"They'll help us help Toromon if we help them. How, I still don't understand for sure. Already I've arranged to have Price Let kidnaped."
"Kidnaped? But why?"
"Because if we get through this, Toromon is going to need a strong king. And I think you'll agree that Uske will never quite make that. Also, he's ill, and under any great strain, might die in a moment, not to mention the underground groups that are bound to spring up to undermine whatever the government decides to do, once the war gets going. Let is going where he can become a strong man, with the proper training, so that if anything happens to Uske, he can return and there'll be someone to guide the government through its crises. After that, how we're to help them, I'm not sure."
"I see," said Jon. "How did they get hold of you, anyway? For that matter, how did they get me?"
"You? They contacted you just outside of Telphar, didn't they? They had to rearrange the molecular structure of some of your more delicate proteins and do a general overhaul on your sub-crystalline structure so the radiation wouldn't kill you. That, unfortunately had the unpleasant side effect of booting down your index of refraction a couple of points, which is why you keep fading in dim light. In fact, I got a blow-by-blow description of your entire escape from them. It kept me on the edge of my seat all night. How was I contacted? The same way you were, suddenly, and with those words: Lord of the Flames. Now, your first direct assignment will be ..."
In another room, Clea was sitting on a blue velvet hassock with her hands tight in her lap. Then suddenly they flew apart like springs, shook beside her head, and then clasped again. "Tomar," she said. "Please, excuse me, but I'm upset. It was so strange. When I was dancing with the King, he told me how he had dreamed of my brother this morning. I didn't think anything of it. I thought it was just small talk. Then, just after I changed partners for the third time, there I was, staring into a face that I could have sworn was Jon's. And the man wasn't dancing, either. He was just looking at me, very funny, and then he said my name. Tomar, it was the same voice Jon used to use when I'd hurt myself and he wanted to help. Oh, it couldn't have been him, because he was too tall, and too gaunt, and the voice was just a little too deep. But it was so much like what he might have been. That was when the King made his announcement. I just turned and ran. The whole thing seemed supernatural. Oh, don't worry, I'm not superstitious, but it unnerved me. And that plus what you said this morning."
"What I said?" asked Tomar. He stood beside the hassock in the blue-draped sitting room, his hands in his pockets, listening with animal patience.
"About their drafting all the degree students into the war effort. Maybe the war is good, but Tomar, I'm working on another project, and all at once, the thing I want most in the world is to be left alone to work on it. And I want you, and I want to have a picnic. I'm nearly at the solution now, and to have to stop and work on bomb sightings and missile trajectories ... Tomar, there's a beauty in abstract mathematics that shouldn't have to be dulled with that sort of thing. Also, maybe you'll go away, or I'll go away. That doesn't seem fair either. Tomar, have you ever had things you wanted, had them in your hands, and suddenly have a situation come up that made it look like they might fly out of your grip forever?"
Tomar rubbed his hand across his brush-cut red hair and shook his head. "There was a time once, when I wanted things. Like food, work, and a bed where all four legs touched the ground. So I came to Toron. And I got them. And I got you, and so I guess there isn't anything else to want, or want that bad." He grinned, and the grin made her smile.