The Far Side Of Forever Part 22

"The detour would be rather extreme." the demon an- swered, obviously having already considered the idea- "They're spread out in the woods as well as cl.u.s.tered

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around the road, and if we did get by them, we would then have to pick up the trail again, which probably leads through the large town this road goes to. If you can't stay on the road. you won't have an easy time of it."

"Easy doesn't enter into it," the man muttered, rubbing at his face with one hand while continuing to consider the direction we had to go in. "If Su doesn't follow the unbroken trail, how will we know we're following the real thing? Laying down a false trail at a point like this would be just the trick to send us off in the wrong direction. We can't afford to leave the road for any length of time."

"And an attempt to face such numbers head on would be futile," InThig said, closing the circle Rik had opened.

"What we need is another way."

"InThig," I mused, "why do I have the feeling you know this world? Better than ten minutes' worth of scout- ing would provide, 1 mean."

"Possibly because I once visited it," the demon said, looking at me with unblinking red eyes. "I came through this very gate, as a matter of fact, but from a world which wasn't the one we just left. There were no soldiers posted on the road at the time, biri there was a band of brigands I just happened across. You should have seen their expres- sions when I ..."

"Then you know enough about mis world to give me some background information," 1 said, interrupting what would probably have turned out to be a very long story.

"Do you think you can describe the important parts in enough detail to let me copy it?"

"I'm certain I can," it answered, trying, demonlike, to decide between being put out over having been inter- rupted, and curious over what would happen next. "You're going to disguise the group as natives?''

"Can you think of anything else we can do?" I asked in turn, privately wondering how successful secondhand magic would be. "They're watching for strangers, not for a group of natives."

"I think that's probably the best chance we have,"

Rikkan Addis said, his attention obviously having s.h.i.+fted from the distance to our conversation. "Is there anything the rest of us can do?"

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"The rest of you get to do the hard part," I said, gesturing InThig along with me to some gra.s.s at the side of the gate. None of them asked what I meant, as my meaning was obvious: all the others could do was wait.

More than two hours went by while InThig talked and I listened, both of us trying to form a picture in my mind's eye. I had to See something before I could reproduce it, and most of the Sighted 1 knew would not have even considered attempting a spell for something they hadn't Seen. As the time went by I got a fairly good idea of what that world's society was like, but not in the sort of detail 1 needed to work with. Not long after we started Zail drifted over to sit with us, and although he made no attempt to touch me and certainly didn't interrupt, his presence was hardly the help I needed. I just kept getting more and more frustrated, until suddenly InThig said something that gave me an idea.

"... and their buildings are all one-story," it was going on, only the claws flexing into the gra.s.s showing its own frustration. "Those buildings remind me of the ones on Cymar, in that small town they think of as a giant metropolis. They use coaches to travel in on Cymar as well, but not as cla.s.s status symbols the way they do here.

Only aristocrats are permitted to (ravel by coach among these people, and ..."

"Wait, wait, that might be it," I said, sitting straighter out of the slump I'd fallen into. "InThig, if I were to reproduce, say, one of the coaches from Cymar, which I have Seen, would you be able to be specific about how h needed to be changed for this world? That's taking the long way around the mountain, but it's still better than working blind."

"I should certainly be able to do that," InThig decided with a blink of its eyes, rising to a sitting position. "At any rate, it can do no harm to try."

It might also do nothing but drain my strength, I thought, but it was still a better idea than the only alternative I'd been able to think of. Making us and the horses invisible would likely have gotten us past the waiting soldiers, but those who aren't used to being invisible usually have a lot of trouble with it at first. Not being able to see the feet

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you're walking with is more of a problem than those who have never tried it consider it, and that goes triple when horses are involved. Accidentally touching someone you're pa.s.sing, with an arm you can't see and have therefore forgotten the length of, losing track of the people you're with, which produces the thought that you're deserted and alone, getting it through your head that just because you're invisible does not mean you can step on a twig and not make noise- No, trying to play match-up would be a good deal easier, not to mention less nerve-racking.

It took something over an hour to do the coach and our clothing, as well as deciding who was supposed to be what sort of native. There were six of us, three male and three female, and for all we knew the composition of our party and our descriptions had been given to the soldiers who were watching for us. If they'd been posted around the gate they would have had us as soon as we stepped through-if our sudden, unexplained appearance hadn't sent them running and screaming in all directions first.

Someone hadn't been sure they wouldn't react that way so they'd been set on the road we had to follow, giving us the room to come through unmolested, but not the room to go anywhere. By the time we were ready, I was really getting to dislike our enemy on a personal basis.

"I think that just about does it," Rikkan Addis said when my last spell changed all the horses to brown. Four of them were hitched unhappily to the coach, saddle mounts in traces they were completely unused to, while the last two were left under saddles for our "escort." Two was rather a small number as far as escorts went on that world, but it was either leave it like that or "create" more riders and horses. If it hadn't taken so much effort to get that far I would have created them, but we weren't ready to leave that world yet and I had to save as much as I could for emergencies. The gear from our four coach horses was on top of the coach disguised as luggage, dark leather trunks which went well with the gold and green-trimmed coach.

"There's still one thing left, but at least I'm not the one who has to do it." I said, pointing at InThig. "It's time to play demon-in-the-basket."

"Really, Laciet, 1 see no need for this," InThig pro-

THE PAR SIDE OF FOREVER.

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tested for the umpteenth time, enjoying the way the rest of us looked but unwilling to share the discomfort. "I'd be much more effective if I ranged ahead, scouting out what was before us, giving early warning of peril or ambush, seeing where you others can't . . ."

"And not being with us if we get asked a question about this world that we ought to know," I finished for it, also for the umpteenth time. "You're the only one of us who knows the necessary details, so you have to be with us.

And if we're going to talk about preferences, I'd rather be up on the coach seat with Su than in this stupid dress, so if you insist on doing it your own way, I'll do the same.

There's no reason why you should be the only . . ."

"And I would find it far more pleasant were I to ride beside Rik rather than be the driver of this conveyance."

Kadrim put in, gesturing at the coach with his own unhap- pjness. "Then. should we be attacked, I would find it possible to . . ."

"And I would rather be riding in the coach with Laciel and Dranna," Zail took his turn, grinning at the small woman and myself. "We three could share one of the seats, with me in the middle, of course . . ."

"Okay, that's enough out of^all of you,*' Rik broke in.

his tone even and sure, calming despite the words he used.

"Zail, you'll be riding with me as one of the guards, Kadrim, you'll be driving, Laciel, you're one of the ladies in the coach, and InThig, you're going in the basket. Has everybody got that?"

He looked around at us as we looked back at him, and even without a bronze-eyed stare we were able to remem- ber that our places hadn't been chosen at random. With four horses needed to pull the coach, four of us had to ride on or in the thing, and those four were placed there by necessity. Su had to be up on the driver's seat in order to show the way, and the best one to sit beside her, to make her size less conspicuous, was Kadrim. The other two inside the coach had to be Dranna and me, a lady who was, as custom on that world demanded, traveling with a maid. That left the escort roles to Zail and Rik, who might have been a n.o.ble and his servant, except for the fact that Dranna and I would then have had to be the escort, which

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wasn't the way things worked around there. To make things even more confusing for the ones watching, I had disguised Rik, Su and myself so that we no longer looked precisely like ourselves. Su was pretending to be male and was therefore also able to wear her sword; Rik had dull black eyes that made him look slow and not quite bright;

and I had brown hair and eyes that were a good fit for the maid role I was playing. Su and the men wore trousers, boots and s.h.i.+rts of gold, with wide-brimmed hats of gold trimmed with green, just like the coach. I, as the maid, wore a green-trimmed, long-skirted dress of goid, but Dranna-Dranna was absolutely magnificent in all green trimmed with traces of gold. She was the high lady, the one the rest of us served, and she had laughed in delight when it was first decided, and after that simply glowed with pleasure. She had been a.s.suming that I would be the one to pretend to be the lady and she the maid, but somehow I'd found I couldn't do that to her.

With InThig's idol laying it on the line, the demon had no other choice than to sigh and agree. I could have found enough reason to make a fuss of my own, but I'd been responsible for most of the decisions about everyone's places, and it would have been mindless to jump on fear- less leader for standing behind my own decisions-even if I felt like doing exactly that. 1 still wasn't very happy with the idea of him as leader and was still looking for a way to change it, but that was neither the time nor the place to do it.

InThig looked at the dainty pink and white straw basket I'd made with a demon in mind, looked at me with less friendliness than it usually did, then sighed again before beginning to dissolve. What had been solid black flesh and fur quickly turned to thick black smoke, and then the smoke began flowing into the basket, fitting in neatly until it t.i.tled the wide basket completely. Two blazing red eyes looked up out of the black cloud, and they weren't pleased.

"It's narrow, cramped, and hard despite the silk lin- ing," InThig announced, sounding terribly put-upon and suffering. "I hope you're pleased with yourself, Laciel."

"I hope you don't mind if/'m pleased, InThig," Dranna said before 1 could answer, looking down at the demon-

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vapor. *'I really do feet much safer having you in the coach with us, and I'm very grateful to you for agreeing to do something that's so obviously beneath you. You really are a magnificent-life form."

"Why, not at all, Dranna, the pleasure is mine," InThig purred in its sleekest manner, the black cloud roiling in a very satisfied way. "If my presence is comforting to you, I'm more than happy to oblige. If you'll close the lid now, we can be on our way."