Serpent's Silver

Heln felt the gauntlet holding her slipping on her hand. Then she was falling. She reached out, grabbing and grasping for anything. She caught hold of rough bark. She held on, and looked down to the ground so far away. She felt dizzy, dizzier than when they had been far higher. Her fingers hurt on the bark, and she realized suddenly that there were branches holding her, and that she wasn't about to fall after all.

  She looked at St. Helens, held there with his belt. The belt was pushing hard against the trunk. St. Helens himself was out, head down, breathing but unconscious. The blood from his wound was leaking from her crude bandage, running down his leg and dripping through the leaves to land far below.

  The first thing she had to do was stop that belt. St. Helens' face was right up against the trunk and it looked squashed, though she thought that was just from the pressure. She had to stop the belt from pushing—but how? He had moved that little lever, but if she moved it wrong, what might happen? St. Helens could shoot up into the sky and then that whirlwind could come and suck him down again. Yet she had to try.

  The gauntlets—perhaps if she put them on? They were supposed to know what to do, weren't they? Kelvin had spoken as though they did. And where was Kelvin? Why did her natural father have her husband's gauntlets and why did he have his laser and this belt? There were many things she did not understand, and there was no time to think them out. Perhaps Kelvin needed her—but how could she know?

  The blood on St. Helens' leg bothered her. The head of the bolt might not have lodged in the bone, but it had certainly torn up the flesh! The way he had yanked it out—she could never have done that! It might have been better to leave it until there was competent help. At any rate, she hoped it was merely a flesh wound. St. Helens had a lot of flesh, and that was his good fortune, maybe. But she had to stop that blood.

  The dress was knotted as it had been, but it had slipped. Consequently it was pressing against the bolt and the wound was being pushed partially open. She wished she were less squeamish, and that she had Jon's touch for this sort of thing. But she had to do what she could.

  She pushed the blood-sodden dress a bit higher on his thigh. She took St. Helens' sword from its sheath and cut a stick from a branch, then rested the sword in a crotch. Next she loosened the red-stained knot, pushed the stick through its center, and twisted a proper tourniquet. There, she thought, maybe I'm not as helpless as I sometimes think.

  St. Helens did not thank her. He remained unconscious. He seemed to be breathing adequately, and his heart maintained a steady beat. But his face remained pressed to the trunk.

  Well, maybe this will help. She stripped the gauntlets from his hands. The soft leather with the metal plates yielded readily to her touch. She slipped her own fingers into the gloves until her hands were all the way inside. To her amazement the huge gauntlets fitted her perfectly, and now seemed like an extension of her skin. It was apparent that any roundear could wear them, though the prophecy applied only to Kelvin.

  Hesitantly she reached with her gauntleted hand for the control on the belt. This little lever must move forward and back. But which way should she move it now?

  Use your own judgment, gauntlets, she thought.

  Her fingers acted. She was not certain whether she controlled them or the gauntlet did. The lever moved, pressing back all the way. The belt changed its thrust, and St. Helens' body shot through the branches with a speed and motion she had not expected. She watched helplessly as it left their tree and was stopped by the trunk of another.

  She had to get him down! She knew that—but the neighboring tree couldn't be reached from this one. Even worse, the tree St. Helens was now in was growing straight up and down, with no branches at the lower levels. How was she going to touch him, let alone get him safely to the ground? She had expected the gauntlets to help her, and instead they had only made things worse!

  A movement at ground level took her attention. Two horsemen were there, astride their steeds, looking up.

  "There he is, Corry. How're we going to get him down?"

  "Don't ask me, Bemode. We're going to need some help. Look over there!"

  "What?"

  "His daughter. How'd she get over there?"

  "I dunno. What's that shine?"

  "A sword. Must be St. Helens'. You up there, girl, you hurt?"

  "N-no," Heln said. "But my father—"

  "You climb on down. Bring the sword."

  She hesitated. But according to Kelvin, the gauntlets were good at climbing. Besides, she had done some tree climbing in the past. Still, there was the blade. If she tried to carry that down without its sheath, there was every chance she might cut herself. She started down without it.

  "Bring the sword, I said!"

  There was no helping it. She was largely helpless, with or without the sword, and would only make things worse if she tried to defy these rough men. She reached up with the left gauntlet and it took up the sword as if it belonged in that hand. As she drew it down to her lower level she saw that there was an inscription on the blade that she hadn't observed before. Her eyes read it without conscious effort "Given in Eternal Friendship, From His Majesty Phillip Blastmore, King of Aratex." Now what did that mean? Had St. Helens stolen the sword, or had he and the king really been friends?

  "Come on, hurry it up!"

  That Bemode sounded ugly. Probably he was a mean man, given the chance. Better not anger him. She tried to shut off all other thoughts except getting down.

  "Look at those legs!" Bemode exclaimed.

  She had forgotten what she was wearing! This silken dress exposed everything from below. But what could she do? If she tried to stay up in the tree, they would fire a crossbow bolt into her. She gritted her teeth and continued climbing down, though she felt the gaze of the two men almost physically on her moving legs. It was as if slime were coating them.

  Sooner than she had expected, the right gauntlet swung her out on a limb and dropped her the short remaining distance. The men stood as if mesmerized, their eyes round, their mouths open. Because of her legs? In other circumstances she would have taken that as a compliment. As it was, she was disgusted, but didn't dare say so.

  "You see that, Corry? She must be part houcat! I thought she'd fall."

  "That would've been a waste!" Corry said.

  Bemode dismounted. "Bring me that sword, woman!"

  Heln transferred the sword from her left gauntlet to her right. The gauntlets did not feel as if they wanted to relinquish it. According to Kelvin, they made the wearer a master swordsman. But could they do that even for a woman?

  "Help my father," she said.

  "We'll help him when we get help. We've got chains all ready for him. Haven't we, Corry?"

  Heln saw that there was a length of heavy chain fastened to Bemode's saddle. As she watched he unfastened it and the chain dropped to the ground.

  "You are going to chain my father?"

  "Have to. King's orders. But maybe not the same for you, if you cooperate. Your sword."

  Cooperate? She hardly needed to guess what that meant. She remembered the first time she had been raped.

  Cony dismounted. "Don't be rough, Bemode. The king wouldn't like it. He doesn't want her badly marked. Worse yet, Melbah wouldn't like it."

  "Melbah's not going to get it."

  "Still—"

  "Pity," Bemode said, evidently daunted by the thought of Melbah's ire. "Still, we can make her say it's all right. Then—"

  The sword in the gauntlet lifted without Heln quite willing it. A sudden determination came to her. A determination that if she could not be in charge she would at least be on her way to get St. Helens some help. He was, after all, in his predicament because of her. As for what these two planned for her—she wanted no part of it.

  Bemode reached out to take the sword. "Give me that!"

  Whereupon she would be weaponless, and largely helpless to resist them. "No!" she said. The sword darted at Bemode's face, pulling back before touching it.

  "Wel
l, I'll be a cuckold!" Bemode said. He whipped out his own blade and made a swipe with it. As he did, the gauntlet feinted, twisted her wrist, and Bemode's blade rebounded. Not only rebounded, but flew away with great force. The sword lit in some bushes and left Bemode standing with open mouth.

  Corry reached for the sword sheathed at his hip. He paused, eyeing the tip of Heln's blade that was suddenly at his throat. Suddenly his mind was no longer on the sight of bare legs, but on bare steel.

  "You," Heln said to Bemode. "Get that chain and drag it to this tree!"

  Bemode did as instructed, looking worriedly at Corry. His horse neighed: it was almost a laugh.

  "All right, stand with your back against the tree!" she snapped. "You, Corry, stand next to him." It was the way she thought a man would have talked.

  The men obeyed. Keeping her eyes on them while they eyed her blade, she took the end of the chain and circled the tree several times. Bemode looked as though he wanted to make a sudden move, but always the gauntlet guided the point of the sword to bear on his left eye and he reconsidered. Now what? Oh, yes, there was a lock at one end. She drew the two ends together and locked the chain. Then she stepped out in front of them.

  "I'm going for help now. If your help arrives before mine, my father is not to be chained. His wound is to be cared for and he is to be rested and fed. If this is not done, your king and your Melbah will answer to the Roundear of Prophecy himself!" What was she saying? This seemed crazy! It was almost as if the gauntlets were making her. speak!

  Corry and Bemode looked at each other. Bemode swallowed. They might disagree, but they were not in a position to argue.

  "And one other thing." Her gloves stuck the sword point down into the ground. "When my father revives he will want his sword. Take good care of it; it's a gift from your king."

  Amazed at what she was doing, Heln mounted Corry's horse and the all-knowing gauntlets took expert charge of the reins. She thought she would remember the way to the border, but she doubted that she would have to. With her wishes firmly in mind, the gauntlets could be relied upon to do the rest.

  As she walked her horse past her onetime kidnappers, Corry said to Bemode: "You, you fly-blown idiot, you had to tell her to bring the sword!"

  "Well, if you hadn't been so busy looking up her dress, you'd have told me not to!" Bemode retorted.

  Heln almost smiled. Maybe that dress had done her some good, after all!

  CHAPTER 13

  Prisoners

  JOHN KNIGHT LAY ON the straw-filled mattress and watched as Gerta, his flopear attendant, ladled his soup. Miraculously his injured hand and broken finger had healed perfectly, as though treated by Earth's best surgeons. It had to be partially magic, he thought ruefully. He who had always declared that there was no such thing, even in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary—he owed his recovery to magic!

  That reminded him of Charlain, his pointear wife, now his widow of the other frame. Wonderful Charlain! She had believed in magic, and now he knew she had been correct. He had a fine son and daughter by her. If only he hadn't had to leave her! But her life would have been put in peril had he stayed longer, and he couldn't tolerate that, so he had left. He had done so with deep and continuing regret, but had never doubted the need for it. He could not return to her as long as the fate of Queen Zoanna was unknown, and as long as Charlain's second husband, Hal Hackleberry, lived. Hackleberry was a good man, and so John meant never to return to that frame.

  Gerta handed him the beautifully wrought silver bowl and exquisitely designed spoon. He took them, marveling again at how well his hand worked. He also admired the moving picture on the bowl; when the spoon approached it, the face on the bowl smiled. This seemed to be an actual change in the image, not a mere illusion. What phenomenal artisans these folk were! He sipped at the broth, really appreciating its rich chicurk flavor.

  Gerta smiled down at him. Such big ears, covering the sides of her face like the ears of a puppy. Such gentle eyes, such a sweet face, albeit with a large slash mouth. About three feet tall and a little bit too wide, she was his picture of a female gnome.

  "You want bread?"

  "Thank you, Gerta. Yes. Please."

  He watched her cross the room, its walls of unbroken stone, its interior that of a neat, clean cottage. She sawed him a hunk of bread from a loaf, using a large toothed knife. The handle was decorated, he saw.

  "Gerta, would you bring the knife?"

  She brought it, handing it trustingly to him along with a thick piece of bread. He bit into the crust, enjoying its rough oat texture and caraway-seed taste with a hint of pizza crust. The handle of the knife was in the form of a silver serpent, the tail expanding into the blade. When he touched the end of the handle, the eyes of the serpent moved to follow his motion. He knew this was just the magic of the sculpture, but it was eerie. How did they manage to animate their carved figures?

  "You call yourselves the serpent people, Gerta?"

  "That is true, John Knight."

  But others would call them flopears, inevitably. He considered his outstanding luck. Injured, floating down a river toward the great incredible falls that seemed to drop into blackest, star-filled space. It had been coming closer and closer, that falls, and he had been paddling to save his life. Then the water and the raft and himself falling, then floating, then… here. It was a different world, a different existence from either the Earth he had originated on or the world that was inhabited by pointed-ear people who considered round-eared people strange. He had found himself on the raft on a different river, singing birds all around. He had realized that something, some force, had taken him and brought him here. Some atomic force such as had been released by the artillery shell that had transported him and a few of his men into a near fairyland of pointy-eared people and magic. It had somehow, someway, happened. That hole, that flaw in reality, The Flaw, had somehow brought him here.

  He thought again of Zoanna, the red-haired queen of Rud who had bewitched him with a magic well known on Earth: the magic of sex appeal. He thought of how evil she had been, how she had killed and destroyed good folk without conscience, and been in almost every way a terrible monster. But he had been slow to appreciate that side of her, being fascinated by the single facet she showed to him alone: her beauty and her desire for him. How foolishly flattered he had been, how possessed by lust for her body—a lust she encouraged and freely obliged. He had willfully blotted out the evidence of her true nature for an unconscionably long period; he was ashamed to remember it now.

  He had tried to destroy her in the end, even as his remarkable son Kelvin, by lovely Charlain, was fighting to free the kingdom from her. He felt he had destroyed her, and yet he was not certain. At least he had tried! It did not make up for his long sojourn on the wrong side, but it was better than nothing. He still owed that frame, he felt, though he had no idea how he could ever make it up. It was all far away now, in another existence, and perhaps best forgotten.

  He dipped the bread in the soup and sucked at it. "You know, Gerta, I'm nearly well now."

  "Yes, your mind and body both healed."

  "Mind?" What could she know of his tumultuous inner doubts?

  "You were mad."

  Had he been? He thought back. Images came to him erratically. As in pictures flickering on a television screen while his mind dozed fitfully, coming awake now and then. Could he make any sense of them? Maybe if he tried to put them into chronological order.

  Falling into The Flaw, down, down, eternally. Then, somehow, he wasn't falling, he was floating, in a sea of stars. Drifting without direction, without orientation. That strangeness penetrating his mind, making it—mad? Stray thoughts: how foolish to travel through this maelstrom without a map! So he had conjured a map, or dreamed it up, and scratched a route on it. A route to Mouvar. That made so little sense, even in his madness, that he laughed and laughed—but nevertheless moved along that marked route, which now was a glowing band in the void ahead. The band became
a stream of light or of darkness, and a current carried him along. Until it became too swift, and he spun out or fainted or dropped into another level of madness.

  Crawling up a slippery bank. Realizing suddenly that it was actually the muddy shell of a turtle as large as the Galapagos kind. Or larger. But not the tortoise on which the world was supported—wrong mythology. Maybe.

  Running, falling, again hurting his sickeningly injured right hand. That hand was mangled horribly, dripping blood, sending pain messages in increasing waves. Trees, brush, rocks. Run, run, run.

  Falling, falling, falling. Pain.

  Something silver, long. A rope? He reached out his left hand, his working hand.

  A loud hissing sound and the rope undulating. Jaws of a serpent, opening wide. A drop of clear venom hanging on a fang and then dropping.

  Pain, pain pain.

  Screaming. His own.

  Now a flower gently tapping the head of the serpent. A blue-and-pink blossom resembling a cross between a violet and a wild rose. A stubby-fingered hand, holding the stem.

  The serpent's jaws closing. The serpent settling down, sliding away.

  Now a face above the hand holding the blossom. Very blue eyes and very large ears like a puppy's. Gerta's. She looking down at him, her mouth making a moue and her eyes squeezing. A tear running down her face.

  Flower petals touching his forehead, gently, gently stroking. A flower scent a little like a poppy's, soothing his tired mind, easing the long pain. A puppy with a poppy! Pained laughter. Oblivion, again.

  He shook himself mentally. It had been so dreamlike, and yet so real. It was more than a hallucination, or else hallucination could return in memory with entirely too much reality.

  This was really Gerta. This room that was lighted by large phosphorescent toadstools placed all about. Walls that were rock, and apparently solid rock. It was like a room in a cave or cavern, but the walls were smooth. Laser construction here? Or magic?

  "You wish to eat?" Gerta asked.

  "Please." The language was the same, at least. Strangely, it seemed like other things to vary only slightly from frame to frame. Perhaps not so strange, if it indicated that man had spread out from a common origin and colonized the several frames. Obviously there had been travel between them, because Mouvar had sown his legend among the pointears in Hud, and if those legends were to be believed, Mouvar hadn't been the first. How could he have predicted the uniting of kingdoms if there were no kingdoms to unite? Roundear and pointear could interbreed; he had proved that! That meant they were closely related species. But these flopears, now—how close were they?