across his lips as he reached into his tunic.

"Oh," Dennis said, realizing. "Oh, no you don't, you son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h."

He hurriedly unraveled his waistband as his guards cowered underneath the glowering shadow of the balloon. There was a thumping sound as two bags of sand exploded into spray nearby, sending men fleeing.

Dennis's carefully selected stones popped into his hand. He ran toward the first parapet, stretching out his sash and praying he would be in time.

Kremer was savoring the moment, bless him, letting the crude aerostat approach as he fondled the Earthmade needler. Dennis measured out a length of waistband, dropped a stone into the fold, and began swinging the makes.h.i.+ft sling over his head.

Except for that evening at S.I.T., he hadn't used a sling much since his Boy Scout days. If only he had been able to practice!

Kremer raised the needler and languidly aimed it at the great balloon just as Dennis cast loose.

The stone struck a parapet spike just in front of the Baron and ricocheted noisily into the night. Kremer jumped back in surprise. He looked about for a second, then saw Dennis in the lighted courtyard below, struggling to ready another stone.

Kremer grinned and aimed downward, at the Earthman. Dennis knew, in that telescoped moment, that there wasn't time to get off another stone. He had barely begun his second swing when Kremer fired.

A hail of deadly slivers tore up the ground a few meters to Dennis's right. Dennis blinked in surprise as he found himself alive. The reason was readily apparent. A small storm of blond hair and fingernails had struck the Baron, spoiling his aim a second time.

A little amazed but not yet counting his luck, Dennis swung the sling, looking for a clear shot. But now Linnora was in the way. The Princess was all over her captor, struggling to take the handgun from him.

Dennis's arm was beginning to tire. If only she'd move aside now!

The balloon was directly overhead and moving fast. All the aeronauts needed was maybe another half minute to get away. . . .

Kremer got a grip on Linnora's arm and flung her down. There were scratch marks on his face, and at last he looked perturbed.

Kremer cast Dennis a look that seemed to say his turn would come, and he lifted the needler to bear on the balloon.

Dennis's guards must have caught on at last. He finished swinging even as he heard them running toward him. He felt a rightness as he let go of the second stone just in time.

The stone struck Kremer's left temple at the same moment as the balloon reached the zenith, and several hundred pounds of guard tackled Dennis from behind.

As the ground came up to meet him, Dennis thought, I've got to stop meeting people like this.

8 'Eurekaarrgh"

1.

It was getting monotonous, this waking up not knowing where you were, feeling like something dragged in from a refuse heap.

He could tell without even opening his eyes that he was back in the dungeon again. Sharp bits of straw stabbed his naked back, thwarted only where bandages covered his worst cuts and bruises.

Still, someone in authority apparently had decided to keep him alive for the present. That was something.

Strangely, in spite of the greater severity of his welts-and they seemed really to have worked him over this time- Dennis felt better than he had on the other occasions when he had been beaten up here on Tatir This time, at least, he had gotten his own licks in. The brief memory of Baron Kremer tipping over like a fallen tree seemed to lessen the pain.

He s.h.i.+vered and sat up slowly, wincing, and gingerly examined himself until he was fairly certain nothing had been permanently damaged.

Yet, he reminded himself.

From somewhere down the dank hallway he heard a faint "thunking" sound. . . like someone chopping something with a sharp object. Perhaps the headsman was practicing his ax.

Time pa.s.sed, measurable only by his spa.r.s.e meals, by his thoughts, and by punctuated screams from some poor devil down the hall.

Dennis pa.s.sed some of the time wondering at his bandages, which seemed never to need changing. They breathed easily, remained clean, and were comfortable to wear. Of course, he realized, they were probably well practiced. No doubt the baron gave his people free emergency care during peacetime so the medicinal supplies would be up to par when war came along. Here in the castle the dispensary would have dressings hundreds of years old.

It was a peculiar thought.

Bandages were among the things he would bring home to Earth if he ever got the chance-not gemstone tools, or works of art that would presumably only decay once they were released from the field of the Practice Effect, but things whose properties could be a.n.a.lyzed and then duplicated by the making wizards of Earth.

In the dark hours he made lists of things to take back. To help pa.s.s the time, he rehea.r.s.ed the report he would give to the dubious folks back home.

He concluded that even if he ever did escape this place, and somehow managed to fix the zievatron and get home, he had better bring back some pretty convincing novelties. Otherwise n.o.body would ever believe him.

They fed him a thin gruel at infrequent intervals. Dennis lost all track of time. For a day or so the screams from down the hall ceased.

Then some unfortunate new victim seemed to have been recruited to practice certain specialized tools.

Dennis tried to do anomaly calculations in his head. He brought up long-untended memories of home. He listened hard for anything to relieve the monotony.

Once he heard the jailers talking excitedly out in the corridor.

". . . first here, then high in the tower, then out in the yard, and now down here again! And n.o.body knows what it is!"

"It's a monster is what 'tis!" the other retorted. "It's the sp.a.w.n of that great demon who struck down the Baron four nights ago. I tell you it's unlucky to keep wizards and L'Toff under a roof! I can't wait 'til the Baron's recovered and makes a judgment. . . ."

The voices pa.s.sed down the hallway.

Dennis got up to grab the bars in his door's tiny window. "Guard!"

he called. "Guard! Did you say Kremer lives?"

The jailers had answered none of his questions before, but this pair sounded different. Perhaps they had just been rotated down to the dungeon.

They looked at each other in the flickering light from a wall cresset.

One of the jailers shrugged and gave Dennis a snaggle-toothed grin.

"Yeah, Wizard. No thanks to that demon you conjured up to drop rocks on his Lords.h.i.+p. Baron Kremer should be up an' aroun' in a few days. Til then Lord Hern's in charge."

Dennis nodded. So. He had figured that these cavemen never even invented the sling. It was a miracle they had bows and arrows.

Probably no one but Kremer himself knew exactly what Dennis had done.

Everyone else quite correctly blamed him for the Baron's condition, but for the wrong reason, thinking he had managed it by metaphysical means. They wouldn't do anything further to him until Kremer was ready to choose an appropriate fate himself.

Dennis didn't doubt it would include a protracted visit to the technicians down the hall.

He scratched his stubble and asked the guards if he could have a razor in order to shave.

They grinned at each other as if they had read his mind. "Naw, Wizard," the snaggle-toothed one said, grinning. "Even Lord Hern don't forgive incomp'tents who let a prisoner take the easy way out."

The other jailer smiled. 'Tell ya' what, though. We'll letcha have some brandy"-he said the word with hushed reverence- "if you'll promise to keep us safe from those devil-sp.a.w.ned critters you've let loose around here. I got a friend on the still detail, an' he sneaks me some." He held up a flask that sloshed.

Dennis shrugged as the man poured a cupful and pa.s.sed it between the bars. He hadn't the slightest idea what the fellow was talking about. Devil-sp.a.w.ned? Critters? It sounded like a load of superst.i.tious nonsense.

He took a swallow of the wonderfully vile liquor. After the fire had settled warmly into his stomach, he asked the guards about Arth.

They told him the little thief had been placed in charge of the distillery. Dennis suspected Arth had actually bribed the guard to pa.s.s the entire flask on to him.

Another swallow of the horrible stuff made him cough. But he swore he'd make it up to Arth someday.

The jailers knew nothing of Linnora. Mention of the L'Toff Princess made them nervous. They made small warding motions with their hands and claimed pressing duties elsewhere.

Dennis sighed and returned to the straw pallet. At least the spot where he lay was getting slowly more comfortable. It had to.

He tried practicing a small stone into a chisel, to pry apart the stones of his cell. But he knew he was really only practicing the dungeon itself. The pebble wasn't anywhere near as good at chiseling as the wall was at being a wall. No doubt it was an old story on this world. Unless he came up with something unusual, a prisoner was stalemated.

2 He awakened suddenly from a dream about monsters.

There was a feathery touch of vague horror to the images that clung to Dennis's mind as he blinked in the darkness. . . scrabbling shapes and sharp, ominous claws. For a long time after waking, he felt filled with a heavy lethargy.

In the dark silence he thought he heard something. Then, for a time, he dismissed the faint scratching sound as a lingering remnant of his nightmare.

Then it changed and became a soft hissing.

Dennis shook his head to free it of mental cobwebs. He turned in the gloom and then blinked. A fiery spark had appeared at one corner of the door to his cell, a bright speck in the almost total blackness.

The spark climbed slowly, leaving a glowing line behind it, until it reached a height of about two feet. Then the hot glow jogged right.

Faint light from the hallway shone through the charred trail the flame left behind.

Dennis backed away, suddenly remembering what the jailers had said about "devil-sp.a.w.ned critters" loose in the castle. They had blamed him, but Dennis knew he had nothing to do with demons.

Something was cutting its way into the cell, and it was not of his liking!

The burned trail turned another right angle, descending at an even pace toward the floor. Dennis clutched his sharpened stone as the wooden segment finally fell away, leaving an opening in the door just above the floor.

Dennis tried to call out, to summon the guards-anybody- but he couldn't find his voice.

For a moment the new opening was dark and empty. Then -two gleaming red eyes appeared in the smoking opening- eyes larger than ought to belong to any living thing. They shone at him in the dimness for several heartbeats.

Then the thing that owned them moved slowly forward into the cell.

In his half-starved condition, with the catalepsy of sleep still in his muscles, Dennis felt far from ready for a fight. Against his will he closed his eyes, holding his breath as the softly chittering monster approached.

Then it stopped. He could sense it poised only a few feet away, muttering slowly to itself.

Dennis waited. Then his lungs started to burn. He couldn't hold his breath any longer. He opened one eye to look, ready for anything. . .