"Gaaa-uuuuh," I said.
Bunny gave me a funny look. "Skeeve, are you all right?"
"Igggaaaah," I stated a little more clearly, feeling my stomach rebel against the intruder, which seemed to have extended a pseudopod to explore my intestines. My abdomen contracted, pushing everything upward.
"Hoogh."
If I was lucky I might be able to run to the garbage heap outside the kitchen door before the morsel made its reappearance.
"Sguusme."
I sprang to my feet.
The next thing I knew, I was lying on my back, with the flickering flames of the dangling chandelier shooting around my vision like fireworks. The pain in my stomach was terrible. I thought my innards were ready to explode. I was about to die of Pervish cooking. I shut my eyes. Not like this, I prayed. Not like this.
"Clear!" Tolk's voice came. I opened my eyes in time to see the Canidian falling towards me, paws first. I goggled, and tried to roll away.
"Don't move!" Bunny commanded, grabbing my head. "You got a taste of your own medicine. Tolk's fixing it."
The canine landed on my belly with his weight on all four paws. I bent in the middle. The purple thing went flying out of my mouth. Pologne caught it neatly in one hand.
"A perfectly good smushlik, ruined," she said mournfully. "My mother would be heartbroken."
"Do you feel all right now?" Tolk asked, helping me to sit up.
The truth was, I did feel better. I should have been bruised from having him leap on me, but I felt a sensation of well-being radiating from my stomach.
"What did you do?" I asked.
"Dogtor magik," Tolk said modestly. "I'm a healer. That's my talent."
"That's great," I said as the others helped me to my feet. "Thank you. That food, er, just went down the wrong way."
He peered at me. "You shouldn't eat anything else this evening. You've had enough solids," he advised. "Tea, maybe."
"I'll make him some." Bunny bustled away to fill the kettle.
The others were gathered around me, most of them looking worried. "Are you sure you're all right, sir?" Bee asked.
"Yeah," Freezia added. "I hope you're not going to drop dead. I don't look forward to trying to negotiate a refund out of your business manager."
"Thanks for your concern," I said dryly. "I'm fine. Tolk was right. I just—overate."
"More than the rest of us did," Jinetta said.
"It was to make a point. Did I get it across?" I asked.
"We don't have to be led from A to B," Pologne said. "Yes, we get it. There's no one single solution to a problem."
"That's right. You all handled it in different ways," I said. "Isn't it best to choose the most expedient and practical way of getting a job done?"
"Hold on," Freezia said, flinging up her hands. "Maybe you were right once. I'm still not going to concede Professor Maguffin's method is wrong."
"Nor am I," Jinetta added. Pologne nodded her agreement.
"Okay," I sighed. "I'm not here to shoot him down. I'm just telling you what has worked for me in the real world. That's why you came here, isn't it?"
"Well, yes," Jinetta admitted.
"That's fine," I said. "For now, we'll agree to disagree."
"Say, I'm hungry," Pologne announced suddenly. "Anyone up for a snack? I know where I can get the best iodine sundaes on Perv."
Chapter Ten
"It's gonna cost you." ANY SURGEON, TECH REP OR AUTO MECHANIC
A vein popped out on Bee's forehead as he strained to concentrate.
"Lift the feather," I ordered. "Levitation is not that hard. If I could learn to do it, anyone can."
The next day I had decided to do something about the wide gap in expertise between the students. Melvine and the Pervects had had basic training before they finished cutting their teeth—well, before Melvine had, anyhow. I believed that the Pervects were born with all their teeth. Bee's instruction had come from his village hedge-wizard and whatever the Possiltum Army's library of scrolls had stashed in between nudie pinups and manuals on how to strip down and repair crossbows, plus what he'd picked up from Massha. I could tell, that except for his handful of homegrown spells, all his progress in magik could be attributed to the latter.
"Good try," Bunny said encouragingly. She sat polishing her nails on a down-stuffed cushion beneath a pavilion, and offering the occasional compliment to my apprentices. Gleep and Buttercup chased one another around the inn, offering a noisy distraction that I warned them all to ignore.
"Huh," Melvine grunted. He hovered in the trees, picking leaves off and tearing them to pieces without touching them. "What good is trying? Magik is about succeeding."
I glared at him. "Don't show off, Melvine. Couldn't you try to help?"
"Fine," he said. "Look, Klahd, just lift the feather. There's enough magik floating around here to raise the Titanic. Use some of it."
"But I don't know when I'm putting enough magik into it," Bee said.
"All right, let's add a wrinkle. We'll give you resistance to work against. It'll be good practical experience for both of you."
"It's not practical experience," Jinetta insisted. "These are just exercises. We used to do them all the time."
"Everything's practical. Bee, you push up on the feather. Jinetta, you push down."
"There's nothing to that," Jinetta said.
"Aha," I said, "but here's the catch: you can't push any harder than he does. He'll levitate it up to here," I held out a hand, "then you top it with your magik. Don't let him push it any farther. You can't let it go lower than the original level. If he lets it drop, that's his problem, but you can't push it down. See how much control you have."
Jinetta tittered. "That ought to be easy!"
But it wasn't, as I had reason to know. With endless power flowing into them, the girls were no more subtle than Melvine. They channeled whatever was in them. What they needed to learn was how to tighten the valve. The first time Jinetta pushed, the feather ended up embedded in a flagstone.
"Oops," she said.
"See what I mean?" I said. "Freezia, Pologne, I have an exercise for the two of you to work on while Jinetta helps Bee. I want you to work on storing up energy then releasing it—slowly!— until you get used to how much you can hold normally."
Pologne clicked her tongue.
"Why, when this place is full of lines of force? This is like Grand Perv Station!"
I eyed her sternly. "Assume that at any moment they could disappear, and then what?"
"Then Bee here wouldn't be able to lift his feather. Which he can't anyhow!"
"Hold on, someone's coming," Freezia announced. We all paused to listen. I couldn't hear anything, which wasn't
surprising. Pervect hearing was a dozen times keener than Klahdish.
"How far away are they?"
Pologne consulted a gold pendulum. "About a mile," she said. "You Klahds make more noise than a dragon in heat."
"Gleep!" protested my pet. Buttercup added a nicker in defense of his friend.
"Sorry," the Pervect said, holding out her hand to Gleep. "You would almost think that they could understand me."
I was unwilling to reveal Gleep's secret to anyone who hadn't saved my life at least ten times. "Well, at least he knows the word 'dragon.' Drop what you're doing, people. Put on a Klahdish disguise. Something believable," I said, halting Freezia, who had promptly transformed herself into a cow.
"Ugh!" Freezia exclaimed. "You soft-skinned are uglier than ten miles of bad road. At least that creature has an attractive pattern!"
"Fashion later," I said. "Security now."
Tolk came galloping back along the road. "A Klahd is coming this way!" he panted.