"Be careful, gaffer Bedizi'n. For the gods' sweet sake and Liavek's, just stand on that point, stand there! Hear?"

Melot looked left and right. Took in her breath, because all of a sudden it started to grow cold; and Junthin began to talk, and all of them to talk. Then the talk became one sound, and that sound rumbled up through her bones like close thunder—"Now, now now—name him, name him—"

It's Gatan they want, they want me to talk, Gatan, Gatan—

BOOM! The thunder burst in her face and there was something there, while a great fist hit her and she went flying backward into collapsing wizards and the crash of furniture and goblets and trays and vases. She hit the floor on her backside, feet out at angles, and struggled up on her hands to see Gatan sitting there in the center of the carpet without a stitch on and blinking and wobbling back and forth. There were rope burns on him. There was a dazed look on his face. "Gods!" he cried, proving his reality.

"Air displacement." It was Dr. Toth, who was helping up Master Junthin and then gaffer Bedizi'n who blinked owlishly. "Your cloak, my dear." And he drew Melot to her feet and took her cloak and went and cast it around Gatan, who sat helplessly where he had landed.

"Where were you?" Melot cried, clenching her hands to fists and pounding her knees as she gazed into Gatan's bewildered, blinking eyes. "Gatan, Gatan, you great fool, where have you been?"

"In this cellar," he said. "In this cellar." He shivered and hugged the cloak about him; and Melot went and threw her arms about him. He was sometimes a fool, Gatan was; and he looked like one this time, being naked as a hatchling and cold as meat and gods help him, smelling like a sewer. Weed clung to his hair. She picked at it, patted his unshaved cheek. "Oh my vases," Junthin moaned at the fringes of things.

"He has a luck," the woman with wet hair said.

"An investment," said the woman with pins, and Melot looked about at her and hugged Gatan fast as the woman rolled her eyes and staggered back against her twin. "An investment, O gods, he's carrying something. Do stand up, young man."

Melot applied herself with both hands and Dr. Toth helped, and the fat man with the marmoset.

"Up, up," the marmoset wailed as the fat man pushed, and Gatan wobbled to his feet and reeled this way and that under Melot's support. Gatan howled, and his face glowed red and changed of a sudden with the shadowed overlay of a man's rough features that were never Gatan's. They changed again, a second face.

"O good gods," Melot cried, stepping back.

"It's Hagon," cried the woman in pins, while the face faded leaving Gatan with his own; Melot stood there in profoundest shock—Gatan, not-Gatan, O gods—what was this they had summoned to the room?

"Not Hagon's choosing," said the marmoset, "that's Othis, that was Othis, sure."

"What, what, what?" Melot cried, and went and grabbed Dr. Toth by the sleeve. "What are they talking about, what's happened to him, what's wrongwith him?"

"An investment." Dr. Toth took her by the arm in turn and by both arms both hard and gently, his close-set eyes looking straight into hers. "Hagon evidently intended to invest some fraction of his power into what he thought was a nexus of considerable intensity. Do you know— no, of course you don't. But with an extension into even such a minor nexus, why, Hagon could invest the merest portion of his magic into your brother and use your brother's luck to magnify his power, to become a great wizard, not a petty one. And so Othis saw his chance. At the worst moment, at the positively worst moment in Hagon's procedure or Othis'—your luck brought us to summon him out of their reach."

"But—but—can't you help him?"

"Help him, my dear woman?" Dr. Toth straightened back and regarded her down his nose, and flung an expansive gesture toward Gatan, who stood hugging his borrowed cloak about his nakedness. "Help him? That's a powerful wizard standing there. Your brother's drained them dry; and gods know what else they were up to beyond using him as a catspaw! If he has the makings of that investment as well, gods save us all! It was power they were after."

"Gatan?" Melot turned and looked and held her hands to her mouth for fear of something else getting out. But it was Gatan. Her brother stood there blinking and scared-looking. "Melot," he said, "Melot, I'm me, I'm just me is all, O gods, I feel like I could burst, my head, my fingers—"

"Don't!" cried the marmoset. "No, no, no, don't let it loose. Wish it to rain. Quickly, wish for rain."

"I hope it rains!" Gatan cried desperately. And the air went frosty cold.

"Weather-wish takes time," said the gaffer Bedizi'n, "a great deal of time, young man, I hope you don't expect haste. That's always young folk, always in a hurry. Tomorrow, I make it tomorrow noon, halfish—"

"But Hagon and Othis," cried Gatan. "What will they do to me? They'll come looking for me."

"Oh, no," said Junthin mournfully. He held one of his vases in his hands and he had a distressed look on his face. "No, I don't think they will." And he came and set the vase on a table that was still upright. It was a flowered urn. It was fall to the brim with red liquid.

"Backlash," said Dr. Toth. "Dear me, what an awful mess. The lad got all the useful things of them. But is that one or both in there?"

"Both, I think," said Junthin. "It's the only vase intact." Gatan sat down where he was, on the rim of an overturned chair. Melot just stood, numb.

"No more Othis," said Junthin. "No more Hagon."

"Good riddance," said the black woman.

"But," said Melot.

"I'd say," said Dr. Toth, "unasked, of course, and unconsulted—that it's going to rain half past noon tomorrow. And everything's going to work out well for this young man. Though I'd say one ought to find him a master right quickly. An untrained talent of his caliber is not comfortable. That advice is free."

Junthin coughed. "My damages—I do have first claim."

"Junthin," cried the fat man's marmoset, "you have no such thing."

"Indeed not," said the black woman without a shadow. "I think we might expect master Toth to research this matter and tell us the consequences."

"Ah, well. Nowwe come to fees. I'll think of some small thing. The answer may take me a few days and I make no guarantees in this case. And pray, my dear friends, pray earnestly that there were no deeper entanglements. I'lltake the pair in charge until I have your answer. That should relieve you of some few anxieties. And of, coincidentally, worry about each other." Dr. Toth leaned over the vase, sniffed and stood back with a grimace. "Ugh. A little consultation would have prevented that. I'll have lost my doorspell, too. It was Hagon's, and I'm afraid it's quite done for."

"I don't know," said Gatan, still shivering, though the doctor's study was warmed with a very natural fire; and the doctor had provided a warm bath and a very fine robe once they had gotten in. (It was Melot climbed through the window they jimmied, and let them in among the books and clutter.) Gatan, a mass of nerves on his way home, still grew distraught whenever he talked about his sojourn in that cellar under Hagon's floor. "I don't know whatthey intended to do, I don't know what's to become of me now. What do I know? I can't deal with folk like that!"