He was walking in a residential district. The sun was beating down on him a bit too warmly. Strange white houses were bordering the street, each with a square of green grass decorated attractively with bright yellow flowers. Zudini hardly noticed, though later he was to regret not picking a bouquet.
"What a waste!" he cried aloud, ignoring a blue-uniformed man with a bag on his back, and a child on some sort of wheeled board. "My greatest escape ever! To the strangest world across the Flaw! Without the fluff they'll never believe it happened! Without a new pinch of opal powder I'll never be able to repeat! I've lost an entry in The Guleless Book of Magical Records. What an incredible, humiliating sacrifice!"
Horace saw his father stepping down in his boots before the cave. He had a dish of chopped meat, which was strange because before Kelvin had brought the meat in a bucket.
Horace wriggled close, allowed Kelvin's hand to pat his head, and savored the rotten aroma. Black and maggoty, just the way he liked meat best. He was about to take a bite when he wondered why Kelvin hadn't thought to him the way he had before.
Horace knew that something wasn't right. He sniffed at the dish appreciatively, and moved his nostrils until they touched the dish-holder's hand.
His nose wrinkled to the witch's smell, and instantly he remembered that his father did not look like himself these days. If this were really he, he would appear to be a warlock or a soldier.
"WHOOF!" Horace said, and snapped at the hand, causing it to drop the dish. The dish shattered, producing a dark-green stain that smoked and ate into the solid rock.
Now he was certain! But the witch had become a grotesque bird, and the bird had started flying from the cave even as the dish dropped. He leaped after her, determined to chase her all the way to the underground river and beyond. His jaws clicked and she was further ahead, and then he was under her and she was flapping her wings wildly. He followed with opal-hops, landing on trees, houses, barns, in fields, on roads, anywhere that kept her in sight.
He opaled above and tried catching her. She wriggled out from under. Below was a dung-uniformed soldier aiming a bow—a big, rough fellow hardly worth a good bite. Ignoring the puny danger of the arrow, he put down his talons and prepared to drop all the way to the ground to rip off the man's face.
NO, HORACE! NO!
Merlain's thought? Or a trick?
That's our brother, Horace! Our brother Charles!
He couldn't chance it. He twisted in midair and opaled into some bushes, landing hard. Overhead the bird was an ugly speck.
Oh, Horace! Go home to the cave! She'll trick you if you don't. Helbah was watching—she knows the bird is Zady. She won't let her get to you again. Go!
Grab bird! Tear out feathers! Pull apart!
That won't destroy her, Horace. Not unless somebody is there to burn up the parts.
Chew off head, squeeze and tear body, scatter feathers. Won't come back.
Helbah says she could, given time. Her astral self would survive and find a way. That's why she has to be burned.
You and Charles come with me. You burn her.
We would like to, but—
Come! Never before had he tried commanding her. Before he had always done what she wanted.
An enemy soldier stepped from the bushes. Horace shot out his tongue, tested the air for the scent.
It's me, Horace. Merlain. See how hard it is to tell?
Climb on my back.
She did, taking hold of his wings. Now, Horace, where is she?
He searched the sky. There were better eyes than those of a dragon, but he could still see better than a mere human person could. He saw birds, many birds. He did not see one particular bird.
Oh, Horace, she's gotten away!
Horace hung his head. He had been so busy thinking to her and she to him that the prey had escaped. Doubtless Zady had landed and resumed her human form, in which case she would again be dangerous.
"Whhhhhooooffff," Horace cried softly. "Whhhhhhoooooffff!"
I know, Horace, but you must wait your chance. Daddy or I or someone needs to be there so that if you destroy her she won't be coming back.
The thick-muscled soldier scratched behind Horace's ears as Merlain knew he liked. It was comforting, knowing that the hand was really hers.
And beware of anyone coming near you. Anyone at all.
Merlain, come to cave with me. Stay with me.
I can't. I'm married now, and— The soldier's hand stretched down and wiped up a drop of moisture. Why, Horace, you're crying! Oh, very well! I'll come stay with you for as long as I can.
Horace opaled them. But once back at the cave, eyeing the ugly soldier, he knew he might awake suddenly from sleep and do her harm. That must not happen.
He thought to her about it, and by and by he returned her where he had found her. Then, a sadder and no wiser dragon, he returned alone to his lonesome cave.
St. Helens moved a bishop, watching John's face. His old commander's mind wasn't on the game. He'd better help him talk it out and then maybe he'd remember how to concentrate.
"Two wines," St. Helens ordered.
The wines were brought by Nellie, who was busy with other orders from other men still wearing uniforms; she patted his hand quickly but didn't stay to chat. John took his glass—a new affectation replacing mugs and jugs in the wine and chess houses—and gulped it in one quick draft. No leisurely savoring or commenting on the bouquet.
"Commander, you think Zady's coming back? I'd thought we had her whipped."
"Never underestimate a witch—especially her."
"Ummm, you're right there, Commander. I learned that from the old days. Specifically from old Melbah in what was then the kingdom of Aratex. You just can't believe their power sometimes."
"I was thinking she might come back strong. Maybe with an army from another frame. Maybe she'll have something new and horrible that none of us will know how to deal with."
"Like an atomic weapon?" The thought of those still gave him nightmares. In the world where he and the commander had been born, atomic weapons had been in a sense an all-destroying magic; to a majority of people it probably made as much sense.
"Hardly an atomic weapon, you Irish tale-spinner. But I was thinking maybe something could be the equivalent and be magic. Helbah sounded so pessimistic last time I saw her. She didn't say what she feared, and I'm not sure she knows."
"Hmm, I think Zady's done, Commander. What she did to your grandson was her last play. At least I'm hoping that was her last."
"I just wonder what kind of gesture she could make." John made circles on the tabletop with the bottom of his wine glass. "If she has an atomic equivalent she could destroy a city as an example—the way the United States destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I dreamt about Zady having the bomb, crazy as that sounds."
"Don't even think it, Commander. She has to follow the rules of magic, whatever they are. I thought back in Aratex I was beginning to understand magic. Old Melbah commanded earth, air, fire, and water, and that sort of made a little sense. Elemental magic. In her hands as powerful as bombs."
"I remember. I thought the same way then. But of course that wasn't the limit of magic. It may have been Melbah's, but it wasn't Zady's. I've no idea how her spells work. You've any ideas?"
St. Helens had to wonder if the commander really expected him to answer. It was good that he was at least talking.
"I've been pondering," John continued. "Old Zatanas used sympathetic magic and that had a logic. The part is equal to the whole; the likeness to the object. As when he used lizards to control the movements of dragons—or tried to."
"Wasn't that something, though! But wasn't there more?"
"Yes. Made a laser beam bend once; I've no idea how."
"Likewise these phantoms and the shape-changing and making people big or small like something in a child's story book. Most of these effects have only temporary duration, but then so does a speeding bullet or the fissioning of an atom."
> "Tough, ain't it? I stopped trying to figure it out back in Aratex. Only thing I know is that Zady ain't got no bomb, normal or atomic."
"And that," said the commander, "is the one truth about warfare here that I actually like!"
CHAPTER 23
Atom Bomb
"Kathy! Kathy! Kathy!"
"What is it, Joey?" Kathy Jon looked up from the stringpeas she was shelling to see her little brother waving frantically outside the kitchen door. "I'd like to play with you, but Mother said get this done or there'd be trouble. As if it wasn't enough I had to hoe these things and carry water to them when it was dry! I don't like stringpeas anyway!"
"Come look up in the sky!" Joey cried, not even agreeing, as he usually did, with her estimate of the vegetables. He was red in the face as he alternately pointed and called out.
"Oh, very well! I guess I'm entitled to a break." Kathy put the large pan of stringpeas back on the table beside the dishpan filled to heaping with the green-and-black-striped pods. It wasn't that she hated the work so badly; it was just that it was boring. Left to her own devices she would have been catching fish or bringing down a ducoose with a throwing stone from her sling. Fish and fowl tasted better to her and were a lot more exciting to get. Given a choice she would rather clean fish she had caught herself. And as for eating, as far as such good-for-you vegetables as bruselbage and cabsprouts went, there was no comparison. Give her a nicely browned fish every time!
And sometimes unusual things happened out by the water. Such as nude naked bare witches appearing. Such as her uncle Kelvin lying on the ground. Such as him kissing her when she went to help him, and telling her she was pretty. Uncles could kiss nieces if they wanted to, since it was all in the family, though it had been a shock at the time. But pretty—no one had told her that before. Her head had spun pleasantly ever since. She wanted very much to know if it could be true. She had never thought of herself in that way, and never wanted to, but now, oddly, she was intrigued. Maybe there was, after all, more than outdoor adventure to life.
Still, she should not be thinking about such things. Not while great evil threatened.
She wiped her hands leisurely on the apron her mother had made her don, though they weren't in the least damp. It was sort of fun to keep Joey waiting and dancing outside the screen. The brat should have been helping his brothers and poor dad. Thank the gods, as Grandpa Crumb was always doing, that she was here for them.
As she looked through the screen door she saw her father and mother looking up at the sky. Her father had been pushing a big wheelbarrow filled with dirt-encrusted potabers he had dug that morning. Her mother stood beside the wheelbarrow, still holding a dull-red pumpquash in either hand by its stout stem. Kathy liked pumpquash pie as well as baked squakin, so she approved of her mother's harvesting the vines. But what were they looking at?
Suddenly it seemed to Kathy that she had the answer. They had to be watching a flock of wild geeucks flying west for the winter! Immediately her thought turned to golden roasted fowl cooked by her in the absence of their mother.
Her sling and rocks were, as usual, not far away. She grabbed them up from the shelf, shoved the screen open, and leaped, rather than ran, outside. So it wasn't ladylike; well, ladyhood could wait another minute.
She looked up, stone already in its leather pocket, ready to twirl. Her first reaction was disappointment. There was no flock of waterfowl overhead, only streamers of white cloud. But the streamers had a peculiar shape, and as she strained her neck to look upwards it dawned on her that they formed words. The longer she looked at them the more they made sense.
CITIZENS OF THE ALLIANCE, YOU MAY THINK YOU HAVE WON A BATTLE BUT YOU HAVEN'T WON A WAR! I, ZADY, MALIGNANT WITCH EXTRAORDINARY, AM ABOUT TO TRIUMPH! YOU WILL SHIVER AND SHAKE AND MOVE YOUR BOWELS WHEN YOU SEE THE EXTENT OF MY NEW POWER. WATCH AND BE WARNED!
"Now what does that old hag think she's doing?" Kathy's father rumbled. Her mother put down her vegetables, took her father's face in her hands, and kissed him. The two were a lot more demonstrative than they had been before Jon's capture by the witch, and Kathy was not about to object. She was just so glad to have her mother back! Others might not ever know what love was all their lives, but Mom and Dad did.
Then Jon motioned her and Joey close. Not knowing what to expect, Kathy gave Joey a shove with the back of her hand and moved over.
Her mother put her arms around them, all three. It was as if she expected the sky to open and a giant foot to stomp down. Always her mother had been so brave, so what her father called feisty. Kathy couldn't understand it. Had her mother's capture and torment changed her that much?
"Look! Look!" Alvin and Teddy were running, shouting at them as if they hadn't eyes. Jon desperately motioned for them to join the rest of the family in its huddle in the backyard.
The boys came close and dropped their mouths open, looking alternately upward and at their mother.
"I know it's going to be something bad!" Jon said. "Look down at the ground! Look down at the ground, not at the sky!"
There was a look on her father's face that had never been there before. It was as if he expected something even worse than before was about to happen.
"I know it's going to be something disastrous," Lester Crumb said in a hoarse whisper. "Look down at the ground!"
Kathy remembered the tall tales told by Grandfather John and St. Helens. She had known that her mother believed the stories, but she hadn't suspected it of her father. Even if the stories had been true, this wasn't Earth. The sky wasn't going to flame. Neither would the flesh melt from their bones as St. Helens had described. But she looked down, wondering, and waited, expecting that nothing would occur.
A great light flashed and the ground became bright. She closed her eyelids, and still she saw the light. The ground shook as from the tread of a heavy giant.
BARRRRROOOOOMMMMM!
"What's she up to?" Kelvin demanded of Helbah. The witch had summoned him and his father to her early this morning. Something was going to happen—something unprecedented, she said. Now they stood out on the royal grounds with the two little kinglings, quiet for a change, sober-faced, even. They were all looking up at the strange message Zady had magically spread across their sky.
"I don't know, youngster, but it's going to be something bad."
Youngster! She had never called him that before. Not even when his youth might have justified it. She was really worked up over Zady's reappearance in their frame and now these mysterious letters above their heads.
It had to be a bluff, Kelvin thought. The old hag had lost her army and her malignant helpers. How she had gotten back into their frame, if in fact she had left it, he didn't know.
"There are benign powers and there are malignant powers, and I've never heard of either taking over the entire sky. This isn't just illusion, Kelvin! Everywhere, in all the kingdoms, everyone is looking up at the sky as we are doing! Everyone is seeing the same letters! Everyone is getting her message!"
"Hardly the Rotterniks," Kelvin said. He was trying to reassure her a bit. "Babkeys can't read."
"That's right, go on, boy, make jokes! You've been a happy, carefree person too long! You don't know what it's like out in the real, cruel world!"
She sounded, Kelvin thought, as he might have sounded had he an ordinary son who was idling. He resented that. He knew he was no idler and never had been! Admittedly he and his family had lived on the king's bounty for a long time, but that was the reward for heroship. As for the heroship, he'd never wanted—
"Do you think we should keep looking up?" Kelvin's father asked. "It could be a trick. She may be intending to blind us."
Kelvin immediately recalled his father's and father-in-law's fantastic war stories of people's melted eyeballs running down their cheeks and men's shadows etched permanently on walls and pavements. The strange thing was that they seemed to believe those stories, though there was no magic capable of that kind of destruction. Of course Earth, his father
always insisted, utilized science.
"I don't know what is going to happen," Helbah whispered. "Your wife can't see in the cards, can she, John? In that we're blind already. All of us are blind to the future."
"Meow," said Katbah on her shoulder. The animal, or Helbah's animal half, whichever interpretation was preferred for a familiar, did not seem worried. That was normally a good sign.
"I'm going to keep watching," Helbah said. "You can watch or not as you prefer."
Kelvin decided to keep watching too. He couldn't believe there was a chance they'd all soon be stricken blind. Unfortunately there was now nothing to see except those cloud letters. Some of the sights he had glimpsed recently had impressed him far more. After seeing giants and friends who suddenly vanished to become enemies, the sky message was tame. He saw that his father was still watching.
Light flashed, or rather the sky did. The entire region overhead was flooded with a dazzling brilliance. Just for a moment it lasted, and then the cloud letters vanished as mysteriously as they had appeared, and the sky split apart like a torn envelope. The ground shook, just as from an implosion, as when Horace opaled and the air rushed in and made a tremendous:
BARRRRROOOOOMMMMM!
Kelvin's ears hurt, but overhead something miraculous was happening. Having split apart, the sky was now filled with mountains and a jungle and rolling farmland. It was so very real, and seemed so very close, that Kelvin almost felt he could touch it. Not like a crystal image, though those appeared to be real enough. This had the same solid three-dimensionality as seen through an ordinary window.
Now the greenery blurred and the jungle was closer and closer, and there was a cairn. The cairn grew larger, as with diminished distance, until finally it was as though they were standing before it. The metal plate on the central rock read: "Dedicated to the Memory of Throod's Fighting Men Killed in the War with Rud, 1824."
"I'd thought it was Rotternik," Kelvin said, letting his breath out.