Finally, Dennis reluctantly concluded the stories of origin were about as contradictory as they had once been on Earth. If there was some link between the two worlds, apparently it was lost in the past.
Dennis did note that some of the oldest legends—particularly those dealing with the so-called Old Belief—did speak of a great fall, in which enemies of mankind caused him to lose his powers over the animals and over life itself.
Stivyung knew about the tale because of his long association with the mysterious tribe, the L’Toff. It wasn’t much to go on. And perhaps it was just a fable, after all, like the stories Tomosh had told him about friendly dragons.
So Dennis pondered the problem alone. He scratched narrow lines of tensor calculus in his notebook in the twilight after supper. He hadn’t even begun to come up with a theory to explain the Practice Effect. But the mathematics helped to settle his mind.
He needed the focus of his science. From time to time he felt brief recurrences at that strange, lightheaded disorientation he had experienced upon first arriving at Zuslik and then again on his first day in the jailyard.
No author had ever mentioned, in all the fantasy novels he had read, how difficult it really was for a normal human being to adjust to finding himself, with his life in jeopardy, in a truly strange place.
Now that he was beginning to understand some of the rules, and especially now that he had comrades, he was sure he would be all right. But he still felt occasional chills when he thought about the weird situation he was in.
On his fourth evening in the camp, after he snuck past the inner post to walk in the dim twilight past the green shoots in the garden, Dennis heard soft music as he strolled.
The music was lovely. The anomaly calculation he had been working on unraveled like shreds of fog blown by a fresh breeze.
The sound came from above the far end of the prison yard. It was a high, clear, feminine voice, accompanied by some kind of harp. The instrument seemed to weep into the night, gently and with an electric poignancy. Dennis followed the music, entranced.
He came to the point where the new wall met the old. Two parapets above, strumming a pale, lutelike instrument, was the girl he had seen so briefly that night on the road, whom Stivyung Sigel had called Linnora—Princess of the L’Toff.
Sharp spiked wooden bars kept her imprisoned on her balcony. The gleaming rods reflected the moonlight almost as brightly as did the honey yellow of her hair. Dennis listened, entranced, though he couldn’t make out the words.
The lutelike instrument must have had generations of practice to achieve such power. Her voice filled him with wonder, though he could barely follow the accented words. The music seemed to draw him forward.
The girl stopped singing abruptly and turned. A dark figure had emerged from the dim doorway at the right end of the balcony. She stood and faced the intruder.
A tall, broad-shouldered man stepped out and bowed. If Dennis had not seen Stivyung Sigel only moments before, back at the prisoners’ shed, he would have sworn it was his friend up there, advancing on the slender Princess. The big man’s clothes were as fine as Linnora’s, though clearly made for rougher use. Dennis heard his deep voice but could make out no words.
The L’Toff Princess shook her head slowly. The man grew angry. He stepped toward her, shaking something in his hand. She retreated at first, but then stood her ground rather than suffer the indignity of backing against the wall.
Dennis’s heart beat faster. He had a wild thought to rush to her aid…as if she were anything to him but another of this world’s enigmas. Only the knowledge that it would be perfectly useless restrained him.
The. big man’s words grew imperious. He threatened the girl angrily. Then he threw something to the floor and swiveled about to leave the way he had come. The curtains blew in his wake.
Linnora looked after him for a time, then stooped to pick up what he had dropped. She walked through a small doorway at the left end of her balcony, leaving her instrument to shine alone in the moonlight.
Dennis stayed in the shadows by the wall, hoping she would return.
When she finally came back, though, he felt consternation, for she went to the bars of her parapet and looked down into the prison yard in his direction. She had a bundle in her hands, and cast about as if looking for something or someone in the darkness below.
Dennis couldn’t help himself. He stepped from the shadows into the pale moonlight. She looked directly at him and smiled faintly, as if she had expected him all along.
The Princess put her arm through the bars and threw the bundle. It sailed over the lower parapets, barely missing the bottom railing, and landed at his feet.
Dennis bent to pick up the torn remnant of one of his belt pouches, tied with a loop of string. Inside he found some of the things that had been taken from him. Several had been broken in clumsy efforts to find out how they worked. The crystal of his compass had been smashed, vials of medicine were spilled.
With the items was a note in flowing Coylian script. While the girl picked up her instrument and played softly, Dennis concentrated on what he had learned from Stivyung, and slowly read the message.
He is mystified. I could not tell him what these things are, even if I would. He has lost patience, and next will ask you himself. Tomorrow you are to be tortured to tell what you know. Especially about the terrible weapon that kills at a touch. If you are, indeed, an emissary from the realm of Lifemakers, flee now. And speak Linnora’s name aloud in the open hills.
There was a sweeping, cursive signature at the end. Dennis looked back up at her, his mind full of questions he could not ask and of sympathy and thanks he could not tell her.
The sad song ended. Linnora stood up. Lifting her hand once in farewell, she turned to go inside.
Dennis watched the breeze toss the curtains for long moments after that.
“Get up!” He shook Arth. Nearby, Stivyung Sigel was quietly awakening Gath, Mishwa Qan, and Perth, the other members of the escape committee.
“Wha, wha?” The little thief came erect swiftly, a sharpened piece of stone in his hand.
Arth claimed to have come from a long line of men who had served as bodyguards for Zuslik’s old dukes—before Kremer’s father had taken over the region in an act of treachery. The small man had a wiry strength that belied his size. He blinked for a moment, then nodded and got up, swiftly and silently.
The conspirators gathered by the stockade wall.
“We haven’t time to prepare any further,” he told them. “The moons have just set, and tonight’s the night.”
“But you said the saw wasn’t good enough yet!” Gath protested “And we had other things to get ready!”
Dennis shook his head. “It’s tonight or never. I can’t explain, but you’ll have to believe me. Arth, you’d better go steal the tools.”
The little thief grinned and sped off to the shed where the gardening tools were kept, not far from the lighted window of the guard shack. It wouldn’t take Arth long to swipe quietly a few items to use as weapons, should that become necessary. Dennis fervently hoped it wouldn’t.
“Give me the saw.”
Gath carefully handed over the onetime zipper. Dennis held it up to look at it. The teeth shone even here, and felt very sharp.
From his coveralls he took a spool of dental floss that, along with his toothbrush, had been in his pocket and not in his pack when he was captured. He tied two premeasured lengths firmly to the ends of the saw.