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The Scholar's face as he contemplated the turmoil was a study in mixed feelings. On the one hand, his
routine of study and ex-periment had been seriously, irreparably, disrupted, his precious papers and
artifacts of magic tossed about promiscuously. On the other, the very nature of the disruption argued
powerfully for the reality of divine intervention in human affairs.
Intervening to save the unhappy guards from military punish-ment, he questioned the pair closely and
was delighted to estab-lish that powers beyond the merely human had been at work. Not that any other
explanation seemed possible. "The verywin-dow,Jonathan! Look at it! Obviously no merely human ..."
He let the statement fade away in bemused mumbling.
Jeremy looked into the several rooms, not knowing quite what to think. Certainly this was not the work
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of Death some other god must have come upon the scene. The nature of the prank strongly suggested
the Trickster.
Arnobius's colleagues, gathering at the scene as the word spread, reacted in predictable ways. The
antigod faction found ingenious arguments to explain how merely human pranksters could have
accomplished the feat after all.
Jeremy's private opinion, fortified by what indications he could gain from the Intruder, was that if the
vandalism had any mean-ing, it must be intended as a warning to the Scholar. But a warn-ing from whom,
regarding what?
Meanwhile, Carlotta was once more nowhere to be found.
"I suppose it's possible she's run away." Arnobius sighed another of life's complications, designed to
bedevil him.
Probing gingerly into his augmented memory, Jeremy could find no instance where any god had ever
operated independently of a human host. Therefore, the Trickster must now be associated with some
man or woman, even as Apollo had come to dwell with Jeremy. The person who now shared the
Trickster's nature could be one of the faculty or a student at the Academy. It might just as likely be one
of the lowliest laborers.
The fact that Carlotta had coincidentally disappeared raised Jeremy's suspicions as to who the
Trickster's latest avatar might be.
In recent days Jeremy had begun to wonder whether the In-truder, after melting down to get into his
head, had then reas-sumed some solid shape. Sometimes he had the feeling that the invader in the form of
a shapeless blob lay hidden only just barely beneath his skin, in the shape of a giant snail or slug, peering
out through his left eye, listening through his ear; then again it seemed to him that the thing must have
taken up resi-dence right in the center of his brain.
Wherever he imagined it, he shivered.
The military situation, across that portion of the continent sur-rounding Lord Victor's domain, which had
seemed likely to flare into open war at several widely scattered points, had in recent weeks apparently
calmed down a little.
The various potentates who were Lord Victor's chief potential enemies, along with the infamous and
already hostile Kalakh, were keeping each other fully occupied, and Lugard wanted to seize the
opportunity to make his own bold move. Some of the Academics tried to keep a close watch on the
military and polit-ical situations as they changed, but others, including Arnobius, did not.
Some three weeks after Jeremy's arrival at the Academy, he was told by Arnobius that a final decision
had been made on the new expedition. They were going, with others from the Academy fac-ulty, to
explore the Mountain of the Oracle. Margaret Chalan-don was long overdue from her solo attempt to
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accomplish the same thing. Arnobius had now been given an additional reason for wanting to go to the
Mountain to help locate Margaret Chalandon.
Arnobius had long been hoping to launch an expedition for that purpose and some time ago, due to the
unsettled political sit-uation, had requested that a military escort be provided by the Lord Victor.
Arnobius's father had now at last agreed, and the Scholar found this moderately surprising.
The real reason for this acquiescence came out in a conversa-tion between the two brothers that Jeremy
happened to over-hear. It was the Lord Victor's wish to carry out a reconnaissance of the Mountain and,
if at all possible, boldly seize control of the Oracle and of the heights above. The uneasy balance of
forces that had heretofore kept the Oracle open to most people was now spoiled.
Now at last His Lordship had assembled what he considered an adequate military force.
A quiet search for Carlotta was under way, though she had not been officially posted as a runaway
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