"That"s very commendable, Mervania," Bloorg said. Now Marvin Loaf"s face changed, as he caught on to what was happening. Perhaps the chimaera had touched his mind, too, with a bit of explanation. "But what about the sting you now have? Your kind have been slain through the centuries for single stings. Indeed, the robot Stapular would have slain you earlier, had he not been waiting for your latest sting to mature. That was why he was able to deceive me; I a.s.sumed that since he allowed his living companions to be slain, he had no weapon sufficient to harm you. Surely there will be other poachers."
"That," Kelvin/Chimaera said with asperity, "is why I am confined to an island and why you guard the transporter! I expect you to do a better job in the future."
Bloorg"s eyes closed and opened, their lids making an audible click. It seemed the chimaera had scored tellingly. "That might reduce the number and strength of expeditions, Mervania, once it is widely known."
"It will be," Mervania/Kelvin said. "And if the transporter is kept locked, at Marvin Loaf"s outlet, and these inferior life-forms do not use the sting in magic-"
"We won"t!" Marvin exclaimed, evidently willing to ignore the remark about inferior life-forms. "We don"t even believe in that stuff! Much. All we want is the copper. Any horserear poachers come for it, we"ll know what to do with "em!"
"Agreed," Mervania/Kelvin said.
"Agreed," Bloorg echoed.
Kelvin was surprised and relieved. He had been afraid that all of them, the chimaera included, would be punished. Evidently the chimaera had understood the situation better than he.
Naturally, Kelvin, Mervania"s thought came.
CHAPTER 22.
Apprentice
"Grip my hands tighter," Helbah ordered. "Let your essence and mine mingle."
Charlain tried to do as directed. The glade, the trees, the animals peering on, even the aged face, all blurred. It was the dizzying twirl Helbah had made her do, and that bitter wine. Now her arms and legs felt numb. Her fingers tingled. She was, was...
Helbah"s hands. Helbah"s arms. Helbah. Where did Charlain end and Helbah begin? She could feel her heart beating in Helbah"s chest, feel the pain of Helbah"s reopened wound, feel the blood seeping, seeping through her black satiny wrapper.
"Helbah! Helbah! I"m you!"
"We"re we. Notice which mouth you"re speaking from."
Charlain noticed. She had spoken from a nearly toothless mouth with sagging cheeks-Helbah"s. But when Helbah spoke it was from a mouth that had all its teeth and was perfect except for a bitter aftertaste.
"We can do it now!" one of the mouths said. "Concentrate!"
Charlain tried to remember. Her legs and arms jerked her. Over to the huge tree. Over to the big crystal sealed in its hollow. Her eyes fixed on its surface, then below. Murky smoke swirled and twirled. Then- Soldiers fighting. Klingland uniforms against Kelvinian uniforms. In the background, through clouds of dust, the huge dome of the Klingland capital.
Swords clashed. Crossbow bolts flew. Men died. More dead lay in the red uniforms of the Klinglanders than the green uniforms of the attackers. Even as she realized this, more died.
"Hurry! Hurry!"
They had to be helped. They had to be given new strength. She could almost feel the weakness in those red-uniformed arms. She wanted them stronger, stronger, stronger, their minds and bodies refreshed.
It was like a great wind blowing through her, out of her, into the crystal, into the bodies and minds of the defending soldiers. A green-uniformed soldier was knocked from his saddle with a broad sweep of a defender"s sword. Now another, and another! The green-uniformed men were going down like harvested stalks of grain! Now they were panicking, turning, running. Their horse"s hooves raised dust as they rode into their dust, pursuing them, chasing them, forcing them to keep retreating and not turn back.
"Now! Now! Now!"
Dust rose, twirled, and- Blurring twin capital domes, city, hills, forest, big hills, bigger hills.
Another army. Green uniforms with a few black uniforms. Bigger than the force driven from Klingland"s capital. Fighting soldiers wearing the bright orange uniforms of Kance. The green uniforms and the black uniforms were winning. Orange uniforms lay with dead or dying bodies in them in the valleys and across the hills. There was no doubt the orange-clads were being driven back, closer and closer to the twin capitals.
This must not happen!
Strength, strength, strength surging through her arms. Out of her arms, to the bodies and minds of the defending warriors.
A green-uniformed soldier dropped his. sword and died. A second was cut down in similar manner. Here a black uniform screamed its agony until a great war-horse"s hoof crushed the unfortunate Herman"s head. More and more, the green- and black-clad died or were unhorsed. More and more the orange-clad struck down their opponents and fought with renewed force.
Now the orange had stopped retreating. Now the armies were facing each other in unyielding lines. Now the spears flew and the swords clanged and the spectacle was increasingly ghastly.
The Kance army was fighting well now, but remained outnumbered. No matter how hard the orange fought, they were certain to be cut down in the end. They had to have help. Magic help. Witch"s help.
With an intensity she had not imagined she had, Charlain felt the buildup, the great ballooning of rage. In her body, in her soul. Growing, growing, growing. She believed the mechanism to be good and just, yet the force was so strong she could not begin to control it.
In the crystal, above the armies, there developed a great roaring ball of flame. All fighting stopped. The soldiers of both armies looked up. The blacks and the greens trembled. The orange-clads waved and cheered. For the ball was orange. Orange was on top.
With a sudden swoop the ball shot over the invading army. It descended. Men threw up their arms, trying vainly to ward off its heat. It glowed, and the horses danced, spilling their riders and stampeding in terror. Little tendrils of flame grew out of its sides, reaching down, touching, burning, crisping as it sped. Men cowered and threw away their fire-hot weapons. The horses bolted for elsewhere. There was chaos.
The ball imploded with an earthshaking report. Sparks showered down on the Kelvinian army.
The Kancians charged. Encouraged by the panic in the enemy resulting from the witch"s fire, they met little fighting resistance. Their swords swung freely. Their spears darted. Men, good, bad, and indifferent, choked and died.
"Oh Lester," Charlain whimpered, remembering how it had been with him, knowing that similar horror was now being visited on so many more on his side. But there was no stopping it. The invading army was retreating, racing headlong for safety.
Charlain felt herself falling. She felt her face against the ground. She felt blades of gra.s.s in her nose and tickling her ears. She felt that she herself was dying.
"Oh what have I done?" she moaned. "What have I done?"
"You did what had to be done," said her other mouth there above her. "What I had to do and you had to help me do."
"But all that killing! All that death!"
"This is the idiocy of men. We cannot redefine their nature. We can only intercede to enable the right side to prevail."
"Meow!" said Katbah, her other body"s familiar. Gently, soothingly, the creature rubbed against her head and sounded a comforting purr.
Zoanna stared at the crystal with disbelief. The Kelvinian fighting men and the pick of Hermandy"s fighting men were being routed! They shouldn"t be. She had endowed them with special strength through her newly acquired powers and had weakened the enemy with others. Now they were losing, and this was contrary to reason. What had happened?
Then she knew. "Helbah!" she cried aloud. It didn"t seem possible, for she had seen the old witch almost dead. She should have known that the only good witch was a dead witch, not an almost dead witch.
In the crystal a burst of witch fire formed above the Kelvinian army. Men fell from their horses, gra.s.s browned in places, and the mud from a recent rain dried.
That settled it. It was definitely the witch.
"d.a.m.n her! d.a.m.n!" Zoanna swore. She would do that literally, as effectively as her powers allowed. First she would have to get the witch"s image in the crystal, and then by all the evil in existence she would crisp her to a cinder!
The crystal"s image swirled and opaqued without her willing it. The opacity vanished, leaving a clear crystal with Helbah"s grimly wrinkled face inside.
"Helbah, I"ll get you! I"ll finish you!"
The face smiled grimly. "Will you, Zoanna? Try!"
The challenge was too much! Zoanna raised her hands, spoke the words of power, and sent forth a ball of fire.
It backfired. She was thrown across the room, flat on her back amid a pile of smoking furniture and room furnishings. Behind her there was a large crack in the palace"s wall.
She sat up, gasping, feeling her ribs, blinking her eyes. She focused on the crystal. There was Helbah"s image, with a pleased expression.
"Helbah," she gasped, amazed. "You"re strong!"
"Stronger than you, Zoanna."
"We can become allies. We-"
"You are going to leave this frame forever. You and your impostor of a monarch are to vanish. Leave on your own, or be destroyed."
"You can"t threaten me, you old bag of bones!"
"Zoanna, I do not threaten. I, far more than you, have the power to destroy."
"Prove it!" Zoanna screamed, losing all control. "Prove it, you old hag!"
"Certainly, Zoanna."
In the crystal the aged face was replaced by a gnarled hand. The fingers separated, spreading to their maximum. Behind the hand, on a level with it, were two deeply burning feline eyes.
"No! NO! NO!" Zoanna cried, panicking.
"Yes, YES, YES!" mocked Helbah"s voice.
The crystal grew pink, then rosy. Belatedly Zoanna tried to put up some mindscreen to abate what was happening. She had become so enraged that she had neglected to ready her defense.
Suddenly there was a loud splintering sound. The crystal turned black and cindery. Then it imploded with a great whoosh of air. Zoanna, who had climbed to her feet intent on retaliation, was back on the floor. Bits of broken and powdered crystal covered her from head to foot.
"d.a.m.n you, Helbah! d.a.m.n you!" she cried. The gritty stuff was in her mouth and eyes. She had never felt more frustrated or angry.
"What"s the matter, dear?" Rowforth had chosen this moment to come casually strolling into this wing of the palace. He appeared unperturbed by the disorder, and in fact he seemed hardly to have noticed it.
She glared at his pudgy form, seething. How dare he act as if nothing had happened!
"YOU!" she screamed at him. "It"s your fault!"
"That it is, dearie," Rowforth said in Helbah"s voice.
Zoanna stared at him, appalled.
"Goodbye, wicked woman," Helbah said. Then her projection faded, leaving only Rowforth, standing there with a bewildered expression.
Zoanna gazed for some time at the vacant spot where the crystal had been. This was once, she realized, that she had been outmagicked and bested. She had underestimated Helbah, and thought her dying and finished, and so ignored her. That had been a colossal mistake. The witch had survived and recovered, and gathered her magic for an effective retaliation.
Well, Zoanna could do that too! One more visit to Professor Devale, and she would be ready. But first she had to see what she could do to sh.o.r.e up the crumbling attack forces she had launched. Otherwise the war would be lost before she was ready to finish Helbah.
Needing something to occupy her mind, she rehea.r.s.ed the brutal tongue-lashing she would give Rowforth the next time he gave her the slightest pretext.
St. Helens listened hard. The sounds that had been growing nearer were now receding like an outgoing wave. Why?
"I wonder, I wonder," he said aloud. There was n.o.body to hear him except an apparently deaf raouse that went right on nibbling his hunk of bread. Halfheartedly he threw his left boot at the rodent. The boot missed by the length of its tail. He drew off his right boot and threw that with as little effect. He went back to pacing his clean cell.
"Those boys, they said surrender, and I thought it was because they were losing. But now it sounds as if our side has been driven off. More witchcraft?"
A commotion at the dungeon door did not quite startle him. He stood back and waited as another prisoner was brought down the stairs. His cell door opened, and a big Kelvinian was pushed inside.
"Mor!" St. Helens exclaimed incredulously. "Mor Crumb!"
Mor rubbed at a spot of blood on his right cheek. He shook his head as though trying to clear it of cobwebs. "Yah, they got me, big mouth. Me and a hundred or so more they stuck in a stockade. G.o.ds know how many died!"
St. Helens" mouth went slack. "You"re blaming me? You"re calling me big mouth?"
"That"s what you are! You were all for this war. You could hardly wait to get your commission!"
"Mor, I never wanted to fight! But there"s the prophecy, and the king-"
"The king you knew is not our beloved Rufurt! He"s a nasty imitation from another world! You knew, and yet you approved everything he wanted!"
St. Helens felt his face flushing. At another time he would have exploded like his namesake, but this was a friend. Moreover he knew the man to be right. "We were all of us witched or magicked. It"s Zoanna, I"m certain."
"Zoanna?" Mor repeated, with disbelief. "She"s dead!"
"I wish she were. We all wish. But she must have escaped John"s wrath. She must have gotten away and brought back King Rufurt"s impostor from that frame Kelvin visited. It"s the only answer."
Mor glared at him, then took his fists out of his ribs and crossed to the straw. He sank down, wearily, as though all his air was out.
"St. Helens, what are we going to do?"
"I fear we are going to lose."
"Can we lose? With the prophecy working?"
"I never believed as completely in that as you pointy-ears do," St. Helens said. "Kelvin isn"t in this frame. He might not even be alive."
"That would cancel the prophecy, I suppose." Mor sighed noisily. Clearly he was as much at sea as was St. Helens.