If only that idiot dragon was around! But in the crystal that showed Kelvin there was no dragon, only a bewildered middle-aged man who had protested all along that he didn't want to be a hero. What kind of an Alliance head and keeper of the opal was the dragon! If Lester could have transformed into a dragon he would be there now, rescuing his beloved.
"Don't ask," Helbah said, seemingly reading his mind, though she didn't. "I will not transform into a swoosh. Yes, I could change you and yes, you could fly, but you couldn't change back into a man unless I was there. I'm not going into dragon territory. Together the two of us could do nothing. We're better here, watching and waiting."
"For what?" It was petty of him, but he couldn't help snapping at Helbah. The dear old witch had given her best, and he knew it, but still this waiting helplessly was getting on his nerves.
"For whatever develops," Helbah said.
"Maybe we could ride there," St. Helens suggested from where he and his not very small waitress friend filled a large chair. "We could round up some troops and—"
"Hush," St. Helens' waitress friend said, pressing her lips near to the old warmonger's best ear. "Hush, you know the worthlessness of that. The Roundear of Prophecy will soon make true all that has been predicted about him, or else—"
St. Helens looked at her puzzledly, his arms not changing position where they held her. Lester felt as puzzled, watching them.
"—or else, dear Sean Reilly, we and the world will vanish as did Throod, as surely as any of us are sitting here."
"It's like something Grandfather used to say," young Kathy Jon said from across the room. She looked so much like a younger version of her mother that looking at her now Lester almost had to pinch himself. "You remember, don't you?" she asked her brothers.
The young scamps nodded energetically, though Lester felt certain that none of them had the faintest idea of what their sister was getting ready to spring on them.
"Speaking of the wars he had experienced and almost experienced he used to say that the people at home had it hard. They had to wait and watch and look at their televisions and read their newspapers. That's all they could do, ever, and still the popular saying was that those who waited still served."
"Wartime propaganda," St. Helens said. "It hardly applies here." His affectionate waitress friend shut his mouth with her hand, then pressed it into unresisting silence with the application of her own. Tomorrow might after all never come.
Lester admired the little show and thought that, like Charlain and Glow, the girl was taking their minds off their pain. But what of young Kathy Jon? Was she just speaking to be heard?
"We can't help them, so we just have to hope for them and wait," his daughter continued. "I know I'd like to pop that witch again with a rock—a bigger rock! But we all know how powerful she is. It will take a really strong hero to overcome her."
"I'll say!" one of the boys said. It was Alvin, the eldest. Lester wondered if he too had once always looked upon any disaster as a challenge and thought that perhaps he had. Boys would be boys, as the saying went, and it was a boy's nature to think that all could be solved with determination. Unfortunately he didn't quite feel that way anymore. Fighting an army or a monster maybe, but being confronted by Zady was considerably worse.
"I wish I were Kelvin!" young Teddy Crumb said. "I'd take that old sting of his and ram it up—"
"By the way, where is the sting?" Lester found himself interrupting. "Come to think of it, where's Glint?"
Helbah sighed. "I was afraid you'd ask that. Glint went into the woods when Kelvin was talking to the air. Kelvin's looking for him now. Zady must have been there in an invisibility cloak and she may have vanished him."
"Vanished? You mean like—"
"Yes. I didn't have a crystal tuned to him. Now I've tried and tried and I can't tune to him anywhere. We may have lost Glint already. Merlain may be a not-widow because his vanishing means he really never was."
"I don't believe it!" Glow said. "I believe my brother still exists and is alive."
"I hope you're right, Glow. But we have to accept the possibility. Whatever Zady did with him, she didn't take him to the others."
"Maybe he's doing something with the sting?" the oldest scamp suggested.
"I hope you're right, Alvin, but I can't imagine you are. He disappeared too fast."
"Kelvin disappears fast," the scamp argued. "So does Horace."
"Alas," Helbah said, "Glint hasn't either Kelvin's boots or levitation belt and he certainly hasn't Horace's opal."
"Oh! Oh, yeah. I guess."
The boy subsided into gloomy, embarrassed silence, as did the rest of them.
In the crystal the painful-to-watch ordeal continued on and on. It seemed to Lester that there could never be an end to it, Kelvin or no Kelvin.
CHAPTER 28
Dragon Rage
Kelvin turned, wanting to do battle or flee but knowing there was no time. Facing him was a dragon, all right, but of coppery scale tone and a familiar expression.
"Horace! I'm so glad to see you. Where's—"
A second dragon emerged from the bushes. Golden-scaled, with unnaturally twinkly dragon's eyes, it had to be Ember.
"Your bride is very attractive, Horace. You're a lucky dragon."
Horace rubbed his snout on the ground and snorted appreciation. Ember actually pulled her head back, as if coy.
"You seem not to be under the spell now. You're not, are you, Horace?"
No spell now. Chimaera fix.
Chimaera! So that was what he had been up to! Mervania had not forgotten the child whose birth she had assisted. Without her powder, Merlain, Charles, and Horace would have been one enormous creature, if alive. As for Heln—there was no way a human woman could have survived the birth of a chimaera.
"We've been searching for you. You're needed, Horace. The fate of the Alliance is at stake."
Horace looked toward the river. He seemed to be but a dragon. Of what interest human and orc problems? Dragons lived but in the moment, the same as wild creatures everywhere.
"Merlain and Charles are in deepest peril. Zady is hurting them."
Instantly the dragon raised his head higher. His toothy mouth opened and he roared a dragon's roar. Clearly he did not like the idea of his brother and sister being hurt.
"Yes, Horace, I quite agree. But we have to be careful. Our enemies are other than dragon or humans. They have powerful magic that can destroy—"
Horace raked his claws on the ground, leaving furrows and the torn-up roots of grass. He was ready even if Kelvin wasn't.
"I'll have to ride on your back again, Horace. You'll have to locate them in the mountain range over there, and then—"
GET ON!
The order startled him. Definitely Horace. Definitely the dragon had been learning. And really, he was an intelligent offspring, though of an unusual nature. He had had Merlain's thoughts and Charles' and later Glint's and Ember's. There was no reason, really, why he shouldn't think directly to his father.
Horace held out a forefoot, almost like a talon. Kelvin took hold of the leg, stepped on the foot, and was lifted up to where his left gauntlet pulled him by grasping a wing. The gauntlet and the boots did his thinking and moving for him. He rested now between the small wings, holding one securely in either hand. Clearly his gauntlet was anticipating a fast move from Horace.
Horace snorted loudly and Kelvin imagined his brow wrinkling. Absurd thought, a dragon with a human brow. But Horace had to be searching—think-calling for Merlain.
Merlain burning. Charles burning. Your father burning. Great horned face in center of large crystal, laughing.
Even filtered through Horace the pain and the terror were overpowering. Kelvin was made dizzy by their suffering. Without his gauntlet holding on to the wing stub he might have slid off as his right hand weakened. But Horace, through the agony and terror and the shrill mental screams of his sister and brother, pulsed with a large and hideous strength. He would
go there and he would save them.
Something occurred to Kelvin. Zady wasn't blocking! Zady had to want Horace to find Merlain!
"NO, HORACE! NO!"
Kelvin's shouted words were lost. The trees and the river were gone. Now high on a mountain they were between a large crystal and four tortured people writhing and screaming in imagined flames. The creature in the crystal raised fiery red eyes to the dragon and smiled.
"Welcome, Horace. Welcome, Kelvin. You can now become a part of history."
Clawed hands raised above the creature's horns and its eyes glowed even more brightly and somehow wickedly.
Horace pounced on the crystal, ignoring the crystals that showed him in the act and Heln and the others at home watching him. His claws raked the surface, producing a screeching noise. His tail cracked repeatedly with bone-jarring blows against the faceted sides of a magically hardened mineral.
The creature in the crystal showed no fear. Its too-human mouth opened and it shook with cruel, hearty laughter. Clearly, as far as it was concerned, Horace was entertaining.
Could Kelvin and his boots and single gauntlet be anything more?
Merlain and Charles saw their father and brother and tried with all the mind power they had to push back the agony of what felt like very real burns. Their breaths were searing, their eyes watering. There was no way they could hold back the screams accompanying their brother's roars.
Dragon Horace and Merlain's father were on the crystal, Horace attacking the image he saw there. Both had appeared together, her father on Horace's back. Now the dragon attacked with all his bravery and strength. The dragon claws made screeching sounds on the impenetrable surface; the dragon tail pounded the sides with powerful slaps that sent the crystal to vibrating. Inside the crystal the horned creature laughed.
Merlain saw the clawed hands raised above the horned head. In a moment her father and brother would be destroyed or captured and made to suffer in the flames. Her right hand grasped desperately for nothing and scraped against something long concealed beneath her oversized shirt. The Mouvar weapon that reversed hostile magic! Could it help? Could it ease their intolerable pain?
Hardly knowing what she did, certainly not thinking through her pain, Merlain pulled the bell-muzzled weapon and touched its trigger. Just as she squeezed it through the cloth, the flames appeared on Horace and her father. Horace attacked all the harder; her father retained his seat as the creature laughed.
The Mouvar weapon buzzed. The flames were gone from around her and her brother and father. The flames weren't on her and Charles and their aunt and grandfather. The flames were all over the large, hideous face!
The creature screamed—a scream both mental and physical.
"Pain, pain, I can't stand pain!"
The crystal blanked. The crystal turned the color of ash. The crystal crumbled, becoming a light-gray powder as it disintegrated. The pile shook, and Horace crawled out of the heap, still carrying his father. The dragon shook and cracked his tail twice. Powder flew, leaving dragon and father of dragon uncoated.
Kelvin dismounted and took several long strides. Nothing stopped him or seemed about to.
Merlain knew instantly that the barrier that had held them imprisoned was no longer there. She rushed to her brother and father. She hugged each in turn and rejoiced in her father's return hugs and her brother's forked-tongue kisses.
"Oh, Daddy! Oh, Daddy! Oh, Daddy!" she cried.
"My little girl! What happened? What saved us?"
"Oh, Daddy, it was this!" She held out the weapon. "Take it! I'm afraid of it!"
Kelvin took the antimagic weapon as though she had extended something very ordinary, patted it absently, and stuck it under his own overlarge shirt into the band of his trousers. It didn't show against his recently flattened stomach any more than it had against hers.
"Daddy? Where's Glint? Where's my husband?"
Kelvin's face instantly lost all its redness. The guilt sweeping over it told her what she least wanted to know.
Merlain's father had failed to keep proper watch on her husband! At the very least he had lost him!
"I'll bring him back," Kelvin said. He grabbed one of the wing stubs and pulled himself up and resumed his place on her brother's back.
Jon watched as Merlain handed the Mouvar weapon back to Kelvin. After such a long time she could hardly believe that she wasn't feeling agony. She checked the skin on her hands and arms—not even blistered. Those protective spells of Helbah's might not have been entirely useless! Kelvin had done it again! Or at least with his son's and daughter's help he had. For the last eternity or so of the torment she had not retained the slightest hope that any of them were going to be rescued.
She looked at their father standing by himself and wiping his brow. She felt sorry for him, and not just because of what they had all suffered. He was older than his children and grandchildren, though he scarcely looked it. Older people had less stamina and had a way of dying suddenly when the pain mounted. Men had less resistance to torture than women because only women experienced childbirth. How fortunate her father had been that Helbah had made him exercise and regain the strength and musculature he had known at an earlier age. Watching him check his hands and arms as she had been doing, she knew that like herself he was going to be all right.
She wasn't so certain about her niece and nephews. Telepaths must find it hard if they felt the pain of others as well as their own. She knew about that now from experience, having been made to feel the agonies of the terribly wounded. But perhaps being telepaths they could control the pain impulse better? She hoped that was the case. Merlain must have had some presence of mind to zap the devil the way she had.
"Jon," her father said, coming to her with widened arms, "Jon, we've been rescued."
"Exactly what I was thinking, Father." She hugged him as he closed his arms. She could feel his heart beating strongly in his chest. He must really feel an emotion, she thought, because her father never had been a demonstrative person. She had even heard her mother remark on it at times, more with sympathy than misunderstanding. It all had to do with his having grown up on Earth. How could a people be expected to feel for one another if they didn't accept even the possibility of magic? She wasn't certain why that was, but her father's hardheadedness had eased with the years and his gradual, grudging acceptance of magic.
"I'd like to get old Zady now and wring her neck!" So strong and determined, with only a hint of hesitancy in his voice.
"Me too, Father. I'd like to get her with a stone, the way my daughter did."
"You have a lovely daughter, Jon, and good boys."
"No fault of mine, Dad. It had to have been their heritage."
"The heritage, my flattering daughter, was not entirely mine."
He released her, feeling uncomfortable, she knew, with the realization that he was actually showing tenderness. It was his Earth upbringing telling him that men were strong and tough and didn't cry and didn't show emotion, except possibly when securely at home with their wives. Such madness, that, and it was all part of what he believed was the difference between masculine and feminine. You'd have thought that his life would have taught him how tough and strong women could be, and how strong didn't mean not showing that you cared.
As these unaccustomed thoughts flooded her mind, she looked over past Horace and saw something that instantly plunged her into terror: Zady!
Wordlessly she pointed and screamed.
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?" The words were so loud that they had to be magically amplified.
Kelvin raised his eyes to the stone peak, all thought of his son-in-law vanishing. She must have flown there as a bird and concealed herself with invisibility. Now she clearly intended to wreak havoc.
"You don't assault a god! You don't do that!" Zady chided in an aggrieved voice.
"Zady, what have you done with my husband?" Kelvin's daughter shouted back. As usual her mind was on one overriding subject and she ha
d guessed that something had happened.
"Wouldn't you like to know, dearie?" Zady's tone was now taunting and threatening at the same time. "I'm going to burn him and I'm going to burn the rest of you. For years and centuries and maybe until the end of time!"
The hag raised her hands and began spelling. Kelvin knew that her gibberish words would draw forth the power from somewhere, and then something unpleasant would happen.
Kelvin drew a breath, thinking instantly of fireballs. Now that she was aware of the antimagic weapon she would take care to insure her own protection; if a fireball came back at her it would be stopped by a shield of magic. It was going to be so unpleasant to burn. He had had quite enough of a taste of it.
GARRRWOOF!
With Kelvin still on his back, Horace was on the pinnacle, on the witch. Because he was other than a magically produced fireball, her barrier did not exist for him. His great powerful claws sank deep into the lovely woman flesh, producing a scream and runnels of blood. He lifted the apparent woman to his mouth and opened wide to bite off her horrid head.
The woman was a bird, torn and bleeding, falling from Horace's claws, falling through space, then tumbling. It righted and began to fly. It circled, climbing higher.
"I'll get you! I'll get you!" the witch-bird screamed.
Horace was in midair where the bird had been, grappling, then falling as the bird flew on. Kelvin hadn't time to react before they were swaying on some treetops, directly below the flying bird. It seemed Zady and Horace were repeating themselves.
Zady's dark wings beat faster as she tried for distance. Horace was in the river under the flying bird, on a hill under the flying bird, on a road under the flying bird. He was taking large opal-hops and keeping up with her.
They were on a rooftop as the people inside the house screamed, then on the roof of a covered bridge with a snorting, prancing horse beneath. They were on hills, in open fields, in water, on ruins. The ruins were those of Rud's onetime royal palace, where wicked Zoanna had ruled. The bird flopped down a stairway. Horace was under her as she flopped above the dock and the excursion boats. The bird flew down the underground river, and Kelvin knew where it was headed. This time he was afraid that there would be no stopping him.