The Universe Twister (20 page)

"What—what is it?" O'Leary tried to keep his mind on what the head was saying. He knew it was important, but a great pit of soft blackness was waiting, and if he just let go, he would sink down, down . . .

"Listen to me! Freedom! If you swear to serve me!"

The voice penetrated the fog. His chest hurt—how it hurt! Spikes were digging in as he slumped against them. Something sharp was cutting into his cheek, and another against his jaw.

He gasped and pulled himself off the daggers. The eyes in the shrunken head caught him, glaring.

" . . . now, fool! Catch at the chance Fortune throws in your path! Give me your word and I'll set you free!"

"What—what do you . . . want me to . . . do?" O'Leary managed.

"See the great ax on the wall yonder? It was written—ah, long and long ago—that by its keen edge the betrayer would meet his doom! Take it! Raise it high! Strike off his head!"

"His . . . head?"

"The murderer of his king and father has sworn to do the like by me," the head hissed. "He swore that none should witness his nuptial revels when he makes the Princess Adoranne his bride! The finest surgeons in the land will he summon, and under their knives I'll suffer living decapitation. He hates me, and he fears me. Me, who has suffered with him through thick and thin, ever ready with a word of advice. And now he says I will shame him before her quaking loveliness! Ah, the vile creature! He'd remove me like a wart, cut me down in my prime! His brother!"

"How . . . can you . . . release me?"

"When he sleeps in drunken sottishness, as now, I can, a little, control the body;
our
body, soon to be mine alone. How say you, little man? Is it a bargain?"

"I . . . I'll try."

"Done!" The glittering eyes narrowed. O'Leary saw perspiration pop out on the brown and furrowed brow under a lock of giant's hair. One hair hand stirred, groped clumsily in the folds of the gown, crept inside. There was a jingle of metal. The hand emerged, holding a ring of keys. Lod snored on, his tongue lolling from his gaping mouth.

"The pain—the mortal pain of it," the second head whimpered. "But soon, soon victory is mine!"

O'Leary watched, goggle-eyed as the hand lifted the keys—then, with an awkward motion, tossed them. They struck the cage, caught on a spike, dangled inches from his hand.

"I can't reach them," he whispered.

"Try! Only a little pain stands between you and freedom! Try!"

O'Leary moved his hand an inch; spikes caught at his arm. He twisted his body sideways, feeling the thrust of other stiletto points against his ribs and hip. He inched the arm forward and up, gritting his teeth as the skin scraped, the blood started, joining the dried blood from earlier cuts. Another inch . . . almost there . . . His finger caught the key ring, teased it . . .

It dropped into his palm, and he clutched it, his heart thudding. Lod snorted, stirred. O'Leary watched him, holding his breath. The giant's breathing steadied once more. Painfully, O'Leary worked his arm back to his side, then forward, enduring the stab of the knives. His clothes were a bloody mess, he realized dimly. He was bleeding from dozens of separate small wounds; none deep, but all painful. He was losing a lot of blood.

"The key of black iron," the head keened softly. "Quickly, now! He sleeps but lightly!"

One more effort. O'Leary took a deep breath, gripping the key in slippery fingers. He reached, forgetting the damage he was doing to his hide, concentrating on the objective. The key touched the dangling lock; it swung away, clattering. The head cursed softly. O'Leary dropped the keys, pushed up on the lock with a finger. In the chair, Lod moved his feet, reached up to rub a thick finger under his nose. The second head watched, cracked lips parted.

The lock rose, teetered, fell with a clatter. Lod half-opened his eyes, smacked his lips noisily, relaxed again. O'Leary pushed against the hinged front of the cage. It swung wide. He stumbled out, stood swaying before the sleeping giant.

"Adoranne," he said thickly. "Was he lying? Is she here?"

"He spoke the truth, foolish man. Doubtless He-Who-Plots-in-the-Palace can tell you of her. There is no time to waste! Quickly, to your duty!"

O'Leary straightened his aching back, wiped his bloodied hands on his thighs, tottered to the wall. The ax hung high, out of reach. He turned, dragged a three-legged stool over to the wall, stood on it, nearly fell, clutched at the wall for support. The dizziness passed. The haft of the ax was as big around as his wrist, diagonally wrapped with tough animal hide, dry and hard. He gripped it, lifted it free from the rusted spike it dangled from.

The heavy weapon slipped from his grasp, came clanging down against the hard earth floor. Lod grunted; O'Leary scrambled down, reached, brought up the ax. It was heavy, awkward, too long by a yard. The broad steel head was red with fine rust, twelve inches wide at each blade, two feet from edge to edge, set in a notch in the wood and wrapped with leather strips.

"Haste, small man!" the thin voice screeched. Lod's eyes flew open. He stared blankly, then shook his head, muttering. His gaze fell on O'Leary as the latter gripped the ax at midpoint, brought it up across his shoulder. Lod roared, tried to rise, slipped, fell back, bellowing.

With a heave, O'Leary swung the ax from his shoulder, took two steps, brought it over and down with all the force of his arms behind it, square on the juncture of Lod's neck and chest. The great head leaped up six inches, like a grotesque beach ball balanced on a spurting column of crimson; then it fell aside, bounced once on the massive shoulder, struck the floor with a meaty thud, spun, came to a stop staring up at O'Leary with a hideous leer.

In the chair, the great body, still fountaining blood, rose unsteadily to its feet.

"Now I am master," the tiny head croaked.

Then the body toppled—dead.

O'Leary groped to the table, feeling blackness closing in; he found the ale jug with his hands, tilted it, drank, then leaned on the table and waited while the cool liquid burned away the fog. There was food here—a feast fit for a giant. He sank down on a stool, picked up a roast pigeon, fell to, oblivious of the immense body lying at his feet in a spreading pool of tar-black blood.

After eating, O'Leary pulled off his shirt and examined his wounds. He was cut, slashed, scraped in fifty places. None of the cuts were deep, but he'd look like a schoolgirl's embroidery project when the doctors finished stitching him up. Using a little of the ale, he cleaned the slashes, wincing at the sting. He wiped away the drying blood, then tore strips from Lod's voluminous scarf to bind up the worst cuts.

He went to the door—there was no sound from outside. Was Crusher or another of Lod's bulky bodyguard standing by, awaiting a summons? He needed a weapon. There were plenty of them on the wall, but all were broken—war trophies, taken from fallen enemies, Lod had boasted. The ax was too big to be handy, but it would have to do—and maybe its bloody condition would impress the locals. He hefted it, got it across his shoulder, flung the door open. There was no one in sight in the dark tunnel.

The rough-hewn passage led upward at a slant, angled around a massive reinforced concrete footing, ended at a crude doorway hacked in the ceramic tile cellar wall, covered over by an un-tanned hide of some scaly animal. O'Leary thrust it aside, emerged into a gloomy basement crowded with vast air-conditioner and furnace units festooned with aluminum-wrapped duct work, piping, and heavy electrical cables. At one side, a 50 kw diesel generator chugged patiently—the source of the remaining electric power in the hotel, O'Leary deduced.

He crossed the wide room, went up stairs and came out into the kitchens, foul with a faint odor of rotted food. Windows at the far side showed the gray light of early dawn. They were sealed shut, he saw. Still, there was no point in venturing out into the frequented area of the building. His mission now was merely escape, and return to the capital as quickly as his pet dragon could canter. Nicodaeus had been clever, tricking him into setting off on a wild goose chase while he completed his plans for seizure of the kingdom undisturbed. Lod had said that the plotter planned to dispose of Adoranne. If he had hurt her—

Time to think about that later. O'Leary swung the ax at the window. Glass burst outward. He knocked free the jagged shards remaining in the frame, stepped up on a table, ducked through to a wide stone sill and jumped down to the untrimmed turf six feet below. So far, so good. Now, where was his mount? He gave a low whistle. There was an answering hiss from beyond the nearest clump of trees, only dimly visible through the early-morning fog. O'Leary set off in that direction and saw the stir of a tall body among the trunks. A mighty figure stalked forth to meet him, looking bigger than ever through the mist.

"That's the boy, right on the job," O'Leary called in a low voice. He trotted forward to meet the tremendous beast as it advanced, emitting a rumble like a dormant volcano stirring to life. O'Leary admired the play of the massive thigh muscles under the greenish hide, the great column of the neck, the jaws—

Jaws? He didn't remember a head the size of a Volkswagen, opening like a vast power shovel to reveal multiple rows of gleaming ivory daggers, nor did he recall red eyes, pinning him down like spears, or talons like curved bone scimitars.

He turned, dropped the cumbersome ax and dashed for shelter. A huge foot struck the earth just beside him; something immense swooped down and O'Leary caught a glimpse of a steaming red-lined cavern big enough to stable a pony. He dived; there was a tremendous boom! as the jaws met inches behind him; a blow sent him spinning.

He rolled over, came to hands and knees, his shirt in shreds. He saw the strange dinosaur whirl, a tatter of cloth dangling from its teeth, and come prancing back, jaws ready for a second try. O'Leary backed, met the solid resistance of thick-growing shrubbery—

With a crash of rending branches, a second, smaller reptile stepped into view. Dinny!

The herbivore took two steps into the clear. The meat-eater bellowed. Dinny gave a leap when he apparently saw the tyrannosaur for the first time. He bleated, took three hasty steps backward, turned and made for cover.

"Smart dinosaur," O'Leary muttered. He readied himself for a desperate sprint as the carnivore veered to plunge after the tame saurian, jaws gaping even wider. A few yards in the lead, the iguanodon skidded to a halt, rocked forward, swept his heavy fleshy tail to one side, and brought it around in a swipe that caught the meat-eater solidly across the knees. The tyrannosaur stumbled, crashed through a screen of trees in a tangle of broken boughs and trailing vines, and went down out of sight with an impact like a falling skyscraper. There was one terrific blast of sound, like a calliope gone mad; the unbelievable legs kicked out, subsided to a regular twitching, shuddered, were still. O'Leary tottered across the patch of lawn, peered through the fallen foliage; the spearheads of the steel fence across which the monster had fallen protruded through the massive neck. O'Leary stooped, recovered his ax.

"Nice placement, boy," O'Leary said. "Now let's saddle up and ride—and hope we're not too late."

It was a two hours' ride into the desert. O'Leary shaded his eyes, watching a moving caterpillar of dust approaching, miles away across the parched sands. The column had halted. Men on horseback were milling, fanning out. One or two deserters or couriers had turned and were cutting trails back toward the distant faint line of green that marked the desert's edge, fifteen miles away. Now a single horseman spurred forward, riding out alone in advance of the deployed troop. O'Leary slowed his mount to a walk. The lone rider was a tall man, buckled into black armor, a long sword slapping at his side, a long lance in its rest. He reined in his handsome black charger a hundred yards distant, and O'Leary saw the black hair and clean-cut features of Count Alain. The count raised a gauntleted hand to wipe the sweat from his forehead.

"As I expected, the traitor, Sir Lafayette!" he shouted. "I warned the king you were in Lod's pay, but he seemed to find the suggestion amusing."

"I don't blame him, it's a very funny idea," O'Leary called back. "What are you doing out here in the desert?"

"I've come with a hundred loyal men to demand the return of her Highness, unharmed. Will you yield now, villain, or must we attack?"

"Well, that's very nobly spoken, Al," O'Leary said. "And I admire your nerve in facing up to Dinny here. But I'm afraid you're barking up the wrong dinosaur. I don't have Adoranne."

"Then your master, the unspeakable Lod—"

"He's not my master. In fact, he's not anybody's master now. I killed him."

"You? Ha! I'm laughing!"

O'Leary held up the bloodied ax. "Then laugh this off. But let's cut the chatter. Adoranne isn't back there; she never was. Nicodaeus is the man we want. He's plotting to take over the kingdom. He had a deal with Lod, but it seems he's decided he doesn't need him any more, so he double-crossed him and instead of delivering her Highness to him as a consolation prize, he intends to do away with her."

"Lies!" Alain shouted, rising in his stirrups and shaking a mailed fist. "You're trying to drag red herrings across the trail. But if you think I'm fool enough to swallow that tale—"

"Go ahead—see for yourself. You'll find Lod in his private interrogation room, at the end of a tunnel from the cellar under the kitchens. He had fifty or more thugs hanging around the place, so be careful. Don't worry about his dragon, though; Dinny here killed it."

"You take me for an idiot? You're perched on the Lod's dragon at this moment, in living testimony to your false alliance!"

"OK. I can't wait around. I've got to get to the capital before it's too late. Too bad you can't see your way clear to join me." O'Leary kicked his heels against the saurian's skull: it obediently started forward. Alain spurred aside, watched as O'Leary rode past.

"First I ride to rescue her Highness," he shouted. "Then I settle accounts with you, Sir Lafayette!"

"I'll be waiting for you. Ta-ta!" O'Leary waved and then settled down for the long ride ahead.