Five Portraits (2 page)

Astrid realized that she had not thought to put her human clothing back on. Nymphs were lovely and largely empty-headed; all most of them did was run nude, scream cutely, and kick their feet high, showing off their pretty legs. Few remembered their yesterdays or were aware of their tomorrows; they lived strictly in the present. No ordinary nymph would attempt to rescue captives, because a nymph's attention span was too short to focus on such a task for more than a few seconds.

“Not exactly,” Astrid said. “I merely forgot my clothes.” She spat out her compact ball, opened it up, and donned her clothing and dark glasses.

“Oh!” a gobliness with lovely reddish brown hair exclaimed. “You're human!”

Wrong again, but Astrid decided not to clarify that aspect at the moment; it was usually more trouble than it was worth. “Close enough. I am Astrid, traveler.”

“I am Ginger Goblin, captive.”

“Hello, Ginger. I am glad to meet you. Now how can I open this gate?”

“The lock is magic. Only the dread troll can open it.” Ginger hesitated. “Who may come upon us at any moment.”

“No danger of that,” Astrid said.

“How can you be sure? He's one mean brute.”

“Because he is dead.”

There was a brief silence. “Are you sure?” Ginger asked uncertainly. “He might be playing possum, to better trap you, because you're very much his type.”

“His type?” Astrid asked sharply.

“Luscious. He would want to ravish and eat you.”

“No, he is definitely dead.”

“How can you be sure? Because if he catches you—”

Astrid became impatient. “Because I killed him. I'm a basilisk.”

The goblins eeked faintly and fell back, terrified.

“Oh come on,” Astrid said. “I'm not here to hurt you. That's why I put on the glasses. Truculent Troll mistook me for a morsel, and attacked me, knocked off my glasses, and I looked him in the face and killed him. It was self defense. Now I just want to undo some of the damage he did, such as by freeing you to return to your homes. I'm a basilisk, but also a woman. I care about the welfare of maidens.”

The goblins inched cautiously back to the gate. “We're sorry,” Ginger said. “It's a bad time for us. Each day he takes one of us to—to—”

“To rape and eat. I know. But that's over. We just need to get this gate unlocked.”

“We can't help you there,” Ginger said. “If we knew how to unlock it, we would have done so ourselves and escaped.”

That made sense. Astrid signed. “Then I'll have to summon help. This may get complicated.”

“Complicated?”

“You'll see.” The Astrid braced herself. “Metria,” she murmured.

A small back cloud appeared. “Did I hear my nomenclature?”

“Your what?” Astrid asked. The demoness insisted on going through the ritual, and since Astrid needed her help, she had to comply.

“Terminology, language, word, figure, identifier, handle—”

“Name?”

“Whatever,” the cloud agreed crossly.

“Yes, you heard your name,” Astrid said. “I killed a troll, and now want to rescue his captives, but they are magically locked in. Can you arrange to get Pewter here? He should be able to handle this.”

“Why not just pick the lock?”

“I don't know how. Do you?”

The cloud expanded and formed into a sultry female figure with barely enough clothing to avoid freaking out any males in the vicinity. Fortunately there were none at the moment. “Oh, sure. I pick my nose; a lock should be cleaner.”

“Then do it, please.”

Metria's finger went to her nose.

“The lock!” Astrid snapped.

“Oh. Why didn't you say so?”

Ginger nodded slowly. She was catching on why this was likely to be complicated.

The demoness examined the lock. She put her finger to it. There was a crackle as a spark jumped, and she jerked back. “This is a troll lock!”

“Yes. Can you pick it?”

“Not without being electrocuted. Only trolls can handle troll locks.”

“Could Pewter handle it?”

Metria nodded. “He might. Too bad he's not here.”

“I have a phenomenal idea,” Astrid said patiently. “Why don't you pop back to the camp and tell him about this, and ask him to come here to deal with it?”

“What kind of idea?”

“Fantastic, extraordinary, remarkable, superlative, spectacular—”

“Grate?”

Astrid was taken aback. “Grate?”

“Maybe I misspelled it.”

“Great!” Astrid said. “Yes, that's it. You're a genius.”

Metria looked slightly suspicious that she was being mocked. “Technically I'm closer to a genie than a genius, but it will do. I'll go fetch Pewter.” She popped off.

“Thank you, screwball,” Astrid said to the dissipating smoke.

“I heard that!” the last wisp said.

“Oh, bleep!” Astrid swore.

“We have heard of Metria,” Ginger said. “She's always mischief.”

“She's a member of our party,” Astrid said. “She does mean well, in her fashion. It just can be a trial at times working with her.”

“We appreciate that.”

Soon the cloud reappeared. “Tiara is on her way.”

“Tiara? But it's Pewter we need here at the moment.”

“But he can't fly. Tiara can.”

Astrid counted mentally to ten. It hardly helped. “I wonder whether she will be willing to go back to fetch Pewter.”

“No need.”

“No need?”

“Superfluous, pointless, redundant—”

“Why is there no need to go back to fetch Pewter?”

“Because she's already bringing him.”

Astrid counted from eleven to twenty. That didn't help much either. “Thank you.”

“Always glad to help,” the demoness said sunnily.

In due course Tiara appeared. Her wild fair hair was gathered and wound around her midsection, its flotation supporting her like an inner tube. She had fins on her hands and feet, and was efficiently swimming through the air, as she had learned how to do in the past month. But she seemed to be alone. Astrid kept her mouth shut, afraid to inquire.

Tiara circled over the forest, spied them, and spiraled gently down, her skirt flapping in the breeze. She landed fairly neatly. She had bright blue eyes, a red cherry mouth, nice features, and a firm slender body. “Hello, Astrid,” she said brightly as her hair shortened and formed back into her namesake tiara. “We wondered what you were up to.”

“I had a run-in with a hungry troll. Now we need to unlock the troll's gate to let out his captives.”

“Ah. That must be why you need Com Pewter.”

“Yes. He has a way with locks.”

Tiara removed her hand-fins, reached into her small backpack and fished out what looked like a potato chip with the letter C printed on one side, and the letter P on the other side. She brought it to her mouth and kissed it. “Wake, CP.”

The chip expanded, forming into an android with a face painted on the front of the head. It was of course a computer chip. “Thank you, maiden.”

“For the ride?” Tiara asked.

“That, too.”

Astrid smiled. Theoretically the machine was immune to the charms of pretty girls, but that was evidently changing. Com Pewter was no prince, but the kiss had revived him regardless.

“Here is the lock,” Astrid told Pewter, indicating the barred gate. “Can you open it?”

Pewter considered the gate without touching it. “This is a sophisticated setup. The lock is protected by an invisible magnetic shell that will short-circuit me if I touch it. The troll surely had it keyed to his identity alone. We need to eliminate the shell first.”

“How do we do that?”

“One good bash by a nonmetallic object should do it.”

“Then I think we need Ease and Kandy.”

“We do,” Pewter agreed.

“I will fetch them,” Tiara agreed. Her hair grew long again. She wrapped it around her middle, donned the hand-fins, and took off. There was almost but not quite a flash of panties before she leveled out and swam forward. She was still learning to manage such details. Trousers would have solved that problem, but Tiara considered them unfeminine. Soon she was gone.

“How come a common garden-variety troll has such a fancy security system?” Metria asked.

“I can answer that,” Ginger responded from inside the cave. “My friends and I were out foraging for flowers, and there were some pretty ones in the glade. We didn't realize that it was the troll's trap. He pounced on us and we were helpless to resist. He told us that he had made a deal with his trollway-building cousins to provide one or more pretty girls to serve their needs. When they come to collect, any of us who survive will be given to them to serve as slaves. We hoped they would come soon, because they can't be worse than Truculent.”

Astrid did not like the smell of this. “What kind of slaves?”

“We don't know, but we can guess. The difference is that they probably won't cook and eat us, after. They're more civilized.”

Ideas of civilization evidently differed. Still, the trollway trolls were a higher class, and surely better to deal with. “Well, that deal is terminated,” Astrid said. “We'll free you so you can go home.”

“We appreciate that.”

But now there was a heavy tramping along the hidden trail. Trolls!

“Let's hope for their sake that they are reasonable,” Pewter said to Astrid. “If not, you know what to do.”

“I do,” she agreed grimly, touching her dark glasses.

The trolls came to stand before the cave. There were three of them, each uglier than the others. “What have we here?” their evident leader demanded.

Astrid stepped forward. “Let's exchange introductions. I am Astrid. Truculent Troll attacked me and I had to defend myself, as you may have seen in the glade.”

“We did,” the troll said. “I am Truman Troll and these are my henchmen. How did you manage to overcome Truculent?”

“I am a basilisk in human form.”

“He knows better than to mess with a basilisk!”

“He did not give me much of a chance to clarify my nature. He was too busy clarifying his own five-stage process.”

Truman nodded. “That does sound like him. Why have you not long-since departed this vicinity?”

“We mean to free Truculent's captives so they can go home. They have suffered more than enough already.”

“Those captives devolve to us, now that Truculent is dead. We have uses for them.”

“You shall not have them.”

“This is troll business. There are precedents.”

“It became my business when Truculent attacked me. Any deals he may have made ended with his death.”

“We do not agree. The terms of the deal extend to the heirs and assigns.”

“We do not agree with your interpretation.”

“Do we agree that an altercation between our kind and your kind could become mutually difficult?”

“Our kinds have normally left each other alone,” Astrid agreed.

Truman exchanged a glance or three with his companions, then stared down at her. “Then it seems we have a problem.” He closed his massive fists as the two henchmen donned hoods that would prevent her from staring directly at their faces. That would provide them only partial protection, and inhibit their vision. Still, it increased their chances of dispatching her before she dispatched them. It seemed they had clashed with basilisks before.

Astrid touched her glasses. She could handle trolls, even experienced ones. But it was chancy; she could not be sure of taking out all three before one got to her with a club. They were of course aware that they would take losses. “I hope it can be amicably resolved.”

Truman smiled without humor. “So do I. Do you have a proposal?”

“I do,” Pewter said.

Truman glanced at him. “And you are?”

“Com Pewter, a smart machine allied with Astrid. You do not know my capabilities.”

“Oh, we do, Pewter,” Truman said. “Your iconoclasm is well known. But your power is limited to your immediate vicinity.”

“You are standing on the verge of that vicinity. You will enter it if you clash with Astrid.”

Truman nodded. “Excellent point. What is your proposal?”

“Surely the goblins have some troll captives, saved for similar purposes as you save goblins. How about a captive exchange?”

“We prefer a good old-fashioned raid and heads-bashing.”

“Which would cost you the lives of the captives, making the raid in that respect pointless.”

“So it would, unfortunately. But goblin males, in contrast with their females, are surly brutes not much known for negotiation. We would be at war before we came to terms.”

“Unless a basilisk served as intermediary.”

This time the troll's smile had humor. “Well now! That notion appeals to me. Let's see what offers. This will require a dialogue with the captives. Shall we make a truce for this hour?”

“Granted,” Pewter said.

“Granted,” Astrid agreed. Trolls were dark and dangerous, but they did honor truces.

Truman's fists unclenched, and the henchmen's hoods came off. They knew that machines and basilisks also honored truces.

“May I say, Astrid, that you are one extremely fetching creature in this form,” Truman said. “It is a pleasure to be near—but not too near—you.”

“Thank you.” At least he was polite about the idea the sight of her gave him.

Truman squatted down to peer into the barred cave. “Goblins, we are in negotiation phase. Are there any troll captives in your home mound?”

“Three,” Ginger said. “But we can't say how long they will survive.”

“They were alive when you left?”

“Yes. But the female was stripped and tied down for the benefit of—you know.”