Serpent's Silver Read online

  "We have Mouvar," Jac said. "Or at least we had. Strange old man, it's said. He performed some miracles and then sort of vanished. Some say he's still around, but no one knows."

  Kian felt a thrill of hope. Mouvar—the original Mouvar?—here? With Mouvar's help anything should be possible. But then according to legend Mouvar had been defeated by Zatanas, and if that was so, Mouvar was less powerful than Kelvin!

  "Of course there's our local magician, who claims him as an ally," Matt put in. "He's prattled about him for years. He's shut up about him lately, though—ever since Rowforth took his daughter to wed. If you ask me, all his talk was just a scheme to make that happen. The one opposition leader in the land—and his daughter just happens to have beauty that kings would trade their thrones for. He makes out fine now, old Zotanas does, but he's not conjuring much. Word is that he's a permanent guest at the palace and King Rowforth's main helper."

  Zotanas here; Zatanas at home. Zotanas alive; Zatanas destroyed by Kelvin. Kian shook his head; there were just too many angles. It was getting harder and harder not to be confused.

  "Well, I certainly don't believe in your almost identical worlds," Lonny Burk said. As comely as he had first thought her, Kian also found her a bit annoying at times. "I heard those stories when I was a child, but until now nothing has ever shown up to confirm them."

  "Mouvar. Mouvar showed up," Kian pointed out. Why did pretty women seem to have an innate ability to irritate him?

  "Maybe he did, and maybe he's just a story." She looked at him quizzically, and he had the feeling that she knew something, despite being a woman and a recently intended sacrifice. Why did she choose to disbelieve him? He had come to rescue her, after all!

  Glancing around the camp, frustrated, he was surprised at the faces he almost recognized. Men whose aspects he had seen around the palace during his youth. Some of them he identified with guardsmen. They had been loyal to his mother the queen, but enemies of his father and Kelvin. Could all of this similarity be mere chance? He shuddered, thinking about it. He wished he were elsewhere—at least until he had figured out more about this situation. He would just have to watch his step.

  A very small man running on the short legs of a dwarf came from a nearby tent and up to them. Quickly this person took the reins of the war-horse, and led it to a spot near the fence where he tethered it to a ring set in a large rock. He clambered up on the rock and moved the horse around while he wiped it down with a rag. Then, rushing to the tent, his legs blurring with the speed, he turned quickly and called, "Happy return, Master!" just as he plunged inside. A moment later he returned, carrying a sack of grain for the horse on his bent but adequate back.

  "Queeto!" Kian said. Queeto—the dwarf apprentice to the magician Zatanas! Destroyed, along with his evil master, by Kelvin and a great cleansing fire!

  "What's that?" Jac asked.

  "Queeto. The dwarf."

  "Heeto, here," Jac said. "You knew him well?"

  "Not very." He did not care to elaborate. Queeto had been a most misshapen creature in both body and mind, as evil and fearsome as his magician master.

  Jac called his attention to the way the dwarf was patting the horse's muzzle and feeding it by hand. "That one's a saint. Kindest person I ever saw. Hardest-working person I ever knew. Cheerfulest, best-natured person ever. Was he in your world as well?"

  "Not exactly a saint," Kian said, thankful that he did not have to tell the embarrassing truth.

  "How do you plan on finding them?" Jac asked.

  Kian jerked his attention away from the dwarf and back to his host. "What? Oh, my parents. I have a plan. Unless, of course, you can help me."

  "What's your plan?"

  Kian told him about the dragonberries and showed them. "You have anything like these in Hud?"

  Jac shook his head. "Never heard of 'em. But they sound like something that might eliminate the need for a lot of spy work."

  "They did." He proceeded to tell about Heln's spying on the evil queen and magician during the war. Carefully he avoided mentioning that they were his mother and grandfather, and that he himself had fought on their side.

  "When you going to take one?"

  "I thought—" He swallowed, made uncomfortable by the thought. "Maybe when I had somebody to watch me. My heart will stop beating. My breathing will stop. I'll took as if I'm dead."

  "I'll watch," Jac said. "Come along to my tent."

  Kian followed him. In a few moments he was stretched out on a bearver hide on the floor of the tent, holding one of the small dark berries up to the lamplight. Nothing much to do now but to go through with it, though he dreaded the prospect. Not giving himself a chance to think, he popped the berry into his mouth.

  He tasted a taste that made him want to retch. He fought off the urge, then swallowed.

  There was nothing for a moment. Wasn't it working? He felt a guilty relief. But if it didn't work, then how would he search for his father?

  Then he noticed that the top of the tent was nearer than it had been. Had a supporting pole broken? He turned his head and looked down.

  There was his body below, lying deathly still. The bandit stood peering down at it, frowning. The berry had worked! He was out of his body! He had felt no pain at all! In fact, it had happened so readily that he felt wonderful!

  But he had a job to do. He thought of moving outside—and abruptly he floated through the tent wall without making contact, and emerged at the front.

  There was the fire—and there was Lonny, looking back at the tent with a scared and anxious expression. Evidently she was concerned about him, and that gratified him. Not that he had any personal interest in her, despite her beauty. Or did he? She had tried to warn him away from the serpent, and that struck him as a pretty selfless attitude. Maybe—

  He brought himself back to business. How did Heln do this? Oh, yes: concentrate on a person. On a face.

  A face came to mind: a woman's oblong visage, of clear complexion, framed by hair as red as the sheen of a dragon, with eyes the color of green feline magic.

  Instantly he was transported, moving past hills and villages as if flying, to a palace high on a river bluff. The palace was almost like the one in which he had grown up, though the Rud structure had been on low ground, with an underground river almost beneath it. Then he was inside, moving from room to room so blurringly swiftly that he was unable to note their details.

  He stopped.

  There was the face: his mother's beautiful face. She was seated on a divan. Beside her, holding her hand, was a tall, straight, elderly man with dark gray hair. His grandfather!

  Both were gone from his home frame, one departed, the other dead—yet here they were alive and unhurt. His mother and his grandfather, oblivious of his presence. He was shaken, despite having no body to shake.

  He could hear them speaking. His mother—or was it really she?—had been crying. Zatanas—or was it he?—had evidently been comforting her.

  "Please, please, my child. Remember who you are. You are Zotanas' daughter, and the queen."

  "But—but he—how can you permit him, Father? How?"

  The old man sighed. "I told you, my magic is only for little, good things. I can help keep him controlled, but I'm powerless to destroy him."

  "Oh, Father. Father, if only you could stop him!"

  "Hush, dearest, you are speaking of your husband the king."

  "But he's so—so evil!"

  "I know, and he's getting more so all the time. Bringing flopears here was bad enough, but offering to share his rule with them if they would help him conquer is worse. I have nothing, I fear, to combat it."

  Hearing the words, Kian was finally able to realize that the woman and man were not his mother and grandfather. Both had round ears, while his relatives had ears as pointed as anyone in Rud. But this was Hud, he had to remember, and here things were different. Yet they did have the faces.

  How long would the berry last? He had wanted to find his mother, but h
e had zeroed in only on her face. Did that mean that she wasn't in this frame? Or did it mean that the berries worked only on natives? He could not decide, and he knew there was little time.

  His father. Think of his father.

  He visualized John Knight's face as well as he could. The walls of the palace disappeared and he was above hills and rivers and farmlands, moving with that unreal velocity of thought. Then he was back in the valley where he had killed the serpent. He moved along the ground, everything blurring, and then through a rock wall and into an area where flopears abounded. Their ears—but he was already past them. Along and through a rock doorway in a cliffside. He halted.

  There, on a bed, pale and unshaven, was John Knight.

  "Father!" Kian cried. "Father, you're alive!"

  The man's eyes flicked back and forth, but he did not open his mouth.

  "Who's that? Who spoke?"

  Astonished, Kian saw the other person in the room: a young flopear female. Yes, those ears really were flopped over! What a sight!

  The woman moved over to the bed. She raised a straw broom in her hands and looked around the room threateningly. "You leave, bad spirit!" she cried. "You leave!"

  She had heard him! He had no body, he was present only in spirit form, he could make no physical sound, yet there was no doubt that this odd woman had heard!

  Should he speak again? Should he try to let her know that he was visiting his father? She seemed protective. Could she mean John Knight harm?

  Kelvin's wife, Heln, had discovered that dragons were sensitive to the astral state and could hear her when she spoke in the astral state. The odd-eared folk here must be similarly sensitive!

  "Go away!" the girl insisted. "Leave here! Leave before I get help! Herzig can capture you, you know! He can imprison you, put you in tree or serpent! You want that, spirit?"

  "No. No," Kian said. Her manner was so fierce he thought it best to placate her. Yet he still felt he would like to tell her who he was, and that he meant no harm.

  "Then go instantly!"

  He went. It seemed the politic thing to do. Obviously she could hear him, and so her threat might have substance, too.

  Besides, he had the feeling that his astral time was about used up. There was a feeling of waning, of diminishing, that gave him warning.

  But he made himself pause to look at the huge cauldron where the flopears were melting down silver. Even as he looked, one came bringing an armload of what seemed like featherlight serpentskin. The flopear mounted the wooden steps of the scaffold and dumped the armload into the silver soup. There was a puff of steam. Another flopear stirred the broth with a huge ladle.

  "Boo!" Kian cried impulsively.

  The flopear almost dropped the ladle. He teetered for a moment at the edge of the soup, in danger of falling in. He recovered his balance and looked frantically around. "Who spoke? Who said?"

  Kian willed himself back, away from the connected valleys. Back to where he had started.

  In a moment he was in the camp again. He zoomed from face to face, trying to see how many he almost recognized. There were several that would have been a previous part of his life, with pointed ears.

  Then he was back at Jac's tent and inside and lying on the bearver hide. He struggled to sit up, to open his eyes. He managed.

  "Gods," Jac said, looking at him somewhat wild-eyed. "I thought you were dead for certain."

  "Not dead, just near," Kian said. As rapidly as he could, he told the bandit leader what had happened.

  "And you're certain he said Rowforth is making a pact with the flopears?"

  "I told you what I heard."

  "If that's true, there isn't much time. Zotanas could be mistaken, and I hope he is. But if he makes a pact, Lord, old Rowforth will end up bossing all the Seven Kingdoms with them!"

  Kian wondered whether Rowforth could be that bad. Then he considered that this man had been the one ultimately responsible for sending beautiful maidens to the flopears for sacrifice. Could any ruler possibly be worse?

  "If we can rescue my father, perhaps he can help. I'm not sure how, or maybe he can go back to Earth and get Earth weapons. Lasers, flying devices—they might help."

  "I'm not sure what you're talking about. But if you think your father can help us defeat Rowforth, then we'll rescue him. Only that won't be easy. The serpent people aren't like ordinary mortals. They have magic—the ability to stop a fighting man in his tracks with just a glance. That's only one of their talents."

  So Kian had discovered! "But there has to be a way!"

  "I'll grant you that. And with your ability to spy, just maybe we'll find it. To start with, we can't actually face flopears. If we try it, they stare at us and we're helpless sticks. That means we'll have to steal your father from them some way, and that won't be easy. From what you say, they can even detect you in the astral state."

  "Yes, but only when I spoke, I think. When I was silent they didn't know I was there."

  "But you didn't keep your mouth shut! Thanks to that, they may now know what to watch for."

  Kian was chagrined. Jac could be right. Damn! he thought. If only my brother Kelvin were here! He's the hero of prophecy, while I'm just an accident!

  It occurred to him that he had never felt less confidence in himself in his life.

  CHAPTER 6

  Going, Going

  KING PHILLIP BLASTMORE OF Aratex chuckled happily with his own cleverness, and moved the black queen across the board. "Check."

  Melbah, pudgy and squat and so wrinkled of face that it resembled a badly cured animal pelt, looked up. Her rheumy eyes seemed to focus not on the board but on his artificially darkened little mustache. It was as though she did not even have to glance at the board.

  "Well?" Blastmore demanded. He felt like jumping up and down. "You concede?"

  "Oh, King," the witch inquired in her creaky, wispy voice, "do you wish to win this game, or do you prefer for Melbah to demonstrate her strategy?"

  "Demonstrate your strategy," he said challenging. But it was a bluff. He had a feeling that he knew what she was going to do, and he didn't like it. Melbah was Melbah, and she had been surprising him for all of his fifteen years.

  "Then this is what I will do." Leaning over the board, eyes still focused on him, she puffed up her cheeks so that the wrinkles faded to mere patinas and blew out a stream of breath so foul that it staggered him. He heard a thump, and when he finished blinking his eyes he saw his black queen on the carpet.

  "I'm afraid that's not permitted, Melbah," he said. "You can't touch a piece except to move it in the designated way."

  "You say this is an ancient game of war. In war all things are fair."

  "Well, yes. But—"

  "I did not touch your queen. I only sent air to remove her from the battle."

  "It's still not permitted." He sighed. Melbah had such a one-track mind. Yet who else was there for him to teach this game to?

  "Then perhaps another strategy," Melbah said. She pointed a finger so knobby it most resembled a dead twig from an appleberry tree, and the black queen burst into flame. Within a couple of sharply drawn breaths it was only a charred piece of wood on the carpet.

  Blastmore blinked. "Really, Melbah, you should not have done that. Now that the roundear has left, who will duplicate it for me?"

  "No problem." Melbah snapped her fingers and the piece on the floor became uncharred painted wood. "This time illusion. In battle to save your kingdom, real."

  "That certainly does make an impression," Blastmore said. The old hag had to be insane, but her magic was formidable. It had been a whim to teach her St. Helens' game—a whim whose price turned out to be endless frustration.

  "Or," Melbah continued, "if the markers you call men were really men and threatened the kingdom…" She picked up a vase of flowers and tossed them on the carpet next to the queen. Just as he was wondering what she was up to, she sloshed water on his side of the board. As he hastily left his chair the water spilled ac
ross and dripped on the floor, carrying with it a wash of black pawns.

  Blastmore stood over the board and contemplated the prevalence of white chess pieces. He picked at a pimple on his right cheek and pondered what to say.

  "I agree," he finally said. "That would win a battle. But this is a game."

  "Yes, game." Melbah moved her hands in a circle above the board and the board began to shake. One by one, the black pieces were jolted off while the white pieces remained. When all of his pieces except the king were gone, and he was surrounded by white chessmen, the shaking stopped.

  "Game finished now," Melbah said.

  "Yes, finished." In fact, he wished it had never started. He should have known how she would act. But he exercised kingly discretion, and complimented her. "You did well. So well that we will not have to play again."

  "Good! Game pieces not needed here. Melbah can direct forces without."

  "I'm sure you can, and have." Poor Melbah must think chess an aid to magic warfare. Not that her magic was of the sympathetic kind. Or maybe it was. He had seen her cheeks puff out and a great wind rise. He had seen her eyes glow like coals before there was a fire. Perhaps if one understood it correctly, all magic used similar principles.

  Melbah stood up. "I go now to my quarters. Your general is coming."

  "He is? How do you know that?"

  Melbah laughed. It was an awful sound; "cackle" was not adequate to the description. He watched her swirl of dark skirts as she seemed to drift rather than walk across the floor. By the time he had blinked and reblinked she was gone, apparently vanished from the room and possibly the palace. It was the way she always exited. He never had quite pinned down the exact nature of it. Certainly it awed others; he had almost no palace staff, because ordinary servants tended to be too frightened of the witch to function properly. Fortunately he didn't need many, by the same token: Melbah could do almost anything that needed doing.

  He sat there for a moment, rearranging the chess pieces as if for a game. The black ones were scattered across the floor, forcing him to reach and collect tediously. He wished that he had not had that falling out with St. Helens. He had really enjoyed the roundear's companionship, especially his wonderful stories about an unlikely world called Earth. He thought again about the way the big man had shown up asking for something called sanctuary, and the way he had paid for it by making himself a friend. In all his life, St. Helens the roundear had been his only friend.