He blinked his eyes and he was a man. His clothing was open, just as it had been back at the boulder. Magic did things like that—converted the enchanted back to their original state with all their clothing and weapons intact.
Zady was perched on the far side of the pinnacle. She was herself with beautiful body and ugly head.
"Here we are, dearie. You wanted to spy on Zady when she was but a head. Now Zady has brought you here and will leave you for as long as it pleases her. If you get tired of the view, try looking at the show I'm providing for you."
Glint looked at where her finger pointed. At the edge of the rough nest was positioned a large, irregular cut of crystal. In the depths of the crystal a face—a very frightened, pain-filled face. The face was that of a woman of unusual beauty with reddish, almost coppery hair.
"Merlain!" he cried, recognizing her at last. "Merlain, my wife!"
"Guess what's being done to her. Notice the perspiration on her forehead. See the way her eyes blink."
Glint lunged. At the old hag with the lovely young body. He meant to do her violence of a fatal nature. His grasping hands closed on the neck where the wrinkles started and there was a poof of grayish smoke. As his eyes cleared he saw a sheer drop below to distant rock. He was right at the very edge of the pinnacle, his fingers digging into crumbly rock.
"Jump! Jump! Jump!" he heard from overhead. He wrenched his eyes away from the compelling drop and looked up to see the big bird hovering on an updraft. As he did, it dropped a dropping that lit on his face, almost in his eyes, and splattered on him.
He moved back on the ledge, backing carefully on hands and knees. The bird was circling, circling, and then flying toward Roughmaul Mountain. He watched it flop out of sight.
Something took his breath away. It was the nest. The old twigs and sticks and ancient feathers were covered and well soaked with the foulest of excrements. He looked at his hands and clothing and found that he was well plastered.
"Phew!" he said, and feared he tasted something. It really stank, and after that there was little more to be said.
Something occurred to him. The weapon Kelvin had given him and helped him tie securely to his back. The polished, spearlike, copper object that he had said came from the scorpiocrab tail of the chimaera.
If that bird should come back or he should see something of her from this height, maybe then he could use the weapon. It was a forlorn hope, but it was worth a try. He tugged the leather thong that held its tip tight to the back of his belt and pulled it round to his front. The thing felt smooth and cool, as a weapon should. He shrugged the strap from his shoulder and, standing at his fullest height, pushed its butt down in the excrement. Kelvin had just placed his hands on it so, he thought, placing his own hands on the shaft, and then had concentrated.
Glint tried thinking of a lightning bolt. The shaft under his fingers remained cool.
This wouldn't do if he had a chance to singe Zady's feathers! Kelvin had said that the butt had to make contact with the earth. By "earth" he knew the place where Kelvin's father had originated was not meant, but rather the ground. Beneath the nest there must be rock. Would rock work? Kelvin had never said and he had no way of knowing.
He pushed hard on the sting, giving it the best effort of his arms and back. He pushed until his legs hurt and the thing sank no deeper. Beneath the rain-softened dung were years of dried excrement.
He sighed. There was only one thing to do. He hesitated over the sword and the knife on his belt. He had never used a sword in his life, but he had used the knife a lot. The blade had been with him since he was a boy. When his sister and he were released from Zady's spell he had been the age he had been at enchantment, with everything on his body that he had had then. In addition to a young boy's clothing he had been outfitted with a deadly sharp, sheathed knife. His mother had provided for him as best she could. That was the way of magic—one day an enchanted sword, the next day a child restored.
It had to be the knife, though the task he faced he hated. He got down on his belly, almost overcome by the fumes, and pushed the blade into the top layer of excrement. He made a sawing motion. Dried dung, sticks, and old eagawk feathers came away with his application of the knife; he pushed these in a pile and finally, as the pile crowded him, rose to his feet, picked up an armload, and tossed it off the pinnacle. An updraft interfered. He coughed, rubbed his smarting eyes, and went grimly back to work.
For a long, long day he labored. He chipped and hacked and got thirsty and hot under the blazing sun. He was afraid his blade might be damaged, but it was a magically conditioned knife his mother had strapped on him. As he worked and sweated he sometimes glanced involuntarily at the crystal with its horrid view of his wife's face.
She was suffering terribly and Zady allowed no clue as to how. He had tried reaching his wife with his mind, and that had gotten nowhere. What he must do, as soon as possible, was get down. With wings or spanner boots or the belt worn by John Knight getting down would have been no problem. Climbing down was impossible—there was just no way.
He went on trying to ignore the crystal, but time after time his head turned involuntarily and he widened his eyes to stare at it. She was suffering, really suffering, and there was no way of reaching her or of adjusting the crystal to show more than her face.
Finally it became too much. He climbed out of the hole he had dug, wrenched the crystal from its spot, and tossed it over the side. He watched it tumble, turning end over end, then dwindle in the distance. Far, far below he imagined that he saw it smash.
Now, holding to the edge of the nest support, Glint regretted his action. She had been in torment, and that was dreadful to see. Zady had cursed him by making sure he saw only his wife's torment. Now, thanks to his rash action, he still could not see. Worse still, he could not know for certain that Merlain was alive. With the crystal showing him her pain at least he had had that assurance. Now he knew nothing at all about her and could see nothing if Zady decided to relent.
Much, much work and his tough, callused hands became torn and bloody and hurt. Still he chipped away, now and then wrenching out a large chunk of petrified ordure and tossing it. The heavy stuff at least didn't fly back. He imagined it exploding far below, wishing that it was landing on Zady.
Finally his knife scraped rock. He hastily scratched away until he had a bare spot as wide as his two hands. Triumphantly he rammed the sting down to contact, held his hands in position, and thought of lightning.
PIFFF!
A tiny blue spark appeared at the tip of the sting and vanished.
This was lightning? This was what he had worked so hard for? Why? What was the matter? But he knew, even as he fought his own rage.
Bare rock was not a close enough contact. It had to be solid, untainted dirt.
CHAPTER 27
Hell
John Knight stood with his daughter and grandchildren, Merlain and Charles, in what was to his Earth-educated mind a large cage formed entirely of invisible force fields. They could not get out; they were as much prisoners in here as though there had been material walls and bars. When he approached either side of the square he had paced off, an energy pushed him back. In the large crystals arrayed just outside the square he could see scenes that had to interest him. Mentally he numbered the crystals and alternated his viewing of them. Crystal one: Kelvin all alone now, looking down a path and seeming bewildered. It had to be some spell Zady had cast on him that Helbah hadn't been skilled enough to counter or quick enough to avoid.
Crystal two: Charlain, his unpredictable predicting wife. Beside her on a couch sat beautiful Glow, who had once been a sword and was now his grandson's loving, telepathic wife. To the side of Glow were the slowly maturing kinglets, Kildom and Kildee, her charges of the past twenty years. In a chair all by themselves sat Helbah and her familiar. Helbah was moaning as though in great pain, and the cat was staring into her face as if to give her some of his feline strength. Considering the linkage of witch and
familiar, the cat might have been in fact helping her.
The third crystal showed an apparent man with polished horns growing from his forehead. John only now saw the face where before there had been a swirl of darkness. He saw and he recognized.
"The devil?" he whispered, questioning only himself. "Old Nick? Satan? I thought you were myth."
"Mythtaken, weren't you?" the imaged creature replied. The words took John mentally back across the years, to when a robot in another frame had used those words under appalling circumstances. Had the horned one access to his memory?
John blinked his eyes to clear them of what had to be illusion. He was going mad, he had to be. He hadn't felt so overwhelmed by anything for years. There was just no way, his rational mind assured him, that this could really be happening.
It couldn't be, even though in this frame and others there was magic, and though witches and warlocks and wizards and necromancers did exist here. Even though here there be dragons, he thought wryly, and even though his son had started an incredible career by killing one.
Even though he had traveled to worlds almost identical to this one. Even though he had encountered doubles of people he knew who on similar worlds had almost opposite characters. Though he had met a chimaera and a robot, both with advanced superiority complexes.
Though he remembered all his previous adventures, starting when he and his men had been ordered out on maneuvers where they had somehow survived an atomic explosion. Or had they? Could his entire life after the explosion have been bogus? Could all have been a dream in a mind as the mind disintegrated? Could all have happened in the instant of explosion?
"So you remember me from my Earth visit?" the creature asked. Its tone was rasping, as of the points of iron nails scraped across mortarless flagstones.
John shuddered. Old Testament imaginings and the ignorant posturings of those who insisted they believed everything. Mythical creature, mythical terrors. But suppose it wasn't quite. Suppose—?
"Oh, hell," the creature said, "allow me to introduce myself. I'm Professor Devale here."
"Professor of—"
"Necromancy, of course. I train all the witches and warlocks—the ones you call evil."
"Of course. Very logical."
"You want to see hell?"
"Not particularly."
The creature snapped its fingers. In the crystal were flames and rivers of lava and people he had killed and people he had seen die and had wept over.
"No, no, no!" John cried, though he knew it for illusion. "I don't want that."
"Then I'll move it closer." Devale, alias the devil, alias Satan and Old Scratch, double-snapped his fingers: snap, snap.
Instantly flames sprang up around them. Everywhere on him, on his grandson and granddaughter, on Jon. The air was choking and sulfurous. The heat was blistering. He was burning, he was burning. Merlain and Charles and Jon were—
"Granddad, what is it?" Charles' voice.
"The crystal! The crystal!" Couldn't the boy see?
"You mean Dad? Helbah and the pains?"
"The other."
"There's nothing in it."
His eyes saw them burning, twisting, ghastly. His mind knew that reality was different.
Grandfather! Charles inside his head.
See it, Charles, see it? See him there in the crystal?
Yes. Maybe—
Charles, no, no, don't!
Charles reached for a mind and encountered one. Instantly it was like being in a quagmire of unpleasant feelings and lusts. He felt himself swallowed by the maelstrom, spun, tossed. He reached out, trying for a mind-hold.
Welcome, little telepath!
You are going to vanish me? Like Throod?
No. I find you amusing.
You did what Zady took credit for?
Of course. She was one of my successful graduates.
You let us go!
Why should I do that?
Because of Mouvar.
Mouvar? You know nothing about Mouvar.
Don't I? I know plenty!
Let me see.
You can't! I won't let you.
Don't be absurd.
It was like a steely rod driving deep into his consciousness. Charles tried to push it out but it only penetrated the more mercilessly.
Stop! Stop! Stop!
Oh, quit your noise! The rod withdrew, leaving him feeling drained. Before his mind's eye as well as his corporeal eyes Devale's horned head appeared.
Just as I thought, nothing. A few hints, a few superstitions, nothing more!
Helbah told me, and before that the chimaera—
The chimaera. Oh, yes, Mouvar was clever using it for his purpose. But what was produced? Only you and your sister and your dragon brother. What kind of success is that?
You'll find out! You'll find out when Mouvar wants you to find out!
I doubt it. Whatever foolish notion Mouvar may have had he didn't confide. As for you and your sister and your aunt and your grandfather, I can destroy all without effort. You know I vanished a kingdom. I can do the same with you.
Why don't you, then?
Why should I? I can have fun yet.
Charles, what's it doing?
Out Merlain, out!
I want to help!
You can't!
Welcome, young unbelievers, came the thought of the creature who called himself Professor Devale, to the boundless pains and agonizing torments of your grandfather's self-created hell.
Jon had never suffered such pain in her life. It had been bad enough back on the battlefield when Zady made her experience the pain of terrible wounds inflicted on others. That had been ghastly, worse even than having her blood almost drained when she was a child. But then she had been alone in her sufferings, though thanks to the wizard magic her brother had felt some of her pain and horror. Now—
She burned! She burned! She burned!
Now her father and her nephew and niece suffered with her. They were suffering, all of them, and there was little comfort in knowing that it was illusionary and that their bodies were not really being consumed by fire. The flames crackled all around. The smoke choked her and brought tears to her eyes with its strong smell of sulfur. She could see the others suffering as she was suffering, and that made it worse, far worse.
Her father was staring into the big crystal even as he appeared to her to burn. Inside the crystal a face was wrapped in apparent flames and seemingly enjoying it—part of the illusion, surely. The horns on the creature's head seemed like goat horns. Something her father had told them in childhood but warned them not to believe as he had believed in his own childhood. A dark, fallen angel, whatever that was, with horns and a tail. A creature responsible for evil thoughts and deeds on Earth, living as it did beneath an imagined shell of Earth. Her father had envisioned such a creature and such a place. It had shocked her childish mind to know that even as a child her father had believed in its reality. Now the reality seemed here. A part of her father still believed the source of his childhood torment was real. His parents and their parents had believed it real as well.
She burned! She burned! She burned!
Horace looked about at the familiar surroundings of their sunnymoon spot as Ember slid from his back. She emitted a high squeal of pure delight at being here again. Creatures with one dragon head and two human heads and a copper-sheathed body were not her idea of fit company.
Now, Horace? Now we can love again?
Not now, Ember. There are things I have to do first.
More important than me? Her thought pouted as it came into his. In this her thinking pattern resembled one of Merlain's.
Have to. Have to. I'll be right back.
That's what you said before! She was so appealing, now that he could again see her in her true form, that he wanted nothing so much as to clasp her and forget all that had happened. But Zady, terrible being that she was, could not be forgotten so easily.
Ember turned her tail to him and
lay prostrate in the sand. Her head turned to look back at him, and it was all the enticement any male dragon should surely need.
Merlain had told him about hate. It was something people had and dragons hadn't. Dragons killed and destroyed because it was their nature. Humans, who were supposed to know better, killed and destroyed because of hate.
Horace had never understood what Merlain had been talking about. Rage he understood, but the longer-lasting, all-commanding hate? Merlain had believed there to be a difference.
Zady had caused him to see his kin as enemies and his mate as a competing male. He would have followed Zady and killed for her because he would have seen her not as herself but as Helbah, or Charles, or their father or mother or even Merlain.
Ember's slim tail swished. Come on, big boy! Come! Mama's ready for loving!
After all his waiting and yearning he dared not take the time. That was the cruelest bite of all! He had to remember what Zady had done to him and the chimaera's warning that he dare not delay helping his father.
Horace, recipient of human emotions, was beginning to feel hate.
"Please, Helbah, please," Lester begged. "She's suffering so—you've got to help her!"
"I would if I could," Helbah replied. In the main crystal Jon's drained face with the sweat glistening on it was hardly bearable. She was screaming again now, screaming for what relief it afforded. Beside her young Charles and Merlain and even John Knight were suffering and screaming as well.
"Be thankful that we can't hear them," Charlain said. Kelvin's and Jon's mother was holding Lester's hand, inviting him by gesture to cry on her shoulder. Lester, not untypically, would have none of it. He appreciated his mother-in-law's intent but he wanted only to get at those causing his wife's torment. There was nothing that he could have done, and that made it worse. A fighting warrior in one revolution and three wars, he was as powerless now as an infant. If only it could be something man-to-man, with swords and shields and maybe spears.
"Please, Lester," Glow urged him in turn. The lovely young blond who had once been a sword and was now Charles' wife looked at him beseechingly from the opposite side of the couch. She and his mother-in-law had taken turns at Lester-calming all day. If he only had a way of going there! If he only had a weapon that would work!