The party gathered on the disk, and the conjurer lifted it, using his small icon-disk. The power for this came from the Cyng of Pwer, who drew it from the Modes and sent it out to be used as needed. The magic was used only to control it; the power itself was physical, like the things grown and made by the peasants.
They floated to the next village, where they repeated the process. This time Koren was not stiff but was afraid when he embraced her, and familiarity did not seem to make her more comfortable with the process. She looked less beautiful than before, even when most of her joy had been restored. Something new and awful had been introduced to her experience. She was coming to understand why her husband believed that love and marriage were incompatible, with a Cyng of Hlahtar.
They served ten villages on this tour, catching up on those that most needed joy. In a few days there would be another tour, to other villages. The process was continuous, for by the time every village had been served, the first village needed to be served again. The break Darius had taken had allowed many villages to get behind, and a faster schedule would be necessary to restore them.
At last they floated home. Now Darius spoke to Koren. “This is what your husband seeks to spare you. You have lost only about a tenth of your joy this day, but before you can recover that, there will be another tour, and another. In two years, perhaps less, you will be depleted to the extent that it is no longer safe to draw from you, and you will have to be set aside for a fresher woman. Of course I hope to return long before that time, and resume the post. But your love will be better if you become his love-servant instead, for that period.”
She stared back at him with hopeless hate. Yes, now she understood. How much better for her to hate Darius than to hate her husband!
His thoughts turned to Colene. She, too, did not understand. She thought love could conquer all. She had been angry when he saw the impossibility of marrying her. Had the transfer of joy been possible in her Mode, he could have demonstrated; then she would have known. As Koren now knew.
THE Chip was ready. It would institute the Virtual Mode. “Now you must understand the deviousness of this process,” the Cyng of Pwer said. “It seems that we are sending out several lines of force, and that those lines will anchor in several other Modes, and fix in place the Virtual Mode. One anchor is here, and another should be at the site of the girl you encountered—but only if she catches onto it. If she does not, some other person may do so, fixing the Mode, but your girl will not be in that Mode.”
“Colene may not be there?” Darius asked, appalled.
“We can send the line past her, but we can not make her take it. You can judge better than I how likely she is to take it.”
“She has to take it!” But there was a troubling doubt there.
“And if she does take it, that anchors only two points. Three more are required, because—”
“Because it takes five points to fix a four-dimensional Mode,” Darius said.
“Ah, I see you understand! But we have no control at all over those remaining three. They can be anywhere, and the Virtual Mode may be strange indeed.”
“At least they will all be human.”
Pwer frowned. “Not necessarily. I have made the setting sapience rather than humanity. Humanity can include anything from our level to complete primitives. With sapience, at least there will in all cases be minds to which you can relate. We hope they will be human.”
Darius hoped so too! “I am ready,” he said. He had a new pack of supplies, and this time he had something he had not thought to take before: a weapon. It was a primitive sword, which did not require any spell for its effect. It had a sharp point and a sharp edge. He was not proficient in its use, but was satisfied that it would be effective against either animals or unarmed attackers, such as the young men who had attacked him without provocation in Colene’s Mode. He also had primitive tools for cutting wood, breaking stone, or making fire. In fact, he had the little box of “matches” Colene had given him. One thing he had learned: not to depend on magic in that realm!
“I hope to return soon,” he said. “But if I do not, I thank you for enabling me to make this quest.”
“This time I can not bring you back by orienting on a signal key,” Pwer reminded him grimly. “You must return by yourself. If you do not return soon, you will gradually lose contact, until finally you will be unable. Do not leave any of your things behind; only you can carry them across the boundaries of the Modes. The Virtual Mode will remain anchored until you come here and touch the anchor place and will it to let go. The Mode exists on its own; we are merely catching an aspect of it and fixing it in place for a time.”
“Fix it now,” Darius said, stepping into the marked circle. Pwer was full of cautions, but not all of what he said was believable.
The Cyng of Pwer nodded. He lifted his hand, invoking the necessary spell.
Something changed.
CHAPTER 5—SEQIRO
COLENE remained in a daze. He had been right! Darius really was from a far Kingdom of Laughter where magic worked. She had not believed, and so had thrown away her chance for happiness.
Yet he had changed his mind too. He had thought she was full of joy, and had recoiled when she told him the truth. He had wanted only one thing from her, and that had been not her body but her happiness. She had been happy with him; without him she was the same old suicidal shell.
Now she was paging through her Journal, which she kept under lock and key here in Dogwood Bumshed, trying to distract her mind from her present distress by contemplating her past distress. She called it a Journal and not a diary, because “diary” sound like “diarrhea” and she was not about to put her sanitary thoughts in an unsanitary place like that. She made her entries in the form of letters to her friend Maresy, who was actually an imaginary horse. Colene had never had a horse, but always wanted one, not just to ride, but to be her understanding companion. People were not necessarily fit to understand, but Maresy had more than human fathoming. Maresy was a most unusual animal.
TO: Maresy Doats North Forty Pasture Summerland, OK 73500
Dear Maresy,
My friend Eney Locke did the craziest thing last night! She was at this party, and she wandered out on a balcony and gazed down into the concrete alley one floor down, thinking her usual dark thoughts. A boy came out, someone she knew mostly casually, a decent type. He said, “Oh, are you looking for the way out?” and she said, “Yes, but it’s not far enough.” Then she realized that she had spoken aloud, and he realized that she was neither lost nor joking. He was appalled. “Eney—you mean you’re—?” he asked. And she, faced with this excellent chance to confess her secret and perhaps have some sympathy, blew it. “I was joking!” she snapped, and pushed on past him, back into the party where everyone was drunk and happy.
The key to this was that Colene spelled backwards was Eneloc, broken in two with letters added for camouflage: Eney Locke. She was talking about herself, but not directly, in case someone should get at her Journal before she had a chance to destroy it. She had the need to talk to someone, a desperate need, but obviously her parents were out, and she couldn’t afford to trust anyone she knew at school. Once she had made the mistake of trusting a friend at camp. Never again! But Maresy was the epitome of equine discretion, partly because she could not speak in any human language. That did not mean that Maresy could not communicate, just that it required special comprehension to know what was on her mind. A horse could say a lot just in the orientation of her ears.