I'm family now! Ember insisted. She was glaring across the water as though she might charge.
Of course, Ember, of course! But making love for many days and nights will weaken him.
He sleep, be strong later.
Yes, Ember, yes, but when he's very, very weak the old witch will come for the opal. She'll turn him inside out and take it from his gizzard. Then she'll leave him. What'll you do then?
Tickle his insides?
He won't be able to eat or to pleasure you. Don't you want him to pleasure you?
The female dragon's golden head snapped up. Go, Horace! Go kill old interfering witch! Kill everyone sister say to, then come back! Hurry back! Don't delay!
Thank you, Ember! Merlain thought to her. Thank you for being sensible. When this war is over I'll bring Glint here and we'll sunnymoon as well. And how! she thought to herself without sending it out. Glint would be thrilled.
Kelvin paused on the third ledge he had found that looked right to him. This could be the one, but there were so many ledges in so many mountains. He hadn't realized the size of dragon territory. It must cover an area as large as Rotternik, most of it up and down. Someday he'd have to look at a map.
If this were the mountain and the ledge, there should be a river. There should be a wide place screened by trees and bushes, and there, Glint had assured him, he would find the dragons.
His weak eyes just weren't up to the task. He had to step carefully and not miss any rivers. That blue ribbon—that had to be another river. He stepped off from the ledge, to the bank of a pretty mountain stream. It was rushing right along, fish leaping in the rapids, and he thought the water too swift. But then just in case this was the river, he should pace its length. With his spanner boots each stride would take him as far as he wanted.
He stepped out, visualizing a place he could see where the rapids started. He came down a little too fast and stumbled, tripped in the water, and got wet. In a moment he was more than just damp and was being pulled along by a current.
His gauntlets, almost angrily, it seemed to him, reached out and grabbed a boulder and held on while the boots pulled on the calves of his legs and pulled his legs against the boulder. His gauntlets found a vine and he pulled, and the boots pushed and he stumbled up on the boulder, wet but free. This wasn't going to work unless he took shorter steps. From a distance he had seemed to be stepping where it was dry. Ignoring the water soaking his clothes but somehow not in his boots and gauntlets, he stepped carefully to a log lying midway across the stream. He landed almost right, so that his feet only slipped but did not slip all the way off. He stepped from the log into a clump of bushes and got scratched. Then he stepped onto a big rock and next onto a clear stretch of shore. The following step took him to the start of a sharp bend.
"WHOOF!"
Kelvin rubbed some remaining water from his eyes to see a golden blur coming at him. A dragon! He sought to pull his sword, but his gauntlets didn't help.
"NO, EMBER, NO! THAT'S DADDY!"
Merlain's voice! She was shouting the words from somewhere close or else his mind amplified words she had both spoken and thought. Somehow words that were spoken loud and thought strongly at the same time came through deafeningly.
"WEOOMTH!" There was now a copper-scaled dragon between him and the golden-scaled one. The golden-scaled reached the copper and lifted front legs, circled its throat and squeezed.
"Horace, this is Ember?"
Who else, Father?
Kelvin was stunned. "Horace, you can mind-talk! Like Charles and Merlain!"
Always could Ember and I mind-talk together. Glint taught her. Merlain and Charles and I always mind-talk.
"Merlain, how did you—?"
His daughter lifted from the opposite bank and flew to him. She landed beside him and gave him a hug that seemed to be influenced by Ember's. She had become more demonstrative with the years, but never before had she hugged him so hard.
Kelvin looked at the levitation belt as soon as she let up on him. He had known she must have it, and now that this was confirmed he should speak. Parental disapproval needed to be voiced. He opened his mouth.
But she didn't wait. "Daddy, I know how badly you need Horace and the opal. He'll take you to the battle and you can kill that old witch! I could see what was happening and I couldn't stand it. I knew Horace would listen to me even if he wouldn't listen to my husband. That's why I disobeyed you and came here, Daddy—to help you."
He swallowed, amazed at how well developed and fast-talking his daughter had become. He felt for her as a devoted father should feel, but now he felt an additional unasked-for urge. He could wish for her mother to be here with him and for their daughter to be safe with her husband at home.
"Daddy!"
She had gotten up on Horace's back. Horace was squatting and she was reaching out her hand.
Kelvin grabbed a wing and yanked himself up, almost going over his son's neck. He straightened, took a good hold on the opposite wing, and felt more the fool than he had in all his years of heroing. "Don't worry, Daddy, I can hold on to you. Besides, I've got your belt. Horace is taking us to the palaces' swimming pool."
SPLASH!
Water got into his nose and mouth as he bobbed to the surface. There was no one about that he could see, but Merlain was already flying to the blue palace.
"Charles! Grandma! Glow! Kildom and Kildee!"
Everyone came in answer to his daughter's call. "Bring out a crystal!" he called.
In a moment Glow brought a crystal out to him. It showed the battle, or part of it. Dung-uniformed Zady-fighters were battling and sweating and suffering from the heat under the floating copper disks. His allies and friends hacked away at them with swords. Now and then a sword connected and an enemy went down. Then a green-uniformed man Kelvin vaguely recognized took a sword in his vitals; his guts burst forth as his attacker ripped, and with the ripping Kelvin lost the contents of his own stomach. In a moment rage replaced his sickness.
"Go there, Horace!" he shouted, tapping the crystal. "Kill those wearing that putrid uniform! Take me with you! Now!"
And suddenly there was a sword swinging at him and he was ducking it and Horace was bellowing and lashing out with a taloned forefoot.
CHAPTER 19
Unexpected Allies
Kelvin discovered that Horace's undersized wings made excellent handholds, or in his case gauntlet-holds. He and his boots and his gauntlets now seemed attuned to Horace's sudden moves, including his opal-leaps. With no trouble at all he would brace himself at just the right time, and the hard scales of his mount remained practically glued to his pantaloons.
At first he used his sword as though he were on horseback, or rather the gauntlets did. But practice made perfect, as his father often said, and Horace was quickly done with practicing. Horses and riders fell and rolled to the whipcrack of the dragon's tail. Great pointed teeth speared through armor and man, and a flick of a forefoot pulled them off again. Roundhouse sweeps of forelegs took men from mounts or down with mounts. Whenever the enemy had them surrounded and seemed to Kelvin about to pull them down, the enemy vanished as Horace opaled them to a more congenial killing spot.
Soon the enemy got wise to their tactics and became less prone to attack. This left Horace attacking group after group of dung-clad men. Kelvin was thinking that they would win despite everything, and then he saw the sorcerer with raised hand and curved bony fingers making a hurling motion.
The Mouvar weapon was out of its sheath and triggered before Kelvin realized it. The sorcerer caught the rebound of his own hostile magic and collapsed as a mewling, unsupported mass of flesh.
It had been the notorious gelatin spell that turned the strong weak by liquefying their bones. Horace was moving them around so fast now and the enemy was so thinned that they were bound to come more and more into the range of magic-hurlers. Helbah and her crew would be working to protect them, but Kelvin knew that he and the gauntlets had to remain alert.
/> In a short while Kelvin was using the Mouvar antimagic weapon almost exclusively. Horace was so efficient at grabbing, slashing, and gnashing, then being elsewhere, that there was little need for the sword. Once one of his boots kicked out and caught a dung-uniformed killer in the face. A little later the gauntlet not holding the Mouvar weapon grasped a sword blade, twisted it from a hand, hurled the sword, and skewered the attacker.
Kelvin knew he was a perfect picture of a hero. He knew there was a hero fighting here, but that was his offspring. Even in the midst of battle he had to marvel that he and Heln had produced such a magnificent, enviable son. In a short time Horace's mouth and claws were red with men's blood and his tail smeared as well. Still the enemy was there in surprising numbers.
Trust old Zady to reanimate the dead and fill in with phantoms, Kelvin thought, and knew that this was happening.
"She's doing it now, Helbah," Glint said, closing his eyes to the crystals and concentrating on what was in his head. "She's sending Lucernia to Rotternik."
"You ready, Whitestone?"
"Ready, Helbah."
"Krassnose, Phenoblee, keep watch."
The orcs opened and closed their gills, acknowledging.
Helbah made a gesture and a smoke, and two white dovgens flew up from behind the wall. Immediately fireballs sped to destroy them, but were shattered against the orcs' magical barrier.
The smooth-backed Master of Rotternik stood on the balcony looking down at the beastmen: oranguillas, gortans, babkeys, and monoons. All were hairy, unlike Strongback himself. All were considered ugly by smoothskins outside the border. In actual fact the nature of the population was Rotternik's greatest strength. In the past Rotternik's terrain and less-than-friendly life-forms had been protection. But Zady's coming altered that.
The ugly old witch with the now-beautiful smoothskin body had come straight to him with her ultimatum: Rotternik's population must swarm out at her order and attack the survivors of the Alliance. Since she had demonstrated remarkable powers, Strongback had reluctantly agreed to assemble the citizenry and await her messenger.
Overhead an ugly bird was circling in slow, ominous patterns. Strongback had an urge to call for an archer, but considering Zady's power he knew it would be unwise. He waited as patiently as he could for what was really no surprise. A warty-necked buzvul landed in front of him with a plop. Smoke puffed around the bird and a smoothskinned woman with stringy hair and sunken light eyes stepped out.
"Strongback, I'm Lucernia, sent by Zady. You have all your population out of the trees?"
"Down to the smallest babkey," Strongback mourned. He didn't like what Zady had demanded, but he saw no way of defying her. Rotternik had had its share of magic practitioners, but unfortunately long ago. There had been a choice then.
The population had chosen to return to the trees and lead happy contented lives rather than build cities and war with other kingdoms. It had seemed a wise choice then, and certainly it was popular with the general citizenry. Protecting their kingdom and their way of life was the magical border that shut out the gaze of intrepid explorers from other lands. Magic from afar would not work past the border, not even the magic of communication crystals.
"Then you'll order them to swarm and I'll add magic to aid in the recognition of the enemy. If the magic doesn't take and they destroy some of our mercenaries, no problem."
"I believe in Zady's ruthlessness," Strongback said. Could his people expect better? The chattering babkeys and long-armed oranguillas and their cousins, the very powerful gortans, were beasts to the outsider. Wouldn't all be destroyed when Zady's battle was won? Of what use would they be?
Two small dovgens lit on the balcony railing behind Lucernia's back. There was a poof of smoke, and the smoke cleared immediately to reveal a small woman and a small man. The woman he recognized.
"Hel—" he started, then gulped. "—bah!"
"And Whitestone," said the tall, robed man. The wizard gestured, and fire snapped from his fingers and coiled around Lucernia's puffy ankles and stout, bowed legs. At the same time Helbah made a move and the malignant was stiffened with a spell.
"Strongback, you've a choice to make. Serve Zady or serve the Alliance." Whitestone did not quite make it an ultimatum.
"Zady said the Alliance can't win. She said serve her now or she'd wither all of Dreadful Forest." He pointed to a large yellowwood's drooping leaves and dead branches. "Like that."
"Zady lied." Helbah made a pass, tossed a powder, and the tree straightened up, healthy and bright. "If she wins, the world will get sick and eventually die. Trees, plants, birds, animals, people—to her they have no value."
"What can I do?" Strongback felt hope, observing the tree. "Can I fight for the Alliance? Can my people?"
"Yes. Your populace can fight, and you can fight personally. Zady is the enemy, not the Alliance."
"Helbah, as you know the magic crystals do not work within Rotternik's borders. It was a precaution taken long ago by my ancestor. But when you go back, tell your people that Rotternik's people will indeed swarm. We will fight to save our forest. Rotternik together with the Alliance."
"Done," Helbah said.
Kelvin couldn't believe how tired he was getting. He was hardly striking out with anything other than the Mouvar weapon, but the continual fighting was exhausting in ways other than physical. All had become just a blur of noise, dying screams, crunching bones, and horror. When he was younger Kelvin had sometimes found relief through fainting and vomiting, but now his spell-strengthened body would not allow it and there was never a chance to do it anyway. The dragon's strength and stamina were truly marvelous: kill one bunch of foes or be mobbed by overwhelming numbers, and he paused not a moment before opaling into a new fray. It seemed a continuous fight to Kelvin, regardless of the scenery that changed. It seemed to him that they had traversed the length of Hermandy's border and were not far from Rotternik. That glowing border might be close.
A big man disappeared from beneath Horace's left forefoot as they opaled. Now a thin man's corpse was in the big man's place. Horace, pausing not for breath, shook a man with a yellow beard, then quickly and daintily wiped the garbage from his teeth. Now the remarkable child was grabbing new foes, his slapping, slashing tail creating further havoc on either side. Mouvar's weapon darted in Kelvin's hand, his gauntlets triggering it. Wizards and witches who served Zady burned or screamed or otherwise suffered what they had intended to be his and Horace's cruel fate. Kelvin tried focusing on just one bit of action, but all blurred. The gauntlets moving his hands and the boots sometimes swinging his feet were not in the least dependent on his eyesight. Time after time his hand destroyed attackers he never saw. Less frequently a boot yanked him to the side in order to kick a mounted enemy or deflect a weapon while the gauntlets were otherwise occupied.
Oh, what an impression he was making! And he knew that he was completely undeserving. He just wanted to get out of here so he could be suitably sick. Without the boots, gauntlets, weapon, and dragon, he was just a country bumpkin.
Now there were giants before them—orc and human. The orcs had been cleansed of their cowardice and were back in action. An orc and a human of slightly larger size were grappling. The orc was trying to get its teeth into the man's throat, but the man had a large dagger barely held back from the orc's heaving breast. The orc was losing green blood, and surrounding him were many dead men who had returned upon their deaths to normal human size.
Kelvin didn't know how Horace knew that the enlarged man and not the orc was the enemy. One quick snap at the man's ankle and the giant looked down, and in the distraction the orc snapped his teeth deep into a neck vein. Blood showered them, very, very red. Then they were away, in nearly vertical position, Horace's claws and tail wrapped around the throat of another human giant. The second giant twirled, and the orc he had been about to slay slew him instead with a deft sword thrust through what seemed an exploding torrent of the giant's bowels.
Now they
were on a hillside where they had been before. Kelvin could see many dead former giants lying in dung uniforms partially dyed with red. There wasn't another human giant in sight—only orcs searching with narrowed eyes and ready swords and clubs.
Horace snorted as the scenery changed. They were now facing a second dragon, this one with golden scales. The dragon lunged for them, mouth open and ready to grab. Kelvin felt terror, but his gauntlets thrust the Mouvar weapon into the open savage mouth and triggered. Instantly the illusion of a dragon was gone, and in the spot the illusion had occupied were two charred wizards turning rapidly into ash. A swish of Horace's tail went through the former wizards and dissipated them into particles and sparks that would never revive to cast destructive spells.
Kelvin sighed at the nearness of their own destruction. Horace had been preparing to fight another dragon, not seeing through the illusion. Only the gauntlets had recognized the magic and reversed the spell in time.
Now they had opaled to a different spot. Here were men in green uniforms. He recognized his father and brother-in-law before him. His father had a wound on his arm and Lester was trying unsuccessfully to stanch the abundantly flowing blood. Instantly Kelvin was unwary, and alarmed for his father.
"Father! Lester! It's me and Horace!"
There was no answer.
His gauntlets tingled. This meant danger, but look as he might he saw no enemy. Could his father and Lester be an illusion, as the dragon had been? If so why didn't the Mouvar weapon lift in his hand? Because the illusion concealed enemy soldiers and not enemy magic-wielders?
Horace was starting toward their apparent kin, accepting them as genuine. Kelvin knew that if he didn't act now it might be too late, and if he did act and he was wrong, the mistake would always haunt him. He drew his sword, though he feared there was no reaching down to them; otherwise the gauntlet would have drawn it for him.
Horace, these people aren't who they appear! It's the enemy: DESTROY!