Laurel bit into the fruit and let its juices trickle down his bare chest. He had a way of savoring food-any food-that never failed to bring a smile to Raikin's face. No doubt an extension of his more animal nature combined with the sense of presence, immediacy, and absorption in the natural world unique to Muritania culture. His ears pricked with the slightest sound in the forest, which he seemed able to translate with accompanying images that also brought smiles to his face as he decoded their meaning, as he was doing now in response to the cracking twigs at the edge of the forest just before the side of the river. Animals trying to sneak up on him never managed to do so, and elicited more pleasure than consternation, though he had none of Linara's ability to make them docile. He just redirected them on their way toward live food they were more likely to be successful with, as he was doing now with that huge constrictor snake slithering down towards from from the top of the boulder.  

Raikin laughed. "Ah, the simple pleasures that occupy you." 

"I can't deny it," Laurel said, relaxing against the boulder, making sure to stay upwind so his pheromones would continue to exert their effect on any creature attempting to come up behind Raikin. It would scare them away, as Raikin too had none of Linara's animal magic to protect him.  

Laurel pretended to look at the sky only to give Raikin chance to peruse his body, covered with no more than a loin cloth, with his eyes without feeling self-conscious. All part of his elaborate seduction rituals. Raikin had to admit his relentless dedication to the task of flirting with him was offset only by his inexhaustible supply of tricks up his sleeve. Laurel must have been able to smell just how much Raikin's own pheromones had dropped off since his crown chakra had become dominant. And it was his way of anchoring him to the physical world. He had gone from trying to distract him and keeping him off Linara to notifying her to dial up her pheromones as well to the same end of grounding him. Now it was all Raikin could do to keep from being sucked into a lover's triangle.  

He wasn't sure he needed the grounding exercise, and for now found it mostly annoying. Then again, maybe they were on to something. Perhaps his own sense of detachment to what was going on in the natural world would only increase without some way of luring him in. After all, how many spiritual adepts resigned themselves to a life of non-participation in worldly affairs, saying, "The world is just as it needs to be?" The implication being that even if mortal minds couldn't divine the larger patterns, and the rightness of things, it didn't mean the Godhead had surrendered its nurturing role and its own dedication to uplifting all lifeforms and reuniting them with its unlimited beatitude. Raikin didn't want to be that kind of spiritual adept, and maybe he would be until he learned to balance his chakras more as Warnak had, until he learned more chakra magic, either from visiting Chakly himself, or indirectly from Warnak.  

When he saw Raikin wasn't taking the bait, and was getting lost in his head again, he came over to Raikin's boulder and flopped down behind him, allowing Raikin to lean against his chest. "Wouldn't want you to get backache. You have such little muscle of your own to rely on. Go ahead, use my chest for support." 

Raikin leaned back into him, trying to get with the spirit of the game. It suddenly dawned on him that, as with so many things on Hitara, there could be multiple meanings behind Laurel's actions. Maybe contact with his body, or just increased proximity to his energy field, helped bring the latest awareness to the surface. "You and Linara are really terrified if you don't make me immune to your wiles that Warnak will get his hooks into me, aren't you? Either by way of his thought projections, or his shape shifting, or some other seductive means." 

"Little bugger stole my magic right out from under me, without me even knowing. So, yeah, I'm a little concerned about him getting to you when your guard is down. No one can maintain hyper-vigilance all the time. Take it from a predator who can sustain the mindset longer than most, way longer, if only to avoid becoming prey himself in a world full of threats, and creatures that come to life just as you're going to sleep." 

Strange, these paradoxes the overlying layers of magic give way to on Hitara, Raikin thought. Laurel's and Linara's seductive magic was meant to both seduce him and make him seduction-proof at once, anchoring him, on the one hand to the physical world, giving him a healthy detachment from his carnal urges on the other. Maybe something could be made of that, a kind of paradox magic. Zen masters were good at resolving paradoxes. His spiritual teachings might well suggest ways for him to navigate Hitara-and for that matter, the universe-and counterbalance Warnak's growing abilities by accessing certain forms of magic which he would be forever better at than someone with Warnak's temperament. Warnak couldn't be called upon to slow his impulsive nature enough to sort through paradoxes of any kind, or even to acknowledge their existence. 

Raikin stroked Laurel's hand that had him in a loose embrace. "You saw how easily I deflected your magic before. So why do you worry so?" 

"Don't pretend you're immune. I can smell your excitement. I just want you to get your fill so you don't go all weepy when he's around, getting weak in the knees. He not only stole my animal magnetism, he managed to somehow amplify it. He's even harder to resist." 

Raikin laughed. "I'm really not a slave to love like that. Pining over someone isn't my style. Not even Linara could reduce me to that." 

"Spoken like someone up in his head too much." Laurel took a bite out of Raikin's ear and filled his ear canal with his tongue. For all his mock flirtations, they may as well have been a pair of monkeys grooming one another. The real intimacy between them right now wasn't so much seething as warm and calm, like fair weather. 

"I'm wasting too much time here. While each day Warnak gets closer to piloting the ship and breaking free of Hitara." 

Laurel laughed raucously. "That's ripe. No one breaks free of Hitara." 

"This is the real reason you feel no pressure to conquer the heavens with me, isn't it? Because I sense the boldness in you that doesn't turn away from anything." 

"Do you know how many times my people have combined their powers in meditation, merged our minds hoping to amplify our magic enough to break free of even this valley? Each time to no avail. And we are the most powerful life forms on this world, save for yourself and Warnak, of course." 

"You think highly of your meditative abilities." 

"From our oneness with nature, it is possible to see things, know things, reach into the infinite in ways that are not possible with ordinary consciousness. If there was a way to turn the key on the lock holding us to this valley, we would have found it by now." 

"I am that key, my friend." 

Laurel snorted and his lips widened in a mocking smile.  

Raikin stood up. "Go ahead, peel yourself off the rock, I dare you."  

Laurel found he couldn't move from where he was. "Release me from this binding spell, wizard," he said calmly. 

"No." 

Laurel fought with all his strength to pry himself free, sending cracks racing across the rock in the process. Still he remained calm, smiling at him. 

"Not too long ago, you'd have flown into a rage at my toying with you like this." 

Laurel relaxed even more deeply, then stood up. It took him a second to realize how he'd managed it. "Ah, that's how it's done. Seems your binding magic won't work on me anymore, wizard." 

"You can think that if you want." 

Laurel threw his arm around Raikin's shoulder and walked back toward the woods with him. "You think because you've calmed the beast in me you've somehow turned the magic of Muritana on its head? Hate to break it to you, but I don't always summon anger to morph. Some animals I change into require a different emotional trigger." 

That did take some of the lift out of Raikin's rising self-confidence. "I tell you it can't be done," Laurel insisted, sticking his tongue in Raikin's ear again. This time Raikin impatiently pushed his face away. 

"Maybe you just have to learn how to up your game. Better science and better magic is always the key to crawling your way up the evolutionary ladder on Hitara." 

Raikin eyed the waterfall descending from high up the mountain. The water was being bled off and redirected toward the village by a series of ingenious ploys. Rather clever engineering, considering the channeling was also set up to blend seamlessly with the countryside so as not to alert others of the camp's whereabouts.  

"Did you design this?" Raikin asked. Laurel merely smiled proudly in response. Raikin bent down to pick up a filter immersed in the rerouted stream made of metal. "You're using an ionic filtration system." 

"Picks up a lot of sediment on the way down." 

"So wolf boy learned to tap all that extra psychic energy available when tapping into the natural realm for a reason. It wasn't enough to accept life on life's terms, he needed to better the lot of his people. Maybe we're not so unlike as you let on. What's more, maybe your pragmatism will offset my idealism."  

Laurel, fluffing up at the ego stroking, was starting to respond better to some of Raikin's more grandiose ideas. "Fine. We'll try it your way, give a go at escaping Hitara. Hope you have a spell for delaying old age. Because even if you're right, we'll be old men before we get anywhere." 

* * * 

"What makes you so hell-bent all of a sudden to get off Hitara and spread your influence throughout the heavens," Laurel asked, "the legends notwithstanding? Especially when you think of the implications of giving Warnak access to the universe. You can bet he has his own ideas of how to lord it over everyone." 

"Let's face it, the way Warnak is going now, no lock box will be able to contain him for long. Each of the regions of Hitara is governed by such different kinds of magic no one but the two of us have ever made it out of any of the zones. And for all I know, I made it this far riding his magic, and without him I couldn't have done it myself. Certainly not fast enough to keep up with him. So best I get out there if only to counterbalance his influence."  

As they hiked through the woods, Raikin allowed Laurel and Linara to lead him to the edge of Muritana. They had to part the leaves for him to see light on the other side. Laurel thwacked into the invisible energy barrier he and Linara were powerless to walk beyond.  

So the dragons are not the only ones who are caged, Raikin thought. Up until now he'd believed that the real hold on citizens of the various districts was psychological. Who wanted to give up their magic which gave them a survival edge in a cutthroat world to cross some boundary where they would be powerless and at the mercy even of those with no or poor magic? But clearly the magnetic fields which fluctuated across Hitara and whose varying qualities leant themselves to the underlying magic of the different regions, shaping and informing them, also kept them physical prisoners. Unless one could divine how to walk through the walls of pure energy, which acted exactly as protective force fields. 

Raikin took a minute to ponder how he'd managed his own escapes previously, hoping to bring more consciousness to what was initially some unconscious or innate ability. For him to set binding spells around the scientific artifacts scattered throughout the different regions of Hitara in his youth, surely some inherent ability had been involved. Of course, it could have been abilities lost to childhood; as he aged, his willingness to believe the unbelievable would have waned, taking from him certain forms of magic. Lastly, it could have been Almadra's magic which had melded with his, and so long as he was tied to the house of Pilmadrin, he could do more than escape its snares and pitfalls, he could escape the Rosan Valley, and the other districts, as well. He took a deep breath and held it to help him power through the many mixed signals and fluctuating interpretations to how any magic worked on Hitara, as the crone had taught him to do so long ago. "Always science and magic must be merged and in balance if mastery is to follow. One without the other will leave you forever stuck and at the mercy of the EB's-the Energy Balancers." That was her term for the wizards who had perfected keeping science and magic in balance, at least up to a certain level of proficiency, beyond which she fully expected both Raikin and Warnak to rise. So what was the lesson mastered in youth and then forgotten, lost in the clouded memories of youth?  

Ah ha! Of course. He was making this more difficult than it needed to be. 

Raikin stepped through the energy barrier as if nothing was there. He held out his hand for them. "Binding wizard, remember? Who better to see us beyond Hitara's binding magic, far less Muritana's?" 

Binding wizards had their own form of magic. It was the opposite to Warnak's, for it consisted of creating lock boxes from which no one could escape. It often involved turning their enemy's energies back on them. So the very tools they had become comfortable with for procuring their escapes, was now the very thing holding them captive. It took a genuine Houdini like Warnak to escape a good binding spell, especially one of Raikin's, which was quite good indeed. So far he'd met no one better at this form of magic.  

Mastering the science involved with binding magic required having a keen sense for how a person's mind worked, and therefore how to unleash the demons in their minds that their victims barely held at bay with the lock boxes they erected in their own minds. So in effect, Raikin, had to be a kind of Houdini also, but mostly at releasing the demons which mortal men kept locked in the dungeons of their minds for fear of being eaten alive by them. That meant that Raikin, at least, if not the other philosopher kings of the multiverse, was also a master of psychology. He had to know how to play people against themselves. Just as he'd known quickly how to play Warnak against himself, baiting him with a chance to best Raikin's ability to balance magic and science by mastering that spaceship before him. What a perfect pair they were, the more he thought about it, like pole and anti-pole between which the fiercest electricity sparked and flowed. 

Now, what did binding magic have to do with stepping through an energy barrier? Well, as it turned out, as Raikin now realized, he could bind himself and anyone else he wanted within a lockbox of psychic energy that made them invisible to the barrier fields. It was as if space and time themselves had folded around them. And while he was more a master of the kinds of psychic energies associated with humanoid psychology, as it turned out, since what we believed we made true, all that was required of him was to change what Laurel and Linara believed to be possible. Their own minds did the rest. The universe is indeed one big wish machine-if you just know which wish to make and can get your fears out of the way. By going into the locked boxes of their minds, he had gotten their fears out of the way, and so cleared the path to inserting the kinds of beliefs he needed them to have. Explaining all of this to them would have accomplished little, so he didn't bother. One of the primary reasons for different forms of magic, wasn't just the geographical regions of Hitara. Within each region each person's abilities to wield magic differed slightly. All in accordance with what they could wrap their minds around. If Linara and Laurel could have wrapped their minds around what he just did, then they too could be binding wizards. The fact that they weren't, spoke for itself.  

For the first time Laurel seemed to grasp the importance of their fated union with the binding wizard. And it was only now that he let himself trust the electricity coursing through him at Raikin's mere presence. Linara too had picked up on the importance of Raikin to her and her people, but she had become increasingly guarded as they approached the barrier, and as talk had turned to escaping Muritana, which, if it only endangered her and Laurel, would still leave her people greatly weakened, as the two of them were their people's most advanced practitioners of magic. Yes, following Raikin meant following in the path of greatness. But at what price?