[Kelvin 03] - Chimaera's Copper (with Robert E. Margroff) (40 page)

"I--I'll watch." He handed his mother the Mouvar weapon. Then he thought again and handed her the belt and short scabbard. She took these with as little surprise as though he had handed her a pot in her own kitchen. She strapped on the weapon, seeming not in the least curious about it.

"I'm sure you will," Helbah said. "Charlain, hop on my back!"

With astonishment that seemed lately never to cease, Kelvin watched his mother climb piggyback on Helbah's aging shoulders. Then, as the moon hid under clouds and it was as dark as the inside of a serpent, there was a whooshing sound. The moon came back and there was a white dovgen climbing into the sky with what looked like a small gray shrewouse clinging with tiny paws to its feathers.

The bird disappeared into the dark sky. There were no lightnings. No flaming balls of witch's fire.

"Meow." Absently he reached down and stroked the cat. He was back to the little-boy stage, he thought, waiting patiently for adults to accomplish adult business. All in all it wasn't too bad a place to be.

Katbah rubbed against him and purred contentment and wordless understanding. He was beginning to understand why witches had familiars; they could be a lot of comfort on dark nights. No, not too bad a place for someone who had never wanted the hero mantle in the first place.

"Ohhh," Rowforth moaned. "Zoanna, you're taking too much of my life-force. It's flowing out and nothing is replacing it. Zoanna, you're draining me!"

"Can't be helped. You want to win, don't you? Quit your whining."

"But Zoanna, if you kill me in order to destroy them, where's my triumph? You don't want me dead." Then he paused, a new and not entirely pleasant thought occurring. "You don't, do you, Zoanna?"

Zoanna, now the complete witch, did not answer. She merely smiled in ever so enigmatic a fashion.

Rowforth, who had been merely uncomfortable, now found that he was thoroughly scared. He resolved that he would find some way of being useful to her other than at the expense of his life-force. To fail to do this, he strongly suspected, would cost him dear. It could, he knew in the depths of him, cost him his life.

John and Rufurt had ridden the plowhorse double half the way to the palace. John for his part was having second thoughts. True, the lights in the sky meant big things afoot, and probably danger to those he loved. But, and the thought jolted him worse than the plowhorse, the intelligent thing would have been to go back to Kian and get his help.

"Curse it," Rufurt said with disgust, "there's never an army around when you need one!"

Looking at the dancing lights in the sky and having his senses beset by implosive blasts, John had to agree with the former king's estimate. But he had to go on. Somewhere ahead there was Charlain!

Jon watched Heln nursing her firstborn and felt a stirring inside her that she had never honestly felt before. Possibly, just possibly, she herself was not completely devoid of maternal instinct. She looked down at the secondborn she held. She certainly was a cute baby! She had her grandma's coppery hair. But how were they going to tell Kelvin about the horrible third one?

Well, maybe they wouldn't have to. The thing had gained its feet immediately and scampered out before they could do more than stare. Heln, lapsing into unconsciousness again, hadn't seen it at all. Maybe nobody but Jon, Charlain, and Dr. Sterk ever needed to know of the horror that had been the remnant of the evil enchantment. It was safely gone.

"I'm sure they'll be all right," Dr. Sterk said, putting his beak of a nose almost in her face. "I wasn't certain. We physicians have so little training in magic."

"I'm sure that can change," Jon said.

"It will. It will have to. After all, magic is the basis of all healing."

"I've heard that all my life. From Mother, mostly." Jon looked at the window and was surprised how light it had become. The ball of fire Charlain had left had gradually grown dimmer until now it was about as bright as that of twin oil lamps.

"I'll light the lamps again, Doctor. I'm not certain how long my mother's light will last."

"Probably almost until morning," Dr. Sterk said.

Jon busied herself with the lamps. She hadn't a coal to apply to the wicks so she simply held them near the witch's fire and--not surprisingly, to her at least--they lit.

"Good girl, Jon."

"Doctor, do you mind if I go out and see what Kelvin and our mother are about? It has been a while."

"No indeed, Jon. I'm wondering about that myself." He took the baby from her. Heln stirred, weak and wan in the bed. "Please Jon, find out about Kelvin."

"Don't worry about him," Jon said, patting the new mother's hand. How wonderful it was to have Heln back, instead of the monster she had become under the enchantment! "He's our hero and nothing bad will happen to him. He didn't come in before because I asked him not to. There was blood, and you were just about unconscious." And we had to clean up the gory tracks of that horrible third birth!

Heln sighed. "Of course. You're right, Jon. You almost always are." She closed her eyes. And we didn't want to rouse you until that was done either, Jon's thought finished.

Jon left the palace, sling in hand. She was wondering if what she'd told Heln was true. Prophecy or no prophecy, she knew she had on more than one occasion saved her brother's life.

Kelvin stood at the gatepost in the moonlight. His hands were on a copper something that looked a little like a dragon spear that she hadn't noticed before, in the mixed excitement of the birthings. The point of the spear thing was pointed skyward; was it some sort of new weapon? Why would he need anything different if he had the Mouvar weapon that had won the war with Aratex? And there, next to his leg, rubbing up against him, was a large, black houcat.

"Kelvin?"

"Jon!" he exclaimed, as if seeing her for the first time. "Is Heln all right? Are the babies--?"

"Calm yourself," she said with a tired smile. "They're all fine. Heln's asking for you. As soon as you finish here, you can go see her." What a boy Kelvin was, actually, she realized. How much more grown-up she and Heln were, and even her own Lester.

"I have to watch the sky for fireballs," he said. "Mother and our--" He paused, swallowed, and then went on: "Our ally, have gone to finish something."

"You mean the witch from the twin cities, don't you?" How naive did he think she was? Who else had been defending them from Zoanna and the false king these past days?

"Yes--yes, that's what I mean. Helbah thinks they're licked and that she can finish them."

"Isn't that a job for a hero?"

"I'm not complaining," Kelvin said.

Jon lightly touched his hand. "You've sent back Zoanna's fireballs, Kel?"

"This stopped them," he said, touching the copper spear.

"Why stop them? Why not send them back?"

"Witches erect magic barriers when they expect magical attack or counterattack. The returned fireballs might have bothered Zoanna but they wouldn't have crisped her unless she'd dropped her guard. She might even have been poised to bounce them back again, and that could have made it worse for us."

"She maintained that through magic?"

"Yes."

"Kelvin, why don't you go after them?"

"I'm supposed to guard the palace. If I neglect my post, and the queen sends one more fireball, we'll lose even if we kill Zoanna. Anyway, Helbah can handle it."

"Are you certain?"

He frowned. "Why?"

She bit her lower lip and tried to see off into the darkness, past the forest, to the mountainside. There was just the faintest of flashes there, first high up and then low down. "Look, Kelvin," she said, directing his gaze, "isn't that a battle? Aren't the witches going at it hard?"

Kelvin's eyes squinted. "I don't see... I can't see past the forest."

"It is," she said. "The witches battling. Kelvin, I think you should go and help."

"They've got the Mouvar weapon."

"But it may not be enough. Zoanna can't take time to throw a fireball at the palace. Helbah and Mother have her occupied."

Kelvin frowned. "You really think I should--"

"Yes." She was really worried now.

"All right, then." He took up the copper spear and strapped it to his back. He did something to his belt and his feet left the ground, and he soared like an untethered cloud. He looked back once, and then he was flying through the moonlight in the direction of the mountainside.

Jon sighed. She hoped she had done the right thing. Her brother seemed so helpless sometimes!

"Meow?" The black houcat seemed almost to question her.

"Yes, kitty," she said. "Kelvin's off to be a hero, and I know that someway he'll save the day. Because he is guarded by the prophecy, while the others aren't. I wish I was going with him. I wish you and I could fly."

"Meow." Something stung her legs, like a jolt of what her father called static electricity but which she had always thought magic. The stars grew smaller and somehow the grass and the gatepost grew high. Ozone was in the air and there was a taste in her mouth that surely she had never tasted before.

She flexed her white wings. A black creature the size of a shrewouse climbed up between her shoulders and gently gripped her feathers with claws.

Jon flapped her dovgen wings and flew after Kelvin.

I'm off to join the witches! she thought as the fields and the trees slid by. Somehow she wasn't at all surprised.

Helbah sweated and strained to keep the barrier erected. She could feel it bulging inward, pushing at them, wanting to break. The heat from the steadily roaring flames was getting to her, and worse still, to her apprentice.

"Now, Charlain!" she said. With all their strength they pushed together, back, back. Who would have thought Zoanna commanded such power?

There was only one thing left to try, and she tried it. Hate technology though she might, there was such a thing as a mixture of technology and magic. She raised Kelvin's Mouvar weapon to point at the cliff, though where it pointed hardly mattered. She pressed its trigger.

The fireball receded from before them. It retreated to the cliffside and the entrance to a cave. It stopped there, held in check by Zoanna's barrier. If Zoanna should drop the barrier she would be consumed by her own bolide. If Helbah could now add her own witch's fire the barrier would surely disintegrate.

Unfortunately the Mouvar weapon recognized no distinction between Zoanna's fireball and her own. Should Helbah try a magical counterattack, it would rebound on her and Charlain.

She was weakening alarmingly fast. That treacherous injury she had taken on the battlefield still vitiated her strength; she needed far more recuperation time than she had gotten. She didn't know how long she could go on. If only Zoanna would weaken before Helbah weakened further. The Mouvar weapon held her in check for a breathing spell and then its power weakened and Zoanna's fireball was drifting back.

Now she regretted telling Kelvin to remain at the palace. She needed him here, with his copper sting! With that he might throw a nonmagical electrical bolt through the barrier. That would be the end of Zoanna and the worst of her many consorts. THUNK!

The feathered crossbow bolt, definitely not magic, protruded from her arm. Blood started from around the shaft. She had only heartbeats left, if that, to maintain consciousness. Heartbeats to contain the barrier protecting them from the witch's fire!

She could deal with the wound, by focusing her magic on it, for it was not a critical one. But if she did that, there would be no barrier to Zoanna's magical attack. She had to maintain that barrier!

The wound burned horribly. Her arm seemed to swell to twice its normal size. She lost feeling in the extremity. Her finger loosened on the Mouvar's trigger. The weapon dropped, and she after it.

"Helbah! Helbah!" her apprentice cried.

Poor Charlain, Helbah thought as her senses faded. I've failed you and the rest.

"Good shot, Rowforth!"

"Nothing to it, my love." Despite his faking it, he could hardly stand. How he had gotten to his feet and aimed the crossbow was a mystery proving once again his remarkable endurance. "Better get them now, love, while you have the chance."

"I'm going to, sweetie. But I intend to savor my victory. Look who's there! Can you see him in the morning light?"

Rowforth squinted. "Kelvin!"

"That's right. We've got the entire bunch! At our mercy, only we have no mercy."

"Burn them! Burn them!"

"In good time." She sharpened her eyesight, a trick she had only recently learned. The thin, tawny-haired troublemaker and prophesied curse was definitely there. He was trying to help Helbah and at the same time he was looking up at them. Helbah was almost finished--and he was almost finished.

She began forming a fireball in front of the ledge. Slowly, slowly, slowly. No need to hurry. Big, big. Hot, hot. Oh, it was nice!

Rowforth gasped weakly and sat down. He was being drained beyond his tolerable threshold, but it couldn't be helped. This was the fire that counted!

Rowforth picked up his crossbow, tried to put another bolt in it, and tried to crank it taut. He fumbled with the cocking mechanism, then dropped it, too weak. "For the gods' sake, Zoanna, you're weakening me too much!"

"How much is too much?" she inquired indifferently. "This will be the fullest revenge, Rowforth. You didn't know I knew about the maid, did you?"

Even in the hot glow from the fireball, Rowforth's face was white. "I thought--"

"You thought you could be unfaithful. That was an error on your part."

"You were unfaithful!"

"Zoanna is Zoanna. My consorts are my consorts. You were only a consort, my sweet."

"Was?" Realization made his voice weak.

"Was, sweet," she said firmly.

Rowforth's eyes bulged above his big ruddy nose until his very face looked obscene. "Zoanna, you're draining me completely! You're killing me!"

"I am, Your Unfaithfulness. It's all part of my triumph. For my next consort I think I'll take a young and inexperienced boy. That guardsman who stole your prize mare and ran off and joined with that fool St. Helens, what's-his-name--Lomax. Yes, for a time he might be quite pleasant. With what I know now I can make him come to me. Come and perform, delightfully."