by Jack Sharkey
"Lorn,” I urged, “they'll be tossing Lorn in the—"
"You see,” Maggot said to Timtik, ignoring, me, “I was by the edge of the moss one day, gathering herbs, when a thing I took for a beautiful white stone came bobbing up from the muck. I thought I'd found a Serpolith egg, and entertaining thoughts of raising me a friendly Kwistian for reconnaissance and such, I took it home with me, and kept it warm by the fireside, and one day it hatched. But it hatched into the Thrake. I was quite disappointed until I discovered its wing-stopping power over Kwistians, but—"
"Then I'm right!” interrupted the faun. “Maggot, you wonderful old darling witch! You were right, but you didn't know it. That was a Serpolith egg you had, but it didn't turn into a Kwistian because you hatched it out of the darkness it craved, kept it in Drendon where it only gets dark once in a lifetime!"
Maggot caught the fever of his deductions. “And the racial memory of the hatred all Serpoliths have for the Kwistians brought out this strange power it had over their flying ability?"
"Right!” said Timtik. “So the Thrake's death doesn't matter!"
"It doesn't?” I asked, fascinated despite myself.
"No,” he laughed giddily. “Maggot, you told me that Cort controls the yearly crop of new winged men by coming down here where the baby Serpoliths are, and taking them into the castle to change, in the daylight, into not adult Serpoliths, but Kwistians! But you took an unhatched egg into the light. Can't you see it, feeling the sunlight through its shell, knowing it must alter its development before the shell broke away? So it became the smooth-bodied, tentacled Thrake, but still needed the food its own kind ate, the recipe which you discovered by trial and-error, and which you named hell-brew. And, in its puny form, it couldn't threaten Kwistians as the fully grown Serpoliths do, with fang and acid and venom. So it developed this wing-paralyzing power, and—"
"Tikky!” Maggot's jaw dropped. “What you're trying to say is that, if we expose the eggs in this cavern to heat and to light—"
"We'll have more Thrakes than the Kwistians have feathers!” he chortled, jumping up and down.
Maggot whispered a magic word, and she, Timtik and I were suddenly equipped with flashlights, with which we hurried into the dark grotto, bright yellow beams flaring ahead of us. Agonized hissing met our ears.
"We've got to get rid of the Serpoliths, first,” said Timtik.
"Easy as pie,” said Maggot, with a mystic gesture. A black tube of darkness appeared on the ground, extending from the grotto toward the rear wall of the cavern, where for the first time I noted a rusted metal door set into the stone. As the tube appeared along the ground, the rusted bolt burst, and the heavy metal door creaked open, exposing-Oozy black muck, the underside of the morass beneath the moss fields, where the acid tongued Serpoliths lived. I knew, then, what had happened to my legs in that brief dip into the moss field.
"Flee!” commanded Maggot, and every single Serpolith trapped at the end of the grotto by our flashlight beams slipped frantically into the tube of darkness and out into their muddy ancestral home. As the last scaly tail slithered into the glutinous black ooze, the door slammed itself and the tube of darkness vanished.
We played our lights on the rear wall of the grotto, and without counting, I realized that at least a thousand Serpolith eggs lay there, waiting to hatch.
"Odds bodkins,” said Timtik, wide-eyed with delight, “If we hatch these out, the Kwistians not only won't be able to fly, they won't be able to move!"
"Don't just stand there with your face hanging out, Albert,” said Maggot. “Have you forgotten that Lorn is about to be roasted alive?"
"Of course not!” I said. “But what can I—"
"Delay things!” she commanded. “You can do it!"
"How?” I choked.
Do a tap-dance, or card tricks! Just hold them off for another ten minutes, perhaps.” Then, forgetting me completely, she returned her attention to the faun and the stacks of eggs. “Come on, Tikky! Let's get a fire started!"
I turned and grimly hurried back to the disc of blackness masking the cavern mouth. I took a breath, said another prayer, and then stepped through.
"There he is!” said Twork, to Idlisk and Cort, who were just approaching him down the tunnel. I worried for a fractional moment that Cort would spoil everything when he saw the Maggot-evoked fluorescents in the cavern, then realized that the only light in the tunnel was torchlight. Cort's magic door worked both ways, thank heaven.
"Chickened out, huh?” smirked the wizard. “Couldn't stick it out with your friends when the going, got tough!"
"No,” I said, making my voice panicky, which wasn't hard. “Those fangs, that acid! I couldn't take it!"
"Now who's a coward,” chuckled Twork, grabbing my arm and leading me away from the cavern mouth.
"Is Lorn...” I said to the wizard.
"For the next thirty seconds, she lives,” he said, as the two guards lifted me in sudden soaring flight behind him. We reached throne room level just as Lorn was brought out of the preparation chamber.
In the center of the floor, the flame pit was almost hidden by a leaping column of yellow-orange fires; the stokers had done a horribly good job.
"Now,” said Kwist, from the throne, “toss that nymph in there, and let's get dinner going!"
Now or never.
I threw back my head and laughed. The occupants of the room, Lorn especially, looked at me in consternation.
"Hysteria?” asked the emperor of Cort.
The wizard eyed me coldly. “Something amuses you?"
"In an ironic sort of way,” I said. “Here you all are, about to glut yourselves on this nymph, and spoil your appetites and taste judgment!"
"Spoil them for what?” said Cort. “Surely not for you?"
"Who else?” I said, trying not to think too deeply on the topic. “Unless you were planning on cooking Kwist next?"
"Cort...” said the emperor, uneasily.
"He's only goading you, majesty,” said the wizard. “Or trying to change the subject. Which is: Just how good is an Earthman for dinner?"
"Let's cook him and see,” said Kwist matter-of-factly.
"No,” said Cort, “we should taste him first."
"T-taste?” I murmured.
"To immerse you totally into the flame might spoil your flavor, burn you to a crisp,” said Cort, smiling gently. “We must experiment, find what sort of cooking suits you best. We will do it in parts. Fry a foot, broil a leg, bake a hand."
"You mean cut me up and experiment?"
"Oh, not cut you up,” soothed the wizard, cruelly. “We're not barbarians. We'll leave you fully alive, of course."
"No,” Lorn cried. “No, have mercy on him!"
"Will someone cook that nymph?” roared the emperor.
"Please, please!” squealed Lorn, as the muscular guards bore her backward toward the hungry fires of the pit.
I'd lost. I averted my eyes. And saw the square-cut diamond in the center of the lead breastplate, coruscating blindingly, waiting to be pressed, as I should have had the sense to press it the moment Maggot's powers were restored. But Twork and Idlisk had my arms held tight.
There was only one chance. Their irritability-level.
"Careful, birdface!” I snapped at Twork, twisting in his grasp. “You almost bumped my diamond stud!"
The parrot-beaked guard snarled, “I'll bump it if I feel like it!” His hand whipped up, and the heel of it smacked hard against the twinkling diamond. Then his beak opened in a silent scream, as the silver sword flashed into magical existence in my hand, the tip of the blade appearing as snugly in Twork's chest.
"He's loose!” blubbered Kwist, as I wrenched away from a terrified Idlisk. Then, as Twork crumpled to the floor, Idlisk leaped for me again, claws flexed to tear through my flesh. I swatted him behind the ear with the mountain stopping flat of the blade. He went spinning across the floor with a shattered skull, to vanish suddenly in the gaping maw of the open flame-pit
, with a noxious odor of burning feathers.
The men holding Lorn pulled back from the grey clouds that marked their companion's line of departure, and she yanked free and ran toward me. Cort raised his arms impressively over his head and shouted “Stop!” at me in his loudest wizardly roar.
Some swift reflex brought up the flat of the sword between myself and the wizard even as he spoke, and the spell that rushed upon me was deflected into a group of quaking Kwistians, all of whom stiffened horribly and went down like ninepins at the feet of their associates.
Then Lorn was clasped to me in one arm, her marble-clad hands nearly braining me as she flung them wildly about my neck, and I held her tight, ready to stay there fighting for her life until I dropped in my tracks of exhaustion.
"Can power fend power forever?” sneered Cort, still spoiling for revenge. His fist came up at the length of his arm, and a pale blue stone in his ring suddenly arrowed a blinding white needle of force at me. The sword-blade caught it, but could not deflect it, and the hilt jerked in my hand, then held steady. Cort's mocking laughter crashed about the room as I stood there with legs braced, fighting the awful surge of raw power that threatened to destroy me if the sword gave out.
Beneath my fingers on the hilt, I could feel the copper and the ivory bands switching from first place to last, as those balance of power storage tanks or whatever strove to cope with this merciless overload.
"The edge!” Lorn yelled into my ear. “Use the edge!” she demanded again, as two flanking bodies of Kwistians started rushing in upon me while I was powerless to do aught but fight Cort's ring-power, using the blade as a shield instead of weapon.
I didn't get it, but I'd have a trident in either kidney if I waited to ask stupid questions, so I twisted the hilt, and caught the sizzling white beam with the razor-edged silver blade. White power cracked asunder in midair, as all the brunt that had poured into the flat of the blade released instantaneously from the edge. Cort's grin faded into greyfaced horror as the raw force spattered outward like so much shattered glass, and as the hurtling shards of white light blasted the incoming Kwistians into hunks of bloody flesh and charred bone, his ring contained nothing but a scorched hole where the blue gem had rested.
"Quickly,” he yelled to Kwist, as I advanced upon him. “The laboratory! We'll stop them yet!"
Pinions whacking the air, they soared smoothly upward through the final orifice of the castle levels, into the tower room housing Cort's laboratory. The other Kwistians were already soaring out windows into the relatively safe-from-me area above the moss fields, or downward into other rooms of the castle. It was a wonderful rout.
"Wait here, honey,” I said to Lorn, as I strode grimly toward the nearest wall, and began smilingly hacking out a series of handholds in the stone like I'd been doing it all my life.
CHAPTER 14
AS I reached the ceiling, cut out a circle of stone, and stealthily raised it with the flat of the force-absorbent blade, I heard the wizard and the emperor in agitated discussion.
"Cort, what'll we do?” the emperor was whining.
"The casement's right here, Kwist,” growled the wizard. “If he comes here, we'll simply fly somewhere else!"
Below me, as I awkwardly tried to ease through the gap without dropping the hellishly heavy slab on myself, one of the winged men looked downward through the entrance orifice and his eyebrow feathers stood straight up on end.
"The witch!” he choked, and sprang into the air, headed I assumed-for another level of Sark, to warn his companions. Only, he didn't rise any farther than that initial spring had taken him. The great white pinions remained stubbornly shut, and with a gurgle of fear, the man's fingers clawed futilely at the air before his ill-advised leap dropped him neatly through the opening in the floor.
But I could have guessed that outcome. If Maggot was truly down below, on her way up, it meant that the eggs in the Serpolith grotto were already hatching like popcorn popping, each into a wing-numbing Thrake.
I finally got both legs through the gap after me, and dropped the slab back into place. My entrance had been behind a long lab table, where neither man could see me; nor was the crash of the stone noticed amid the growing shouts of frightened Kwistians below.
"We can't fly somewhere else,” Kwist was replying in panic, “if the Thrake becomes activated, Cort—"
"How can it?” grated the wizard. “Maggot was the one who might have activated it, and Maggot is dead! By now, she's a mess of bone and acid-eaten flesh!"
"I resent that!" came a familiar voice, from the room below the lab.
Emperor and wizard rushed to the brink of the orifice and peered down. “She's alive!” gasped Cort.
Kwist clutched Cort's arm. “Do something!” he whimpered.
"Let go of me so I can!” yelled Cort, pulling free. He reached down for a long crystal spear from a rack on the wall, a spear whose faceted surfaces glinted with a hundred rainbow sparkles. Just as he stepped back to the brink of the floor-entrance, I stood up silently behind the lab table, silver sword ready in my hand. Kwist gave a shriek of fright and ran to the casement.
"Fly, Cort, fly! It's our only—My wings! They won't open! It's the Thrake! Maggot's done it!"
I saw Cort's own white pinions tremble a bit, and the perspiration spring out on his brow as nothing more happened. “She wasn't kidding!” he mumbled low and scared. “She did activate it from here!"
"Cort!” screamed the terrified, sobbing emperor, “Don't put it off any longer. Use the Roton Beam."
"You mean it?” rasped Cort, still keeping a wary eye on me, his crystal spear poised for defense.
"Yes!" the emperor screamed desperately. “The hell with the risk. I'd rather lose Sark and the moss fields than stand here with paralyzed wings while this Englishman hacks me to pieces!"
I started around the lab table, my sword ready, to stop the wizard. The trouble was, I had no idea where he was about to move, which made interception difficult.
Then, just to one side of him on the floor, I saw an object I recognized. Its metal-and-glass top was supported from below by a tripod. It was the spit-and-image of one of those gadgets Courtland, had used to start sending people and houses to Drendon in the first place. Some vestigial memory of his Earthself had stuck with Cort-Courtland, enough to let him construct another of those dimension-warping machines. Of course it would destroy the Thrake. It would destroy anything in Drendon by the simple expedient of warping it out the dimensional doorway to Earth-normal."
"Hold it!” I said, striving to put myself between Cort and the gadget. “That's, more dangerous than you know.” I don't know why I blurted that. Some subconscious reasoning must have told me that events were coming full circle, if this thing were used, this thing that had started all our troubles.
"Try and stop me!” said the wizard, slamming home a switch. That shimmering haze I'd seen once before, long ages ago on Earth, began to form along one side of the tripod. Then I saw the danger. It had no second tripod-gadget to regulate its focal range. Amid the eye-blurring shimmer there appeared a bright blue helix of light, a helix which twirled like a motor-driven corkscrew and went spiraling swiftly out the open casement, seeking out the Thrake.
Except the Thrake was no more. But a minor army of Thrakes lay wriggling their puny tentacles down in the Serpolith, cavern in the base of the building itself. Kwist saw at once that something was wrong.
"The, beam, Cort!’ Look at the beam!” he cried, much too late. Even as the wizard turned and stared, stunned, the accelerating corkscrew beam was bending in flight like a hawk that has overshot its prey, and snaking right down at the base of the castle. As wizard and emperor sprang fearfully back from the open casement, the beam, now an audible blue bolt of destruction lurched into the hole I'd cut in the base of the castle.
I braced myself, giving that zooming helix about one second to find its way down the corridor, off down the tunnel to the polarized spell-door, and then strike with all its fury a
t the wriggling blue heap against the grotto wall.
It took two floor-shaking temblors of concussion before the whole granite base of’ the castle burst into flame, and the moss fields of Sark ignited.
"Fire!” yelled the emperor, as myriad waves of lacy blue flames shot skyward from every surface outside the casements. Cort had already dashed like a madman to the tripod and, half-torn the switch from its contacts the instant of the helix's down-dip, but the shimmering halted, the hungry fires did not.
A moment later I heard a shout, as Kwist whipped open his fifteen-foot pinions. “My wings work! The beam did it!” He stepped toward the casement and stopped, aghast. Wings or not, there would be no flying out into that sky-high ocean of leaping blue flames. “Cort,” he squeaked. “We can't—"
Cort, already foreseeing the difficulty, had leaped on beating wings to the ceiling. And there, his crystal spear whisked out a hole as if the granite were wet cardboard.
"Look out below!” I had the presence of mind to shout as the slab dropped unerringly through the open floor. A second later, Maggot, with Timtik riding tandem on her broom, bobbed up through the gap and deposited her passenger beside me.
"Thanks for the warning, Albert,” she said, flashing her fangs in comradeship. “Excuse me,” she added politely, as she broomed through the hole again. “Got to get Lorn. My broom only carries one extra rider."
Then she was swooping down out of sight, even as Kwist went soaring smoothly up through the ceiling-hole through which Cort had already made a hasty exit.
"Timtik!” I said, as a horrible notion came to me. “If the broom carries only one extra, who goes with her? You, me, or Lorn? And worse, who gets left?"
Smoke and licking heat were staggering me by now. I could barely see straight as Maggot and Lorn came swiftly up into the room. The castle walls were cracking in the blaze, and here and there a smoking shard was splintering from the rocky walls, which were themselves turning hot pink.
"All aboard, Tikky!” sang out the witch, as Lorn hopped from her perch and rushed to fling her arms about my neck.
