"If they aren't moving, perhaps," Darius suggested. "If we all sit and wait for the end of the duels, not only will we be still, the rabble won't be watching us closely."
"Yes, that makes it feasible," Stave agreed.
"I can make four nothing illusions," Nona said. "But not while I'm animating a familiar at a distance. It is difficult to do more than one kind of magic at a time."
"Can you hold a familiar once you have tamed it?" Darius asked. "So you will not lose it while you do other magic?"
"Yes, I can do that. It is the taming, and the using of its senses, that require my full attention at first."
"Then our first step must be to find your familiar," Darius said. "What is there here that you can use?"
"I need some small creature who can travel readily without being noticed. I need to bring it to my hand, to tame it. But :l I have seen no small creatures here."
Darius realized that he hadn't either. Was it possible that only the human rabble had come here?
There does seem to be only one variety of life here, Seqiro thought. I have quested through minds, and though I can not read many, I can tell that all are human variants. Even the dragons have human intelligence, evincing their origin.
"What about plant life?" Darius asked. "There should be bees to attend to pollination, and other insects with it."
There is no plant life either. No insects.
"Then what are we eating? This is some kind of grain or tuber." Darius took another mouthful of the green glop.
That seems to be yeast or mold. A thing which grows in the dark, and has many varieties.
"Mold." Darius considered, and decided not to argue the case. It made sense; the absence of sunlight—or what passed for it in this reality—down here made such an alternative reasonable. But it did mean that there was no need for bees. That in turn left Nona without any suitable subject for a familiar.
There is small life, Seqiro thought. The children.
"The children!" Nona thought, appalled.
Darius tackled this. "We need something, and we are not going to hurt it. A child can go freely around, if it is old enough. Why not tame a child?"
"Because it has never been done!" Nona protested.
"How do you know what the despots do?"
She took further stock. "I don't," she admitted. "Maybe they do use children. I suppose it is possible."
"I think it is necessary," Stave agreed. "Is there a suitable child we can borrow?"
Yes. There is one unattached, watching the duels. I shall see if I can get into his mind.
"But he can't just walk up to Nona," Darius pointed out. "The others would realize that something is going on."
"I can craft an illusion of nothing around him," Nona said. "But he will have to be quiet, and not speak, because the illusion of silence is a different magic."
I can cause him to be quiet.
In a short while the horse succeeded in getting into the child's mind. Darius did not see the child, because he did not look; he did not want to give away what they were doing. Nona looked only enough to craft her illusion of nothingness.
They continued eating, which took extra time because they were feeding their opponents too. There was a certain camaraderie between each person and the opposite. Null-Colene expressed great appreciation for Darius' help, and never asked him to free her, and continued to look amazingly winsome despite her long bondage. It did make him want to pat her on the head and breed with her. He was sure Stave was reacting similarly. Even Nona seemed to wish she weren't treating her opposite so crudely. A lot of interaction, acquaintaince-ship, and reconsideration could occur in a day and a night together. Friendship could develop, and desire, and guilt. It was perhaps well that the end of the duel was approaching. Darius wasn't sure how much more of Null-Colene's confined likeness he could take. The real Colene had some sharp edges that made her both difficult and intriguing. This one was merely intriguing. While Null-Nona differed from True-Nona in the absence of magic and her desire for breeding. That was surely ever more tempting for Stave.
Darius was not sure when the rabble boy arrived at Nona's dais, because even if he had looked he would not have seen him. His curiosity was considerable. So he worked out a ploy. "Rabble woman, are you ready to use the...?" he inquired delicately.
"Yes, thank you," she agreed.
So he walked to the rim, glancing innocently around and seeing everything including Nona caged and Null-Darius alone on the dais. Nona was looking out over the audience, her right hand slightly extended. "I wish I could see him!" Darius muttered in frustration.
As you wish. The figure of a child appeared in outline beside Nona. She was holding his hand, taming him as she had the bat when they had fled the despots on the surface. She was able to do two kinds of magic simultaneously now, perhaps because they related to the same subject, and he was close.
Darius picked up the pot and brought it back to Null-Colene. He had seen what he needed to; their plan was working. If they could get through the stages of it and maintain their freedom—
"You are very understanding," the rabble woman murmured.
He hadn't even been thinking of her as he automatically lifted her. She was giving him more credit than due, and that gave him another little twinge of guilt. "I have no bad feeling toward you," he said gruffly. "I merely can't afford to do what your people require."
"But it isn't a difficult way," she said. "You can have the whole of your time free, without working, if you just breed one of us at the start of each day. We will take good care of you. And at the end you may choose one of us to stay with, or depart, as you prefer. Can you blame us for wanting to enable some of our number to return to the surface?"
Darius thought of his similarly benign captivity in the reality of the DoOon, just before coming to the reality of Oria. There they had wanted new breeding stock too, though it had been Colene they had proposed to take it from. They had given him a position as a space captain, with three most attentive animal-headed personal servants. The luscious female, Pussy, had had the head of a cat and the body of a perfect woman. At first he had sought to dismiss her, but as he came to know her he had understood that Pussy was a fine person in her own right, a victim of the system. So it was now with Null-Colene.
"Are you able to assume the head of a cat?" he asked.
"A cat? That is a surface creature?"
"Yes." The rabble had lived so long down here without animals that they had forgotten they existed. "With whiskers, and a furry face, and large round eyes." He formed a mental picture, but it was of Pussy rather than an ordinary cat face.
The woman's face changed as he watched, assuming the likeness of Pussy. It wasn't really a cat face, but a human face highlighted by certain feline characteristics. Seqiro was guiding the image, so that she got it right. The body followed. Now it was as if Pussy were bound before him.
He kissed those feline lips. "That's perfect," he said.
She smiled. "It is the first time I have been kissed in this situation," she said, glancing down.
Darius was not given to blushing, but he felt the heat coming to his face. She was still on the pot!
"Oh, I envy your true love," she said. "You are a man like no other."
By the time he recovered normal color, the invisible boy was gone. Nona would let him return to visibility once he was away from this chamber, but would guide him to some suitable place for them to go.
But the period of the duel was ending. "Soon I will go, and you will have a new woman to oppose," Null-Pussy said wistfully. "I will not be allowed to be with you until all the other thousand have had their turns. I plead with you, Darius, I beg of you—"
"What would you have done had you succeeded in tying me?" he demanded.
"I would have raped you." She sighed. "You have made your point."
But Darius experienced yet another surge of guilt. He knew that he would not be able to endure a thousand days of this. He would soon be broken dow
n, and have to do what the rabble wanted. As the rabble surely knew, having had experience with prior captives. The whole point of this one, who was probably not even at her fertile time, might be merely to begin the process of breaking him down. Once he capitulated, they would match him with those who were ready to conceive by him. It was a practical system.
"The familiar has found an isolated chamber," Nona reported. "We must gather together before the duels end, or we will have to fight again before we can escape."
"None too soon!" Stave breathed. Darius knew exactly how he felt.
Null-Pussy gave him a direct glance. "I have one more ploy, handsome man. I have sharp cat ears now. I can hear you talking to yourself, and it is in no language I can fathom. But when you talk to me, I understand you perfectly, though you speak in that same language. You have the magic of mind-talk. "
She had missed her shot, but not by much. Darius did not answer.
"And you do not want others to know," Null-Pussy continued. "Breed with me, and I will keep your secret."
Darius shook his head. "I wish I could make that deal."
She bowed her head, and the tears flowed again. "I will keep your secret anyway."
That destroyed his remaining resistance. Darius took a step toward her.
You must not. Stave is ready to make the illusion of you.
Darius stopped. How close he had been to losing!
Now step quietly away.
He stepped to the side. He saw the image of himself still standing. But he could not see his true body at all; Nona had crafted her illusion of nothingness at the same time. It was as if his soul had left his body.
After a moment, the image-Darius turned and walked away from Null-Pussy. Darius, watching her from the side, saw her jaw clench. It had indeed been another ploy, complete with tears, and it had failed. She was calculating, not submissive. He was glad that he had seen that tiny signal; it made him fee! better. But he still wished he could have done what she wanted. She might be indistinguishable in her malleability from any of the other thousand, but she was quite a woman anyway.
He walked slowly and silently to the edge of the dais, and down the stepped tiers. No one saw him. This was amazing! The magic of illusion was a marvelous thing, especially when cleverly applied.
He saw Stave and Nona on their daises, and knew by the somewhat regular manner of their movements that they were illusions too. In fact, the movements of all three images were synchronous; Stave evidently could not handle individuality in multiple cases. But only someone watching all three with that in mind would catch on.
He crossed between his dais and that of the horse. He climbed. It remained eerie, moving invisibly while his apparent self waited behind. He was accustomed to his own magic, but the magic of others brought wonder.
He came to the top. Was this Seqiro, or merely his image?
I am real. Stave will not be able to maintain the images when we conjure away, so there is no point in making one for me. We will depart together.
Darius remembered the complication that had occurred when Nona's bat was out of Seqiro's mind range. Nona could reach farther than the horse could, for this was her reality. But her mind reach was limited to her familiar.
Then something else occurred to him. She had just made a child a familiar. Could she make a grown person a familiar too? If so, that might enable her to establish mind contact beyond Seqiro's range.
If she made me her familiar, we might have considerable range, Seqiro agreed. Now the others are coming close.
Soon they were all there, touching hands beside the horse. "The familiar is within your range?" Darius inquired.
Yes.
"Give me the image."
The picture of an empty chamber appeared in his mind. This was what the child was seeing. Nona was looking through his eyes, and Seqiro was relaying the image to Darius. Good enough.
Darius brought out his collection of icons: horse, woman, man, man, woman. He removed the last woman; that was Null-Colene. He held the others together in one hand and activated them. He fixed two positions in his mind, represented by two circles: here and there. Then he moved the handful from the first to the second.
There was the familiar wrenching. Their surroundings changed. And now they were all jammed together, in the manner of his handful of icons. Darius found himself plastered to Nona, both of them firm against Seqiro's solid side, with Stave on the horse's other side.
"You are the real Nona?" he inquired gravely after he uninvoked the icons.
She laughed. "I hope so. And this is Jud, my four-year-old familiar."
She turned, and there beside her was the boy, now visible. His eyes were big and not quite focused. Darius realized that he remained under control, which was perhaps just as well.
"Go find us another empty chamber," Nona told the child. "Up near the ceiling." The boy walked away.
"So we can conjure through to the central cavern," Darius said, making sure he had it straight.
"Yes. Before the rabble finds us here."
Indeed, now there was a commotion in the near distance. The abrupt disappearance of the four captives had alarmed the rabble. That was actually one real horse and three illusion figures, but the rabble would not know that.
"My opposite, who assumed several shapes, realized that I was using mind-talk," Darius said. "She said she would not tell, but probably she will. They will probably realize that we have a nonverbal way to communicate with each other."
They do. But it makes no difference. They regard us as magical creatures, and the more magic we show the better it pleases them, because of the potential for their offspring.
"But they will be more careful now."
"So we had better not get caught again," Stave said.
They are spreading out and checking every chamber. They are leaving one person to continue watching each chamber, so that we can not conjure past them.
"So there will be no place here for us," Darius said. "But how are we going to conjure through the wall to another chamber if Nona has no familiar there?"
I will have to find a mind, and we shall have to go blindly again.
Darius nodded. That was the necessity. But it was risky.
"He has found one," Nona announced.
That was good, because the sound of the search-pursuit was rapidly getting closer. They clustered together, and Darius reinvoked the icons. Seqiro gave him Nona's image, and he conjured them to the new chamber.
This was a tiny one, and it did feel high, which meant it was deeper in the planet. It might be one of the last the rabble would check. But the pursuit sounds remained. The rabble would not stop until every chamber was covered.
Little Jud stared at them placidly.
The sound of footsteps grew suddenly loud.
Stave stepped toward the door opening. "I will block the way," he said.
"No," Nona countered. "I can do it better." She stooped to pick up a pebble. She flipped it toward the doorway—and as it flew, it grew, until it landed crunchingly as a boulder. She had used her expansion magic.
"But I can help," Stave said. He concentrated, and a viciously fanged snake appeared on the boulder, facing outward. The rabble might have forgotten what animals were, but they would be wary of that one.
Still, Darius knew that neither stone nor illusion would hold the rabble back long. Even if they did, the group would remain trapped here, and have to make terms when they got hungry.
I have found a mind.
"Then I will move us across," Darius said. "Brace yourselves; we don't know what we'll find."
They braced themselves, and he invoked and moved the icons. There was the wrenching.
They landed, jumbled, in a cavern so awesomely large that it seemed like the surface. Darius did not know how to judge an internal distance like this, but guessed that it was perhaps a third of the planet's diameter across. The ceiling might well be the center of the planet.
They were on a slope that rose in
to a pointed mountain peak on one side, and into the great curved side of the chamber on the other sides. It seemed somehow familiar, as if he should recognize this vast domain, but somehow he didn't.
"The other side of the East Sea," Nona said.
That was it! This was the inside of the planet. The pointed mountain was the pointed depth of the sea at the base of the planet, viewed from within the planet. What an amazing perspective!
A sudden growl startled them into looking around. The mind we oriented on, Seqiro clarified.
It was a small dragon. Nona quickly scooped up a pebble and transformed it into stone ramparts that effectively barred the creature from charging them. But its growl had alerted larger dragons farther away. One of them launched into the air and flew toward the intruding group. It was so big that it might have been a creature of Jupiter, and it looked hungry.
"I fear this is not a suitable place for us," Darius said. The others nodded agreement.
"But if we go back—" Nona started.
"I think we shall have to come to terms with the rabble," Darius said. "What they want with us is not nearly as deadly as what these dragons want. They are not bad folk; they merely have a need they must pursue, and they are doing so in a manner that is ethical by the standards of their culture. If we negotiate again with them, they should do so in good faith."
Trite. They tried to deceive us, but only to facilitate their desire, not to harm us. They will honor whatever deal they make with us.
To that Nona could not object, though she did seem a trifle doubtful. Her objection to required breeding was more substantial than that of the males. But the approach of the dragon was persuasive.
They gathered into their tight group, and Nona found the mind of her familiar. The boy remained in the small chamber, gazing at the boulder that partially blocked the entrance.
Darius invoked his icons and conjured them back. They landed behind Jud, who heard them and turned to gaze solemnly at them, unsurprised.