The Sinners of Erspia

Harmasch took the observer's chair a short distance away. In times past magicians had been known to cheat in favour of their apprentices, ‘nudging’ the results by using their own faculties. Any examiner worth his salt would soon detect such chicanery these days, but by convention a patron did not sit at the table.

“Now then,” said the examiner affably, “I want you to recite the words I am thinking."

He closed his eyes, and Peadul did likewise. After a moment Peadul began to speak.

"The science of magic is the art of discipline of the mind. If the mind is not disciplined, magic

cannot be performed. The magician learns to sustain a single thought for as much as an hour ormore. He learns to extend his thoughts and mental images to the external world and to achieveeffects through them."

Peadul paused, then spoke again in a different tone.

"Say, this is rather interesting."

The examiner opened his eyes and frowned. “Hmm. You seem to have picked up a stray thought from somewhere.” He glanced in slightly reproachful fashion at Harmasch. This was a mark against Peadul: being unable to distinguish between one person's thought and another's.

“Let us move to the second test."

The examiner tipped a boxful of coloured balls into a curved hollow in the middle of the table. “Now. Let me see you perform the motions known as Petals Dance in the Wind."

Peadul smiled. He had practised long on Petals Dance in the Wind. He fixed his eyes on the pile of balls, readied his mind, and reached out with his telekinetic faculty. The balls rose in the air and began gyrating in a complicated pattern, mauve following mauve, russet following russet, cobalt blue following cobalt blue, in winding streams. Intense effort of will was called for, each stream being moved independently but harmonising with the others. Smoothness of movement was required. The examiner would note any jerkiness or sudden drops indicating that the apprentice's telekinetic grasp had wavered.

Unfortunately just such dislocation occurred now. Kinks appeared in the gyrating streams. There was confusion in the dancing balls. Colours became mingled. With a gasp Peadul relinquished his power and let the balls cascade back into the recess.

He turned, not to the examiner, but to Harmasch. “Someone is interfering with my control!"

The two older men looked first at one another, then all around them. A little further off, standing between the tables, was a man who glanced furtively aside, as if trying to make himself invisible.

The person was of such odd appearance that it was surprising he had not been noticed before. He wore neither the conical cap of a magician nor the more common-place turban, but was bare-headed. His clothing was drab and without style: a single close-fitting blue overgarment, making it impossible to guess the mood of his native country. His features were unusual, too: sharp, with an angular nose and peculiar eyes.

To a Magus Adeptus the source of the sabotage was quickly evident. Harmasch and the examiner pointed, crying out together.

“Seize him!"

As the projector station flew over the landscape of Erspia-4, Laedo had seen spread below him what seemed to be a huge patchwork quilt. Slowly he realized that it was more like a map showing each country or political entity in a different colour. The colours resulted from the apparent fact that each country possessed its own unique weather, which ended sharply at clearly delineated borders. Sunny, stormy, tranquil, cloudy, fog-covered, and so on. The projector station came lower, and Laedo began to experience mood changes as he passed from one region to another. Delight, gloom, happiness, misery, fury, resignation, all flitted through his mind like wisps of cloud passing across the face of the sun. The transition from one emotion to another was as sudden and obvious as the edge of a moving shadow.

He suspected that he was in the presence of a social experiment similar to the one he had encountered on Erspia-1, but far more complicated.

Still outside his control, the projector station settled itself in a canyon in a bare, rocky region.

No sooner had it landed than a desire to kill Histrina plopped full-blown into his consciousness. The impulse was sudden, vicious, and full of hatred.

He resisted the urge and walked out of the control room. He had not gone far when the murder mood vanished. Instead he was assailed by an almost overwhelming wish to commit suicide.