Serpent''s Silver

  "This isn't going to do," Zotanas said aloud. He closed his own eyes again, cupped them with his hands, and concentrated. It was easier this time. Blackness, blackness, black blank. Transfer.

  "I can't see! I can't see!" Rowforth cried. "Broughtmar, you must help me! You—what are you doing!"

  "Take him up the stairs, Broughtmar, and see that he surrenders," Zotanas said. "For a man with your strength, it shouldn't be difficult."

  "P-please," the queen added, sick at heart.

  Even though concentrating heavily on the black, Zotanas heard Rowforth gasp as Broughtmar picked him up. Then Broughtmar tromped heavily as he carried the king to the tower and beyond it to the roof.

  Blars Blarsner, amateur wrestler and boxer in better times, was fighting with the confounded sword that seemed forever out of his control, and putting all his energies into staying alive. He finished off the Royalist with a sudden lucky stab and looked for an opening between thrashing horses and battling men. The back of the otherworlder known as Kelvin was toward him. As usual, the hero of another place was battling three Royalists with his shield and his sword, handling both brilliantly. He chopped off the hand of the Royalist in front of him, swung the sword back, and slashed the eyes of the man to his left. He seemed hardly to look; it was as if he knew exactly where his opponents were without having to use his eyes. In the meantime the swordsman on his right had stabbed him, not quite touching him but severing the leather thong that held the Mouvar weapon secure against Kelvin's leg.

  The Mouvar weapon! It had fallen! It was down there in the dust!

  While Blars was wiping sweat and dust from his eyes, Kelvin finished off the third of his three attackers with an expert stab. But ahead the way was clearing before the gates. There was a clanging noise and a billow of dust that hid even Kelvin from him. Something was happening!

  There was no time to speculate. He had to get the Mouvar weapon while he could, and get it to Kelvin. Without it Kelvin couldn't continue to win, and none of them could win.

  Unless, he suddenly thought, he could manage to use the weapon himself.

  With sheer brute strength Blars reined his huge war-horse over to where Kelvin had been. One of the Royalists was still there, horrified as he stared at the spouting end of his arm. Reluctantly, Blars finished off the man and turned his attention to what was under the horse's hooves.

  At first he didn't see it, and then he did, next to a dead Royalist and a riderless horse that was whinnying pitifully with its guts pouring out. He reached, grabbed, and had it.

  He stared dazedly at what he held. He pulled his horse to one side of the fighting and examined the weapon closely for the first time. He had heard so much about it, yet had never seen it in action. It was a strange-looking device that resembled a crossbow only in the most superficial manner. It had a bell-shaped muzzle that would be pointed at whatever was to be attacked. The part that fitted the hand was like the handgrip on the smallest of crossbows—the kind used mainly for games, for children to train with. There was a strange dial set in it, with two odd marks and a little fin-shape pointed at the higher of the marks. Without thinking, Blars turned the fin-shape to the lower mark.

  "Flopears! Flopears! Flop—" came the cry.

  Realizing that things were happening and that he was wasting time, he urged his horse out into the dust. Now he could make out the figure of Kelvin sitting oddly still astride his war-horse. Riding hard down on him, standing upright in a small saddle on the back of a gigantic war-horse, was a small figure with upraised sword. A flopear! About to kill Kelvin!

  Blars hardly knew that he pulled the trigger while pointing the weapon. All he knew was that it hissed and jumped slightly in his hand. Nothing seemed to come from the bell of the weapon except for a few too-bright sparks.

  Had it failed? Yet it had seemed to do something. He had felt the slight recoil, seen the spark. But was that all?

  But as he watched the flopear swing down, he saw Kelvin save himself and his horse with some amazing maneuvering. Freedom Fighters who had been stationary in the dust resumed their motions. All kinds of action were occurring where a moment ago there had been none except that of the flopears.

  Blars looked at the weapon in his hand. It must have worked! He felt that he had accomplished something. He said a prayer of thanks to Mouvar. He had no idea how the weapon had worked, but it seemed to have brought the Freedom Army to life again.

  The flopears were still fighting, but no longer against frozen opponents. How a weapon could bring folk back to life instead of making them dead, he hesitated to guess. Certainly this was nothing for him to gamble with. Concentrating hard on the deed at hand, he maneuvered his horse, bypassing fights when he could and working steadily closer to Kelvin. When he reached the hero, he would place the weapon in his hands, where it belonged.

  The movement of the gauntlet surprised Kelvin as it had never done before. It shot up, grabbed the swiftly descending blade, and wrested it from the flopear. The flopear lost his balance, toppled from the saddle, and fell under the war-horse's pounding hooves. There was a scream of agony from below which should add spectacularly to Kelvin's future nightmares.

  He pulled his eyes away from the gory sight of the small ruined face. In so doing, he turned his head.

  He could move! The stasis spell was gone! He could move hands, arms, feet, and legs. The horse was moving, too. Everyone was moving—every man and every horse. All the Freedom Fighters and the Royalists and their horses—unparalyzed! All moving as they were supposed to, naturally and right. What had happened? What magic had come to his rescue and stopped the flopears' spell?

  "Here, Captain, you lost this."

  It was a large, swarthy Freedom Fighter who was holding out the Mouvar weapon to him, using the rank Kelvin had been given. Something about the man's face instantly bothered him. With supreme shock he realized that this was the near duplicate of the pointy-eared guard at the notorious Franklin Girl Mart who had forced himself on Heln. Kelvin had seen the ravisher dead after one of his Knights, a brother to one of the other girls there, had finished him. At the time Kelvin had both thanked the gods that he hadn't been the one to strike the fatal blow, and regretted deeply that he had not been the one. Now here the man was, or his counterpart in the frame, unbloodied and alive and round-eared. Holding out to him their one small hope of winning this fight. This man, nearly identical in appearance with the one who had raped Kelvin's wife.

  "I… lost it, and you… used it?"

  "I saw one of those three last men you fought cut your belt with his sword. Your horse did some jerking after that, and the gates fell and the flopears appeared. I got the weapon for you because I knew you'd want it, and had it in my hand and—you were frozen then, so I tried it—and now you're unfrozen, and I brought it to you. I don't know what I did with it, but I guess the thing worked, somehow. You're the hero, not me; you know how to use it. I—"

  Kelvin took the weapon from the big man's hand. He had to say something, and he fought to get it right.

  "You're the hero. You, not me. Thank you for saving me and for returning the weapon I should have guarded with my life." You are the hero, Kelvin repeated to himself. You, who in another world, another time, raped my beloved. You, who in that other world, were a person who ruined and harmed without conscience. Only it was not you, but another who resembled you in all things but character. What a universe this is, that two who look so much alike could both so touch my life in opposite ways!

  "Captain," the man said, "the war's not over until they lower the flag on the palace."

  "I know."

  After a startled intermission the fighting continued. Nobody was frozen that Kelvin could see, either Freedom Fighter or Royalist. Mortal Freedom Fighters now fought immortal flopears hand to hand.

  Yet the battle had seemed to be turning, just before the flopears appeared. Now, looking around, he could see more green-clad soldiers on their mounts than red-uniformed Royalists.

  The
battle was not over. The war was not over, until the flag was lowered. Would it come down? Kelvin did not yet know.

  Zanaan looked up from the floor at her father as he covered his eyes. She listened to her husband screaming. Then, assuming a philosophical poise befitting a queen, she got to her feet, wiped her face, put her robe in order, picked up the ring of keys she had been carrying, and resumed her journey to the dungeon.

  John and Kian were at the bars as she descended into their gloom. Both were thinner than they had been, worn by the days and the nights of harsh confinement. Dark half-moons were under their eyes, reminders of more than sleeplessness.

  The neighboring cell was empty. After Smith had finally died, the result of his desperate banging of his head against the wall with all the strength of a madman, there had been a lingering and sullen silence. Broughtmar had complained about having to carry out the corpse; in the old days he would have let it ripen. But the king had remembered that prisoners subjected to bad air sometimes died. Rowforth had wanted the prisoners alive and helping him. How well she knew!

  That reminded her of what the king had said: that John regarded her as resembling his mistress, and Kian, as resembling his mother. In the frame from which they came—

  She shrugged that off. Certainly she had not misbehaved like that in this world! Nor would she. She was simply doing what was proper.

  She also wondered whether her father had done something to deflect the king. She had never seen him use actual magic before this day, only minor illusions for show.

  The young man looked at her with widened eyes, swallowed, and said, "You look so much like—"

  "Hush, now," she chided him, oddly flattered. Her husband had sought to use her to corrupt these men; it would not have been an unpleasant task, were it not so reprehensible morally.

  She inserted the big key in the lock and turned it, knowing that they watched. "Your ordeal is over and your victory all but won. The Freedom Fighters are at the gates and winning back the land. Your brother, Kelvin, is in their very midst—a hero to base legends on. Soon, very soon, it will be over."

  "Thank the Gods!" John Knight said, and his son echoed him.

  Looking at the Mouvar weapon he held, Kelvin saw that the knob on the butt had been turned. Possibly when it fell, he thought. Could a different setting account for the fact that the flopears were not themselves the victims of their own stares? He had wanted to see them frozen into statues, as the serpent in the valley had been. If he moved the knob to its former place, would that cause it to happen?

  It was worth a try. He twisted the knob, heard a click, and raised the weapon just as another flopear rode at them with suicidal fury. He pulled the trigger, wondering whether he should be raising his sword instead.

  Bright light dazzled him. There was a WHOOMPTH noise that echoed on and on. Then silence.

  The horse and the flopear were stopped, frozen as if by the staring paralysis. The mortals and their horses were not affected; the fight could continue with the flopears out of it. But would it?

  Just then there was a shout. He saw the big man pointing. There was the silver-and-gold flag creeping down the pole on the palace roof. This meant that the king was surrendering—finally, totally, unconditionally.

  As he looked toward the palace, past the gates, two men and a woman awaited him.

  "Father! Kian!" he shouted. "We've won! We've won! We're going home again to those who love us. Home, home, at last!"

  But Kian, though released from a dungeon, looked as if balanced on a precipice. His face, already pale from imprisonment, paled perceptibly more. When he spoke it was in a hoarse croak that seemed devoid of the joy it should have held.

  "Home. That's very good. Really wonderful," he said without enthusiasm.

  "Well, Cousin, it's over," Herzig said. "The good mortals won."

  "Yes, won well," Gerta agreed. "As planned, though the Mouvar weapon cost us."

  "Did it, Cousin? Good members of our band?"

  "Your enemies, Herzig, though not acknowledged as such. Those who wanted to go with Rowforth and share his triumphs. Those who wanted to be rulers of mortals in this and other lands. Was it fair, Herzig, giving them what they wanted?"

  "Fair is a mortal concept. Call it just. They wanted to fight for Rowforth, and they fought for Rowforth. Now, slain or not, they will never again be involved in a mortal's fight."

  "True," Gerta said. "You are very old, Herzig, and very wise. You prove the wisdom of a saying mortals have."

  "Yes, Cousin, and that is—?"

  "Wily as a serpent," Gerta concluded.

  Kian could not understand why he felt as he did. He was going home. Home to the girl he wanted and always had wanted. Why, then, did he fell that his execution was at hand?

  "I'm going to miss you, Kian," said Lonny Burk. That made him realize why he felt so inappropriately bad. "We will all miss you, but I know that I will miss you most."

  "I—" He swallowed a lump. "Know." And how he wished she was the girl who would be his bride. But the right girl had pointy ears and always had had. Not too long ago Lonny wouldn't even have looked desirable to him. No, the right girl had to be the one at home. It hurt, but somehow it had to be right. His mother had known what was right—hadn't she?

  "Good-bye, Lonny, good-bye." Saying it, he felt his insides tormenting him as if from a sword wound. Dungeon food did not account for it. "If—if things were different—"

  "I know." He felt her hand delicately touch his, and then, incredibly, her kiss. It was almost—in fact it was—too much for one weak man to bear. Tears filled his eyes.

  They were waiting for him. He forced himself to turn away from her and to begin, step by step, what had to be his successful return.

  But Kelvin and John Knight were with Queen Zanaan, and the older man looked just as uncomfortable as Kian felt. The queen turned, her great green eyes bearing on him, so familiar yet strange in their gentleness.

  "I understand that in your frame my analogue was your mother," she said. "I have had no children, but had I done so, I would have been pleased to have one like you."

  Kian found himself hugging her, just as if she were indeed his mother. If only things were different!

  CHAPTER 30

  Victory Home Front

  THEY EMERGED FROM THE chamber to discover Jon and Heln waiting. Without a moment's delay all embraced.

  "Oh, Kelvin," Heln said against his chest. "I had this dream! I think the dragonberries have caused me to dream what is actually happening! I saw all of you back here, so I persuaded Jon—"

  "There was only the one boat here, and that too small for the four of you," Jon explained. "Mr. Yokes was kind enough to lend us another, particularly after I explained about the baby coming."

  "Baby! Baby—you?"

  "No, you idiot!" Jon managed to sound offended. "Your wife."

  "Heln! Heln?" Kelvin's face paled, as though real danger was upon him. "You?"

  She nodded, smiling prettily in the manner only a pregnant wife could. "You're going to be a daddy, Hero, like it or not."

  Kelvin's whoop echoed and reechoed from the surrounding rock for a distance up and down the underground river. Kian pounded his back and shook his hand enthusiastically. But even so, there was a certain half-hidden reticence to his congratulations that registered with each of them.

  St. Helens took a deep breath, trying to shut out of his consciousness the sounds of screaming men and terrified, suffering horses. She might take all their lives, he thought, but by the Gods, he'd get this witch! Burn a witch alive, he'd been told. By the heavens, if that was what it took, he'd do it!

  Back in the pass, the avalanches went on and on, boulders dislodged by the quake bounding and rebounding and often striking flesh. Great cracks were opening like hungry mouths, swallowing men and horses unfortunate enough to be under.

  Was she laughing, up there? If so, he'd stop it! He'd stop it for all time, whatever it took!

  St. Helens drew the poli
shed, razor-sharp sword the young king had given him and pressed its cool metal to his lips briefly. Now, he thought, and activated the levitation belt.

  He floated soundless as a rising balloon. He cleared the overhang and the three ledges of Conjurer's Rock and disturbed some buzvuls brooding on their nests. In a moment they were after him, circling, crying out hoarsely, snapping their beaks, trying each and every one of them to snap out an eye. He swished the sword, downed two of them, and then another. The remaining buzvuls circled, coming in more cautiously. He wished that Melbah could have been one of those killed.

  Stunted trees, twisted and gnarled, grew on the sides of Conjurer's Rock as he approached the top. At the crest the trees seemed all occupied by buzvuls—hundreds if not thousands of them. His sword made a continuous flash, but few of the ugly birds risked the blade. Silently he drifted above the trees and the buzvuls, ignoring the squawks. If she was preoccupied with her magic, maybe then he had a chance.

  There she was! At the very edge of the rock. Her black cloak flapping, her arms stretched out toward the pass, her lips making sounds that were lost in the rumbling of the earth and the cries of brave and good men. She couldn't hear the buzvuls, he thought, and she couldn't hear him either. Now, now was his chance!

  He drifted at slow speed toward her back. Not quite sporting, he thought, but then how sporting was she? Just end her life and he would end that of a killing germ. He visualized her head bouncing down the rock with her hair flowing. He raised the sword, prepared to sever her neck.

  A buzvul screamed above him, and the witch vanished. "Fool!" the bird cried. "Fool, to seek to destroy me with nothing more potent than an ordinary sword!" She had fooled him again, the cunning crone!

  He raised the blade but could not reach her with it. "Come! Come!" he cried.

  Suddenly the air thickened between them. It was a wall of heavy air, pushing down like a wedge of water, forcing him down with his belt.