"I watched Machiavelli's theories in action," he admitted with something that approached a smirk, "though I wouldn't say it helped."

But his hand rose and a finger lifted.

"Plato's forms. For I know the Oz in my mind, in the minds of many, and the Oz I traveled through, where so many friends and allies walk and breathe and live, are two very very different things, the latter a battered imitation of the former."