I understand, Mervania. Don't get so excited-- you're making us ill.
I don't care if I do! Kelvin had to have the antidote, and I provided it! After she takes it the female won't lay an egg containing a superior life-form!
It'll be dead. The hatchling and the female. An inferior life-form won't adjust.
Possibly. I hadn't considered that. Mervania remedied that by considering it now.
At least there won't be a living superior life-form among inferiors, Mertin thought, satisfied.
If the antidote reaches the female in time.
Yes. But if that inferior female dies too, he may reconsider about fetching our dragonberry seeds.
But he made a deal!
He did. But inferior life-forms sometimes forget things when under stress. She pondered further, troubled. What could she do to ensure that Kelvin would not be distracted from his true mission of fetching the seeds?
Then she had it. She would have to be there, mentally, when the antidote was administered. Then, with a little guidance of precisely the right nature-- yes.
A sound impinged on her thoughts. Someone ringing the bell at the gate.
She reached out mentally. A froogear was there, and in its arms was something that caused Mervania to start with surprise. This-- why this changed everything!
*
As the sun was setting, Kelvin found his mother and Helbah waiting where they had promised outside the palace. He cut the speed of his belt, lowered his feet, and landed before them.
“You get it, Kelvin?” his mother asked worriedly.
“Right here,” Kelvin said, holding up the packet. “The chimaera sent a froogear to meet me at the transporter.”
“That's nice, dear. Now Zoanna and the false king have fled the palace. Helbah is trying to locate them with her crystal. She's stronger now; she says I've been a big help to her. Come now!”
“But-- ” Kelvin protested as he followed her. “The queen-- “
“Oh, Helbah can counter her fireballs! Once it was two witches against one, the queen was done for, and knew it. She won't want to give herself away, but if she does, Helbah will be ready. Can you hurry?”
“Good idea,” Kelvin agreed, and activated his belt. Scooping his mother up in his arms-- she weighed less than he did, now, which surprised him somewhere in the background of his mind-- he hopped-flew the remaining distance. Actually the gauntlets made her seem even lighter, and they knew how to support her; he would have bungled the job on his own, he was sure. He carried her through the wall blasted open by Helbah. Through the twilight-lit throne room and the ballroom and down the halls.
“Here, this is it!” Charlain exclaimed, indicating the guest room that Kelvin and Heln had once shared.
Kelvin never paused. With all the strength of his left gauntlet he shoved in the door and paused, hovering in midair.
Dr. Sterk looked up birdlike and agitated at the bedside. Jon turned, her mouth an O of surprise. On the bed, limbs chained to the bedposts, was a bloated, misshapen thing of pure horror. This couldn't be Heln! His gentle, lovely, loving wife! It couldn't be-- yet it was.
“Kelvin! Mother!” Jon cried, gladness and horror mixing.
“She's having her contractions,” Dr. Sterk said grimly. “But there's no way she can birth it without destroying herself! I could cut, but-- “
Kelvin swallowed. He thought he had come prepared, but his mind had gone blank.
Charlain struggled in the grip of the gauntlets. “Let me down! Let me down this instant!”
Oh. He touched down his feet and shut off his belt. He lowered his mother to the floor. She started across the room.
Night fell in an instant. Lightning cracked outside, lighting the windows. The oil lamps blew out. They were now in deepest darkness with Heln's unhuman screams.
“Darn!” Kelvin heard his mother say. She snapped her fingers. Immediately a little ball of fire appeared near the ceiling and stayed there, brightening until it gave off more light than there had been from the lamps.
“Mother-- ?” Kelvin asked, his heart pounding. “What-- ?”
“That's my fireball,” Charlain said. “The darkness is Zoanna's mischief. She gave Heln the poison potion. Helbah may need a little help dealing with the queen, and I'm going to be busy here. Why don't you go outside and find her?”
“Mother, the powder!”
“Yes, and fast! Give it to me!”
He handed her the leaf packet. She held it near Heln's face. Heln drew in a breath to scream. Charlain touched the packet with a fingernail. The packet went POOF! and a cloud of pinkish smoke obscured Heln's face and head. From the midst of the smoke came an unhuman coughing and then a gasping, wheezing sound. The wheezing became a shrill whistle, as of an escaping gas. A heartbeat after that there was a choking from the midst of the pink cloud.
“Mother, she's-- she's-- “
Charlain raised a finger. POOF! and the cloud was gone. Heln lay there, sickly and pale, her eyes shocked and unbelieving. “Kelvin, Dr. Sterk, Mother Charlain-- it's gone!”
“I know it is, dear. But your baby isn't.”
“But-- “
Then both froze for a moment, as if listening.
“What-- ?” Kelvin started.
Will you give over, oaf? Mervania's thought came. The job is only half done. Let me concentrate on them; the situation is critical.
Kelvin shut his mouth. Oddly, he felt better, knowing that the chimaera was present. He trusted Mervania's motive; she wanted this finished so he could go fetch her dragonberries.
“This is no ordinary delivery, Heln,” Charlain said. “Now you know what is entailed. Are you strong enough?”
“I'll have to be,” Heln said weakly.
“Then focus on the first, and bear down.”
Heln's eyes rolled. Faintly she said, “I'll try.” Then she lapsed into unconsciousness.
“Darn!” Charlain said. “Sorry, Kelvin, you shouldn't hear your mother swear.”
“Is she-- dead?”
“No, of course not. But we're all going to be if you don't get moving!”
“What should I do?” Kelvin had never felt more helpless. All he could think about was the stories of expectant fathers boiling water while the wife was in childbirth.
“How should I know?” his mother snapped in exasperation. “Go find Helbah!”
“But-- “
“Your life and Heln's and all the others depend on it! Now go!”
Heln's eyes flickered open. “Go, Kel,” she gasped. “You wouldn't like what happens here.” She sagged down again.
Believe her, inferior form, Mervania thought.
Hardly realizing what he did, Kelvin left the palace. He knew that birthing a baby was difficult, but something more than that seemed to be in the offing. What was going on?
Outside a gust of wind struck him in the face and almost drove him back. Rain spattered, hot and smelling of sulfur. Lightning cracked, luridly illuminating everything with an unnatural cast.
Where was Helbah?
“Over here!” her voice cracked.
There she was, hanging on to the gatepost. He activated his belt and flew over to her.
“Kelvin,” she gasped weakly. “I need your help. I can't do it without you or Charlain, and your mother has her hands more than full. So it has to be you. I can't contain them.”
“I-- I'll do what I can.” Kelvin knew that he was an inadequate substitute. “What can I do? Tell me, Helbah, tell me!”
A great ball of fire looped across the sky. Helbah raised her hands, and a smaller ball formed at her fingertips. The small fireball shaped itself into an arrow and shot skyward as though from a bow. Witch's fire collided above them, and there was a shocking thunderclap as both magically generated missiles imploded into nothingness.
“I'm getting weaker and she's getting stronger!” Helbah said. “With Charlain's help I had her beaten, but now I am alone, and her fireballs are getting closer before I can nullify them
. I was shooting them down at the horizon, but now it's almost overhead, and soon I won't be able to stop them at all. I never thought Zoanna would recover so rapidly and well! If Charlain doesn't finish quickly with that chimaera so she can add her power to mine-- “
“What?” Was Mervania attacking instead of assisting?
“Get that thing off your back!”
“The sting?”
“Of course the sting! What else have you got on your back? Get its butt down on the ground, way down, in contact with the dirt. Point the point east, where that fireball came from.”
Numbly, Kelvin did as directed. He hardly understood any of what was happening, inside or outside. Some hero he was!
“There.” Now Helbah's fingers lightly touched the sting and moved up and down its copper surface. Lightning flashes came from her fingers and were reflected by the copper.
“What?” he asked dazedly. “What?”
“Shut up! I've got to locate her and I can't use the crystal. When a fireball comes, you zap it. This is a case where science can counter magic, as with the Mouvar weapon.”
“But I don't know how to-- “
Helbah made a gesture. There was a poof of magic, and smoke. Lightning flashed in the sky. Where Helbah had been there was a large white bird resembling a dovgen.
Kelvin blinked, and then the bird-- symbol of gentleness and peacefulness-- was in the sky, flying, darting from side to side.
Another fireball appeared from the east. This one was smaller than the last, not much larger than the bird. It streaked for the bird, and Kelvin stared with opened mouth as his gauntlets tingled.
He grasped the top of the sting's shaft with his left hand and put his right hand farther down as far as he could reach. He tried to will lightning to stop the fireball.
Blue lightning crackled and snapped. A long, thin bolt shot from the tip of the sting and stretched out and upward. Above him the fireball sent by Zoanna was intercepted, pierced as if by an arrow. There was an improbable sizzling sound, a whiff of pure ozone, and the fireball vanished.
“I did it!” he exclaimed, astounded. “I shot down a fireball!”
Below where the fireball had been, a bird fluttered groundward in the fading light.
Kelvin's joy turned to horror. “No! No! No!” Without Helbah all was lost!
“Meow?” A blackness detached itself from the dark and reached up a paw.
The houcat! Helbah's familiar! Was it trying to tell him something?
Another fireball appeared. This one was larger than the last. Obviously Zoanna was gaining strength! Angry, determined, Kelvin put his hands on the copper sting and made the lightning jump. The bolt hit the fireball and the implosions all but deafened him. He gasped, almost knocked off his feet. Hot rain struck his face.
“Meow!”
He was getting weaker. He could feel it in his legs and arms. It seemed that it was his own life-energy that powered the shots. He was generating electricity from his body, just as the chimaera did, but his body was only a fraction the mass, and not adapted to this. How many bolts could he get from this sting? How many before he collapsed? Now he understood why Helbah had needed help!
He had to keep knocking out those fireballs. He thought the houcat was telling him as much. The familiar might be all that existed of Helbah, and that but for a time. If one of those fireballs hit the palace, it would be destroyed. It was up to him, then; he and the gauntlets and the chimaera's sting.
The chimaera! He tried thinking to Mervania, but got no answer; there was no indication that she was tuning him in now. What was going on within the palace?
“Meow!” Looking down in the moment of a lightning flash he saw every black hair standing up on Katbah's back. The animal's tail looked like a sharply bristled brush.
A phenomenally large fireball rushed with blurring speed across the sky. The queen was determined to finish them off now!
Concentrating hard, he threw the lightning. The ball seemed to accept the lightning and swallow it. There was an uncomfortable crackling that made his teeth ache and the blue lightning bolt snapped and cracked its full unnatural length from sting-tip to fireball.
Was this going to be the one that would destroy them?
“Meow!”
The little paw touch on the copper shaft felt like the blow of a hammer. The sting tipped. Remembering that Helbah had said the butt should make contact with the ground, he pushed down on it. Still the tip tipped, pointing more visibly, more directly at the fireball that was lighting the sky.
Lightning sizzled and there was a pop that might and might not have been in his ear. Streamers of fire faded rapidly. The lightning bolt vanished. Katbah, mewling as from singed pawpads, backed away.
How much longer could this go on? How much strength did Zoanna the witch now have? Was he going to weaken right out of the fight? Was it going to be the gauntlets and Katbah left to defend the palace?
No, he'd stay conscious, and he'd keep doing this, whatever it was. Eventually the wicked witch would have to weaken. Eventually there would have to come an end to night!
There was a horrendous roar from the palace. Katbah hissed. Kelvin turned, and saw a long low shape charge from the palace into the night. It looked a lot like a small dragon, but of course that couldn't be.
PLOP! A white bird, singed and sooty and apparently almost dead, fell beside Katbah. It lay there in the lightning's flash. Katbah sniffed it as all went dark.
“That was some trip!” Helbah groaned.
Kelvin swallowed. “You're-- back?”
“Of course I'm back! For a dimwitted boy you ask the dumbest questions!”
“I-- I'm sorry, Helbah. I thought-- “
“You thought that fireball got me. That's what you were supposed to think! That's what Zoanna was supposed to think!”
“Meow.”
“Yes, Katbah, you did right. Can't depend on a hero for everything. Particularly one as inexperienced as this.”
Considering all the adventures he had had in his relatively short life span, Kelvin did not feel he was inexperienced. But the need to get on with this was great.
“Helbah, what did you-- ?”
“Found them. Cave in the mountainside. Now it's up to you, me, and Charlain. Get that fireball, will you?”
Almost absently Kelvin directed the chimaera's sting to lightning out another approaching fire-bolus. The ground shook.
“But Mother is-- “
“Here,” Charlain said behind him. “And congratulations, hero, you are now the husband of a relatively healthy, loving wife, and the father of a healthy, squalling baby boy.”
Kelvin's mouth dropped open.
“And a rather pretty baby girl,” Jon said, emerging with a bundle.
The enormity of the change in his life hit him then, as did the ground before he had half realized.
CHAPTER 30
Defeat?
Wake up, hero! Wake up!”
He felt her slapping him. Helbah. Then he felt the cat's tail under his nose and he wanted to sneeze.
“Does he do this often, Charlain?”
“I wouldn't know, Helbah. We'll have to ask his wife.”
Wife! Heln! The baby!
Babies!
Kelvin sat up, then stood up. He was dizzy. There were stars in the sky, not all of his making. A moon, bright and coppery as a chimaera's haunch, lighting the grounds of the Kelvinian palace.
He made his way unsteadily to where Jon stood, holding his daughter. The baby's face seemed oddly familiar. The eyes were dark, almost coppery--
He froze. That face, after allowing for the difference in age--
Don't be concerned, Mervania thought. All foodstuffs look alike to us too. She favors me only slightly.
Kelvin reeled.
“What's the matter, Kel?” Jon asked, alarmed. “She's not ugly, she's remarkably pretty for a newborn baby, and so's her brother, Mother says. Nothing wrong with either of them.”
“But-- “
What your mother doesn't want to tell you, Mervania thought, is that there were three. The dragon fled.
But--
It was a very tricky disenchantment, Kelvin. You can't undo in a minute something that has developed for weeks. We saved your wife's life by breaking the chimaera into three: boy, girl, and dragon. You may keep the first two. That's fair, isn't it?
Kelvin's mouth was stuck halfway open.
Now go in there and see your wife, and be brave when they tell you about the third. It was the best that could be done, Kelvin. The two are completely human, except--
Except? he thought numbly.
They will be telepathic. Sorry about that; it just couldn't be helped. Now be on your way. I'll be on mine; I have business at home to hold me for a while. He felt her presence fade; she was gone.
Kelvin shut his mouth and started toward the palace.
“Uh, I know she wants to see you, but not just yet,” Jon said. “It was a difficult delivery, and there's blood, and she's sleeping-- “
“True,” Charlain said. “And we do have other business out here. Stand by, Kelvin.”
He stood by. Jon turned and walked into the palace with the baby girl. They didn't know the whole story! he thought. They didn't know Mervania's part in it.
“Later we must talk, Kelvin,” Charlain said. “But right now we must deal with the queen, or all can still be lost.”
Kelvin finally found his voice. “Yes. I'll help here.”
“We have to get to work,” Helbah agreed.
“The fireballs!” Kelvin said. “Are you watching? I forgot to-- “
“She has quit sending them for the time being. It takes as much energy to generate them as to abolish them. I must admit I'm surprised at her strength. If you hadn't come out when you did we'd have been finished.”
Kelvin refocused on the problem. He had managed, with the help of the chimaera's sting, to make witchfire arrows! Or at least the lightning to shoot them down. But indeed the battle was not over; not until Zoanna was gone. He stared into the sky. He'd never expected to see the moon out tonight; it had been so dark. But of course the storm had not been natural.