Reluctantly, the smallest female jumped down from her console and came to take her place with the rest of the Per-vect Ten standing around the table. They joined hands.
"Shouldn't we lock the door?" Nedira asked.
"Why?" Charilor asked with a smirk. "No Wuhs would ever come in here unless we invited them. Besides, they'd be incinerated if they walked through our security spell."
"Reach for the line of force," Monishone instructed them. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back. "Draw all the power inside the circle."
"For these?" Niki scoffed. "We don't need all of it."
One hot yellow eye opened and glared at her. "It's a comprehensive spell, you mechanical imbecile! It depends on forming an atmosphere of power. We have to place all of the component spells in a cascade, and the structure can't exist outside of the circle!" "How'd you do it, then?"
Monishone glared at her. "One pair of goggles at a time!"
"Oh," Niki yawned. She rolled her eyes. "All right."
"Shut up, then. Bring in all the power."
The major force lines that ran through Pareley didn't go underneath the castle, something that had proved to Vergetta that the Wuhses didn't know a damned thing about magik, which was all right, since they had little aptitude for it, anyhow. The closest one, a weak arrow, lay on the other side of the moat. A much stronger sky line, lying at perpendicular angles to the first was just a little farther away. In their minds they glowed soft green and bright yellow. Slowly, but with gathering intensity, the circle bounded by their arms and bodies filled with light. Their shadows, knife edged, crept up the walls until ten black shadows loomed over them like giants watching from the sidelines.
It had been by accident a few years ago that they had learned they could unite their talents. It happened in the middle of an end-of -year bargain sale, when all of them had been trying to get the only bronze alembic left in a bin. Vergetta had first tried to use main strength to toss her rivals out of the way. They hung on. Then, she started using magik, first subtly, then with all of her powers, dragging everything she could out of the local line of power. So had the other nine females all reaching for the same thing. To Vergetta's surprise, they all seemed to be evenly matched, from the muscular young woman at her side to the minute tot across the circle. But Vergetta had been determined not to let go of the alembic—it was 70 percent off! She pushed, they pushed; she pulled, they pulled. When the dust settled, they were all sitting on the floor, or what was left of it. The store walls had been blown down. All the other customers had been thrown hundreds of yards away in every direction, and the merchandise had exploded into its component ions, except for the alembic, which sat in the center of the circle shining like an atomic pile. There was nothing left for Ver- getta to do but figure out a way to kill them all, or form an alliance to make use of the hundredfold magikal force the ten of them could raise. Being Pervects, they'd gone into business together. Even so, there were times when she still thought about killing all of the others.
"This is so camp," Caitlin whined.
"Shut up, gearhead," Tenobia snapped.
"Right," Monishone declared. At her nod the box opened and the goggles danced out into the air. The frames were blue or red or silver, and the lenses glimmered with all the colors of the rainbow. "The frames control the spell, and the lenses are like magik mirrors. With our combined will we can do all of them at once."
Like veils of color, the individual spells poured out of Monishone's fingertips. Each of them grabbed hold of an edge of each veil and stretched it out so that it covered all the hovering pairs of spectacles. The first, gleaming silver, was the master enchantment that held all the others together. Vergetta was impressed at the complexity of the structure Monishone put together. The girl was a master wizard. She was a credit to her parents, Perv, and the Ten. It troubled her a little that they were putting so much masterwork into trinkets, but it took a lot of pebbles to make a mountain. They needed the money. Some day they were going to sponsor her to research some wizardry that was really worthwhile.
Tiny threads of color began to embroider scrolls and books on the stuff of the spelclass="underline" the stories going into the framework. Sparkles of gold energy twinkled in the light, sinking into the frames and making them glow.
"Ash-shoo!" Caitlin exploded, and started to pull her hand loose to wipe her nose.
"Don't let down the barriers!" Monishone warned.
"Here, sweetie," Nedira offered, floating a handkerchief out of her pocket and sending it across the circle to the little girl. Caitlin obediently put her face forward and blew her nose resoundingly in the white square. "Ugh," Loorna grunted with a grimace. "Don't let that get into the spell."
Caitlin crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue at the acquisitions manager.
"More power!" Monishone cried.
EIGHT
"It looks like a trap!"
—F. BUCK
"What happened?" Tananda whispered, gripping my collar. I clawed at the air, trying to get back on the ceiling with her.
"I don't know," I whispered back. I glanced down. It was a good thirty foot drop to the floor, and my magik had deserted me. I felt desperately for the lines of force I'd just been using, but they were drained. What spell needed that kind of power expenditure? I began to believe in the Wuhses' tale of the Pervect's quest for interdimensional conquest.
Tananda, maintaining her hold on the ceiling with an Assassin's trick that didn't rely upon lines of force, crept backwards, swinging me by my collar, until I was over the fireplace at one end of the big, dark room. Gently, she stretched down until my feet touched the mantelpiece. I heard a tiny "clink." I froze, hoping the Pervects in the room ahead hadn't heard it. Ten of them! I wasn't a coward, but I started to realize what a huge mess I had gotten dawn. I started up at the sight of the dark circles under her lovely eyes, but she signaled me to lie down. "I got them to agree to fifteen hundred gold pieces, but Wensley had to let them take their turns with the D-hopper," she said, wearily. "I could have gotten more if you had let me negotiate before you said you'd take the job, but as you have pointed out ad nauseam, we really don't need the money. I'm going to bed. Please don't wake me for breakfast."
When we left for the castle about noon, I had left Gleep guarding Bunny's door, to make sure no one bothered her. I asked him to make sure, even if we didn't come back, he would keep her safe. He promised, and laid his head on my foot with worry in his big blue eyes. Zol also remained behind at the inn, getting more information from our hosts, who also looked somewhat worn out... but whether from the all-night speeches or negotiations with Bunny I wasn't sure. Tananda and I had assumed the images of a couple of Wuhs housekeepers, trudging along in line with the others to begin their cleaning shift.
Once inside the real Wuhses went to work, while Tananda and I dropped the disguises and crept off in the direction of the Pervect Ten's wing of the castle.
I had to admit I couldn't see much evidence of the endless greed Wensley and the others had told us about—I mean, more than usual. Aahz, my best example for how Pervects behaved, had always felt there were two kinds of wealth in the world: his, and that which wasn't his yet. Still, Tananda and I poked through the ten suites the Pervects had claimed for their own. The furnishings belonged to the castle. Little of the clothing in the presses seemed to have been made on Wuh: the Pervect Ten hadn't gone in much for the handmade fabrics and modest styles that were prevalent in this dimension. Far from it; a few of the outfits we found even made Tananda whistle in disbelief. And every room was relentlessly clean. The possessions that the Ten were supposed to have confiscated weren't among their personal goods. I found the dining room by smell. The aroma of Pervish cooking reminds passersby of a stableyard compost heap, only slightly more likely to linger in the nostrils. I could never stand watching Aahz or Pookie eat their hometown grub. I had been hungry in my day, but I could never picture a situation so desperate I wouldn't rather risk starvation than eat Pervish food. Our eyes watered painfully at the stench, but we went in, anyhow.