Science or Magic?

We have a chat with Exotica before we finalise our plans. She is the one who is likely to know just where in the palace her mother is being held. Though Exotica didn't come with us to see Fred's parents, we are able to talk to her using a rather more reliable magic link than the one I had used before, since this time it was preplanned rather than improvised.

Exotica tells us that someone has recently attempted to contact her using magic. "Probably Blondin, my father's mage," she says. "When I didn't report in, my father will have become anxious."

"And when Blondin couldn't contact you?" Synizn asks.

"I expect he will have tried Thiortin and, when he had no luck there, Guy. Blondin is a good enough mage to speak to him given some personal belonging of his to work from. Actually, he's a better mage than I am."

"So Emry will know that the force that he intended to send to Thunderclap has been reduced to a rabble, and that you have been abducted by the dragon and are probably dead," I say. "That gives me an idea."

I turn to my fellow Champions. "You remember meeting the Doctor from the Voyager, and how stunned we were to find out that his body was actually what they told us was a projection called a hologram? Well, do you think they, or failing them then the Military back on Terra Prime, would lend us a portable holographic generator? We'd also ideally get some comms equipment to allow Exotica to speak via the hologram without having to leave her current place of safety."

"I think I see what you're getting at," Jarlath says.

I grin at him. "If the men guarding the queen see what appears to be Exotica's ghost walking the palace corridors, perhaps with her head under her arm and maybe groaning a bit, then unless they are exceptionally brave I don't suppose they will hang around."

1. "Couldn't we achieve the same effect more easily through a magical illusion?" Annafrid asks, still not as comfortable with science as some of us have become.

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