SIMON RAISED the heavy tankard to his lips.  Over the rim of the vessel he watched the scene alertly.  On his first acquaintance he had thought the people of Estcarp somber, overshadowed by a crushing weight of years, the last remnants of a dying race who had forgotten all but dreams of the past.  But during the past weeks he had learned bit by bit how surface and superficial that judgment had been.  Now in the mess of the Guards his attention flickered from face to face, reappraising, not for the first time, these men with whom he shared a daily round of duties and leisure.

To be sure their weapons were strange.  He had had to learn the swing of a sword for use in close melee, but their dart guns were enough like his automatic to cause him little trouble.  He could never match Koris as a warrior - his respect for that young man's skill was unbounded.  However Simon knew the tactics of other armies, other wars, well enough to make suggestions even that aloof commander came to appreciate.

Simon had wondered how he would be received among the Guards - after all they were making a stand against high odds and to them any stranger might represent an enemy, a breach in the wall of defense.  Only he had not reckoned with the ways of Estcarp.  Alone in the nations of this continent, Estcarp was willing to welcome one coming with a story as wild as his own.  Because the power of that ancient holding was founded upon - magic!

Tregarth rolled the wine about his tongue before he swallowed, considering objectively the matter of magic.  That word could mean slight-of-hand-tricks, it could cover superstitious Mumbo-Jumbo - or it could stand for something far more powerful.  Will, imagination and faith were the weapons of magic as Estcarp used it.  Of course, they had certain methods of focusing or intensifying that will, imagination, and faith.  But the end result was that they were extremely open-minded about things which could not be seen, felt, or given visible existence.

And the hatred and fear of their neighbors was founded upon just that basis - magic.  To Alizon in the north, Karsten in the south, the power of the Witches of Estcarp was evil.  "You shall not suffer a witch to live."  How many times had that been mouthed in his own world as a curse against innocent and guilty alike, and with far less cause.

For the matriachate of Estcarp did have powers beyond any human explanation, and they used them ruthlessly when necessary.  He had helped to bring a witch out of Alizon where she had ventured to be eyes and ears for her people.

A witch- Simon drank again.  Not every woman of Estcarp had the Power.  It was a talent which skipped willfully from family to family, generation to generation.  Those who tested out as children were brought to the central city for their schooling and became dedicated to their order.  Even their names were gone, for to give another one's name was to give a part of one's identity, so that thereafter the receiver had power over the giver.  Simon could understand now the enormity of his request when he had asked the name of the woman in whose company he had fled over the moor.