They were on the way back to join the rest of the party before the High Kaireen felt like speaking. «Prince Blade,» he said. «You watched with interest my people at work. There are Kaireens in your land of England?»

«Yes, quite a few.»

«Are they wiser than I?»

Blade sensed that the old man was asking to be praised, although he did not seem like the sort to appreciate really gross flattery.

«Some are,» said Blade. «A great many are not.» That was both flattering and accurate. The High Kaireen seemed to be a man able to use all of his intelligence for any purpose that interested him. That made him a wise man by any standards of any dimension.

The High Kaireen smiled graciously. «Thank you. I do not imagine, then, that our skills have many surprises for you.»

This was an admirable opening. Blade shrugged. «Not many. But the liquid you poured on the cloth-the one that made the boy sleep-that interests me. I-«

«That?» The High Kaireen sighed wearily. «The sleeping water from the peza leaves? It is a strange jest of the gods.»

«How is this? It saved that boy much pain.»

«Yes, it is better to have it than not to have it at all. But it is not all that good. It is made by boiling peza leaves in water from mountain springs, then letting the liquid settle. When it has settled one takes the part close to the bottom, and that is the sleeping water. It is not strong enough, for as you saw even a small weak boy took a long time to fall asleep. Yet if one uses too much, it is very easy for the sleep to turn into death.»

«You have no way of making it stronger?»

«The gods have given us no such knowledge, Blade, not in all the years we have been using the sleeping water. I suppose they will never give it to us. Perhaps they wish us to endure pain, to remind us that we are weak after all.»

«Perhaps,» said Blade. His mind was no longer entirely on his conversation with the High Kaireen. Instead, part of it was drawing conclusions from what the old man said and leaping on ahead to exciting guesses.

The anesthetic was too weak and too unreliable. That was not surprising, considering the crude methods used in making it. Suppose one developed a way of distilling the sleeping water, so that it was five, six, ten times as powerful?

Yes, but distillation involved metal tubing, large quantities of it. There wasn't enough copper in all of Draad to make a single good still. Nor was there the skill in iron working needed to make usable pipes out of iron.

True enough, all of it. But threebo stalks are hollow, and the wood is strong, tough, and waterproof. Seal the joints with resins and leaves, and you might have exactly what you need for a still. It would be a weird-looking setup, all the tubing probably zigzagging instead of coiled. But it might work. If it worked, Draad's sick and wounded would have cause to bless the name of Prince Blade for a long time to come.

Blade smiled at the thought. Then his mind took another leap ahead, and abruptly his face straightened out. Suppose you could make the sleeping water even stronger than you needed for an anesthetic? Then you'd have something usable as a weapon. Spray a good dose of it on a man, and he'd go down.

A man-or a stolof. A man might be fast enough on his feet to evade the spray. But a stolof? They were deadly, true, but they were not that fast on their eight feet. Attacked by brave men spraying powerful sleeping water, what would happen to them? They might be knocked out. Certainly they would be far too slow to fight, to kill, to hurl their deadly ribbons with such accuracy.

Blade swallowed. For a moment he felt almost dizzy at the possibilities opening up in front of him. He felt as though he was slightly drunk and standing on top of a high cliff in the darkness, with a strong cold wind blowing around him.

The sensation faded, and Blade began to think clearly again. There were a hundred questions he'd have to answer before he could say if his idea made sense or not. How did stolofs breathe? How well could the joints of threebos be sealed? What with? And so on.

Well, he would just have to go about finding out the answers. In the meantime he would keep his mouth shut. He did not want to arouse vain hopes in those who would be his friends. He also did not want to arouse jealousy and all the things that might follow from jealousy in those people who could easily become his enemies.

Neena came out to greet him as he approached the main party. «Blade, you look-strange. As though something very important had happened to you.»

«I do?» He shook his head. «I did not know. I suppose it is just being happy that we have saved the boy. That is all that has happened, and isn't that enough?» Even Neena would have to remain ignorant for the time being.

«I suppose so,» she said, and took his arm.

Chapter 17

Draad had no real capital city. Instead there was a cluster of a dozen or so large villages that King Embor ruled directly. Their hunters and warriors provided his guard, and their crops and animals supplied his table. Embor himself lived in a log-walled compound hardly larger than that of one of the principal clan chiefs.

Blade was just as happy not to have to live in the middle of a vast palace, with a swarming horde of courtiers and servants to watch everything he did and hear everything he said. He wanted to push his inquiries forward without anyone watching him or eavesdropping on him. In King Embor's home, he could move about freely and quietly, seeing what he wanted to see, asking questions wherever he wanted to, with no one paying any attention.

He had plenty of time to himself. He had high rank and honor, as a warrior, a foreign prince, and above all as Princess Neena's betrothed. But he had no specific duties, or at least none to anyone except Neena. She demanded a vigorous performance of those duties. Yet no matter how demanding she was, she could not take up all of Blade's time. He quickly learned more about turning threebos and sleeping water into weapons. The more he learned, the more optimistic he became.

He finally reached the point of asking to meet with King Embor and the High Kaireen. He also asked Neena to attend the meeting. In fact, he wouldn't have dared not to ask her, even if, he hadn't respected her judgment as highly as he did.

Blade sometimes thought it was rather a pity that Neena was from Dimension X, rather than Home Dimension. She seemed to have the perfect balance of physical and mental development needed to make a field agent, one good enough to travel among the dimensions. It was frustrating to know that she could never be tested and trained into what she might so easily become!

The four people met in King Embor's most private chamber, locked away in the innermost part of the great sprawling house. The room was dark except for a pair of flickering candles. The air was close and heavy with the scents of wood, resin, wax, and dry rot.

Blade began with a plain, unadorned statement.

«I have been looking for a way to destroy the stolofs of the army of Trawn. I think I have found that way. Now I need your help to be sure.»

That certainly got their attention. All three of them stared at him as if he had just turned into a stolof himself. Then King Embor cleared his throat and nodded.

«Go on, Prince Blade. Tell us more.»

Blade did so. He ran over all that he'd guessed and all that he'd learned for certain, about stolofs, sleeping water, threebos, distillation, and everything else that was part of his plan. He had a number of drawings, made with charcoal on bleached parchment. One showed the distillation apparatus. Another showed how four men could attack and slay a stolof. Two would have swords or spears, two would have containers of the distilled sleeping water. King Embor and Neena were particularly interested in that second drawing.