David Brin - The Practice Effect

“Not yet,” Dennis said. “First we have to get out of here. I’ve got friends to rescue. Or at least one friend—and someone else I’d very much like to have as my friend…”

He realized he was babbling. Hope was a mixed blessing. He found he was capable of being afraid once more.

“Okay, then. Everybody ready?” His two little companions didn’t look like awfully formidable allies in an assault on a fortress. The pixolet would likely desert upon the first sign of danger, anyway.

He straightened his guard’s uniform and pulled the cap down low, then set off with his strange crew.

He didn’t even have to help the robot with the stairs. The thing was, indeed, a marvel.

I must get it home to Earth when all this is over and find out what’s happened to it! he thought.

Princess Linnora had little choice but to use some of the beautiful things in her room.

She sat before the ancient vanity table and looked at her reflection in the centuries-old mirror. She didn’t want to help practice her captor’s property, but there was so little else to do, trapped alone in the elegant room. She found that brushing her hair helped to pass the time.

At first she had tried to give Kremer nothing, not even the benefit of her good taste. She refused to pay attention to her environment, lest her appreciation of subtleness and beauty help make Kremer’s palace a little nicer for him.

The room had formerly been occupied by one of Kremer’s mistresses. The peasant girl’s tastes had made a heavy impression on the furnishings. After the first month of her captivity, Linnora had had enough of the bright, garish colors and flashy decorations. She took down the worst and began concentrating on her own image of the room.

It had been a subtle sort of setback, using some small fraction of her powers to make her imprisonment a little more tolerable. Kremer obviously intended to break her down a little at a time. And Linnora wasn’t at all certain she could prevent it. His will was strong, and he had her life in his hands.

She picked up the lovely antique brush and stroked her hair, watching her reflection in the mirror, trying to imagine a way to stay out of Kremer’s bed once he recovered, or to prevent being used as a hostage against her own people.

She concentrated on seeing Truth in the mirror It was a form of fighting back. The next person to look into the mirror would see more than just flattering images of themselves.

She looked at a young woman who had made mistakes. From that day when she had gone off riding on her own, far from her brother Proll, in search of the strangeness she had felt come into the world—from that day when she was captured by the Baron’s men at the small metal house in the forest—she had committed errors.

She recalled how Dennis Nuel had’ looked at her, those days after the banquet and before the sky monster appeared. She had been convinced by Deacon Hoss’k’s logic that the wizard could only be an evil man. But might other logic than the obvious apply to someone from so very far away?

What if there were other ways to create the alien essences than the trapping into them of life forces? Could an evil man have been so gallant, fighting her enemy when her need was greatest? On the night of the sky monster, the wizard had done battle with Kremer. Linnora was still confused over what had happened. Had Dennis Nuel conjured up the great glowing air-beast on seeing Kremer attack her? She wanted to believe it was so, but then why had he been forced to throw stones to bring Kremer down at last? And why did the monster fly away then, leaving its master to be overcome?

She put down the hairbrush, shaking her head at her reflection in the mirror. She would probably never learn the answers. Her guards had said the wizard was as good as dead in the Baron’s dungeon.

She picked up her klasmodion and plucked its strings idly, letting the soft notes come one at a time and in no particular order. She didn’t feel much like singing.

There was a tension in the evening quiet of the palace, as if something strong was about to happen. She felt a sense of danger in the night, and it was intensifying! She stopped playing, her senses suddenly alert.

From outside her door came a strange, high-pitched sound. Then something fell with a thump in the hallway. Linnora stood. She laid down the instrument and picked up her hairbrush, the only thing handy that was heavy enough to serve as a weapon.

There came a faint knock at her door Linnora edged back into the shadows. There was something familiar in the presence in the hallway, like that faint feeling she had had a week ago that had seemed to say that Proll had briefly been nearby.

There was also something out there so alien that just the hint of it made her shiver.

“Who is it?” She tried to keep her voice steady and regal, It came out sounding merely young. “Who is there?”

A voice in the hallway whispered hoarsely, “It’s Dennis Nuel, Princess! I’ve come to offer you a chance to get away from here, if you’re interested. But we’ve got to hurry!”

Linnora ran to the door and opened it.

The aroma of unbathed male was almost overwhelming. Filthy, bruised, and unkempt, Dennis Nuel smiled, holding the bunched waist of an oversized guard’s uniform.

It was more than enough to surprise a girl. But Linnora gasped when she saw the thing in the hallway behind him.

The hairbrush fell clattering to the floor as she fainted.

Well, Dennis thought as he rushed forward to keep her from falling, a guy could get a less flattering reception. I wish I could be sure it was gratitude that’s overcome her, and not BO.

He knew he must be a treat for the senses. His bruises were a still brilliant shade of purple, and he hadn’t bathed in two weeks.

Behind him the Sahara Tech ’bot poked at the fallen guards. While it awaited farther orders it proceeded with its second priority and took tiny blood samples from the unconscious soldiers for comparison purposes.

Fainting princesses were fine—in storybooks. But slender or not, Linnora felt heavy to Dennis in his weakened state. He carried the girl into the room and laid her on the bed.

“Princess! Linnora! Wake up! Do you recognize me?”

Linnora blinked, recovering quickly. She got up on one elbow. “Yes, of course I recognize you, Wizard…and I’m happy to see you alive. Now would you please release my hand? You’re squeezing much too hard.”

Dennis hurriedly let go. He helped her sit up.

“Is escape truly possible?” Linnora asked. She assiduously avoided looking at Dennis’s companion in the hallway. If it was one of his demons, it surely wasn’t about to consume her, she assumed.

“I’m not sure,” Dennis answered. “I’m on my way to the tower to find out. I stopped here to offer you a chance to come along. I don’t suppose either of us has anything to lose.”

Linnora managed an ironic smile. “No, we do not. One moment, then. I will be right back.”

She stood and hurried quickly to a closet.

Dennis dragged the supine guards into the room. It had been a harrowing climb from the dungeons to the storerooms, to the kitchens, and beyond, constantly ducking from shadow to shadow. He and his companions had made it to the second story before being spotted. A pair of guards saw him entering a stairwell. They called and hurried after in chase.

As Dennis had expected, the pixolet deserted the moment it came to any action.

But the robot was stalwart. It waited with Dennis just inside the stairwell until the two soldiers sped through between them. Dennis heard the second guard slump to the floor before he was half finished throttling the first into unconsciousness. He left them both bound and gagged behind the staircase, and then they hurried on.