Fractal Mode

CHAPTER 1—NONA

THE child was clumsy and rebellious. This was the remedial class, and he had no taste or talent for music. He wanted to be outside playing tag-ball. Still, Nona had never expected him to bite her.

Music was fundamental to the culture of Oria, and every child had to learn at least one instrument. This one would never be proficient, but he had to master the basics, or suffer consequences. The teacher did not want to call on a despot for punitive magic, so she tried kindness first. She assigned the prettiest and most talented music assistant to this difficult case. “If you can’t do it, no one can, Ana,” she murmured. She used Nona’s pseudo name, not knowing her real one; only one other living person knew that. Well, perhaps another knew it, but that one would never tell.

Nona smiled. The boy was only nine, the required age for the onset of musical training, but even at that age they could be moved by an attractive woman. She was two months shy of her second nine, in the interim between the completion of her training and the onset of legal maturity. Everyone assumed that she would become a music teacher, but she had serious private doubts. She dared not express those doubts, for if the despots learned her secret they would destroy her.

She approached the boy. “Hello, Jick,” she said pleasantly. “Why did you choose to play the lute?”

“I didn’t,” he said. “I don’t want to. I hate it.”

So his parents had required him to use this instrument. It was not her place to second-guess them. “Well, perhaps you will like it better when you get to know it,” she said with careful cheer. “Let me help you get set.”

She set his left hand on the stem of the junior instrument, his fingers on the frets. She guided the other hand to the body of it. “You hold it before you, like this,” she explained, getting it into the right position for playing. “With this hand you pluck the strings, and with this one you adjust their tones. See, you can make several notes from a single string.” She pressed on his left forefinger with her right forefinger, on the string, to demonstrate the effect.

Instead of moving as she indicated, he jerked his head suddenly forward and bit her finger, hard.

Nona shrieked, wrenching her hand away. The flesh tore and blood welled out.

The headmaster appeared. He snapped his fingers. The pain abruptly abated—and the boy screamed. The man had performed an instant transfer spell, causing Jick to suffer Nona’s pain. There was a muffled titter from others in the class; they knew it served him right.

But in his agony, the boy threw down the lute, smashing it. Nona was busy inspecting her hand, trying to assess the damage, but she knew that this incident had already escalated dangerously. She was apt to get the blame for letting it happen.

“Go home and have your mother tend that,” the headmaster said with a deceptively gentle voice. “I’ll deal with this.” His expression turned ugly as he faced the boy.

Then Nona knew that the man had been watching, probably by means of an illusion in another room, and knew exactly what had happened. He was technically a theow, but had a despot ancestor, and so had more magic than was normal for a theow. That was why he was in charge of the school: he could enforce discipline. She put her finger to her mouth, licking off the blood, and hurried out, relieved.

As she walked down the road from the school, she concentrated on her injured finger. The pain was returning as she got out of range of the transfer spell, but she should be able to craft an illusion of healing that would help.

Under her gaze the torn flesh knitted itself back together, and the color became normal. The pain faded, and her finger looked whole. But of course that was only the way it seemed; the damage remained, under the spell. Only the despots could do the potent magic.

She walked on out of the village and up the path to her house, which was nestled a bit apart. At first she had not understood why, but later she had learned: it was because of the secret. Her folks had made this isolated house and moved here twenty years ago, in anticipation of her presence. Now she understood how wise a decision that had been.

Her mother was weeding beans in the garden beyond the house. Nona realized with a small shock that the woman looked old. She was in her fifties, having gotten Nona late, and now seemed to be aging more rapidly than she should. Nona felt a pang of guilt, suspecting why that would be. Stooped shoulders, gray hair, deep facial lines—yet the goodness of her shone through the fading shell of her body.

Nona hurried out to her. “A boy bit my finger,” she explained as she approached. “The headmaster sent me home to get it tended. I made a spell to hide it.”

The woman took the proffered hand. She touched the finger, and there was no pain. She had no magic of this sort, but much experience of the natural kind. “This one?” she inquired with a lift of one brow.

“Yes. He bit so hard he tore my flesh. The headmaster made a transfer spell, so the brat got the pain instead of me, but I still have the injury. I hope it won’t hurt my playing!”

“Child, this finger is not injured,” the woman said.

“I covered it with illusion,” Nona reminded her.

“I think you did more than that.”

Startled, Nona looked at her finger. She flexed it. There was no discomfort. She touched it with her other hand, and found no injury. She lifted her eyes to meet her mother’s gaze. “But—”

“I believe you,” her mother said. “You are maturing.”

Nona fell in beside her and helped pull weeds. They did not speak much, because it was never possible to be certain that a despot wasn’t magically listening, but they had long experience at communication with minimal speech.

Nona remembered how her magic had gradually come upon her. As a child she had learned to convert her pease porridge to sweet pudding, and thought that others did the same. Later she learned that their conversions were mere illusion, while hers were actual. Similarly, when she conjured a living bird to her hand, it was real, while others fashioned only the semblance.

Her mother had cautioned her to restrict herself to illusion whenever in company, and not to tell anyone of her abilities. This was because only the despots were supposed to practice significant magic, and a theow who did it would be in peril. The despots used magic to suppress the theows, and reacted fiercely to any conceivable challenge.

So it was that Nona had lived, if not a lie, a charade. She could do significant magic, but no one knew. No one except her mother. Not even her father, though perhaps he suspected.

Actually they were not her birth parents. They had somehow known that they would have a changeling, and had prepared for it. When their only baby was born, they had taken him out at night to the town meetinghouse and left him. Before dawn they had returned and taken the changeling: Nona.

Who were her natural parents? Nona did not know. But she did know this: she was the ninth born of the ninth generation. The ninth of the ninth. That was what accounted for her magic.

And she was the one who might have the power to rid fair Oria of the despots, according to the legend. If she could only discover how.

That was why she had had to be hidden. Had the despots known there was a ninth of a ninth, they would have razed whole villages to destroy that baby. So her natural parents had given away an early baby, hiding the fact that it had ever been born, in this manner reducing the count. Then when they birthed the ninth, it was reckoned as the eighth, and they did not have a ninth. That eighth was then exchanged for another, so that if the despots became suspicious, they could verify that there was no special magic in that boy. The magic was in the lost one, Nona. Nona, called Ana, so that the significance of her real name would not give her nature away. For her name meant “ninthborn.” The people did not know, but the body did; the magic was in her, and it was growing. To all others, she seemed to be the first and only child of her mother, who had had difficulties in her birthing and could not bear another. There was no magical threat in a firstborn theow, and little in a female, so her concealment was effective.

Now she had manifested another ability: healing. She had cured herself of a troublesome injury, without even realizing. Illusion could be marvelous, but in the end it was transitory. Real magic lasted. Her healing, supposedly a mask over injury, had eliminated the injury itself.

They came to the end of the row. “Come inside,” her mother said. “I will bandage your hand.”

Because they could not let it be known that the healing had taken place. After a week, yes, but not after a day. After less than an hour, actually.

Nona followed her mother to the house.

A week later the bandage was reduced to a thin wrapping around the finger, and that was masked by a spot illusion. Only those who actually touched her hand sensed the bandage. In a few more days she would remove that, and wear only a small scar—which would actually be illusion, because her finger had healed scarlessly.

The errant boy, Jick, had been severely disciplined. He now wore a muzzle. It would be long before he bit another person—and if he did, he might be subject to the discipline of the despots, who well might conjure away his teeth. Nona had been relieved of her assisting, not because they thought her injured or culpable, but because it was policy to let things settle after an incident.

She used the time to query her mother, when they could converse with minimal risk. Her father worked at the castle as a horse trainer, so was no problem in the day. It was not that he would willingly betray her secret, but that the despots could use their terrible magic to get anything from anyone who knew anything. Only complete lack of suspicion protected her. So she acted like a somewhat spoiled juvenile, sleeping late, until her mother hinted strenuously that she should help with the field-work. Then, grudgingly, she went out to tackle the relentless weeds beside her mother, and only then, their real purpose masked by the charade, did they talk. Even so, it was in interrupted segments, so that any magical eavesdropping would pick up only an innocuous fragment.

Nona would soon be eighteen. If she did not find out how to save Oria before then, she might not be able to thereafter. She was the only one of all the theows who could do it. This was her window of opportunity.

“But why not longer?” she asked.

Because, her mother clarified in snatches between weeds, a woman’s magic came to her through her ancestry, and departed through her babies. With each baby she had, she would lose part of her power, until the ninth would take the last of it, and she would be no more than an ordinary caretaker. In addition, she would have to care for the children, and that would anchor her to her house. She could not afford to marry, or if she did, she could not afford to have children.

“But I don’t want to anyway,” Nona protested. Indeed, whether because of her raising or her nature, she was appalled by the prospect of becoming a brood mare. Romance she could handle, but that notion stopped short of baby birthing.

Her mother only smiled sadly. Marriage and babies and deepening poverty were a theow woman’s destiny; everyone knew that. It was an aspect of the system. Only those who had significant magic lived well; the others got along as well as they could. Those who became too poor to sustain themselves, whether because of age or depletion, disappeared: the despots had little tolerance for burdens.

“But how?” she asked.

That was the key question. She had more or less understood the answers to the others, for they were common knowledge. But since the magic power Nona had was no more than that possessed by the despots, that was not enough to oppose them. It merely signaled her nature. Perhaps it would continue to grow as she aged—but not if she started having babies. Since it would be hard to avoid having babies if the despots remained in power, that prospect seemed insufficient.

“You must ask the Megaplayers,” her mother murmured, hardly loud enough to be heard.

The Megaplayers! But they were long gone, now hardly more than a memory. Only their giant stone instruments remained, weathering at the brink of the sea, awesome monuments to the greatness of the past. Of course the despots would not have a chance if the Players returned! Yet surely the Megaplayers were dead.

Her mother shook her head. “They live.”

How could she know that? But Nona trusted her. The Players lived.

Still, how could she find the Players, to ask them anything? And if she did, why would they pay any attention to her? She was only a lowly theow woman.

Her mother smiled. “Music.”

If there was one thing Nona excelled at, it was music. She had a natural talent for it, enhanced by her magic, which sublimated in this expression. Now she realized that the Megaplayers had to be musical. Consider their instruments!

So she had her answer. She would have to seek the Players where their instruments lay. She would have to appeal to them, and if they responded, they might act to abolish the despots. It would be easy, for them, for the magic of the Megaplayers was like none known since.

Yet what had banished the Players, long ago? Surely it could only have been some power even greater than they. Where was that power now?

Nona shook her head. Whatever the answers were, she had perhaps two months to find them. Then she would be eighteen, and her fate would pursue her.

SHE could not risk a trip alone to the instruments. This was not because there was physical danger, for the region was sanguine. It was because it might alert the suspicion of the despots. She had to have a seemingly unrelated pretext to go there.

So she did the obvious: she made a date with Stave to view the sea. The fact was that the place of the instruments was a rendezvous for lovers, because of the bracing sea air and the lingering magic of the region. But she specified afternoon, thus signaling that the prospects for romantic involvement were limited. He, however, was free to hope that if the afternoon excursion turned out to be successful, there would be an evening liaison on another occasion. He was happy to agree to the date.

The day was beautiful. There had been recent rain, and the meadows were greening. Even the dread castle of the despots, at the crest of the highest hill, looked almost pretty. Of course it had not been built by the despots; they had merely moved in after the Megaplayers left. So whatever beauty it possessed was what lingered despite its present occupancy.

She wore her best red theow tunic with the matching slippers. Stave, more sensibly garbed in his dull blue work tunic, was taken aback. “You’ll soil it on the grass!” he protested.

“Not if I don’t sit,” she replied.

“Of course,” he agreed, politely masking his disappointment. Couples normally sat near the brink of the cliffs, looking out over the waves, and drew close when the sea winds were chill. It was a most seductive pretext. Hands could stray as far as desired or tolerated, concealed under those tunics. In fact, almost anything could be done under tunics, when both parties wished.

She did not want to turn him off, however. She had no intention of getting serious, but Stave was a decent young man who deserved decent treatment. Had she desired a settled life and babies, he would have been as good a choice to share them with as any. “If I do sit, it will be on you,” she said. “So that my tunic will not touch the ground.”

He pondered that as they walked. There were ways and ways to interpret it, and some of them were intriguing. His disappointment faded.

There was a bark to the side, and a blur of white. Cougar had spied them, and was running to join them. He was the village dog, of mixed breed, not at all like a cougar, but somehow he had acquired that name. Normally only the despots kept animals, but sometimes they allowed one to wander unattached. Cougar loved adventure, and a trip to the instruments was that, by his definition. Indeed, it was said that a tryst wasn’t complete without the dog.

Stave picked up a stick. “Fetch, Cougar!” he cried, hurling it ahead of them.

The dog launched himself in pursuit, joyfully. But as the stick landed, it assumed the likeness of a skunk. As the dog caught up, the skunk turned tail, making ready to spray.

“You shouldn’t tease him,” Nona murmured.

“He’s too smart to tease,” Stave replied.

Sure enough, Cougar charged right in and caught the skunk in his jaws. He had not been fooled by the illusion. But, in a seeming act of retribution, he brought the stick back not to Stave but to Nona.

She reached down to take it, using her own illusion to convert the skunk into a bouquet of flowers. “Thank you, Cougar,” she said, patting him on the head.

“You’re welcome, lass,” the dog replied.

She elbowed Stave in the ribs. “Watch you don’t get bitten in the hind pocket!” the dog said in a more feminine voice.

Cougar wagged his tail. He enjoyed being part of an illusion.

There was a rumble of thunder. They looked, and there beyond the castle a storm was building, appropriately sinister. However, it was unlikely to come in this direction, and if it did, they would have time to return to the village before it struck. There was even a rainbow, probably the work of an idle villager, because the angle was wrong for it to be natural.

They reached the place of the instruments. Nona handed Stave the bouquet, which became the skunk again as he took it. She ran ahead, up to the very brink, and stood looking out. Cougar did the same, to the right, sharing her spirit.

The sea wind sought her out and tugged at her hair and the skirt of her tunic. Both material and hair flowed to her left, and the air stroked every part of her body with an intimacy she would not have permitted in anything else. She was exhilarated. She shaded her eyes with her left hand and waved to the sea with her right. She wished she could be here forever.

Then she looked down. The cliff at whose brink she stood was no ordinary work of nature. It was a monstrous stone musical instrument, a hammered dulcimer without its strings, rising five body lengths above the heaving surface of the water. Two giant stone roses were set in it, red with green leaves despite the weathering of the stone. In these alone the old magic lingered. The rest of the instrument was scarred with cracks and chips, and the top was overgrown with moss and grass.

How long had it been since the Players left? No theow seemed to know, and if the despots knew they did not tell. How long did it take for waves and weather to make stone crumble? Nona shivered. Longer than the time required for nine generations, obviously. Far longer, surely.

She looked to her left. There was a giant mandolin, its stone also cracking apart. The grass and moss outlined its entire top surface in green, and its hole was a dark cave into which the waves crashed. To her right was a great fiddle, in similar ruin.

These had been the possessions of the Megaplayers, even in their destruction suggesting the immense power of that lost age. What giants had wielded these mighty instruments? What could their music have been like? What could have caused these beings to depart, not only leaving their music behind but dumping their treasures into the sea?

Nona tried to imagine the Players, and could not. She tried to fathom the playing of the instruments, and could not. It was all too far beyond her. Yet somehow she had to find the Megaplayers and call on them to return. To deliver her people from near slavery. If only she could!

She stepped to the side, then back. She hopped. She shifted her weight and turned her body to an imaginary rhythm. She spun about, her skirt flaring out, her brown hair wrapping around her face. She felt a faint beat, as of distant marching or a baby’s heart. She heard a faint sound, as of a delicate melody hidden behind crashing waves.

In a moment she was dancing. At first she set her feet deliberately in the patterns of the dance. Then something took them, and she abandoned herself to it. She stepped and whirled, kicked and leaped. The beat intensified, carrying her with it. She saw the world turning around her, the sky above, the sea below, and she was not in it but of it. She floated, she soared!

“Ana!”

She fell, abruptly released from the spell. Stave caught her, his strong arms bearing her back from the brink. “You were going to leap!” he exclaimed apologetically.

She realized that it could be true. Something had imbued her, and she had let go of her own will. It had been glorious—but now she realized how readily that possession could have swept her over the cliff and into the surging sea. Actually that would not have meant her death, because she had developed the power to fly, or at least to float in the air and to propel herself by attempting to conjure heavy objects to her. But if she had gone over the cliff, and fallen, and used that power to save herself, her secret would have been out, and that would have meant her death at the hands of the despots.

“Thank you,” she panted. “I—I lost control.”

“I never saw anything so beautiful,” he said. “You danced as if the Players had taken your feet! Your legs were so lovely when your skirt floated up. Where did you learn those steps?”

The Players… Could it be? Had she made contact? The prospect awed her. But what could she say to Stave?

For a moment she was nonplussed, knowing that she could not afford to have him guess that she was tuning in on the music of the Megaplayers, but also that it would not be right to lie about it. The magic she sought was the essence of truth; a lie would taint and perhaps nullify it. Yet if she distracted him by waxing romantic, she would be deceiving him in another way. She had no intention of marrying him.

“Just how far did my skirt rise?” she inquired, forcing a blush. This was about as much of a ploy as she cared to try: diverting him to a minor matter.

“Oh, not that far!” he said quickly. But it was obvious from the dilation of his pupils that it had been too far. Yet maybe that had solved her problem: he had already been distracted. It was not the way she would have chosen, but perhaps it was just as well.

“I tell you, Ana,” he said as she hesitated. “I always thought you were, well, distant. Not the sort of girl to take on a date. I came here with you mainly from curiosity. But when you danced—you are a truly comely woman—it would be easy to love you.”

“Don’t do that!” she exclaimed. Then she had to laugh. “I mean, I didn’t mean to—”

She saw him grow subtly tense. He felt rebuffed. “You just wanted to see what kind of impression you could make on a man when you tried?”

“No, I—”

“Well, I’ll tell you: you made an impression on me!”

This was getting worse. “Stave, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

He smiled, not comfortably. “You’re trying to say that you didn’t know how well it would work, or if it would work at all, and it worked too well? I understand. You had no more interest in me than I had in you. You just wanted to try the dance and see. Now you know: it works. So it’s time to fetch whoever it is you’re really interested in, and make your skirt flare up for him, so—”

“Stave, no!” she cried, chagrined.

“It’s all right. There’s someone I’d like to impress too. Can you show me how to do that dance?”

She stared at him. She had not tried to deceive him; he had deceived himself. But she had to accept it. If he took the dance as a romantic prelude, instead of a connection to the Players, there would be no suspicion.

“I can try,” she said. “But it isn’t something I learned. It just happened.”

“Let’s make it happen again.” He set down the skunk, which became a stick as his hand left it. “You did a side step, like this, and back. Then you hopped.” He did these motions and he talked. He was nimble on his feet; he knew how to dance. “Then something happened.”

She had heard the distant rhythm of the Megaplayers! But she doubted that he would be able to hear it too; he was not ninth born. Could she duplicate the dance without that music?

She tried. She set her feet in the remembered pattern, and her body moved, but the magic was not there.

“No, that’s not it,” Stave said, following her perfectly. “But the wind was taking your hair and skirt. Maybe if I try it up at the brink.” He walked to the verge, faced out as she had, and tried the steps again.

The wind caught at him, as it had at her, and the sound of the sea seemed to grow louder. Stave danced—and it seemed almost that he was getting it. Certainly his tunic was flaring; if it went any higher she would have to avert her gaze. Then he misstepped, and teetered on the brink.

Nona screamed, and Cougar barked. At the same time, she exerted her magic, drawing him to her by a spell of attraction. Just enough to prevent him from falling outward. Stave caught himself, and dropped to the ground, catching his fingers in the sod for support.

Nona ran up, her heart pounding. “I thought you were going over!” she said, dropping to her knees beside him.

“So did I,” he confessed. “I almost got it, but then—”

“Enough! Get away from the edge. Don’t dance any more. If—if you want something of me—”

He glanced into her décolletage as she leaned toward him. “I do. There is no other woman I wish to impress. But I think—I think it is forbidden. Get your bosom out of my face before I forget.”

She straightened up, smiling contritely. She had come to him in genuine alarm, thoughtless of her appearance. The tunics of the theows tended to be too large in the neck region, so that women normally held them closed with one hand when bending forward. Certainly she had given him something to see! She was no longer embarrassed; the horror of his near fall over the brink had banished that. But she played the innocent. “Forbidden?”

He got up and dusted himself off, then extended a hand to help her up. “Will you answer one question?”

Had he felt the faint presence of the Players? Suddenly she feared that he had. He might not have been able to attune well enough to dance, but he might realize that something was there. She didn’t want that. Neither did she want to discuss it, because the despots could be eavesdropping with their magic.

So she did not answer. Instead she stepped up close and drew his head down for a kiss.

She could tell by the way his body didn’t give that she wasn’t fooling him. He did suspect.

Then he put his mouth down by her ear. “I felt it,” he breathed, his moving lips actually touching her ear. “I felt your magic save me. You can trust me.”

Could she? He had made it seem like an endearment, as if kissing her ear. In the process he had eliminated both sight and sound, because not even a magic spy could hear such a faint sound beyond her ear or see the motions of his lips against it. Yet suppose he merely wanted to learn something about her, so as to curry favor with the despots by telling them? She could not risk it.

“Nona,” he breathed.

She jumped. He had spoken her true name! But no villager knew that. Not even her father knew it, and if he suspected, he would never have told.

Then, to cover her reaction, she spoke. “You bit my ear!”

“A love bite,” he said. “Isn’t this what we came here for?”

“I’m not sure.” Indeed, she was in doubt. Was he going to require her favor, in return for his silence? She did not see him as that type of man, but he had already expressed interest in her body. This could be a dangerous game.

He drew her slowly in, and kissed her. This time she was the unresponsive one. He pretended not to notice, then moved back to her ear. “Can you hear me?”

That much she could admit to. She tightened her arms around him, once.

“Then listen,” his lips said almost soundlessly into her ear. “I am the other changeling.”

Again she jumped. “Will you stop that?” she said aloud. “I need that ear.” The other changeling? The baby they switched with her? The true child of her parents?

“But it tastes so good,” he protested in his normal voice.

They kissed and clinched a third time. This time she held herself still for the whole of what he had to say.

“I thought I was the eighth and last child in my family,” he continued into her ear. “But my mother let slip once that she had lost one. I thought she meant the baby had died. But later I learned from another slip that it had been given away to skew the count. For my mother was the eighth child of her family, and had been required to marry young, lest she have magic. She was the eighth generation. That meant I was the ninth of the ninth, masked as the eighth to save my life from the despots. It applies only to females, but the despots tend to act first if there is any doubt.”

They changed position, and kissed a few times in case there were watchers. Cougar settled down a short distance away; he did not find kissing as much fun as fetching, but he could tolerate it. The dog had learned that sometimes kissing led to more interesting activity. Then Stave sat on the ground and she joined him, pulling up her tunic so as not to soil it, though this meant that her bare bottom was on his lap. Had he drawn up his own tunic—but fortunately he did not. He was after all not pursuing her that way, though at this point that was a mixed relief. He ran one hand along her bare leg while he nuzzled her ear again, and she had to tolerate this for the sake of the appearance they had to make. He had abruptly become most intriguing, in an entirely different way.

“But I had no special magic,” he continued. “Only the skill of illusion we all share. And my parents did not seem to expect more of me. How could that be, if I was the ninth? This concerned me. I did not at first understand that the effect is limited to the female line. Then I realized that there could have been a double mask. I did not closely resemble my siblings, though none ever teased me about it; indeed they helped me to be more like them. I could have been from another family—exchanged for the true ninth.”

His hand was resting high on her leg, but he was not moving it now. His interest was only for show. She, in contrast, was far more interested than she had been. Stave was after all no ordinary young man; he was bound to her in the most special way. He was in a sense her brother, and in a sense her protector.

She moved to put her mouth at his ear. “I never guessed!” she breathed. Then she touched her teeth lightly to his lobe.

“Hey, now you’re biting!” he protested.

She mussed his hair. It was fun flirting, now that she knew it would lead nowhere. “You are getting fresh for a first date. Get your hand off my leg.”

He looked regretful. “Oh.” He removed his hand.

She embraced him. “You should not be too quick to believe what a woman says.”

He held her close and breathed into her ear again. “So when I came of age to wander, I walked from village to village, staying only long enough to see every person who was my age. When I came to this one, and saw you, I knew. You could have been one of my foster sisters. Then I looked at your parents, and they were fair like me. And your father—”

He paused. He brought his right hand around and turned so that his wrist was before her eyes. There was a small wine-colored stain—exactly like the one on her father’s wrist. There was no doubt of it: he was the son of her parents.

He had had as much reason to come here with her as she had with him. She had been looking for the Megaplayers; he had been looking for his alternate. His expression of diffidence had been only a cover.

Now she knew his question, and she trusted him with the answer. She glanced around, and spied a dry stem of grass. She picked it up. “I will give you an illusion,” she said. In her hand it became a rose, its hue matching her dress, its bud just opening. She handed it to him.

He took it by the stem and brought it to his nose, pretending to smell its perfume. Then he froze, for just a moment. He brought it closer and actually touched his nose to it. A subtle shudder went through him; had she not been sitting on him she would not have known. She had answered his question.

For it really did smell like a rose. Because it was a rose, not a mere illusion. She had transformed it: sight, feel, smell. But he knew the difference between the semblance of a rose and a real one, for he could not nullify it.

He handed it back to her. She flipped it away, and it became the grass again, reverting in the manner of illusion when it left the hand of its creator. She had changed it back; had she not done so, the rose would have remained.

Stave drew her close again. He was shivering, though the day was warm. “How may I help you, my sister?” he whispered.

She took her turn at his ear. “Date me again. Let me dance with the Players. I must find them if I can. Tell no one.”

“I will tell others I touched your body,” he breathed back in due course. “I will touch it more each time.” He put his hand on her leg again, at the exact place it had been before, just above the knee. There remained some distance to go before such touches got serious.

She nodded. They would have to appear to be getting quite intimate, so that no spy could doubt the nature of their interest in each other. It would be a perfect cover, much better with his cooperation. “Thank you,” she whispered.

Then they kissed once more, and she protested that it was getting late, and he protested that there was still plenty of time in the day, and she pointed to the storm which was expanding toward them, and he suggested that they could take off their tunics and roll them up to keep them dry, and she suggested that he take off his head and roll it up instead, and he finally agreed that they would return to the village. He evinced silent disappointment that he had not been able to make more progress with her, and she evinced silent relief that she had managed to restrict his ambition, this time.

Yet behind the act was something else. They had found a bond, and they were in a manner brother and sister. But they were not related, and they did like each other. The romance they were pretending was not fully pretense. She had come to understand, in the course of their close contact, that he really was interested in her body as well as her nature, and she was becoming interested in his interest.

IN the following month they came many times to associate near the instruments. Nona would dance and Stave would watch, and then they would get together and become increasingly affectionate. Sometimes there were other couples there. It didn’t matter. Stave and Nona were now known as a couple, and it was thought they might marry.

Indeed, the notion of marrying Stave was growing in her.

She wondered whether her destiny could be truly worth it, if it took her away from him. She liked his kisses, and the touches of his hands on her body. When he reached the permissible limits, she took his hand and guided it to more intimate regions than she would have tolerated had she not had control of it. It was both game and not-game, at the verge of loss of control. She wanted to stop teasing him and being teased by him, and to let nature take its course beyond. But that would be tantamount to commitment, and she couldn’t afford it. Never before this series of dates had she truly understood how a girl could actually come to desire what it seemed every young man did.

Meanwhile she was definitely getting closer to the Megaplayers. She felt them more perfectly each time she danced. But they remained distant. Their music was there, capable of being evoked in her mind, and the beat of it grew stronger, but that was all. The Players themselves were somewhere else.

How was she to reach them? She had only one more month before her birthday. Then she would have to marry Stave, or risk the alternative. They discussed this openly, for it was independent of her quest.

“If we go to work for the despots,” he said, “I will become a carpenter like my father and build shelves. That is my training. But though you are trained in music, you may not be sent to teach it. You are too beautiful.”

“I know,” she agreed.

“If we marry, I will still be a carpenter, but you will not be the plaything of your employer. They will let you teach music.”

“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.