Knot Gneiss (26 page)

“I will,” Angela said. “But if you see danger for me—”

“I will send you a thought to flee,” Jumper agreed. “If I do, don’t question it. Flee instantly.”

“I will,” Angela repeated. She flew across the water.

“Give us the hologram again,” Wenda said. “This time from Gauche’s mind, if yew can.”

For answer, the hologram reappeared. This time it showed the scene from the goblin chief’s perspective.

He watched the angel flying across the lake. “I must get her to bring the others,” he said to himself. “She’s not enough by herself.”

Angela flew closer, and more of her legs showed under her flaring skirt. “Then again, she’s got nice gams. I hope she keeps her elevation as she gets closer, so I can peek at her panties.”

“He would,” Ida muttered.

Angela, inexperienced and concerned about possible capture, did maintain her elevation, showing more of her legs. She was not even thinking of such exposure. Wenda thought of asking Jumper to warn her, but decided not to, for two reasons. She was concerned that Jumper might lose focus if he had to do two different telepathic things simultaneously, and realized that the distraction might give Angela an advantage. This might be naughty strategy, but was tolerable.

Gauche did look, and was increasingly distracted. But his cunning goblin mind remained in control. He had seen enough legs and panties in his day to appreciate them without freaking out. Indeed, the sight stirred memories of goblin girls whose beauty threatened to put the sun’s glory to shame.

“Wow!” Hilarion breathed, viewing those memory girls in the hologram. “Goblin males may be ugly, but goblin females are contrastingly lovely.”

Angela came to hover almost above Gauche. “I have come to—to negotiate,” she said hesitantly.

He hardly blinked. “How much to drop down here and let me grab your ass, cutie?”

This was so far out of bounds that the angel couldn’t understand it. “What is your proposition?”

“Just spread your legs wide and settle down right here.”

Now she began to get it. She blushed from her face to the tips of her toes. “Oh! I forgot my legs show!”

“They sure do, honey! Bring ’em down.”

Angela closed her legs. “We want to—to—recover our companion, Meryl Mermaid. We will consider any reasonable—”

“That too,” Gauche said, concealing his irritation at the loss of the panty vision. “We want the Knot. We’ll trade it for the mermaid.”

“We can’t do that,” Angela said.

“Okay. Let her tell you the deal.” He snapped his stubby fingers. Gorilla Goblin advanced, carrying a struggling Meryl.

Meryl spoke her piece, repeating what they had learned telepathically. “So they want an exchange,” she concluded. “And if they don’t get the Knot, they will t-torture me.”

“We can’t make that deal,” Angela said.

“Yeah?” Gauche smiled. “Gorilla, you may begin.”

Gorilla held Meryl before him. “Ha!” he said hungrily.

“I mean we have to discuss it,” Angela said desperately. “We need to agree about making the exchange.”

“Just tell the rest to come on over and we’ll do it,” Gauche said. “It’s not complicated.”

“Yes, it is. We have five remaining members of our party, and they all have to agree. We can’t possibly decide on the spur of the moment.”

The goblin chief gazed at her closed legs. She seemed innocent, and she was an angel. That meant she wasn’t trying to deceive him. He might yet get the whole party to come across. He made a snap decision. “Okay, cutie. I’ll give you a day and night. After that, Gorilla starts in on the crossbreed, and we’ll go on from there. You think about that. Think about it hard, because you know what we’ll do if we don’t get that Knot.”

“I—I will tell them,” Angela said. She spun in the air and flew back across the lake.

“Take her back inside,” Gauche told Gorilla. “You can’t have her yet.”

“But tomorrow—” Gorilla said hopefully.

“Tomorrow we’ll all score,” the chief assured him.

The hologram dissolved. “We’ve got trouble,” Jumper said. “I read his deeper mind. He doesn’t just want to get the Knot and keep Meryl. He wants to get our whole party.”

“Our whole party!” Wenda exclaimed.

“He had goblins hiding in ambush. If we had crossed today, they would have thrown a net over us all, doused us with hate elixir, and captured us individually while we fought among ourselves. Then his men would have started raping and torturing all the women of our party. You don’t want to know the details.”

“What of the men?” Hilarion asked.

“We are to be given to the goblinesses to play with before execution. Execution would be by dousing us both with hate elixir and locking us into a cell together. The winner lives to be doused with another captive, and so on.”

“We can’t afford to be captured.”

“But neither can we leave Meryl to be tortured,” Wenda said.

“We have a day and night,” Ida reminded them. “We can fashion a plan.”

Hilarion looked at her. “I am not sure our combination of talents will be effective in this instance.”

“What are you talking about?” Angela demanded. “Can’t you make the goblins forget about Meryl?”

“Not from this distance, and not in a mass,” Hilarion said. “Were I close to the chief goblin, I could make him forget her, but the others would remember. That would not be much of an improvement.”

“Well, then maybe I should try it,” Angela said angrily. “I can fly in there at night and unbar her prison, and the two of us can fly out of there.”

Wenda could see that Ida wanted to agree, but couldn’t manage it. The angel would most likely be caught and cruelly ravished. Gauche had already eyed her panties.

But that gave Wenda an idea. “Jumper could dew it. He could assume the form of Gauche, and say he’s taking Meryl for fell purposes, then lead her out.”

“Fatal flaw,” Hilarion said. “What would the real Gauche be doing while Jumper was emulating him?”

Ouch. He was right. Something had to be done about the real chief goblin.

“I know!” Angela said. “I could go and distract him so he wouldn’t be checking on anything else.”

“Another flaw,” Hilarion said. “No angel could do what that miscreant would require. Only a demoness could do that.”

“We have reverse wood,” Angela said. “I could use it to reverse my nature and become a demoness.”

“And forever soil yourself, if you even survived his degradations,” Hilarion said.

“Better that, than to let Meryl suffer.”

The angel was demonstrating her friendship and loyalty. But the thought of subjecting her to that session with Gauche appalled Wenda, and she was sure the others liked it no better.

“Yet it might work,” Ida agreed reluctantly.

“Yes, it might,” Wenda agreed. “I will dew it.”

Hilarion turned to her with much the same concern as he had for Angela. “This is not a thing to inflict on any damsel. It is likely death and sure degradation.”

“You and your d*mned gallantry!” Angela flared.

“The safety of the members of my Quest is my responsibility,” Wenda said. “I will dew it.”

“Wenda, please,” Jumper said, pained. “I couldn’t bear to see you hurt.”

She appreciated his concern, but had little patience with it at the moment. “Then figure out a way for me to avoid getting hurt.”

A bulb flashed over Ida’s head. “Reverse wood!”

The others looked at her, not seeing it.

“We have all kinds,” Ida said. “And only Wenda is immune, at least as far as the chips are concerned. She could do it.”

“Please explain,” Hilarion said.

Ida explained. And before long they had a plan. It was daring and chancy, but had a fair chance of working.

Jumper checked on Meryl, and made the hologram of her surroundings. She was now in a much nicer suite, with a roommate/guard: Gossamer Gobliness, delicately lovely in the manner of her gender. They were playing card games. It seemed that the goblins were honoring the delay. But that did not mean that Gauche had relented; the torture would commence on schedule.

Jumper picked up on something else in the chief’s foul mind: “He
expects
us to raid at night. Guards are lurking to capture us when we do. Then they will cross to the island and capture the Knot. They are just pretending to be unaware. It’s all part of their plan.”

Wenda winced. They could not afford to forget for a moment that they were dealing with dangerously cunning little monsters. But they were going to raid, regardless. Just not quite in the expected manner.

They waited until nightfall, meanwhile organizing their camp, foraging for pies on the island, and locating a small spring that was not hate elixir.

And the nuptial party came. Well, why not? If Wenda was going to risk her life soon, it was better to let Charming know now.

The others felt the same way. Each explained to the spouse or equivalent.

“If you are wiped out, what will become of me?” Charming asked, worried.

“If Wenda loses, you will take her place?” Beauregard asked Angela, not at all easy about it.

“You are invulnerable,” Eris reminded Jumper. “But I may have forgotten to tell you that the talents I lent you are limited. If you use them too often, they will expire.”

“Expire!” Jumper exclaimed. “I had no idea!”

“It’s in the fine print of the Demon Protocols. We can’t give too much to mortals. It might give them delusions of significance.”

He considered. “I’ll have to use one shape-change tonight, and limit it to that. And be far less free hereafter, saving my talent for an emergency.”

“That makes sense,” Eris agreed. Then she kissed him, and Beauregard kissed Angela, and Charming kissed Wenda’s left ear as she unobtrusively turned her back. Six and a half minutes later the visitors were gone.

Wenda, Jumper, and Hilarion paddled the air boat across the lake, while Angela hovered above, serving as liaison. Ida remained with the Knot to make sure no goblins sneaked across to the island to steal it. If she had to, she would invoke the humidor and push the wagon through, rather than allow the goblins to get the Knot.

They landed, and walked boldly toward the goblin hill. Soon the goblin guard spied them. “Halt! What simpleton goes there?” he demanded.

Hilarion focused on him, and in half a moment the sentry forgot that he had seen anything. They walked on.

“I will go first,” Wenda whispered. Coordination was essential.

“I will go second,” Jumper agreed. He changed form, assuming the likeness of Gauche Goblin.

“I will wait here, and be ready to make any pursuers forget,” Hilarion said.

“I will hover here and watch,” Angela said. “And flee to tell Ida if anything goes wrong.” She shuddered prettily.

Wenda donned a white scarf to signal truce, girded her hollow loin, and marched to the main entrance. A goblin guard oriented on her, but he was in sight of Hilarion, and immediately lost his memory of her. She walked on in, unchallenged.

Now she was on her own. She followed the twisted passages toward where she knew the chief’s chambers to be. Jumper had identified it from the awareness of the goblins, and Wenda had rehearsed the route. The passage was lighted by guttering torches, and was high enough so that she did not have to stoop, though she was taller than any goblin.

“Hey, nymph!” a goblin challenged her. “You’re an outsider!”

“Hey yewrself, snot for brains,” Wenda responded politely enough for goblin dialect. “I’m going to see Chief Gauche. Want to make something of it?”

The chief’s name was magical in this domain. The goblin went on, staying out of it. A goblin who messed with the chief could get hung upside down and force-fed hate elixir until he vomited it out the wrong end. Jumper had picked up the memory.

She came to the chief’s door. She closed her hollow wooden fist and pounded on the door. “Open up, fecal face!” she called. “I’m here to talk to yew.”

The door opened. There was Gauche, glowering. “Woodwife!” he exclaimed, amazed. “What the bleep are you doing here?”

“I come under flag of truce to plead for the release of my friend the winged mermaid,” she said.

Gauche considered. “What will you do to get her back?”

“I thought I wood talk to yew. I’m sure we can come up with something.”

“Come in.” He stopped back to let her in, then closed the door firmly behind her. “I never had a woodwife before.”

Naturally there was only one thing on his evil mind. But she needed to distract him, and keep him distracted long enough for Jumper to emulate Gauche and take Meryl out to safety. She half turned so that he could focus on her full rear outlined by her tight skirt, instead of her hollow front. She was padded in front, but that would be lost the moment he tore her clothing off. “Why knot?”

“Couldn’t catch one. They’re slippery woodland creatures.” He smiled as he scratched his rear. “But you are catchable.”

Wenda touched her white scarf. “I am here under truce. I am knot for yewr interest.”

“Not even to save your friend?”

Wenda hesitated. “Knot necessarily.”

“Enough of this bourgeois courtship! Rip off your clothes!”

“I wood knot dew that to yew,” Wenda protested, alarmed. “It wood knot bee right.”

“Of course not, nymph. I’m doing it to you.” He grabbed her and threw her roughly facedown on the bed. It didn’t hurt because she had no frontside to bruise. In three quarters of a moment he was on top of her, still clothed, slobbering expectantly. He caught at her skirt, trying to haul it up or down.

“But I wood dew this to yew.” Wenda brought out the chip of reverse wood she carried. She tucked it into his boot beside her thigh, wedging against his dark ankle.

Gauche converted to a gobliness.

It took him a good moment and a half to catch on. He was still busy trying to get into her skirt. “What—what?” he sputtered.

Wenda lifted him off her, as he now weighed perhaps a third what he had. “Yew are now Gaucherie Gobliness,” Wenda said. “Enjoy the condition.”

Gauche scrambled off the bed and went to look in the wall mirror beside it. He was now a very fetching gobliness in very baggy male clothing. “Oh, horror!” he wailed.

“But yew look quite gneiss,” Wenda said. “Yew will knot bee in want of male companionship for long.”