David Brin - The Practice Effect

Dennis shook his head. “We have to be going as quickly as possible. You’re as generous and brave as Stivyung described you, Surah. But I can’t be responsible for what would happen to you and Tomosh if Linnora and I were found here.

“We’ll leave the day after tomorrow.” Privately, Dennis dreaded waiting even that long.

“But the Princess’s feet won’t have healed by then! Her ankle is still swollen!”

Mrs. Sigel had offered earlier to take Linnora to her sister’s and to try somehow to disguise her. But Linnora would hear none of it. It wasn’t just her unwillingness to put innocent people in danger. She was also determined to deny Kremer even the possibility of ever using her as a hostage. And her people had to be warned of Kremer’s new weapons. She would climb the western mountains even if she had to crawl.

“I’d not even stay the extra day,” Dennis said. “But I have to try to make something… something that will enable us to take Linnora along even if her feet haven’t healed.”

Mrs. Sigel sighed in acceptance. A wizard was a wizard, after all. She had listened to Arth’s stories, about Dennis’s miracles with wonderment. “All right, then. At first light I’ll go fetch those tools you need from Biss’s house. Tomosh’ll watch the road and warn you if soldiers come. I’d draw you a map to show you the way to the L’Toff, but you’ve got the best guide in the world, so I don’t suppose you’ll need it.”

Linnora and Tomosh had retired after a Spartan but nourishing meal from the Sigels’ secret hoard. Arth snored softly in a chair, practicing it in return for his hostess’s hospitality. Although he wasn’t much of a smoker, Dennis puffed diligently at one of Stivyung Sigel’s pipes for much the same reason.

Surah told Dennis about her own adventure, from which she had only just returned—her journey into the mountains of the L’Toff. Her eyes seemed to light up as she spoke of her travels.

Stivyung had often spoken of his career in the Royal Scouts. Brought up in a society that still rigidly controlled the options open to women, Surah had thrilled to her husband’s stories of adventure in the wild border reaches, of encounters with strange peoples including, of course, the mysterious L’Toff.

From his descriptions she knew that they were not fairies or devils but people on whom the gods had bestowed some mixed blessings. Since their exodus during the reign of Good King Foss’t, they had lived pretty much to themselves in their mountain retreat. After the fall of the old Duke, their last strong protector in the west, the only Coylians who had regular contact with them were a few traders and the Scouts.

When the Baron’s men took Stivyung away, Surah suddenly found herself behaving as she never had imagined before. She ran to her sister’s and told her to pick up Tomosh. Then she threw together a pack and headed west with no definite plan in mind, thinking only to find some of Stivyung’s former comrades and beseech their help.

She did not recall much about her journey into the mountains, except being frightened most of the time. Though she had grown up on the edge of the wilderness, she had never spent nights alone under the trees before. It was an experience she would never forget.

The first sign she was in L’Toff country came when she encountered a small patrol of stern, fierce men, whose spears had the burnished look of deadly practice. They were agitated and questioned her closely. But eventually they let her proceed. Only later, when she passed through the outer hamlets and finally came to the main village of the L’Toff, did she learn that Princess Linnora had disappeared.

That explained the anxiety of the border guards, certainly. Surah began to realize that her own problems were small eddies of a larger storm brewing.

Linnora’s father, Prince Linsee, ruled a virtually independent realm, answerable only to the King of Coylia. himself. This irritated the great lords and the temples. But like the isolation of their mountain home, it was for the tribe’s protection.

In return, the crown monopolized the trade in rare treasures whose Pr’fett had been “frozen” into a permanent state of practice. Each item generally cost some L’Toff a measure of his vital force—a week, month, or a year out of his or her life. The frozen goods were very rare—and coveted greedily.

Relations between the L’Toff and the great nobles had grown worse since the demise of the old Duke, and especially as Baron Kremer’s cabal of gentry and guilds prepared to confront the King.

Obviously the aristocrats would be well served if they had a lever on the L’Toff, the King’s strongest allies in the west. If they had a hostage to ensure Prince Linsee’s neutrality, they could turn their attention fully to investing the cities of the east, with their royalist, antiguild rabble.

Fate had delivered Kremer his hostage against the L’Toff the very same day that soldiers had come to take Surah’s husband away.

When Surah arrived in the mountains, the L’Toff were searching far and wide for their beloved Princess. Linnora had slipped away from her maids and escort nearly two weeks before, claiming in a cryptic note that she had sensed “something different” come into the world.

While everyone respected Linnora’s fey powers, Prince Linsee had feared the results of his daughter’s impetuousness. He suspected she had fallen into the Baron’s hands.

So, too, thought Demsen, the tall, homely leader of a detachment of Royal Scouts that had arrived just before Surah. Demsen was sure that Kremer was holding Linnora in secret, until a hostage was needed to keep the L’Toff passive at his rear.

Surah found out all of this because she was right there in the thick of it. Since she knew something of the situation in Zuslik, Surah was invited to sit at table with Linsee and Demsen and the captains and elders, all of whom attentively listened as she nervously answered their questions.

At the assembly, young Prince Proll had demanded permission to storm Zuslik and rescue Linnora by force of arms. Proll’s courage and charisma influenced many. The younger L’Toff could think of nothing but their beautiful Princess languishing in prison.

But Linsee knew that Kremer’s forces were more than a match for his own in open battle, especially since the perfection of the Baron’s terrifying glider corps. It would take years of dangerous experimentation to duplicate that accomplishment. Long before then, the war would begin.

Linsee had sent a delegation, led by the Chief of the Council of Elders, and Prince Proll, to visit Kremer and inquire. It would probably accomplish nothing, but it was all he could do. Reluctantly, he ordered the defenses strengthened, such as they were.

Surah listened to all of this and came to a numb realization that she would find no help here for her own, personal crisis. If the L’Toff and the Royal Scouts could do nothing to save Linnora, what could they do about a simple farmer—even a retired scout sergeant—whom Baron Kremer had seized on a whim?

Prince Linsee gave her a donkey and some provisions and wished her well. Except for the border guards, no one even noticed when she left.

She returned to find the countryside in an uproar. Preparations for war were well under way, and the area was being scoured for important fugitives.

Life had to go on, whatever the magnitude of great affairs around her. She retrieved her son from her sister’s house and headed home to keep up the farm as best she could, against the hope that Stivyung would someday return to her.

And at home she found the fugitives hiding in her own bedroom.

Surah Sigel sighed and refilled Dennis’s cup with hot thah.

“I’ve not had a big voice in th’ happnin’s of the time,” she said in conclusion. “I’m just a farmwife, for all of Stivyung’s teachin’ me to read an’ all.