He also discovered that casting plasma charges was tiring, took something out of him. Casting one or two wasn’t bad; that’s why he hadn’t noticed it before. But to cast ten or a dozen in just a few minutes left him exhausted, and the energy wasn’t made up by tapping the Web of the World. Apparently it was a different energy.
After a futile and exhausting week, the nature of his training changed again, with Kurqosz showing less interest in him. Now he was to cast not plasmas but images.
These were not quasi-physical monsters, but holo-images pure and simple, images that frightened partly from their horror content and partly by breaking the victim’s confidence in his own sanity. Within days, Montag could stand on a balcony, target a slave in the courtyard, and create in the man’s mind the sight of headless corpses waling; bony scrabbling hands digging their way out of the ground; decaying g bodies with worm-eaten faces moving as if to embrace and kiss-the victim. Invariably the target collapsed or stood paralyzed, fell unconscious or broke and ran.
The first time, Macurdy had been pleased with himself. Then he’d realized the cruelty of the act, and the pleasure of accomplishment died.
More difficult, he learned to tart people he couldn’t see, at first in rooms whose locations he knew precisely, then rooms known only approximately. In these cases, he needed to have seen the person before, and be able to visualize them. He’d already become superb at visualizing.
To the extent practical–which was very limited-Mac had used Hithmearcisc around the palace, including with Zhilnasz. Zhilnasz, of course, answered in German-his function was not language instruction-but most of the palace staff were humans, who of necessity answered Macurdy in Hithmearcisc, keeping it as simple as they could. So his small knowledge of the language improved, and meanwhile it gave him a form of recreation.
Finally the Crown Prince tested his progress in image casting, providing himself as a target in a building halfway across the palace grounds. The results validated Montag’s skill; his training there was finished.
The next day, instead of being sent to Zhilnasz, Macurdy was ordered to Rillissa’s suite, and as usual her demands were imperious, not to be refused. That evening before he left, she astonished him by weeping. Her father had kept them apart, she said, and the next morning Macurdy would be leaving, unlikely ever to return.
“And I love you so!” she cried.
He’d known she was fond of him, in her way, but love? Like a pet, Macurdy realized as he walked down the hall, like a favorite dog. Which at that was better than some people loved their spouse. He could feel for her-she did the best she could-but to love her was beyond him.
The next day, with Kurgosz and a surly Tsulgax, he left the palace on a barge again. The trip up the Rovenstarn and Jugnal was much slower than the trip down had been; there was the current to fight, and the beginning of spring had worsened it. He practiced his Hithmearcisc on servants and crew, and once tried it on Tsulgax, who simply glowered at him.
He saw Kurgosz only occasionally, and wondered what the crown prince did with his time. Perhaps, he thought, he spends it browsing the hive mind.
On the eleventh day they arrived at the gate hostel, and on the twelfth passed through it into Bavaria again. Bavaria and spring.
29
Assignment
Back at the schloss, they returned Macurdy to drills on beaming emotions. He hadn’t had much success with them before, and didn’t improve. He doubted they expected him to. It felt more like keeping him occupied, though while waiting for what, he hadn’t a clue.
Several days after his return, a guardsman arrived at the men’s quarters after breakfast and took him to the colonel’s office. The telepath, Anna Hofstetter, was there, but neither Anna’s aura nor the colonel’s showed cause for alarm.
“Stand at ease, Herr Montag,” Landgraf said genially. “I hope you found Hithmearc interesting. The Crown Prince tells me you did quite well in your drills there.”
“Yessir, colonel sir!”
Landgraf gazed quizzically at Montag, who stood stiffly at attention despite the order to stand at ease. Perhaps he was intimidated. He would phrase the next question so the man couldn’t answer it with a simple yes or no, and see how he did.