[Kelvin 03] - Chimaera's Copper (with Robert E. Margroff) (12 page)

The distance between the two forces became smaller. Les imagined that he could see the angered eyes, the set lips, even the sweat on the attackers' foreheads. How could they be immune to arrows?

"Cease firing! Form a phalanx!"

The troops formed the square, spears pointing out protectively on all sides. The enemy riders came closer, closer, while all Les' men waited. There was muted grumbling; they didn't like taking a defensive posture when they plainly outnumbered the opposition.

Damn, he thought, what was there to do?

"Sir," said Captain Barnes, his second in command. "It's magic!"

"I can see that, Captain."

"We need the Mouvar weapon, sir. To turn the magic back on them."

"Agreed, Captain," Les said tightly. "Unfortunately we don't have it." Kelvin had the weapon, and why, oh why wasn't he here, when so much depended on him?

Lester stared gloomily at the ever-charging cavalry. He had to wonder whether they were going to have to squat here and wait indefinitely until Kelvin returned from his brother's wedding.

Then he had a new thought, an alarming one. If King Rufurt had been replaced by the king from another frame, what then had been the rightful king's fate? And if Rufurt had been destroyed or somehow magicked, what then of Kelvin? What was going on, in that other frame?

St. Helens should have felt great. Leading troops again--not that he ever had before, exactly. But campaigning was something he knew from the ground up. So why wasn't he happy, now that he was at the head end of it instead of the tail end?

Charley Lomax rode by his left and young Phillip at his right, and behind them stretched the Hermandy army. All seemed to be in order. So what was his problem?

"Sir," the young guardsman whispered, bending near in his saddle. "Have you noticed our well-wishers?"

St. Helens saw what the lad meant. A few sullen faces were staring at them from passing yards and doorways. There were no flowers strewn in their path, no cheers or patriotic cries of well-wishing. The faces were mostly glum and the bodies often ill-fed. The populace of Hermandy reminded him of another. Would the former king of Aratex be reminded? St. Helens turned in his saddle and glanced.

Phillip's face was wreathed in boyish smiles. Taking no notice of anything around them, he appeared as happy as when he was beating St. Helens in chess. After viewing all the death and destruction in Aratex, he still was thinking of glory. St. Helens knew how it was for him because he had once been that way himself.

"I don't think the military is popular in this land," he whispered to Guardsman Lomax. "Considering that the Hermandy government is highly repressive, that's normal. It was that way in Aratex, and, not long ago, before the roundear, in Rud."

"And after this war it will be different here also?"

St. Helens had had a top sergeant once who answered each and every question a private could muster with irrefutable logic. The answer was always the same in St. Helens' experience. He used that sergeant's answer now. "Shut," he said reasonably, "the hell up!" They rode on through deeper and deeper gloom brought on by the fact that nothing was as either of them would have wished.

Helbah had to smile as she gazed into the twin crystals. One showed Mor's difficulty, the other his son's.

"Yes," she said aloud, perhaps to Katbah, her houcat friend. "Yes, old Helbah knows a thing or two! Never could defeat my evil frame-sister, but I kept her from invading us long enough! Glad she's gone! She's my malevolent mirror image, you can bet!"

"Meoww," Katbah remarked, arching his slick back. He would rather be battling a leaf or climbing a tree. Instead he was here in her defense headquarters giving her support.

"Now, then," Helbah continued, checking her brewkettle in the fireplace and giving it a stir with its ladle, "here's our plan. Once we've got them stopped we wait until they go back discouraged or until their decent leaders come and surrender to us. No killing. You like that?"

Katbah rubbed his head against her gnarled hand and purred. It was a gentle soothing sound that befitted a feline creature that never, ever killed birds. From the same gentle frame and mold as Helbah, he preferred finding and returning baby birds that had tumbled from their nests. Yet feline was feline, and Katbah, her familiar, responded as only a familiar could.

Helbah looked down at the touch of the velvety smooth tongue on her hand. She ruffled the black fur, tweaked the triangular whiskers, and stared into the oval eyes.

"Katbah, I think we've won. But--" She frowned as she thought of this. "I wonder why? Not just that we've won, but why the invasion. This is utterly unlike pleasant, ineffective King Rufurt of Rud. Or whatever they call that kingdom now. Kelvinia--that's it, after that good lad."

Katbah rubbed against the third crystal on the table. This one was a smoothed square. His paw reached out and tapped it. The crystal was opaque. "Yes, yes, I'd better. I hate spying, Katbah, but now and then I have to. There is too much of a mystery about this matter."

She drew the square crystal across the rough wooden table to her. She held her clawed fingers above the smooth surface, closed her eyes, and concentrated. In a moment she felt the quiver in her arms and the lightning sparks from her fingertips.

She opened her eyes, staring into a universe of tiny bubbles. Now where? Where? To Kelvinia to find out the cause of the attack. She visualized a man with a big nose, wearing a crown. Yes, there he was, reflected in the crystal as though in a glass box. Rufurt.

Why, she wondered, why? Under her prodding thoughts the view widened. The king was in his bedchamber and he was not alone. Helbah frowned, not wanting to intrude on a private moment between king and--

The woman in the bedchamber turned. As she did, Katbah raised his fur and spat.

Red-as-dragon-sheen hair. Eyes the color of green feline magic with little cometing lights in them. The eyes might have been directed right at her!

Zoanna! Zoanna, the evil queen all thought dead. Hadn't she drowned? Yet here she was with the king, whom she had despised in life. Could this be Rufurt, the real Rufurt?

She peered close, moving in on the man with her thoughts. There was a mean look to him, an insane light in his eyes. His ears were tipped, but with a tipping that was new.

This was not good King Rufurt.

So, then, it was another paired set, like Melbah and Helbah, from other frames. Similar appearance, dissimilar nature. Only the ears gave such folk away, physically.

And the queen?

Helbah moved in on the queen. The face, just as haughty, just as inhumanly cold and devoid of genuine feeling. The original Zoanna, without a doubt.

So the queen had not died. She had hidden, and now returned with a look-alike to replace Rufurt. Rufurt had been easygoing and appreciative of life, but Zoanna had manipulated and misled him. When he and John Knight were released from the Rud dungeon, having sprung themselves during the battle, Rufurt had been just the same. She had checked up on him from time to time, not to interfere but to assuage her curiosity and make sure that no mischief was afoot. This, she was now sure, was not he.

Zoanna had been taking something from a wooden stand. She held up a round crystal. Her face a study in suspicion, she closed her eyes.

Now what? The couple had evidently been about to make love, but now seemed to be up to something else. Had Zoanna learned magic? Her father, Zatanas, had known little, though he had faked much. But Zoanna had been absent for some time. Perhaps she had learned. Maybe she had developed a dormant witch-sense.

In the crystal Zoanna held, Helbah's own face appeared. Zoanna's eyes opened as she peered at it.

"Helbah, I thought that was you! Are you so hard up for thrills that you have to spy on the pleasures of your betters?"

Horrors! She had learned magic! She had felt Helbah's questing, and challenged it. Only a few selected people, male or female, were able to master sorcery, and even fewer ever made the attempt. Zoanna had evidently discovered that she had the ability, and now had developed it. Here was real mischief!

The king bent forward, also looking. "She the witch?"

Zoanna ignored him. To Helbah she said: "Your time has come, old woman. You won't exist much longer. We're taking over the brat kingdoms. When we complete that chore, you will die. We shall throw you away like the garbage you are."

Katbah leaped at the crystal in sudden fury. Sparkling sharp claws raked the crystal, producing a screech that hurt Helbah's ears. It was the way she herself felt.

"I have stopped the armies," Helbah said. "Just as in years of yore."

"Yes, witchy bonebag, but not for long. I now have means of countering you."

"You can nullify my spells?" Helbah asked skeptically.

"Watch." Zoanna gestured. In the crystal she held was Mor and his army in Klingland. They were paused, looking at a pile of horse droppings. Zoanna took a small vial from a drawer in the stand and sprinkled an orange powder. The crystal flared bright. Zoanna held a finger pointed, and the horse manure lifted from the ground and hovered in midair. A sudden cutting gesture, and the dung fell.

A horse leaped. Mor assumed a startled expression, as did his officers. Then they were riding on, into the target territory.

"No you don't!" Helbah snapped. She made a gesture of her own, and the advance, though it seemed to be going forward, stayed even with a tree.

"That is the last time that will be tolerated," Zoanna said grimly. She made a new gesture, and the movement resumed.

Angered by this insolence, Helbah raised a hand. At that moment Zoanna raised her own hand. There was a loud snapping sound, the smell of ozone, and all three of Helbah's crystals vibrated.

"I can keep this up, bag," Zoanna said. "I can keep this up until they crack."

Helbah reluctantly directed a thought, and all three crystals abruptly turned opaque.

She looked at her familiar, who was now glancing all around, as if fearful that the queen were hiding right in this room.

"Yes, Katbah, she's going to be trouble," Helbah said. "Far more than ever before, I fear."

Katbah spat, angrily and knowingly. Meanwhile, Helbah felt drained.

"Yes, I greatly fear, Katbah, that it is going to be a long, wearying fight. Who could have guessed that that evil queen would return, worse than before?"

The question was rhetorical, but the situation was grim. Helbah wished she wasn't quite so old and tired.

Rowforth looked from the now-opaque crystal to his consort's face. He didn't like what he had just heard. This witch sounded like trouble. "Can you keep her from stopping us?"

Zoanna came as near to smiling as she ever did. The expression she normally used was an artifice that affected only her lips, unlike her tepid analogue in the other frame who smiled with her whole face, on those few occasions she had reason to smile at all. This was one of the things he really liked about Zoanna. "Stop us? You must be mad, lover mine. She'll never stop us. Nothing can."

He wanted to believe her. Then, as he looked into her eyes, he very nearly did.

Torture, torment, pain. With her help, all would be inflicted on their enemies, and especially those treasonous ones who had defeated him in his own frame. That Kelvin, how he would enjoy strapping him up in each newly created torture device! But would the iron maiden, the strappado, and the rack be enough? For that soft young man who yet had caused so much mischief he would devise some special pain.

He began dreaming of the child the roundear's wife was to bear. With Zoanna's help it might come out so hideous as to cause both parents unremitting anguish. Yes, that would be fitting--and fun!

"Zoanna, have you heard of a beast called a chimera?"

"Chimera?" she asked blankly.

"With three heads and a scorpiocrab tail." She smiled. "Oh, you mean the chimaera! Of course, though it is almost extinct. What a lovely beasti!"

"Could the--could the child of Kelvin be made to resemble that?"

Her artificial smile slowly became genuine. "My dear, you are a genius! Why not?"

So confident, so certain. Surely he would have had to look through all the frames before finding so ideal a consort!

CHAPTER 9

Fool's Return

"What's this armor you're wearing?" Kelvin asked his cellmate.

Stapular, as usual, managed to look as if he were sneering. In a tone just to the right of insulting he said, "What's it to you, Minor World dolt?"

Kelvin sighed. He tried so hard to be polite and Stapular always ruined it. He took another big handful of fruity mash from the trough and munched it, eying the redhead speculatively.

"That's right, go ahead and stuff! Put on some fat so you'll be just what old triple-head wants! You don't see me gulping that stuff! But you do what you want. Maybe it'll fry you. Saut� you with a little onlic. Yes, that should be good."

Kelvin shuddered. He had never liked onlic. The other man was obviously trying to nettle him; what made it worse was that he was succeeding. If the chimaera was going to eat him, he almost preferred that it eat him raw.

Still, he was hungry, and he wanted to keep up his health and strength, so as to be ready to escape if any opportunity presented itself. He finished chewing the mixed nuts, fruit, and grain mixture, reflecting that it wasn't bad, in fact it was delicious. He then lay down at the edge of the little stream and sucked up water. Good, crystal- clear spring water, the best. He had to admit that the monster had excellent taste in food and water.

At last he stood and faced Stapular deliberately. Have to control the body language now, he thought. Don't want to appear hostile.

"I asked, cellmate, about your armor."

"Why should I tell you?"

"I told you about the Mouvar weapon."

"I didn't ask you to. Does that mean I'm obligated?"

"You want to get out. You want to save yourself. Surely you don't want to be eaten."

Stapular hesitated. He was doubtless trying to think of a reason to refuse Kelvin's reasonable request. Even the most unreasonable people liked to appear reasonable, oddly.