Yaril giggled. “Yes, mama.” She got to her feet and walked with lazy grace out of the circle of firelight.
Danny Blue yawned. “Looks like Maksim’s made himself some friends.”
“You could try helping us a bit. I agree with Yaro; we’re bound to run into trouble; I’d like to know more about that and how you’re going to help deal with it.”
“That depends on the attack, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know, does it?”
“In a word, yes. Trouble, mmm. Maksim’s got earth and fire elementals tied to him and an assortment of demons. You’ve met some of those.” A quick grin. “Demons aren’t too, big a problem, you send them home if you know where home is and I know most of the realities Maksim located because Ahzurdan knew and I’ve got his memories.” A lazy stretch, a yawn.-Flip side.” When she raised her brows, not understanding, he murmured, “The good of having Ahzurdan in here. As opposed to the problems he causes.- He took a sip of the tea left in his mug, grimaced. “Stone cold.” He poured it out on the ground beside him and managed to squeeze another half mug from the teapot nestled next to the fire. “Which reminds me, one of the things Maksim might try is tipping the changers into another reality; it’s something I’d do if I could. If he managed that, he could really hurt our chances of surviving. Something else…” He gulped at the tea, closed his eyes as warmth spread through him. “It’s a plus and a minus for us, Ahzurdan might have told you this (I’m a little hazy here and there on my sires’ memories), the top rank sorcerors don’t often fight each other, no point and no profit. They tend to avoid taking hires that might oblige them to confront an equal. He’d argue this, but I don’t think Ahzurdan is one of them. Might be close but the impression I get is he lacked a certain stability.” His body jerked, he looked startled, then grim. He set the mug beside him with careful gentleness, pressed his lips together and slapped his hands repeatedly on his knee until the nagging itchy under-the-skin pains faded away. “He didn’t like that.” He finished off the tea, wiped his mouth. “Where was… yes. What I’m saying is, Settsimaksimin has never been in a war with someone as strong as him or close to it. We’ve both seen it, he doesn’t like to attack. He’ll make individual strikes, but he won’t keep up the pressure and I don’t believe it’s because he can’t. He’s a warm man, he likes people, he needs them around him and he’s generous, if I’m reading the Magic Man right. Aaah, yes, what I’m saying is his peers are all frogs in’their own ponds, they don’t want to share their how shall I say it? ahhh adulation. He’s like that in some senses, he wouldn’t tolerate anyone who pretended to equality with him, but he’s got friends in the lower ranks and among the scholars who don’t operate so much as study and teach, more of them than you might expect. Ahzurdan’s not typical of his ex-students either, poor old Magic Man (uhnn! there he goes again), but even he can’t hate the man. That’s one of his problems, shahhh! apparently it’s mine too. I’d say this, if we hurry him, don’t give him time to set himself, there’s that little hiccup between thought and act we could use to our advantage. No matter how he nerves himself, attack isn’t natural to him, his instinct is to defend. Which is a potent reason for making sure he doesn’t flip the changers off somewhere. Amortis wouldn’t have that drag on her, her instinct is stomp first then check out what’s smeared on her foot. He knows his limitations better than any outsider making funny guesses. He’ll use BinYAHtii to drive her against us. She’s afraid of you, Brann, you and the changers, and she loathes you and she loathes Maksim for con7 straining her, all that fear and rage is waiting to dump on you… ahh… us. With the changers we should be able to deflect it onto Maksim and let him worry about it. Without them… I don’t like to think of facing him without them.”
She bit into her lower lip, frowned at the fire a moment, looked up at him. “How do we stop it?”
Danny Blue unwrapped his legs and lay back on his blankets; he gazed up at the spearhead leaves fluttering over him, the patches of black sky he could see in openings between the branches. “I don’t know. I have to think. I might be able to block him if I have a few seconds warning. If the changers start feeling odd or if they see sign of Amortis, they should get to me fast.” He yawned. “Morning’s soon enough to tell them.”
“Why not now?”
He pushed up on his elbow, irritated. Her face was a pattern of black and red, he couldn’t read it, but when could he ever? “Because I don’t know what to say to them yet.” His irritation showed in his voice and that annoyed him more.
She got to her feet. “Then you’d better start your thinking, Danny Blue. I’ll be back in a little.” She walked into the darkness where Yaril had gone, a prowling cat of a woman radically unlike the changer, slender but there was bone in her and good firm muscle on that bone. He remembered her hands, wide strong working hands with their long thumbs and short tapering fingers, he remembered Ahzurdan looking at them disturbed by them because they represented everything he resented about her, her preference for low vulgar laboring men, her disdain for wellborn elegance, for the delicacy of mind and spirit that only generations of breeding could produce, her explosive rejection of almost everything he cherished, he remembered even more vividly the feel of those hands moving tantalizingly up Daniel’s arms, stirring the hairs, shooting heat into him. He pushed up, slipped his sandals off and set them beside his blankets, then stretched out on his back and laced his hands behind his head. “Yes,” he said aloud. “Thinking time.”
Toward the end of the third nightwatch six young men in their late teens slipped from the river and crept toward the redleaf grove. Jaril spotted them as he cat-walked in ragged circles about the camp. To make sure these young would-be assassins were all he had to worry about, he loped through one last circuit; reassured, he woke Yaril and left her to rouse the others while he shifted to his shimmerglobe. He considered a moment, but the impulse was impossible to resist; he’d wanted to try a certain repatterning technique since he’d sat on Daniel’s stunner and sucked in the knowledge of what it was. He made some swift alterations in one part of his being, suppressed the excited laughter stirring in him and went careening through the trees, a sphere of whitefire like a moontail with acromegaly. He hung over the youths long enough to let them get a good look at him, then he squirted force into his metaphorically rewired portion and sprayed them with his improvised stunbeam. He watched with satisfaction as they collapsed into the dust.
Yaril glimmersphere drifted up to him. *Nice. Show me. *
*It’s based on Daniel’s stunner. You do this. Then this. Right. One more twist. Good. That’s the pattern that does it. Remember, keep the lines rigid. Like that. And you cyst it. I didn’t at first and look what I’ve done to myself, that’s going to be sore. It gulps power, Yaro, but you don’t have to hold it more than a few,seconds.*
*Now we won’t have to depend so much on Danny Blue. I like that, I like it a lot.*
*Agreed.*
*Why didn’t you try it before?*
*No point. Besides, if Maksim knew about it too long before we got to him, he just might figure out a way of handling it. Remember what. Ahzurdan said, this is heartland for him, I don’t doubt he can overlook most of it easy as an ordinary man looks out his window. *
*Gotcha. Do you really think Maksim is going to try tipping us into another reality?*
*Brann does. Don’t you?*
*We’ll have to keep wide awake, Jay. When I leave this reality, I want it to be my idea and I don’t want to be dumped just anywhere. I want to go home.*
*Bramble’s next quest, reading Slya’s alleged mind?*
*If we can work it. Talk to you later. She’s coming.*
Brann walked into the pale grayish light they gave off, squatted beside one of the young men. She pushed her fingers under his jaw, smiled with satisfaction when she felt the strong pulse. “Good work, Jay. How long will they be out?”