Mercedes Lackey: The Wizard of Karres

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2004 by Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint and Dave Freer

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-7434-8839-3

Cover art by Stephen Hickman

First printing, August 2004

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lackey, Mercedes.

The wizard of Karres / Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint, Dave Freer.

p. cm.

"A Baen Books Original."

ISBN 0-7434-8839-3 (hc)

1. Interplanetary voyages--Fiction. 2. Space ships--Fiction. 3. Witches--Fiction.

4. Circus--Fiction. I. Flint, Eric. II. Freer, Dave. III. Title.

PS3562.A246W56 2004

813'.54--dc22

2004009766

Distributed by Simon and Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

In this series:

The Witches of Karres by James H. Schmitz

The Wizard of Karres

by Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint and Dave Freer

The shrill screaming from inside made Captain Pausert open the cabin door with some caution. Not that screaming was necessarily unusual around his present company—just that it was a good idea to meet screaming with due care.

He ducked reflexively as something went whizzing past his head. Vermilion splattered all over the wall of the Venture 's second-best stateroom. It didn't make things look much worse. The eggshell blue paint that Goth had picked out with such care during their refit on Uldune was scarred and splattered with mute testimony to the savageness of the battle that was going on inside.

In the center of what had once been an ankle-deep pale cream carpet was the perpetrator of the ghastly destruction.

The Leewit, the younger of the two witch girls of Karres aboard the ship, stopped drumming her heels on the floor, sat up and glared at him. "What are you doing here, stupid?" she demanded, weighing the next paint bottle in her hands.

Like the sound of sunlight, like seeing a scent, he was aware of the insubstantial thing somewhere in the room: a thumb-sized vatch, filling Pausert's head with tinkling vatch-giggles. Then he saw it. Around the light, a sheet of paper dragged by that tiny piece of impossible blackness fluttered like a demented moth.

Throw it at the Big Dream Thing!squeaked the vatch, inside his head, its silvery eyes wide with delight. Throw, throw!

"Shan't!" said the Leewit, changing her mind.

Spoilsport! Throw at me again, then!The vatch swooped down at her, fluttering what had obviously been the Leewit's artistic endeavor inches from the Leewit's nose.

The Leewit snatched at it furiously, nearly dropping the paint bottle. "Mine! Give it!"

The vatch and the picture twitched away from her fingers, and then disappeared, and then reappeared—in four different localities at the same time.

Life with vatches was interesting. So was life with Karres witches. Life with both was . . . complicated.

Captain Pausert's life had been very, very complicated for some time now.

The Leewit impotently threatened the dancing vatch quartet with the paint bottle. Then she turned on the captain. "You! You can even handle a giant vatch. Get my picture back from the stinkin' little thing!"

"Seeing as you asked so nicely, child, I will." Captain Pausert was careful to keep a straight face. It amused him to see the Leewit persecuted, for a change, since the Leewit was ever so capable of doing a fair amount of persecuting herself.

Still, vatches were too capable of creating havoc for him to leave one on the loose here. Forming hooks of the invisible stuff that was klatha force, Pausert began to reach with them for the tiny vatch . . . or vatches.

There were four of them and they all looked the same—less than an inch of blackness and a pair of slitty silver eyes. They all seemed to have the Leewit's picture, too. That was confusing. But vatches did odd things to time and space in human dimensions. He'd just try each one in turn.

He did. To no avail.

"It's doing a light-shift, Captain." That observation came from the Leewit's older sister, Goth, from where she lounged in a formfit chair on the far side of the room. "Splitting its image. Neat trick. Hadn't thought of that," she said, rubbing her sharp chin.

Pausert stared at the four. "So where is it actually?" Light-shifts were one of Goth's klatha skills.

"Got to be somewhere between them, Captain."

Pausert "felt" with the klatha hooks . . . encountered nonmaterial resistance. Suddenly there was only one tiny speck of whirling midnight, and the Leewit's artwork fluttered towards the floor. The little blond witch snatched it out of the air.

Pausert was a vatch-handler. He'd taken on Big Windy, the giant vatch. He could pull them inside out and make them jump through hoops, if he had to. Only . . .

There was one kind of these nonmaterial klatha creatures that was supposed to be unmanageable—and, unfortunately, you couldn't tell which kind of vatch you had until you had it. Then it could be too late. Klatha was powerful, but also dangerous.

Tickles, giggled the vatchlet.

Pausert tried to make the little creature move. It was like pushing smoke. With a sinking feeling, he realized that the silvery-eyed mischief must be one of the kind of vatch that none of the witches of Karres could make do anything.

I like this place. It's fun!The vatchlet whizzed around his head, then—into his chest.

Pausert's heart stopped for a moment. But nothing else happened, and it restarted again.

Well, at least it hadn't turned on him. And it sounded and acted awfully young. He'd—

Suddenly, the ship-detector alarms sounded through the intercom system. Pausert had set them up to do so when the Venture had made her run through the Chaladoor, that region of dangerous space between Emris and Uldune. He'd never gotten around to undoing it.

The baby vatch and the Leewit would just have to sort out their own problems. This could be something far worse. The captain left at a run, with Goth hard at his heels. They nearly collided with Vezzarn, the old spacer-cum-spy who was one half of their crew. The other half, Hulik do Eldel, former Imperial agent and citizen of the pirate planet Uldune, was barely moments behind.

The captain focused the viewscreens on the object—no, objects—the detectors had picked up. They were still almost at maximum range, but were coming in fast.

"Imperial cruisers, Captain," said Goth, looking at the heavily armed spacecraft.

Pausert's heart began doing complicated calisthenics. Pirates would have been preferable. Infinitely preferable.

"There is another one up there coming in the upper quadrant," said Hulik, pointing.

"And another one, dead ahead," added Vezzarn. "I think they've got us boxed in, Captain."

They did indeed. Pausert realized that this meant that someone back at the governor's palace in Green Galaine on Emris must have passed on details of their plans, including their exact trajectory. This was not good, and he had the feeling it was going to get a great deal worse.

"Do you want me to unseal the nova guns, Captain?" asked Vezzarn nervously.