CHAPTER 21

Friend or Foe?

Horace saw the enemy soldiers confronting him and prepared to destroy them. Two males, two females.

The females must be witches come to use destructive magic. He should bite them first, then gut the males with a couple hard kicks. As a final gesture of his contempt and anger he would turn his back and pound all of them with his tail. When he got done there would be no enemy, only a hearty lunch.

He reached out his head to the old woman, and her eyes stared into his and reflected him.

Where was his father? Where his aunt? Where was his new brother-in-law? Where was Helbah, the witch he knew had protected them?

Questions, questions, questions! Dragons should never ask. He opened his mouth over the woman's head, the better to engulf her. If she was going to turn into a bird she'd better be quick!

Horace! Don't!

Glint's thoughts? Where was he? Here were three enemies.

Horace, that's Helbah!

This wasn't Helbah. Couldn't be. But there was something different about this malignant. He sniffed. This didn't smell like a malignant; it smelled like Helbah.

Horace, you're under an enchantment! I'm standing with Kelvin—watch and I'll wave my hand.

That's Helbah you're about to bite. Jon is beside Kelvin.

Another trick! He wouldn't believe what his eyes knew were false. Yet the enemy was waving his hand.

Think to me, Horace! Think to me! I'm Glint.

Hard to think, Glint. Why you look like enemy soldier?

I don't. It's magic. You see me as Zady wants.

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Magic, yes. As when he had thought the enemy to be his grandfather and Uncle Lester. He sniffed again.

It still smelled like Helbah.

The enemy soldier who claimed to be Glint turned to the witch he claimed was Helbah. The witch's eyes did not flicker, merely reflected his great teeth and the scales on his chest.

"Tell him, Helbah. Tell Horace he's bewitched! I know that you can help him."

The witch's mouth opened and without other movement she said, "It's an identity spell, similar to what Zady once used on Jon. She must have had an invisibility cape. She may be here now, watching, hoping you will destroy us."

Horace remembered that he had briefly lost sight of Zady and gotten her mixed in his mind with the other flying birds. There had been too many birds, though he had tried never to take his eyes off her. But every time he opaled she had a chance to drop back or move ahead of the others. Not enough chance to do magic, but to change position slightly, and all those birds looked alike. Besides, he'd had to look to where he was opaling, or he might have killed a friend.

Can she rid me of the spell, Glint?

"The spell is hard to undo," the good witch or bad witch pretending to be good said. "I haven't a key ingredient. There's a certain herb, but the plant is unknown in most frames and rare in others. I may have to travel to other frames searching for a cure. Kelvin will have to care for you while I'm gone. He'll have to bring you food and you'll have to stay away from people."

I can kill my own food, Horace thought, annoyed.

No you can't, Horace. You listen to her! The meer you kill and eat could be me or Merlain.

Horace thought of eating a meer that was actually his sister. Not good for either.

Horace, remember that cave midway up Flattop Mountain? That was our first stop. Go there. It is a big cave and people won't be stopping by. Kelvin and I can bring you food, letting you know we're us. Anyone else who comes could be Zady.

Horace knew he didn't want to go to that cave. What he wanted to do was return to Ember. Thinking of their pond, he was there.

He splashed into the water right where he had thought, to the side of a great tree trunk. He ducked his head, sucked water up, and spewed it out through his teeth. He still had a foul taste from that bird! Now where was Ember?

Horace, you're back!!!

Hiding, playing their game. He searched the shore from where he floated. In a moment he'd surprise her.

There—a flash of gold behind the appleberry bush!

Horace opaled to the spot and onto a smaller dragon's back. The dragon under him turned its head and hissed loudly in his face. This wasn't Ember! This was a dragon of his own sex!

Horace bit angrily for the intruder's throat, wanting to kill it. The sanctity of the mated state demanded Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

extreme measures. What this intruder had been up to he didn't care to think.

His teeth pushed hard through overlapping golden scales, searching for the softer hide and pulsing vein that held life. He could taste the gold on his forked tongue; soon he'd taste blood. He opened his jaws a little to take an even harder and renewed bite.

HORACE! You're too rough! That hurts! Get off me, big copper lump!

Ember! He could hardly believe it was she. He sniffed hard and detected her fragrance.

He opaled back into the water where he had been. He had to explain to her somehow. But how could she be expected to understand? Ember was the delight of his life, but she was a dragon and a female.

Dragons and females, his human brother had once explained to him, are quicker to anger than to accept excuses. Sometime maybe he would think to her and she'd understand, but for now he'd better do what a human would under similar circumstances—run.

Unhappily he opaled to Flattop Mountain's cave.

"Do you think he went where you told him?" Kelvin asked Glint. The dragon had disappeared so fast that there had been what Kelvin's father called a sonic boom—air rushing in to fill the space Horace had occupied. He hadn't been aware of the phenomenon while riding, but it occurred to him that both friends and enemies must have been startled by the noise of Horace's sudden exits.

Glint shook his head. "I don't know, honestly. He was a pretty confused dragon. If I hadn't thought to him and Helbah fixed him with her stare... I hate to think."

"Why don't you step over to the cave and find out?" Helbah demanded of him. As usual she made him feel it was obvious and he should have thought of it himself.

"Yes," Kelvin managed to say. "I'll step back there and see. Wait."

He stepped, concentrating as well as he could on the cave entrance where he and Horace and Glint had recently been.

He came down on the ball of his right foot, directly in front of the cave, just as visualized. He looked up at the overhang, then inside. The dust was undisturbed except for the pad marks of a large bearver and the partially eaten carcass of a mountain goeep. He looked at the golden-colored fleece the bearver had left, thinking how its shade matched that of the typical dragon. There would be batbirds and piles of dried batbird excrement further back. In the front there was an ancient painting of sticklike hunters pointing to a flattened dish with circles around its rim. The pictured disk had flames coming from its rearmost edge, and definitely it was supposed to be above the hunters' heads in the sky.

What an imagination those ancients had! Kelvin thought, and stepped back to the entrance.

Almost into open jaws. The dragon breath almost knocked him off his feet, and in an instant he knew why popular superstition had dragons breathing fire.

"Oops. Sorry, Son. Just your old man this time. It's right that you keep alert. I'll be back with food, and maybe I'll bring along Merlain."

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He wasn't certain how much Horace understood under the enchantment, but now was definitely the time to make his exit.

He waved almost in Horace's face and stepped back to Helbah and Glint on the waiting dock.

Lester stared. There was Jon, preternaturally beautiful. "I thought—" he said.

"Oh, Lester, I escaped, of course," she said. "You should have known I couldn't be kept anywhere against my will."

"But Helbah said—"

Jon said some bad words—very bad words. Lester had heard her say some pretty rough things before, but never like this. It must have been the influence of the malignants, he thought, and resolved to make things right for her.

He squeezed her tight against him and placed his unshaven cheek up against her hair. She was just so attractive. She had lost some weight and gained a good deal of sex appeal. Maybe that was just his fond perception; still, it was exciting.

"Where is the old... benign?" she asked.

Lester held his wife back at arm's length, looking her hard in the face, unable to believe the way she had asked that. Something about her just didn't seem right. But of course she had been held captive; he had to make allowances.

"Helbah may be in another frame," he explained. "She's going to have to get a cure for Horace."

"A scaling would cure the lizard best."

Truly, this wasn't like Jon at all! Could there be magic at work on her yet? Hadn't Helbah or one of her helpers checked on the possibility? Or—he hated to think of this, but had to—the way Jon had so suddenly gotten free—that just might be suspicious. Kelvin had mentioned things that—no, impossible!

Jon smiled in an unusual manner, and drew up her shirt to show an amazingly well-formed young breast.

"Well, dearie, I suspect that now you want a little sex. Maybe a little more than a little, hmm?" She showed the other breast, as breathtaking as the first. "Maybe you'd like to have me tie you up and whip you a little first?"

This wasn't Jon! There was no way that it could be, and not just because of the physical improvement—uh, correction, physical change. This was Zady or one of her minions! "You are not my wife," he said grimly.

Lester forced his hands to close on her throat. Immediately he found he was holding a squirming serpent.

The snake hissed in his face, spitting drops of spittle that he moved his face to avoid. In avoiding the spittle he let his grip slip on the snake.

Wingbeats. Lester made an anguished grab.

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"I'll be back! I'll be back!" Zady called down to him. She hovered a moment, and something smelly plopped on the ground.

Amid a flurry of faster and faster wingbeats, pursued by a fireball released by Zally, who had been guarding the Crumb farm on Helbah's orders, the nasty witch flew on her evil way.

But Lester remained chagrined. How could he have been fooled by that creature, even for a moment?

Not only fooled, but tempted. He felt unclean.

A carriage pulled up and Jon stepped out. She was covered with blood spatters and dust, and had large purplish bruises on her wrists and arms. Lester thought that she had never looked more lovely.

But was it really Jon, this time? It was supposed to be, but after the witch's ruse, he had a nagging doubt. Suppose...?

But Lester couldn't contain himself. He ran to his wife and threw his arms around her. "Oh Jon, Jon! I thought we had lost you for sure!"

"Kelvin broke me out as quick as he was able." She hugged him as she hadn't hugged for years. "Where are the children?"

"At the twin palaces where they're supposed to be."

"Let's go get them right away! I don't know why Kelvin dropped me here since he knew they are there."

The first thing she was concerned about was the children. That was Jon, all right! Lester's doubt faded.

"I do," he said, sniffing her hair. "It's what I'd have done for him and Heln given reversed circumstances."

"Oh, Lester!" But she wasn't displeased, only concerned as a mother. "I'm certain they're safe, but I want so badly to hold them."

"Me, too, I hope. We can start for the palaces, but I know that soon they'll be here. Now that the war's over, Helbah will want our children to be home."

"Lester, is the war really over?"

"I hope. Only there is what happened to Horace."

"I know. I was there with Kelvin and Glint."

"Do you think Helbah has the cure?"

"I know she'll try to get it. But she says it's one of the ultra-rare herbs."

"Do you think—I know this sounds crazy, Jon—but do you think that Zady may have planned on Helbah leaving our frame to seek Horace's cure?"

"You don't think it's over, do you?"

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He shook his head. "I do wish that I believed it's over." He held her, telling her without words how very much a respite from fighting meant to him.

By and by they went into the house together. Jon stripped and cleaned up. Her body was her own, and her own age, but it seemed perfect to him. By mutual agreement they did not come out until much later in the day.

Helbah turned to Whitestone and said what she had on her mind: "I can't go."

Whitestone patted her shoulder. "I know you can't, Helbah. We understand why. Zady might not be able to raise another army or find more malignant helpers, but until she's burned to ash she's a menace."

"Yes," Zudini added, "and that means watch and don't get caught unprepared. You have friends, Helbah.

We'll search all the frames in existence if we have to, but it's going to require time. None of us now knows an apothecary in any frame that carries the herb."

"Not only that"—Whitestone continued the pessimistic note—"but that very herb may not exist any longer. Zady may have taken especially vengeful steps to see that it doesn't."

Helbah looked down at her feet. "I know you'll do your best. I just don't know that any of us can help Horace."

"Keep him isolated," Whitestone advised. "And don't let others near him since he can't tell friend from foe."

"He's smart for a dragon," Helbah said, "but if the herb can't be found his frustration could turn him into a rogue. Can you imagine what a rogue dragon could do with the opal?"

"Worse than the battle," Whitestone said. "And since the dragon is his son it would be hard for the Roundear to slay him."

"The dragon is the head of the Alliance, after all," Helbah said. "How could the Alliance function without its unifying safeguarder of the opal? If he were to turn rogue we'd be finished."

"I'd suggest a reading of the cards," Whitestone said, "but I understand the cards here don't show a future. Possibly the reason is Horace."

"Possibly," Helbah said. But privately she believed the fault had to do with Zady and not with their unfortunate copper-scaled ally.

"Well, we really won that one," Kildom said to Kildee.

"Yes we did, brother," the identical king replied.

"You two did nothing!" Glow said, hugging the just-returned Glint and eyeing them over his shoulder.

"You did just what I did—you watched."

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"A king can say no wrong," Kildom retorted.

"That's can do no wrong," Kildee corrected him.

Glow sighed. She was so happy she didn't care how they teased her. She knew that Merlain and Charles and Kelvin's mother all felt as she did. Who wouldn't feel elated after such a great victory?

The word she didn't want to hear came round to her by way of Charles. Gently Charles took Glint's place and Glint went to Merlain.

Don't let them know. Glow, but Helbah's worried. Horace may not be able to defend us again.

Zady may only have started her fight.

Glow wondered what he meant, and immediately had her answer. She allowed her face to show nothing to the kinglets and to Mrs. Knight. It was possible, all too possible, that the terrible fighting that she had thought ended in victory was but a preliminary.

It was enough, Glow thought to herself, to make a girl wish she had never grown up and married but had remained always just a dreaming, hardly feeling, enchanted sword.

St. Helens and John sat at their familiar chess table. One of them was winning and one losing. One of them was waiting for the other's move. St. Helens had to admit to himself that he hadn't the faintest recollection of who had moved last and who had made the best moves. It wasn't just the unaccustomed third glass of dark red—it was the way things were happening.

"John, what do you think will become of your grandson?" There, he had asked it! Now it would come out.

"Charles will do fine. A mind-reader just about has to."

"I mean the other one. His litter mate, so to speak."

"Horace? He should do fine. I don't like to think about it."

"I don't either. Seems I have to."

"I don't think we can help. I'm not certain anybody can, except possibly Helbah or her witch and warlock friends. If it were a matter of a blood transfusion or a replacement part..."

"Kelvin takes him his food. What does he say?"

"He says that Horace sniffs him, each and every time. Has to. Zady or one of her minions could fake his appearance."

"Hell of a note, ain't it, Commander?"

"It is, and don't address me that way. You know I haven't succeeded you in rank since the day we got exploded from Earth."

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"Wasn't that a gas, though? You know that there's no logical way that we should have survived. As for our being here... that's nuts."

"I know it well, old friend." John moved a knight—appropriately.

St. Helens studied the board, momentarily interested in it. So it had been John's move, not his.

"Commander, you think it could have been the doings of Mouvar?"

"Possibly. Something saved us."

"Perhaps then it can save Horace? I mean if saving's, as your wife used to say, in the cards."

"She doesn't say that anymore."

St. Helens moved a pawn. He couldn't have said why. His thoughts were now on cards, not chessmen.

John studied the board in his turn, or seemed to. St. Helens suspected that his thoughts, too, were of predicting cards.

"You've become a master tactician, St. Helens."

"How's that?"

"Your move places my king in check."

"Oh." He hadn't noticed. "I forgot to say check, so by the rules it's your move again."

"I wonder about Mouvar. Maybe he's a player. Maybe he used my son and grandson for his own purpose. Maybe he's accomplished what he wanted to and now—"

"Moving your queen there will put you in check again," St. Helens said.

"In that case I concede the game. I couldn't have won without a Mouvar stepping in. I wonder about my son and grandson. Mouvar doesn't do big things like piping down the walls of Jericho, but he gives indications that he knows what's going on. He left those boots for Kelvin at the right time, and a personal message for him."

"You think maybe it's a game that's been played for centuries?"

"Our centuries, perhaps. By Earth time we could have existed here for minutes or seconds. That relativity thing we used to discuss."

"I get what you're suggesting, Commander. If Mouvar's a god—"

"He's not. Or if he is he's not all-powerful. My other son in the different frame has a wife who believes she spoke to Mouvar as a child. Sounded more like something from a UFO than a god."

"That robot talked about him too, didn't he? That robot on the chimaera's world."

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"Yes, it talked about Mouvar and claimed it visited different frames. The tin man also talked about major worlds and minor worlds. Worlds of science and worlds of magic. Mouvar, according to the robot, came from major worlds run through science."

"I've never understood it, Commander. Mouvar may have used science in building transporters, but then didn't he use magic? He left the gauntlets and then the boots, and don't forget the opal that may or may not have been his."

"As my unfortunate daughter says, maybe science and magic blend. At some point of development maybe the two are indistinguishable from each other. To our ancestors, yours and mine, the inventions we grew up with would have been seen as magic. When I consider what the transporters do and what the gauntlets and boots do, I'm not sure if they're magic or if they're—"

"Science?"

"If we were Neanderthals how would we comprehend computers?"

"We wouldn't. We'd call them magic."

"Right. Magic or science, to us Neanderthals there's no practical difference. The big question is, are we or are we not more than chess pieces to beings such as Mouvar?"

St. Helens dutifully considered the matter. After several long minutes of difficult thought he concluded that both he and his old commander had had more than a sufficiency of dark red. As for the answers, from where they sat there were none that made sense.