“True. Quite true.” Kildom rolled over and stood up on little pudgy legs. He looked down at his twin, his hands toying with his lace collar. “If only our bodies were grown! Some days I don't think I can wait until I'm a hundred before taking a queen.”
“What would you know about that!” Kildee retorted. “We're only six and what you have in your royal pants I have in mine.”
“Do not! Mine's bigger.”
“Bigger butt, maybe.”
They tangled, arms and legs and heads. Kildee was on top and blacked his brother's right eye with his left fist. Then Kildom rolled over and blacked Kildee's left eye with his right fist. It was always thus.
“Boys, boys, boys!” Helbah said reprovingly. She was very old, far older than they had reason to think about. She bent over now and picked them up by their lace collars, shook them hard, and sat them down.
Kildom, king of Klingland, looked up at her wrinkled face and tried not to cry. His eye hurt, as it always did when his brother blacked it. “He hit me, Helbah!”
“And you hit him back. You both got what you deserved.”
Kildom sighed. So true, so very true.
“You boys are going to have to exercise a little restraint. Your kingdoms have problems.”
“They have?” This was news to them both.
“They do. Some people think you are babies. They don't realize that you have the intelligence of grown men.”
Kildom wished that his emotions were not those of a six-year-old. He could convince his intellect of almost anything, but his emotions were another matter.
“Now we know,” Helbah said, “that Kelvinia has made a pact with your hereditary enemy in Hermandy. We know because old Helbah has her ways.”
“Magical,” said Kildee.
“Witchy,” said Kildom, not to be outdone.
“Yes, yes. Now we mustn't negate the craft by putting false names to it. Helbah has a power that is good and for your protection. She knows you are threatened and by whom.”
“We understand, Helbah,” Kildom said. He knew his brother would not have to withdraw his suggestion of magic. Magical or witchy, the powers were hers.
Helbah squeezed the boy's tiny hand. She looked into his face as if he were indeed all man.
“Kildom, your kingdom is now being invaded by forces led by Mor Crumb, the former opposition leader in Rud. Kildee, you have his son's invasion on your hands.”
“Your magic can stop them, Helbah,” Kildee said confidently. “It's more powerful than armies.”
“Perhaps. You know that Helbah will try.”
Kildom felt more alarm and saw alarm on his brother's face. If Helbah expressed caution, the matter was serious!
“You see,” Helbah explained, “Hermandy would not attack you without magical assistance. Bitler wanted help from Zatanas, the sorcerer slain by Kelvin. Now Bitler has found the help he lacked.”
“You are certain?” Kildee asked.
“I am certain that there is a power in the newly formed kingdom of Kelvinia. How well controlled and how powerful I can only guess.”
“Then you do not know everything,” Kildom suggested, disappointed.
“No. My clairvoyance is limited and my precognition all but absent. I know that Melbah, my duplicate from another frame, was killed by Kelvin. I did not know she would be killed or see it happening. There are limits to all abilities, including mine.”
“Never mind, Helbah,” Kildom said, impulsively grabbing her around the neck. “My brother and I will protect you.”
“That's nice,” she said, managing to look reassured.
*
Rowforth, formerly king of Hud in another world, now the imitation king of Kelvinia, looked into the mirror and laughed. His ears looked so preposterous to him. Newly pointed and with no more hair on them than on a baby's rump, they were the proper size and shape for this frame. They had to be, considering where he had obtained them.
Zoanna, his fully pointeared consort here, tweaked his left ear as she massaged it and pulled its point. “They are quite ready to show now, dear Rufurt. The magical ointment has worked its wonders.”
“Don't call me Rufurt.”
“It's your name now. You have to get used to it. You are after all taking the man's place.”
“King's place,” he corrected her. Though very bright for a female, she didn't quite seem to recognize the qualitative difference between mere man and godlike king.
“Yes, stoneheart,” she said affectionately. She nuzzled the ear, as if liking her handiwork almost as much as him.
Rowforth rubbed his cheek against hers and wished that for all her beauty and her magic she were not so much the local. He had enjoyed punching her counterpart, Zanaan. He couldn't imagine punching Zoanna, since the queen had magic and would retaliate. Too bad, but eventually he would find other women he could beat and pummel and kick and bite with impunity.
“What are you thinking, my lusty king? About destroying those who thwarted me before? About tormenting those who robbed you of your kingdom in that other place?”
“Not exactly,” he confessed. In the mirror reflection he did look like the rightful king. It was both reassuring and angering. Round ears, after all, were natural. “I've been thinking of revenge.”
“The Roundear of Prophecy? Kelvin, spawn of the roundear John Knight?”
“Sort of. That woman in the palace is his wife. She carries our worst enemy's brat.”
“Yes, yes.” She seemed delighted with his dialogue.
“I plan on torturing her. Before his eyes.”
“Yes, yes, yes.” Her eyes were bright, her lips parted and wet. Her queenly robe was falling open, showing more of her intriguing figure. One would hardly have guessed her true age, looking at her body. Magic was wonderful stuff!
“And perhaps a bit of magic. Make pointed ears on them both.”
“That would take time. It's not like something you do to extract a confession. Yours was a very special case. They don't have convenient doubles to borrow from.”
“You could start now. Get Sterk to ointment her ears. Maybe give her something to affect the cub in her. If she could give birth to something misshapen and revolting before they all are allowed to die ...”
“Oh yes, yes, yes! Brilliant! You are the greatest, most magnificent consort ever!” She put her hands to his head and turned his face to hers with a ferocity and eagerness that almost scared him. Zanaan had never been like this! She kissed his lips, pressing them hard with hers. Her passions were aroused by what he accidentally said. It seemed that the same sort of thinking aroused them both. He took her in his arms and then to the bed. She looked just like his consort in the other frame, but she was a world different! That malice and savagery lent her phenomenal sex appeal, while Zanaan's disgusting niceness made her appealing only when she was screaming with pain and humiliation.
“It's so early in the day!” she exclaimed. There were golden lights in her greenish eyes. Zanaan had had those too, but they hadn't ever lit up for him.
He enjoyed kingly privileges all morning in a manner he had seldom if ever done before. Thanks, he felt certain, to some magic substance added to his wine that gave him a seemingly indefatigable potency. The queen had done it, surely, but he didn't mind at all. What a lithe and joyfully vicious creature she was! Her rapture was almost like that of pain, which really turned him on.
During and after his exertions he thought not so much of Zoanna, or even of Zanaan. What he most thought about were delightful new means of extending torment in helpless folk, especially in attractive women. How similar the reactions of sex-making seemed to those of agony. Once he got into the real thing . . .
CHAPTER 7
Squarears
It happened so suddenly that Kelvin hadn't time to think. One moment he was trying fruitlessly to sleep on the straw bed the chimaera provided, and the next it was broad daylight and he was looking up at an orange sky with whippy yellow clouds. His back felt as though a
stick was poking in it. He felt around with his hands and recognized the prickle of grass. He was on the ground, outside. But how?
“Greetings, visitors.”
Kelvin sat up. The person who had spoken stood beside him: blocky of build, with straw-colored hair and ears that stuck out and were square. There were several similar folk beyond.
Kian and John were sitting beside him. Stapular was nowhere in sight.
“You-- you-- what?” Kelvin inquired intelligently. He wasn't yet sure whether this or the chimaera's den was reality.
“The squarears,” his father supplied. “Remember Stapular telling us?”
Kian was looking past all of them. “We're back at the cave!”
“Very true,” the squared individual said. He held a huge copper needle that seemed a duplicate of the chimaera's sting. “You are now free to leave here and continue your journey.”
“But-- ” Kelvin said. Could it all have been a dream? But no, dreams never remained this clear. Besides, he could still taste the mash he had eaten from the chimaera's trough.
“I am Bloorg,” said their apparent rescuer. “Official Greeter and Sender, Keeper of the Transporter to Other Worlds, Keeper of the Last Known Existing Chimaera. I'm sorry that we did not check on you in time. We were preoccupied with more deliberate visitors.”
“Stapular's people?” Kelvin asked.
“Yes.”
“He's still there? In the chimaera's cellar?”
“Yes. He deserves to be, though I doubt the chimaera will find him tasty eating.”
Kelvin shivered. Poor Stapular! But why had they been rescued, and that man not?
“That magic Stapular spoke about,” John said, almost answering Kelvin's thoughts. “Timelock?”
“Yes,” Bloorg said. “We simply took you away without the chimaera's awareness, or yours, or the other captive's.”
“But why?” Kelvin demanded. It surprised him that he demanded anything, but the hero's role was gradually growing on him. “Why were we rescued, and not him?”
“Stapular's people were here deliberately. They came to do harm. You, in contrast, arrived by chance.”
“You-- you know?” Telepathic?
“Limited telepathy,” Bloorg agreed. “Enough to know your thoughts, though unable to communicate that way.”
“And the chimaera is telepathic,” Kelvin said. “I know, because-- “
“Because it exchanged thoughts with you. Yes, it is a complete telepath, able to receive and send, which is part of what makes it unique. But we have kept it confined for some time. We know how to keep it from our thoughts.”
“You're like zookeepers!” John said. “You're a chimaerakeeper!”
“Correct.”
“But why?” Now John looked as bewildered as Kelvin felt.
“Uniqueness. In all the frames we know of, this is the last of the chimaera's kind. Should it be destroyed, the victim of genocide, to satisfy an alien's greed?”
“No. No it shouldn't, but-- “
“You think of your fellow prisoner and his claim to be from a Major world. Major and Minor are in the eyes of the beholder, as your people say. It was no love of knowledge that brought them here.”
“But you did let them be slaughtered, eaten by the chimaera?”
“Of course.”
Kelvin looked at his father and brother, and wondered. Were they as appalled by this as he was?
“Your property was also rescued,” Bloorg said. He gestured with squared-off fingers. Other squarears stepped forward carrying the levitation belt, the Mouvar weapon, the gauntlets, and the swords.
“So we really are free, then?” Kian asked, seeming hardly to believe it.
“Yes. Go now to your wedding.”
Something was not right. Kelvin almost knew, but could not quite pin it down. He buckled on his sword, the Mouvar weapon, and drew on the gauntlets.
“Well I for one am ready to go!” Kian said. “I've had enough of chimaera and poacher. I'm ready to go any time.”
Kelvin looked at his father. John was frowning, maybe disturbed about the same thing that was bothering Kelvin. They had after all been confined in the same place. Driven by hunger, they had eaten from the trough Stapular must have eaten from. Kelvin had felt like a piog, gulping slops, but the stuff had been amazingly tasty.
“Do not waste your sympathies on the hunter,” Bloorg said. “He is not quite as he seems, and he knew what he risked.”
But dipped in lye? Cooked alive? Pickled? Eaten? It seemed all too much. Even the sorcerer Zatanas and the witch Melbah had received kinder fates, and they, more than gruff Stapular, had seemed to be of a different species.
“I repeat, your sympathies are wasted,” Bloorg said. “Once you have considered the enormity of what they planned, you will agree that their fate was deserved.”
Sympathy then for the chimaera? A creature that mocked them from a feminine face? A monster that munched human limbs with enjoyment? Was that where his sympathy should lie?
“No,” Bloorg answered patiently. “You should not feel sympathy for either. They are what they are, and nothing you or we could do would make any difference.”
Evil beings deserving nothing more? But Stapular had seemed human. Not likable, certainly, but human. And advanced.
“Advanced by what cosmic standard?”
Yes. Yes, that made sense. A person might think himself advanced, but that was as likely to be vanity as fact. Greed was after all greed, and cruelty was cruelty. But could a monster be said to be cruel? Wasn't its taunting ways simply part of its nature?
“You are remarkably philosophical for one so recently rescued.” The squarear was looking at him from blocky pupils in blocky eyes set in a blocky head. Looking, seemingly, into the roundeared, roundeyed, roundheaded depths of him.
“It's my nature,” Kelvin said. “I have to question.”
“Of course you do.”
Kian looked toward the cave. “Any time you're ready, Kelvin, Father.”
“All right.” John Knight stood. He held out his hand to Bloorg. “In my frame it is the custom to clasp the hand of someone who has saved your life, and say thanks.”
“You are most welcome,” Bloorg said. They shook, John wincing as he felt the other's hand.
Kian was already on his feet, extending his hand similarly. Kelvin, uneasy for no reason he could quite define, followed their example. When he took Bloorg's six-fingered hand he knew why his father and his brother had acted surprised. It was chilly, like a froogear extremity, but dry rather than clammy. The fingers wrapped around his wrist, showing that they were many-jointed, like little tails. The alien feel of the appendage drove all other thoughts away.
“Come,” John said, and Kelvin followed with Kian. It was farther than it had appeared to be, and it seemed to get no closer as they walked. Then suddenly it was much closer, and each step was taking them rapidly forward.
Kelvin looked back. The squarears were gone, vanished.
“Magic!” Kian said, also looking back. “I knew there was something funny about it. We weren't where we seemed to be.”
Kelvin had to agree, though he was not elated. Somehow magic and the evident extent of the squarears’ powers was depressing. True, the magic of the gauntlets had saved him many times, but it had always seemed to him that having magic was an unfair advantage. What chance did a master swordsman have, for instance, against a bungle-foot like himself, when his sword was clasped by a hand in a magic gauntlet? Kelvin knew himself to be no hero, merely a person whose ordinary abilities were amplified by magic. Now he had encountered creatures who seemed to be far beyond that magic. It was disconcerting.
“Hey, Son, you look glum!” his father said lightly. It was almost a doggerel rhyme, the kind he had done to cheer Kelvin as a child.
“I can't get it out of my head, Father.”
“What, that you were rescued? That none of us will be eaten?”
Finally the thing that had been bother
ing him focused. “No, Father. That Stapular will be eaten.” He let that sink, then plunged ahead. “Is that right, Father? Is it?”
“I wondered how long it would take for your conscience to catch up,” John said. “You can't let anything be. You always have to work it out to the last degree, so that it makes sense on every level. You are unusual in that, perhaps unique.”
“I'm sorry,” Kelvin said.
“Sorry! Son, that's what makes you a hero!” His father's friendly hand came around his shoulders. “But look, Son, it's not right by our standards, but this isn't our frame. We shouldn't be here. We're here only by chance. It isn't our business.”
“I'm going ahead!” Kian said, and ran on to the cave. He looked inside, looked back, and called, “This is it, all right! Hurry up!”
“He doesn't care,” Kelvin said.
“It's his upbringing. It was different from yours. Remember who his mother was.”
Kelvin remembered. Evil Queen Zoanna, who had used magic to fascinate John Knight and seduce him and bear his child. Zoanna had evidently liked to play with men in much the way Mervania did, only Zoanna, being human, had been able to take it farther. “Yes, he's seen more cruelty casually applied.”
“In the palace he did. His grandfather and his mother were not noticeably kind. Give him credit for turning out as well as he did, given that environment. He did not have Charlain as his mother.”
That certainly accounted for the difference! Kelvin's mother was the finest woman he knew, though perhaps Heln approached her.
“Hurry it up, won't you!” Kian called.
“And you can't blame him for wanting to get on with his wedding,” John said.
Kelvin abruptly stopped. “Father, I'm going back.”
“Of course you are, Son. We all are. First to Kian's wedding, as we planned before getting diverted here, and then-- “
“No, Father. I mean back to the island in the lake. Back to rescue Stapular.”
“Son, you can't!” But something in John's expression suggested that he wasn't surprised.