Eighth Circle

Liala clung to the small moorland pony and wondered if it would be quicker to walk. Allain said they should ride because they were pretending to be shepherds and shepherds rode ponies when they wandered the moors. Bryn wanted to speed things up. Allain said that if they did a computer, in the palace, would record their behaviour as suspicious and send some trolls to investigate.

They were carrying implants that had been removed from real shepherds. They were members of Plaid Koerno who went on sabotage missions when their implants said they were tending their sheep. Allain said the guardians weren't as clever as they thought. They relied on computers and computers could be hacked and reprogrammed.

Their party had been reduced to three. The commander and the sergeant had gone off with Balduur on a secret mission. In this case "secret" meant that only Allain knew where they were going and wouldn't say. His job was to take them to a sea cave that was special to the dolphins.

Whenever things got really bad the dolphins went there. The cave had a narrow entrance that could be defended against orcas. Tunnels led in from the land and that was how they were going to get in.

Liala desperately wanted to see the dolphins. They would be worried about her just as she was worried about them. She had learnt a few words of their strange click language and could imitate them well enough for the dolphins to get an idea of what she was trying to say. Crispin thought she was very clever. Liala wasn't so sure. Sheep dogs knew far more words of human speech.

She wanted to see the dolphins and she needed them. They could pass messages to Crispin. There was no other safe way. The guardians were spying on them. They had listened to their conversations in the laboratory. That was how they knew about the Lord of Light.

She had to tell Crispin that the two men hadn't come from the Ninth Realm. One was a head hunter from the Seventh Realm and the other was a man called Tom Carter who came from the Sixth Realm. Balduur was primitive enough. If the realms got more primitive as you went down the scale, it was horrifying to think just how primitive Tom Carter might be.

And she had to tell Crispin about Bryn's sister. They had to rescue her. It was just awful what happened to decent girls. She and Crispin had always thought that the girls who took part in the sex parties were licentious hussies. Now she knew they were wrong. The guardians put implants in the girls' brains to control them. They could switch them on and off like they did to the trolls.