[What is As'taris doing?]

John was so impatient to get to the Raleka wizards' rooms that he ran the entire way, leaving Ringo to shift for himself. Annoyed, Ringo took his time, stopping often to inspect intricately painted walls or to peer into classrooms. When he finally arrived at the third floor, he found John pressing his ear to the door of room 70.

John greeted Ringo with, "Can you see in there?"

Ringo rolled his eyes. "No. I told you it's all invisible to me." Recognizing that John hadn't heard anything in the rooms, he added ironically, "Can you hear in there?"

"No. Stupid fucks, couldn't they at least leave a note?" John gave the door a forlorn shove, but—though it had no lock, none of the doors in the building did—it was firmly sealed. "I suppose I could break it down, but what's the point, there's no one in there, and they're not likely to've left an address."

Ringo gave John a little mental tug on the vest. "Come on, then, let's go look for them outside—better than standin' about here."

With a grunt of assent, John pushed away from the door, and they went back downstairs. They easily found the main entrance and stepped outside

POW! into a blinding blast furnace, realizing too late that the school building had been kept magically cool. Ringo swore and clapped his hands over his eyes, which started to water profusely. John made an agonized sound, and a haze of water blossomed around him, then extended to encompass Ringo. "Fuckin' desert!" John cried. Ringo rubbed at his eyes, trying to somehow rub sight back into them. Some of the tears that streamed down his face were real ones of frustration. From perfect sight to this!

As he recovered, blinking, and as John calmed down, they took in their surroundings. They stood on a black mosaic sidewalk, with strands of blue and yellow and white tiles winding together underfoot. The building they'd come from, one of several buildings clustered together in a quad, was a kind of cross between a mosque and an adobe cliff-dwelling. Visible between the buildings to the left was what appeared to be a palace—probably now in use as the Administration building—fronted by a cactus garden. In fact, between the obvious age of the buildings, the fearsomely intricate sidewalk, and the lavish frescoes and statues that decorated the grounds, it appeared that some ancient palace and its outbuildings had been co-opted to create the School.

Eyesight more or less back to normal, Ringo wanted to look around the School grounds a bit more—he wished he'd borrowed George's camera, and he hoped George would film everything—but John resolutely continued toward the city, and Ringo didn't want to go back into the hot, so he went with the flow, so to speak. He stayed as far to John's right as he could within the confines of the water aura, because every time they touched (usually when John's right wing bounced into him) he got a mental flash of John's anger, mostly in the form of the word "fuck."

Within minutes they were off the School grounds and staring at Zagesevregar proper, which was ood. Now, shake a little onto the ration, and take a bite. ISN'T THAT AMAZING?"

"Solve the Baravadan problem forEVER! Gro-M-Big will make monsters out of mosquitos, opponents out of opossums, adversaries out of ants, foes out of flies! You'll never lack for opponents when you have Gro-M-Big!"

"Delicious singing noodles! Fried bread! Soup on a stick! Solid outside your mouth, liquid inside!"

"No worthy opponents? Then why stay on C'hou to fight? Jo-Krum's Interdimensional Hunting Safaris will take you to worlds teeming with adversaries! No, sorry, sar, I don't have an 'Earth' in my database. But how about a trip to the spawning pits and giant crawler tunnels of Sattpo Sattpay?"

"Magic Sperm and Eggs here! Never worry about finding a baby to be reborn into again! With Magic Sperm and Eggs, when you die, the nearest female thing becomes pregnant with a body reserved for YOU ONLY!"

"Is magic inadequate, unreliable? Try Tech! Flycycle! Laser! Recording Device! Nuclear battery guaranteed for life of item!"

Hours later, well past midnight, Ringo hopped out of a crowd into a rare clear space between two buildings. He was wearing a shimmering rainbow T-shirt that read I Went to the C'hovite Festival of Magic, and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt. On his belt he sported a large new black nylon beltpouch, into which he'd stuffed his old blue C'hovite shirt and his "Amulet against the Heat," which, as the temperature cooled and he started to grow tired, he'd replaced with an eye-shaped one that kept him awake. His original magic-hiding amulet lay framed within the chain of the eye amulet.

With one hand he shaded his eyes from the light sphere overhead (one of many that now illuminated the city), and with the other he sucked a berry popsicle and contemplated the pleasant prospect of What To Do Next? Should he go to another demonstration of magic (he'd already seen three)? Take in the combat at the nearby arena? Poke his head into a beer garden where there was music and dancing? Browse among the stalls some more? Or slow down a bit with some peaceful people-watching? He'd spent most of his money, so beer garden and browsing were best left for the near future, when he could bum more gold off Brox. Magic demos and fights were usually free, but he wanted to finish his popsicle, which was getting drippy, before sitting down again.

So people-watching it was, and he leaned against the wall, licking and looking. He was glad he'd decided to do this; the Festival had been such a sensory overload, with so much to do, that he hadn't had much time to look closely at the attendees. And the streets teemed with color. While a slender majority of the Festival attendees were Baravadans tricked out in their best adventuring togs (looking like a very large mercenary force on holiday), they were the family next door compared to the many outworlders who filled the streets of Zagesevregar. Why, just by looking slowly from left to right, Ringo saw a woman, well over seven feet tall and jet black in color (skin and clothes), almost a three-dimensional silhouette except for her glowing green eyes; a trio of blond Tolkienesque elves, none over five feet tall, leading a shaggy pack pony with about three feet of packages lashed skillfully to its back; two blue-skinned men, identical down to their sardonic expressions, striding side-by-side in perfect unison; someone identifiable only as a biped, bundled up in a white fur coat and hood (in the desert?); an ethereally beautiful blond ivory-skinned woman floating about three inches off the ground, dressed in wispy purple silks that drifted around her body, smelling of fresh ocean air and violets, and arguing in the screechiest voice imaginable with a cowering female vendor; a winged Caucasian man slouching through the street, flinching whenever anyone touched him and eating buns out of a big bag—

"John! Hey, John!" Ringo called, waving his popsicle and getting reddish drops on his T-shirt.

John looked up and over, and in a trice he was standing next to Ringo. The Festival had done nothing to improve his humor; if anything, he seemed even more out of sorts than before. "Fuckin' crowds," were the first words out of his mouth, followed by "Fuckin' desert. I hate this. I want to fly." Bleakly, he eyed Ringo's new stuff. "I see you've been busy. Any luck, then—or shouldn't I bother to ask?"

"I looked for them," Ringo snapped, his good mood rapidly dwindling. Here he was looking for someone to join him in a chorus of Isn't this great, did you see this, did you see that!, and he got Ebenezer Scrooge instead. "They're nowhere around here. I think we're gonna have to wait until the Conference for them to show up."

"Fuck." John rummaged around in his bag, from which the smell of spicy meat and yeasty bread wafted up, and came up with a sausage roll, which he bit into, squirting meat juices hither and yon. As he chewed and his head bobbed, Ringo caught a glimpse of something shiny in John's ears. "Ice earplugs," John explained after swallowing. "Fuckin' crowd's too fuckin' noisy. It's like bein' trampled by elephants. Crowds in the desert—it's worse than hell! Have you seen George?" he asked abruptly.

Ringo nodded. "He's still at the School, readin' that book. I can't see it, but I think it's some kind of encyclopedia of monsters. He'll stand and read; then he'll change into somethin' weird and stand still for a few minutes; then he'll change back into himself and turn the page and do it again. He's been at it all night."

John narrowed his eyes. "You mean he hasn't been out lookin', then?"

"Oh, come on, John, if you were him, you wouldn't've been lookin' either. That's a hell of a gift Brox gave him!"

They were silent for a few minute, each lost in his own personal world of irritation; then John shrugged. "Oh, fuck it, it don't matter. I'm sick of this rubbish. I'm goin' back to the School and go to bed. What about you?"

Fantastic! thought Ringo, careful not to be touching John when he thought this. He kept his face neutral and nodded to the right. "There's an arena over there. They're havin' magic combats, and I haven't seen one yet."

"Magic combats…." Despite his mood, John seemed interested. "Yeah, okay, I'll suss 'em out with you before I go back."

Bugger. Oh, well, at least John was showing an interest in something besides his personal misery; so Ringo concealed his disappointment, and they set off for the arena.

Lit by three balls of magic light, the small arena was one of five scattered around Zagesevregar, and one of four being used for various forms of combat; the fifth was the Conference venue. Entry was free; people trickled in and out constantly. A giant placard listed the scheduled combats, the names of the contestants, and their magical specialties, such as Air and Force. John scanned the placard for Water, but it wasn't listed.

The arena, which looked as if it could accommodate about 5,000 people, held perhaps an eighth of that, with the audience scattered all over rather than clustered at the bottom, which seemed odd. Ringo and John were content to take seats in an empty middle section with no one around for rows and rows. When they sat they discovered a nice property of the arena; a bit of magnifying magic made the action on the field seem as close as if they were sitting in the first row. Ringo found this disconcerting when he stood up once and the field retreated to its normal distance, but on the whole they both appreciated the unexpected visual clarity.

They had entered the stadium in the middle of a battle between two copper-skinned Baravadans, a man who wielded fire and a woman with control over plants. Charred sticks and ash scattered around the arena implied that the fight had been exciting in its early stages, but it had reached an impasse; the woman had surrounded herself with a thick hedge that the man's fire bolts couldn't penetrate, and the man easily burned off the tendrils that the hedge occasionally sent writhing his way.

After a minute of this, John turned to Ringo and said, "Can you see Paul?"

"Sure!" Ringo enthusiastically summoned up a vision of Paul and the house. He could see the old familiar things just fine; he was immensely reassured to know that his Festival blindness was, indeed, limited to the Festival. "He's sittin' on the ground, talkin' with some of the refugees."

John drummed his fingers on his knee. "I wonder if we should send for him. I have a feeling we're gonna need him."

"Shouldn't we be sure the Raleka wizards have the Vasyn before we do that?"

John got no chance to answer this bit of logic, because at that moment there was a soft roar from the audience and a great snapping of branches. Ringo opened his eyes in time to see the hedge reshaping itself around the plant mage. The fire mage, who looked exhausted, made a sweeping gesture with his arm, and a small wall of flame leaped up from the sand. Meanwhile, the hedge had attained a rough giant humanoid shape, with the plant mage in its stomach, and it clumsily walked towards the fire mage, waving thorny club-like arms. It didn't pause at the wall of flame but plodded through. Now quite dry, it caught like an oil-soaked torch. The plant mage, smoking slightly, fell backwards out of the flaming hedge-thing, which continued to plod toward the fire mage. The man backed away but tripped on a stray branch, and the thing collapsed on him like the Hindenburg, a great flaming hollow framework sinking down on him. The fire mage came staggering out of the conflagration, coughing, blackened and sooty and naked, his clothing having been reduced to charcoal shreds. "I yield," he wheezed, his words as audible to the audience as the fight had been visible.

To a patter of applause, the combatants walked out of the arena together, swigging healing potions and chatting about the fight. The burning hedge-thing went out suddenly, and the detritus of the fight began to dissolve to make way for the next match.

"Smashing," said John, and he stood up and stretched mightily, spreading his wings to their fullest before pulling them in again. "Right, I'm goin' back to the School. You gonna stay, then?"

"Yeah, for a bit. They've got different sorts of magic comin' up, and I'd like to see how they work."

A soft voice announced, "Next combat. Whirlwind, air. Pamar Swiftlegs, movement."

As John began to sidle out of the row of seats, Ringo turned his attention to the new combatants, who stood at opposite ends of the arena. One was a slender young man, another Baravadan, in dull gray shirt and pants. The other's sex was hard to determine, as he/she wore a body-length sky-blue cloak with a hood that hid her/his face. Though there was no wind, the cloak moved about as if in a breeze; no doubt this was Whirlwind. Then the person dramatically threw back the hood to reveal the grinning face of a Caucasian woman with long brown hair and—

Ringo sat bolt upright. "John!" he cried. "John! That woman in the arena—that's one of them! That's a Raleka wizard!"

Almost out of the row, John paused in mid-step and whipped his head around. "What? Are you sure?" He plumped back into a seat and leaned forward, studying the head of the blue figure. "Jesus, you're right! That is one of them!" With a little noise that could have either been a laugh or a growl, he scrambled to his feet, practically leaped the rest of the way out of the row, and ran down the stairs, shoving past people and ignoring their cries of indignation as he screamed, "HEY, YOU! WHERE'S OUR FUCKING STATUE?"

Ringo was so startled by both the unexpected appearance of a Raleka wizard and John's knee-jerk response that he just sat where he was, watching in fascination.

At the bottom of the stairs John vaulted over the low wall that defined the arena's fighting space and ran toward the woman, screaming incoherently at her, the embodiment of every trouble, every pain he'd experienced since his return from Third. She watched him come with a mad light growing in her eyes and a huge, predatory smile building on her face. From the other side of the arena John heard an indignant "Get out! This is our fight!" from Pamar Swiftlegs the movement mage, but he paid no attention as he bore down on the woman—

—who burst into laughter, lifted one cloaked arm, and pointed at him.

A massive gust of wind smashed into John, and he arced up and backwards through the air. "Whoa, shit!" he cried, and he just had time to throw a thick water field around himself when WHAM! he slammed butt-first into some empty seats at the opposite end of the arena. Water splashed everywhere, much to the annoyance of the people sitting nearby.

For a few moments John sat sprawled among the seats, arms, legs, and wings akimbo. Dazed, he barely comprehended as Pamar Swiftlegs said, "Why did that sar attack you?", the magic of the arena making his distant words audible to all.

Whirlwind said with a giggle, "I know not, but I appreciated it!" She reached up to smooth back her hair, then shook it out so that it floated around her head. For a skahs, Ketafan or not, she had an amazing amount of hair. She squinted in John's direction and apparently concluded that he had no fight left in him, for she deliberately turned her back on him with a great swirl of cloak and hair. This movement she turned into a series of pirouettes around the arena, giggling with each revolution.

The movement mage looked a little confused by the woman's behavior. But he merely said, "Your response will have weakened you—shall we postpone our combat until you return to full strength? I don't want to bra'an teb."

Freezing in place, Whirlwind gave him an incredulous look over her shoulder. "Postpone?" Her voice cracked on the second syllable of the word. "I would never—"

At that moment John shook off his confusion entirely. His rage erupted; the water around him poofed into steam, the little black cloud popped into existence over his head, and in one motion he sprang up from the seats and leapt back into the arena. He searched briefly for threads of water in the air or the ground; finding not nearly enough, he pulled fluid directly from the Kansael and directed a geyser of water across the arena at Whirlwind, screaming "FUCK!"

The murmur of the crowd as John entered the arena must have alerted her; his scream certainly did; but his action was so rapid that she was only beginning to react when the blast hit her in the left side of her back. She spun around helplessly and pitched into the ground, rolling a few feet before coming to a stop in a little muddy heap of cloak and limbs.

Pamar Swiftlegs glared at John but also left the arena; like any good skahs, he wasn't going to enter a fight that wasn't his.

Seeing his target down and apparently helpless, John sprinted forward to grab her, shouting "WHERE IS IT? WHERE IS IT?"

When he was just a few feet away from Whirlwind and skidding to a halt, she suddenly sat up, grinning, and made a scooping motion. This time the wind came from beneath him and carried him straight up for about fifty feet, then abruptly shut off.

He was startled for a moment but quickly regained his wits; a mere drop through the sky was no threat to him. Performing a kind of backwards midair swan dive, he twisted round and got his wings spread—and found himself buffeted by winds from several directions, as Whirlwind, having bought herself time to recover and stand up with this maneuver, really went to work on him. Her arms raised, her body arced, her cloak and hair billowing, her face possessed of a truly insane joy, she wove a powerful dust devil around him.

John twirled like a top in the dust devil's grasp about thirty feet above the ground. He beat his wings frantically, trying to break free, but he had little experience with flying in strong winds and none with cyclonic winds, and could find no purchase in the air. As he spun, he screamed with rage and frustration, taking no comfort from the very small bright spot that at least he wasn't getting nauseous or dizzy. The dust devil was also sucking up a lot of dirt from the arena, and he coughed and choked and threw up his water field again so he could breathe. Below him, Whirlwind shrieked with laughter and waved her arms about, though she seemed to be doing that for the sheer pleasure of moving rather than to affect her spell in any way.

Then John sensed a weakening in the dust devil's winds. His spinning slowed, and even through the whistling of the wind he heard Whirlwind quit laughing and start panting. Hope surged in John. Of course she couldn't keep this up forever! Likely she took out most normal opponents this way, rendering them too dizzy and sick to fight effectively—and dropping them on the ground from way up in the air—when the spell petered out.

Which it suddenly did, and John fell feet-first, facing away from Whirlwind. He flapped like mad, and he caught himself and alighted gently on the ground as if landing from a self-generated flight. God, it felt good to fly, even in that abbreviated way! Even just those few seconds with his wings spread was immensely calming—

Down! cried a voice in his head. Reflexively, John flung himself on the ground with a little splash as his thin water field met the earth, and a howling, narrow gust of wind passed over him, followed by a peal of laughter. Tired the woman might be, but she still had considerable fight left in her!

John rolled over and bounded to his feet, beefing up his water field as he did so, and found that Whirlwind now had swirling dusty winds surrounding her. He pulled more water from the Kansael and fired another one-handed blast at her, but when it hit her wind field it deflected away, leaving her untouched. "Yes, yes, yes!" she chortled, sending another gust of air at him. It splashed water in every direction when it hit his water field. Then they fired simultaneously; their respective bursts met in the middle in a spectacular shower of water.

Don't use me up! protested the little voice again—the Kansael, now that John had a moment to think about it. The desert eats me to no purpose!

John looked down at his chest and almost had a heart attack. His deep blue gem was now light blue! "Shit!" he cried, more disturbed by this sight than by anything that had happened so far. In a panic, he grabbed every water-string he could perceive—oh, the desert limited his reach so badly—and pulled, drawing back as much as he could of everything he'd recently released. Great clouds of mist enveloped him and flowed into his chest. Waves of relief emanated from the Kansael, though John knew he'd only reclaimed about half the water he'd taken from it, the thirsty desert soil and air having carried it away too quickly for him to catch.

He had also, he discovered as the mists began to clear, developed a horror of releasing any more water. The little cloud over his head merged with his water field and vanished, and he had to force himself to keep up his water field, though he lightened it as much as he dared to prevent too many water molecules from escaping. Certainly the berserk fury that had consumed him had evaporated as thoroughly as most of the Kansael's lost water.

Luckily, Whirlwind seemed to have exhausted herself, or at least was taking a breather to think of something more effective to do to John. Protective winds still swirled around her, but she no longer had her hands up ready to cast a spell, and her laughter had dwindled down into occasional giggles and that predatory grin again.

The two combatants stared at one another across the arena, and then the woman cried,

"Who be you and why did you pleasure me with an attack?"

The why of it; John had all but forgotten in his blind rage. And now that his head was clearer, he began to think that maybe he hadn't approached the woman correctly on the issue. Rather embarrassed, though starting to grow angry again, he said, "You took the Vasyn while we were gone, dammit! What did you do with it? We need it!"

"The Vasyn?" Again Whirlwind's voice cracked. "You be the one restoring it? Ha-ha!" With a one-handed gesture, she banished the winds around her; with a two-handed push-downward gesture, she rose into the air, her hair and cloak billowing around her, and floated over to land in front of John. He stepped back, ready to fend off anything she tried; but she merely dropped to her knees while looking into his face with an unsettling combination of hilarity and worship, and she said,

"Savior of Ketafa!"

[Who is this person?]

"Eh?" John said intelligently, absolutely confused and rather alarmed.

Whirlwind crawled over and started kissing the water around John's feet, smack smack smack. Then she stopped and said, "Why didn't you tell me you be the one restoring the Vasyn? We need not have fought! Still, I enjoyed fighting." She grinned up at John before resuming her kissing.

"Uh… uh-huh… right…." John backed up a step, and she followed him, still kissing. He backed up some more. "Uh, you can stop that now."

"Your wishes be paramount." The woman stood up and brushed off her knees. "I will do anything for you!"

"Oh. Eh… thanks." Jesus, John thought, they're just getting more and more fucking daft here, aren't they? Noticing some angry noises emanating from the audience, he said, "We'd better clear out since we seem to be done."

"Your wishes be paramount. This combat be over," she announced to the audience, and she followed John back to the edge of the arena where he saw Ringo waiting anxiously. He vaulted over the wall, and she wafted into the air and flew over it, settling to earth on the other side.

Of course, thanks to the magic of the arena, Ringo had heard everything, and he was just as mystified as John by the woman, especially when John, with a certain amount of irony, introduced him as another of the "Saviors of Ketafa." Whirlwind promptly dropped to her knees again and began kissing his feet.

Ringo touched John's shoulder and thought at him, At least she's not trying to tear our clothes off.

She will if we ask her to, John replied sourly. Thanks for all your help out there.

Ringo was stung deeply—more deeply than John had expected. There were overtones of real despair in Ringo's mental voice as he cried, I tried, goddamn it! I tried! But I can't grab you when you've got your water up, and when I could grab you, I wasn't strong enough to pull you out of her winds! And I couldn't grab her at all—I kept just sliding off! I couldn't do anything, man! I'm totally useless here!

Well, John was just Mr. Gaffe today, wasn't he? I'm sorry, mate, I didn't realize—come on, let's finish this thing so we can get out of this crazy place. He broke off the connection and said to the bussing Whirlwind, "Right, then, if our 'wishes be paramount,' give us back the bloody Vasyn."

The woman quit kissing and looked up at the two Saviors with a mischievous gleam in her eye. "I cannot. That be not my decision to make."

"Oh, fuckin' Christ!" exploded John. "Where's the person whose decision it is, then?"

Gracefully, Whirlwind rose to her feet. "I will take you to him." She made a sweeping gesture with both her arms, and abruptly she, John, and Ringo were swept into the air and wafted into the night sky. Once they were higher than the highest light sphere over the city, they stopped rising and began moving horizontally at about 100 MPH.

As if she were standing on solid ground, Whirlwind stood at the edge of her wind, hair and cloak streaming behind her, laughing with delight as they soared toward their destination. John wasn't quite as happy with the mode of travel; he bobbed in the air as if he were in a swimming pool, which didn't feel like flying. But poor Ringo… evidently John couldn't tell how violent the bobbing really was, because Ringo promptly turned green and vomited up his popsicle and all the other snacks he'd had in his wanderings. Worse yet, the vomit didn't drop to the ground but bobbed around in the little pool of magical air.

As Ringo heaved, John tried to move over to him somehow, but flapping achieved nothing, and swimming motions were equally useless. "Hey!" he cried to Whirlwind. "Ringo's sick! Stop the ride!"

The woman merely glanced over her shoulder, saw the mess, and gestured. The existing vomit was blown away, and what little more Ringo produced also wafted off as soon as it had left him. But Whirlwind didn't stop the ride, evidently because they were almost to their destination. They'd cleared the city, which wasn't all that big, and were headed into the desert toward a just-visible outcropping of rock that Ringo would have recognized if he'd been in any shape to look at it.

In a few minutes they were dropping earthward, and they settled gently in front of a cave opening that looked as if it had been hewn by humans rather than formed by nature. Ringo was too weak and dizzy to stand; John sprang to grab him before he fell over and helped him to a convenient flat-topped boulder, where he sat in misery as John steam-cleaned the vomit off him. "I hate flying," he muttered.

Whirlwind was turned in their direction and apparently watching them, but her eyes were glazed over, as if she were receiving mental instructions. John turned on her in a fury. "Are you quite done with us? Where's the person we need to talk to?"

"I be that person," said a male voice from the cave, and a smiling Ketafan walked out. He was a portly, rather ugly man with light brown hair and a broad flat nose slapped across a fleshy face. John and Ringo recognized him as another of the Raleka wizards, the one who had thrown up the vicious Protection on the Vasyn and nearly shredded Ringo's brain.

The man made as if to embrace John, but John was in no mood for that kind of behavior and moved back to stand by Ringo. Recovering gracefully, the man said, "Welcome, saviors. I be Meryst Sahfahshah, called Meryst the Mind in Baravada. Whirlwind explained who you be and what you want. First, I must apologize for our abrupt abduction of the Vasyn-piece. We did it to ensure its safety, for the Raleka be not the only Ketafans to have traveled to Baravada. There be Idris here, my friends."

"There are?" John glanced at Ringo. "We haven't seen any, have we?" Ringo shook his head.

Meryst clicked his tongue. "Ah, my saviors, the foul Idris be clever enough to disguise themselves, for they know that given the chance we would exterminate them like the vermin they are. When we learned of the Vasyn-piece's presence, we went immediately to verify that it was indeed part of the Vasyn. What horror, when we arrived to find the sacred statue unguarded!" The ugly wizard waved his hands in fright. "We had to take it, to protect it!"

The man seemed sincere enough, and their reason for taking the statue made sense, but something didn't seem quite right to John, though he couldn't put his finger on what. "You could've left a note, y'know," he snapped. "We had a bloody hard time findin' you."

Meryst looked at him in amazement. "And led every Idri on Baravada straight to us? We planned to contact you after the Conference. I apologize for causing you inconvenience, but the safety of the Vasyn be more important."

The little note of wrongness sounded in John's head again, but he didn't know if it really meant anything. Frankly, he was so burned out on the whole issue that he didn't care. "Fine, wonderful, we forgive you, can we have it back now?"

The ugly wizard clucked his tongue in dismay. "Not yet! We be using it."

John narrowed his eyes. "What're you doin' with it?"

"You'll approve, you'll approve!" Meryst said hastily, giving John a hopeful smile. "We be making it part of our presentation for the Conference. For years, we have tried to get the skahs to join us in our fight against the Idris. But they refuse, for they won't travel to a land where the gods can't see them. But now you are restoring the Vasyn!" He did a little jig where he stood. Behind him, Whirlwind began to dance to some unheard music. "When the skahs see that Ketafa will be opened once again to the eyes of the gods, they will gladly join our crusade."

"Crusade?" John and Ringo said simultaneously.

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