Mercedes Lackey - The Wizard of Karres

"Their pet," said Hantis, with a perfectly straight face. "Ta'himmin and Lisol Aloorn-Taro have prevailed on their grandfather to enter a plea for its return. They say it is skilled in playing games, and good for defense. Besides all that, it helped to fix their nursebeast. So they want it back, even if it does eat a lot."

" 'It'? A toy! Huh! I'll fix them." She began to purse her lips. Hastily, the captain clamped his hand over her mouth.

Hantis shook her head "The demand will be denied, of course. This is just their grandfather's way of raising a public vote of gratitude to you, Leewit. He is a powerful sub-clan head. This is how you gave rise to your own name, you know, as well as saving two great ones among my people. Ta'himmin Aloorn-Taro is credited with much of the restoration. And his sister is remembered as Lisol the Healer."

Hantis smiled oddly. "It is a bit strange to see my own distant and famous ancestor as a very little girl-Sprite. As you know, the youngest daughter of my house is always called 'the Leewit.' Toll and Threbus asked me for a good name for you, so I offered them one of ours. I never knew where it came from, until now. Ta'himmin and Lisol never forgot you."

The latest of the universe's Leewits dissolved into tears. The captain decided it was safe to remove his hand. But he still did so a bit warily. With the Leewit . . .

You never knew.

The power rooms of Aloorn were hidden deep within the stalk of the castle.

They were heavily guarded both by ordinary and klatha means, but with the High Lord at their side those barriers were passed. Arvin had walked slowly, talking to Hantis, both of them looking sad and serious. From what the captain could work out, it would be a grim time and hard tasks ahead for the young Sprite Lord, for which he'd get much blame and little credit.

Down here, underneath the huge humming turbines, the captain hoped that they would be invisible to the vatches. Silver-eyes certainly hadn't followed them. The captain fashioned his hooks of klatha force for the big creature, with heat like a kiss of the sun. He put barbs on them, and not threads of force but broad ropes of it. This vatch wasn't going to get away, if he could catch it at all.

They waited. The Sprites also had folk who could rell vatch, and while the party from the Venture had to "disappear" to make the creature of klatha force curious, they could "reappear" in a hurry if the vatch came calling.

And it did.

The signal came down.

"All right, everybody onto the hoist. Go, go, go!" yelled the captain. They tumbled onto the hoist and rushed upwards. As they rose the captain became aware of the big vatch. He flung those hooks of force, flung them around and over the huge shifting cloud of vatch. They hooked into the black energy swirls, they hauled and tightened. Tighten. More. As much as we need to immobilize this one. Pull in. Hold it. Hold hard.

The vatch yowled. Green slitted eyes peered fearfully at him. NOT AGAIN! MONSTER, LET ME GO!

Not unless you do what I say—or I'll tear you apart and short out your innards! Playing with us! Take us back to our ship and our time right now! No. Wait. Let's finish things here properly. Let me see where those Nanite-possessed ones fled to.

The towers that Hantis had pointed out as "fabled Delaron" sprang into view from the grayness that was vatchspace. And then the elegant, slim towers shrank and broadened. The captain blinked. There weren't twenty of them. Just one. This tower looked like the others had—only this looked like it could be built with bricks and mortar. It was impressive but not impossibly tall. And looking in—somehow as if he had X-ray vision, he saw a group of Sprites in an upper chamber. Once again his vision shifted as if he was now seeing into the Sprites, and he saw them as a seething mass of myriad tiny klatha black energy points . . . all but three of those present in the upper chamber. The Nanites were klatha or klatha-using creatures too, and this was apparently what they looked like to a vatch.

Pausert directed a bolt of dark energy, torn from the mass of the great roiling thing that was the vatch, at each of the Nanite-creatures. It absorbed the little sparks of klatha energy that were billions of Nanites, and consumed the bodies in gouts of incandescent heat. He saw the three noninfected ones flee, and then he finished the business with a explosive bolt of raw energy that simply vaporized the now empty upper stories of the tower. That would do as a parting present for the safety of ancient Nartheby, if not Arvin's reputation—since he'd be the one blamed for the destruction in the historical records.

Now take us all back to our ship, and then take the ship where I tell you. Pausert had already decided that if he caught the vatch, he'd have it take them to within a few hours of the Imperial Capital. To Great Patham's Seventh Hell with all this mucking about in Egger Space!

The grayness whirled and surged. Even by the vatch standards of non-distance this place was far off. And dark . . . and then tumbling. Finally, they were back in the Venture .

But not the Venture in the stillness of the void: the Venture on the expanding wild edge of matter. The Venture was being violently flung and rolled as a great tumbling tidal wave of energy and existence picked her up. The ship was on the verge of breaking up, torn between two states and sometimes existing in both. Her engines roared at full throttle, and then cut out and then roared again. Gravity surged in waves that almost made the captain black out as he reached for the drive controls. The engines cut again . . . then free lightnings danced through the ship. Sparks zipped and sizzled. The Venture vibrated like some giant jaw's-harp.

Nothing could survive the front-wave of singularity for long. Even the vatch was being battered and torn, and so were the cables of pure force and the klatha hooks.

Suddenly, they were out of there.

The control panels were alive with flashing lights and the air in the control room was thick with smoke and the sound of damage alarms.

Pausert fought with the controls, realizing as he did so that his grip on the vatch was literally being torn away. The vatch was so desperate to leave that it was willing to part with large pieces of itself in order to do so.

One of the control panels was actually on fire. Pausert just let the vatch go, and focused all his attention on the damaged Venture . Vezzarn had managed to get out of his acceleration couch and grab a fire extinguisher and spray the burning control panel. But the power systems were running on emergency auxiliary now. The lights dimmed and flickered. The Venture 's main drive engines stuttered and hiccupped . . . and were still. Unfortunately, one auxiliary lateral rocket still fired—even though the automatic controls had it shut down—and it spun the Venture in a clumsy spiral. The lights cut completely as the captain managed to shut the lateral down with one of the manual override switches.

There was an eerie silence. A spaceship is never completely silent. There is always some machinery running. There is always some vibration, even at the subliminal level. Spacers became inured to the roar of the main drive to the point where they just didn't notice it. But when everything is still, the ship is dying or dead.

The Venture drifted like a derelict hulk. Inertia kept her on the slow spiral that the misfiring lateral had caused. Then the standby batteries cut in, lighting only the emergency glows and the instrument readouts. The air was thick with smoke, burning the captain's eyes—though not as much as the readouts from the instrument panel did.