"Until I begin having children," she finished. There was the crux of it. When she began bearing babies, her magic would diminish, and her chance to find the Megaplayers would be gone. She had to find them now—and was not succeeding.
There had to be some way to reach them. Dancing wasn't enough; it only verified the presence of their lingering magic. But what else could she do?
There had to be a way! Tomorrow she would find it. Somehow. Her magic sense was tingling; she could not actually foresee the future, but she could tell when something important was about to happen.
THE day was much like the one when she and Stave had first come here, except that there was no storm forming in the distance. There were no other couples, but Cougar came along, as gladly as ever. The dog still seemed to hope that their control would snap, and they would get into a tangle of arms and legs that rolled helplessly down the hillside, leaving their clothing stranded at the top of the slope, as was reported to have happened on occasion to other couples.
She danced at the brink, taken by the glory of the ancient music, but still she could not reach the Players. Then something else came, something weird and wonderful and alarming. What could it be, if not the Players?
She broke step, retreating to make way. But she saw nothing. It must have been her own desire manifesting as a kind of illusion.
Exhilarated but disappointed, she turned to join Stave. She remained unwilling to admit it, but she enjoyed her sessions of pseudo-love with him as much as the dancing now. It would be so easy just to forget her destiny and take the safe way. In fact, recently he had been firmer about this than she; he did want her, but he wanted her destiny to be realized first. He did not want to divert her from it. That was part of what she had come to appreciate in him.
But he was gone. Perplexed she looked around—and spied him far to the side, with the dog. Cougar had run after something, evidently, and Stave had gone to investigate. They would return in a moment.
Then Nona felt something strange again. She heard the music, though she was not dancing. In fact it had not stopped; she had merely been distracted from it for a moment. The Megaplayers—could they be coming after all? She turned to face the cliff—and there was a shimmering there at the verge where she had just danced. She had tuned in to something!
Four figures appeared. They did not walk in from the land, or fly down from the sky, or climb up the cliff. They just were there, an instant after there had been nothing but her feeling. They must be the Players!.
But they were small—on her own scale, not giants who could wield the mighty stone instruments. There was a man, and an old woman, and a girl, and a horse. The man was looking down toward the sea, evidently appraising the monstrous dulcimer. The girl was looking right this way.
The man turned to look at Nona. So did the horse.
Then the girl's voice was in her mind. I am Colene.
I am Nona, she replied in her mind, amazed. What kind of magic was this?
Hello, Nona. We are friends. And the thought was so sincere that she believed it.
CHAPTER 2
COLENE
COLENE gazed at the young woman. She was lovely, in a red dress, no, a knee-length tunic, with thick black, no, dark brown hair. She was the anchor person, obviously. What a relief! Colene already knew this was a nice woman, because her mind was nice.
The language was unfamiliar, of course. But that didn't matter, with Seqiro's telepathic ability.
However, that did not necessarily mean that this reality was safe. They had to learn more about it, in a hurry. They had just escaped an awful situation in another reality, and had some real problems to work out between themselves, and some significant unwinding to do. New trouble was the last thing they needed—but they had to be prepared for it.
Nona reminded Colene of herself of a few weeks before. That was funny, because Colene was fourteen and Nona was evidently several years older. It was the naivete and hope and underlying desperation of her situation, all coming through as background emotion: Colene had been that way, and Nona was that way now. So it was as if the four of them were on a fantastic roller-coaster ride, without seat belts, hanging on as the ride became impossibly wild—and now suddenly a fifth passenger had dropped into the car.
Are you the Megaplayers? Nona asked.
The whats? What was this? Oh, Nona thought they were godlike figures, because of their sudden appearance from seemingly nowhere.
We are travelers. Colene clarified. Not gods. Just three people. A suicidal girl from a science world, a decent man from a magic world, and a woman who remembers the future and not the past. And a horse. He is Seqiro, and he is telepathic.
What?
He can read minds. That is how we're talking. We're bypassing language. That is, what I think is being translated into your language by your brain, and what you think is being rendered into my language. That's how it works.
This is amazing magic!
"I can remember it better if you speak aloud when possible," Provos remarked.
"And this is Provos," Colene said immediately, projecting the thought to Nona. Seqiro cooperated so well that it was just as if she herself were telepathic. But without the horse, it would not have been possible.
Nona faced the older woman. "Provos," she agreed.
"And Darius."
Nona faced the man. "Darius." She had no problem with speech; it was just that she spoke a different language.
Then Nona turned and gestured toward a man of about her own age who was approaching with a nondescript white dog with a yellow collar. His clothing was solid blue. "Stave," she said. She indicated the dog. "Cougar."
Then she faced the man and dog and spoke in her own language. Colene listened just enough to verify that it was completely alien, as she had expected, then tuned in on Nona's mind again.
"...and when I turned back, they appeared from nowhere," Colene translated. Seqiro could send to them all simultaneously, if Colene asked him to and focused on it, but this was easier now that the introductions had been made. "They say they are not the Megaplayers, and their size suggests that this is true. But they must have remarkable magic, because—" She hesitated, and Colene caught the fringe of a complex network of concerns.
Colene stopped translating, intent on the thought. There was danger of some kind, she realized, but she couldn't pick up its nature. Nona meant them no harm, but someone else might. Not Stave, not the dog, but someone.
"I think no one here can understand us," Colene said for herself. "Verbally, I mean. So we might as well talk freely. But someone else may. I'll ask as soon as she stops explaining to Stave."
Stave was looking duly amazed. Now Colene touched his mind. Hello, she thought.
His gaze shifted from Nona to Cotene. His jaw dropped. Mind-talk magic! he thought.
Nona evidently was telling him the same thing. No, she wasn't; she was saying that she was guessing about the visitors. Why was that, since Colene had explained about Seqiro's mental ability?
Then Nona paused, and Colene asked her: "What danger?"
Now it focused. Nona answered directly and silently, but Colene spoke the words again for the benefit of the others. "The despots rule here. They take whatever they want. I must take you to them, or my village will be punished. They will treat you well, until they know how they can use you. But you must not let them know about your mind-magic, for if they knew you could fathom their minds, they would kill you instantly."
There it was. "Why?"
"Because there is no magic of that nature here, and they will fear it. It is their great power of magic that enables them to hold us in thrall. They destroy any theow who evinces magic other than illusion." Theow was an obscure word meaning peon or peasant; Colene dredged it out of her memory because it fit. Nona's concept had nuances of servitude, poverty, and horror; it seemed that the common folk suffered here as they did elsewhere, while those in power exercised their prerogatives ruthlessly.
"But you have
magic," Colene said, reading this ability in Nona. There had been a time when she did not believe in magic, but she had experienced too many strange things recently to doubt it any longer. She had had no personal experience with it, but Darius was a magician in his home reality.
"I am the ninthborn of the ninth generation," Nona thought and Colene spoke. "I have the magic of the nines. I can conjure, float, attract, transform, and heal. But only my mother and Stave know, for it must be secret until I find the Megaplayers. The despots would kill me. They would know that I seek to overthrow them and restore grace to our world."
And so Nona had become an anchor: one of the five people who defined the slice of reality that crossed an infinite number of other realities, enabling them to travel to completely strange worlds. She had sought the Megaplayers and inadvertently tuned in on a Virtual Mode. She was surely a special person, with one terrific surprise coming.
But could Nona's access to the Virtual Mode help her solve the problem of her world? Perhaps only if the mystic folk she sought were on one of the realities this Mode crossed.
"What are we going to do?" Darius asked Provos in his own language. Colene picked up on it because Seqiro translated the thoughts to her mind.
"We visited the despots, where Queen Glomerula sought to seduce you and Knave Naylor sought to rape Colene," Provos replied promptly in the same language. She did not know more than a few words of Colene's language, but with Seqiro present it made no difference.
Colene jumped. She had not had a lot of experience with Provos, but understood that the woman remembered backwards: she knew her future but not her past. Suddenly Colene appreciated how useful an ability that could be.
"You seem very sure," Darius said wryly.
"I am. My memory is quick when we spend enough time in a single reality."
Do they succeed? she thought to Provos.
"No," But the woman smiled obliquely, almost before the question.
Colene was relieved. "Then let's go to the castle and get this over with," she said. "We'll be moving on through the Virtual Mode soon, but Nona deserves to know her role in this."
Darius was more cautious. "Why do we spend much time in this reality?" he asked Provos.
"Because we were blocked from the Virtual Mode." She had evidently waited before answering, considering the question.
"What?" Colene had jumped again.
Provos spoke, and Seqiro brought the meaning to her mind. "There is a magic spell which prevents us from passing back through the anchor. We think it is because of the animus."
"The what?"
"It becomes complicated to explain. You have done a better job of it."
Meaning that in due course Colene would figure it out herself and explain it to the others. Maybe that was best. Anyway, they could use some rest in a single universe before tackling the rigors of the Virtual Mode again. "So take us to the castle, Nona," she said.
"Maybe I should do it," Stave suggested, his thought similarly translated. "I have less to hide from the despots."
Nona considered. "Would you, Stave?" And from her came gratitude bordering on love.
Stave looked at her, startled. He had a similar feeling for her, but had not realized that it was so strongly returned. They had never been telepathically linked before.
"We will keep each other's secrets," Colene said.
They walked down the hill, away from the sea. The landscape was spread out before them: walled fields, patches of trees, a sprinkling of houses, and the escarpments leading up to the castle. Down in a hollow was a village, and now there was a path leading to it. It was quite pleasant, to Colene's taste.
Nona separated from the group and went toward the village, while Stave led the way in the other direction, toward the castle. There seemed to be no mechanized transport for theows, or any other kind; people walked. Yet the houses did not look primitive. Archaic, rustic, minimal, perhaps, but not the type she would have expected on a world without heavy transport.
"The despots use the horses," Stave explained, responding to her thought. "They control everything." Then he had another thought, which Seqiro duly transferred: "This mind-magic—the despots will guess, if I respond to your thoughts. I must say I know nothing of you, but led you here."
"That is true," Colene agreed. "You do know nothing of us, and are leading us there."
He smiled. "But I hope to learn more, if we meet again."
Colene glanced at Provos. "Some of us spent much time with him, and liked him well," the older woman said. "Perhaps too well. He is much a man."
That future memory was unnerving at times! But also frustrating. How were they going to experience Stave's manliness? "Then maybe I should explain a bit more to you," Colene said to him. "We are from another reality. The world you know is only one of many."
"Of course," he agreed. "The despots try to hide the information from us, but we know that there are worlds beyond counting, if only we were allowed to walk to them. But the despots control the filaments, so we can not."
These folk knew of alternate realities? That was surprising. And what did he mean by filaments? So she sought a clarification of his concept of worlds—and got only a mental picture of planets strung together like beads, the string between them winding in fancy patterns. Obviously not the same thing. Primitive mythology, perhaps.
"You do not understand?" Stave asked, picking up her return thought. "How can you not, since you come from another world?"
"My world is the same as yours, only not the same," she said. "It is in a different plane of reality. So it has different people, and maybe different geography, and different laws of nature, but it is not removed in space or time from yours, exactly. We have established a Virtual Mode, with Nona as an anchor person."
He shook his head. "That is beyond my understanding!"
"Just as your concept is beyond mine," she said. "Later on we'll get together and hassle this out. For now, just accept the fact that we are stranger to you than we look. We'll just follow you up to the castle, and you do your duty and turn us in, and go away. We'll get in touch with you later."
Stave wasn't satisfied with that. "The despots may mean you ill. They treat everyone with contempt. Do not trust them."
"We don't," she assured him. "We can read their minds."
Only if they allow it, Seqiro reminded her.
Oops! She had become so accustomed to the free expression among the four of them—herself, Darius, Provos, and Seqiro—that she had forgotten this was because they were all willing. A person could close his mind, if he knew how, and strangers tended to be closed anyway, because they were apt to be suspicious or hostile.
"But they will want to communicate with us, to question us," Darius said. "Therefore they will open their minds as we become responsive."
She nodded. That made sense. "But how do they treat horses?" she asked Stave.
"Well, if they are docile. But once they take your horse, they will not give him back unless you satisfy them that you are despots from another center."
"Another center?" Darius asked.
"There are hundreds of despot territories, all across the planet," Stave explained. "All oppress their theows similarly, and though they may contest with each other for dominance, they are united against theows. Only a despot has any rights, in his home territory or when traveling through others."
Colene patted Seqiro on the shoulder. "They will not take this horse." Nevertheless, she suffered a qualm. She had had some experience with a despotic regime.
Provos laughed. "They try!" she said.
"Do they take Seqiro?" Darius asked Provos.
Colene had not gotten used to the business of Provos sometimes answering questions before they were asked, but it made sense in her terms.
"Yes," Provos said. "All seven."
"So we will escape as a group," Darius said. "But not through the anchor. But do we get through the anchor eventually?" This was the question Provos had just answered.
"So we'll just have to play it through," Colene said. Given the assurance that they would get away, she preferred to avoid further confusing hints of the future. What was this "seven" business? Only five could use an anchor. It was complicated for any others.
A blackbird flew toward them. "Stop talking," Stave said quickly. "The minions of the despots can hear and comprehend, and if they think we understand each other, there will be much mischief. Pretend I have tricked you into following."
Colene liked the way his mind worked. He might be a peasant, but he was no fool.
The blackbird circled them, then flew on toward the castle ahead. "They can see things from a distance," Stave murmured almost inaudibly; the telepathy carried his thought. "But they usually need a familiar to hear. They have surely seen us coming from afar."
They came to the castle. It had seemed small from across the valley, but it had grown inversely as the distance diminished, and now was huge. In fact it seemed more like a massively walled city, with the turrets of many buildings within its compound. Colene realized that either the theows had to work here in great numbers, or there were many more people in the ruling class than she had thought.
Stave approached the guard at the gate, a man in a black tunic who carried a formidable sword. "I found these three people and their horse near the sea," he explained. "I brought them here to you, as is proper. They don't seem to speak our language."
Before the guard could answer, the castle gate opened. A grim contingent of interior guards marched out. They approached the party, orienting on Stave. "What is this, theow?" the head guard demanded. Seqiro picked up the thought from Stave's mind; the guards were hostile, so their minds were closed.
"I found them in the countryside," Stave replied. "They are strangers, so I signaled them to follow me, and they did. I thought the despots would want to see them."
The guard faced Darius. "Who are you?" he snapped. Again, the message was from Stave's mind.
Darius looked blank. "Are you speaking to me?" he inquired in his own language, which Colene could not understand; this time it was Darius' thought Seqiro relayed.