Kingdoms of Light

by Alan Dean Foster

  Demonstrating remarkable agility for one so large, Samm stumbled backward along the route taken by his companions, covering their flight. Oskar remembered swinging his sword two or three times. The wild blows did not make contact, but they kept Quoll's own rapier at bay. By the time the three morggunts had landed and were massing fang and claw for an overwhelming attack, their quarry had vanished.

  Vanished? Vanished where? Oskar found himself wondering. That they had vanished could not be denied. Or maybe it was the world around them that had vanished. One minute he was swinging his sword wildly when his guts told him to leap and bite—and the next, he was drowning in color. Seeing color, breathing color, hearing and smelling color. Samm was right about the latter—it was hot.

  The moonbow, he realized. They had not stumbled through the moonbow, but into it. As if trapped in a powerful stream, he felt himself caught up and swept toward the top of the arc. Color roared blue in his ears and burned yellow against his eyes. Then he was falling, falling, down through hue after warm dampish hue. Purple cushioned his plunge. Tiny moon-bows sparkled in his eyes as he steeled himself to make contact with the rocks on the far side of the river.

  When he finally did hit, the shock blew the little moon-bows away from the inside of his eyes. The roaring blue left his ears. The ground beneath him was hard, but it did not feel like water-slicked rock. For one thing, it was sandy. For another, it was dry. But that was impossible. Here at the bottom of the gorge, at the base of the falls, everything existed in a state of perpetual clamminess.

  As the last of the miniature moonbows faded from sight, he saw that not only was it no longer damp—it was no longer night. In front of him, in broad daylight, his friends were spreading out, forming a small circle as they marveled at their wholly unexpected if timely transposition.

  Broad daylight. Normal daylight. For a wild moment, Oskar thought that color and natural light had returned to the world. Looking around, he realized that more than the light had changed. The world had changed. There was no sign of the moonbow, or the waterfall that sustained it, or even the Eusebian Gorge.

  They had gone through the moonbow and come out on the other side. The only problem was, the other side was not just the other side. It was another side entirely.

  Another world. Or at the very least, another place.

  Collecting himself to examine his new surroundings, Oskar exulted silently in the realization that if he was confused, their pursuers must be even more so. Because wherever they were now, there was absolutely no sign of morggunts, black-clad riders, or the red-eyed, maniacal Quoll.

  That individual was presently feeling even more surly than usual. Dismounting from his morggunt, he strode quickly to the base of the moonbow. Around him, the river Shalouan crashed and bounced over the jumble of boulders that formed the base of the falls. Behind, he could hear his bemused comrades puzzling over the abrupt disappearance of their seemingly cornered prey.

  "Where did they go?" Ratha slid lithely from the neck of her mount. "I saw no flash of necromancer's light, heard no outbreak of sorcery."

  "There wasn't any." Black cape billowing in the damp wind from the falls, Ruut moved forward to stand alongside the stockier Quoll. "They all stumbled backward, and went away."

  Murderous red eyes glared up at him, and the shorter man's nose twitched. A quoll's nose was always twitching, always searching, but in this instance it smelled nothing but water. Even their quarry's odor had vanished with them.

  "Is that what you want to tell the Mundurucu?"

  What little color there was drained from Ruut's pale countenance. "No, but what else can we do?" Long, spiderlike fingers gestured fruitlessly. "They have gone."

  "Then we must follow. Somehow." A deliberate hand held out before him, Quoll slowly advanced on the moonbow. His fingers made contact, sensed a slight tackiness, and continued to penetrate. Taking one step at a time, Quoll walked completely through the moonbow's edge. Pivoting, he repeated the exercise, until he was once more standing alongside his two gaunt comrades.

  "They have gone through the rainbow. For them, it was a door. For us, it is nothing more than light reflecting from droplets of water. Something turned it, for them, from a phenomenon of the natural world into a means of escape." Bushy eyebrows shadowed those icy, penetrating eyes. "Or someone."

  "Someone?" Ruut exchanged a glance with his equally mystified mate. "But the wizard Evyndd is dead, slain by the glorious Mundurucu at the battle for Kyll-Bar-Bennid." He indicated the place of disappearance. "You saw how they fled from us."

  "I also smelled their fear, which was strong enough to rise above this accursed dampness. There is no sorcerer among them. The wizard Evyndd has not risen from the dead to save them." Sitting down on a rock and tucking his legs beneath him, a thoughtful Quoll sat as still as he was able and contemplated the enigmatic moonbow. "They truly smell of cat and dog, as the informant insisted. Apropos of that, sorcerers and witches of different stripe often have certain elements in common. Familiars, for example. Working with a necromancer, alongside one, such creatures are known to sometimes pick up shards and fragments of their master's skills."

  Ratha nodded slowly. She would have been truly beautiful had she not worn unsheathed savagery like eye shadow. "So you think the wizard Evyndd's familiar may be among those we pursue, and that it has worked some strange alchemy to preserve them?"

  "Do you think they crossed a bridge over this river where none exists? Did they transform themselves into puffs of cloud and drift away downstream?" Quoll's lips parted, exposing teeth shaped and pointed like white needles. "Please to realize that there is impressive thaumaturgy at work here." Rising, he headed deliberately toward his quietly salivating, waiting mount.

  "I will take it upon myself to return to Kyll-Bar-Bennid. When it flies level with the ground, the morggunt flies slowly, but it will still be far faster than walking. I will describe to the Mundurucu the events we just witnessed."

  The terrible-visaged Ruut was impressed. "Are you not afraid?"

  Pausing with one leg half-raised as he prepared to mount, Quoll glared back at him. "My kind are afraid of nothing—not even the Mundurucu. We live to kill, and so deal daily with death. I know the Mundurucu can do worse, but the keen ones among them think before they slay. They want dead those whom we hunt; not me and thee. I think I will return with most of my limbs intact, together with the means for following our bumbling but opportune pilgrims. When we identify the one who is the familiar that travels among them, we will deal with it first. Once that individual has been slain, the others will quickly submit or perish."

  Swinging his leg over the narrow neck of the morggunt, he whispered into its upthrust, spike-fringed ear a word that must go unmentioned. Snapping at the dank air of the canyon, the demon of the night sky lifted its head and spread its wings.

  "Until I return, you must keep watch. Perhaps there is no air where they went, or food, and they will be forced to come back out the way they went in. In that event, you must be ready for them."

  Ratha nodded, one hand falling to caress the red metal of her sword. She stood close to Ruut as the morggunt rose into the air. Circling to gain altitude, it was visible for several minutes before, at its rider's urging, it straightened out and disappeared over the rim of the gorge, heading northwest.

  Turning, Ruut considered the moonbow. Falling water was clearly visible through the wide bands of diffuse color. Reaching out, he waved one waxen hand through the edge. It came away damp, without penetrating to unimaginable realms beyond.

  Disgusted, he looked away. "We can make a camp in the shelter of the trees, and there is plenty here for the morggunts to eat." He tapped the crossbow now slung against his back. "If they show themselves here again, we will take out their legs."

  Ratha nodded agreement. "The giant first, since we don't know which one is the familiar. Aim for his ankles. The others we will take in turn."

  "And if they don't come back out, we will go in after them." Ruu
t was feeling more and more confident. "From the Mundurucu, Quoll will acquire for us the means of following." Striking out suddenly with one hand, he snatched a salamander from its resting place among the rocks, popped it into his mouth, and chewed noisily, spitting out small bones one after another.

  His kin and companion watched enviously. "That reminds me: I'm hungry, too."

  "A tidbit." Plucking the small, now bloodless skull from between his lips, Ruut cast it absently aside as he glanced back over his shoulder. "As Quoll said, the Mundurucu will want only one or two to question before they dispose of them. The rest will be ours, to drink at our leisure."

  Contemplating the vision, Ratha felt better. As viewed through her red-stained thoughts, the anticipation was delicious.

  SEVEN

  There was much to see in the place where their swift journey through the moonbow had deposited them, and much to think about, but what struck Oskar immediately after the light and color was the heat. Compared to the damp coolness at the base of the Shalouan Falls, the air was as brutally hot as it was dry. Around them in all directions stretched a gravel plain dotted with plants the likes of which he had never seen before. Some were twisted together like entwined ropes, while others grew straight up toward the sky, with thorny branches that grew out at right angles to the trunk. A third group of large growths resembled the cracks that formed on the surfaces of thinly frozen ponds, while the flowers that bloomed on them in spite of the temperature sprouted their own shade leaves.

  Not only was it hot, he realized, but in this place at least, natural color had returned to all their surroundings. Gradually he became convinced that they were no longer in the world, heretofore the only one he and his companions had ever known, but in another. As the initial shock of their unexpected transposition began to wear off, he remembered their murderous pursuers. Whirling about, he sought the pale, malign faces of the black-caped morggunt riders and the pinched, feral smirk of Quoll. Neither was present to leer back at him. There were only his friends and traveling companions, standing dumbstruck as himself beneath a scorching scarlet sky.

  Color. Wherever they were, whatever the name of this fiery place, it had color. Colors such as he had never been able to see out of dog eyes. So this was what humans meant when they spoke of the color of something. To one who had lived knowing only the limited hues available to his canine kind and then the grayness of the world as cursed by the Mundurucu, it was more than a revelation. It was a whole new kind of being, like tasting a dozen novel food flavors all at once. The hex of the Mundurucu had not reached here, or had never taken hold. Glorious it was to experience a world saturated with bright hues, so profound as to be almost blinding. Wonderful also it was to realize that, however great their power, the Mundurucu were not omnipotent. There was only one thing wrong.

  Magnificent as the coloration was, it was all variations of the same color.

  Everything—sky, ground, plants, the line of flat-backed beetles clustering around fallen fruit, the distant hills, the clouds scudding turgidly overhead—was suffused with redness. The beetles were pink and cerise; the rotting melon-size fruit into which they were burrowing, bright-skinned as fresh cherries; the distant hills, frozen in permanent sunset even though the sun was still high overhead and it was far from eventide. Carmine blossoms sprouted from maroon tree limbs, while through the sky a gaggle of shocking pink grouse groused a raucous route toward the eastern horizon. Even his friends had acquired a distinctive roseate cast.

  "You look like you've been in an accident," he told Mamakitty. Naturally darker of color than any of them, her skin appeared as if viewed through blood-stained glasses.

  "You should see yourself," she shot back testily. "All red and pink streaks. And pull in your tongue. I know it's hot, but remember that we don't have to pant anymore. We get to sweat instead."

  "I prefer panting—it is a far more elegant way of dealing with elevated body temperature." Cezer was sipping from his water bag. In the absence of commonplace mountain and forest streams, the water they carried with them had suddenly assumed real importance.

  Of them all, Samm, with his mottled, patterned skin, had taken on the most interesting appearance. "You look like you were designed instead of born," Taj commented. The songster was fortunate in having a relatively uniform skin tone. In this place it was no more striking than a pale reddish tan.

  "Where are we?" Kneeling, the tip of her scabbard scraping the hard ground, Cocoa fought down the urge to go and chase the beetles. Instead, she picked up a handful of red-tinged pebbles. They filled the delicate bowl of her palm with more than gentle warmth, and she quickly cast them aside. "Not anywhere near the Eusebian Gorge, I'll wager."

  "Nor anywhere known." Mamakitty studied their surroundings, searching for signs of life. "I believe we have gone into the rainbow."

  "It being formed of moisture, I would've thought the inside of a rainbow would be cooler than this." Reaching up to caress his forehead, Samm marveled silently at the unfamiliar perspiration that beaded his skin.

  "We're inside color, not moisture." Oskar squinted at the sky, his bushy eyebrows affording him some protection from the unrelenting glare. "We fell into the near end, which is red, and were carried by a current of red all the way up and over and down the other side—where I am guessing we fell out. Which I suppose explains the restricted variation in the coloration of our surroundings."

  "Is this enough to take back with us, do you think?" Cocoa tried to grasp a handful of red air, with no success.

  Mamakitty shook her head. "Even if we knew how to confine some of it, I don't see how it could be sufficient. The Mundurucu hex stole all color from our world, so we must somehow get all of it back. How we are to do that I still haven't figured out."

  Silence greeted her observation until Oskar avowed, "I once saw Master Evyndd break up ordinary light into rainbows with a special piece of glass he called a prism. If ordinary white light contains all colors, then that is what we must bring back to our world."

  To his dismay, Cezer found himself agreeing with the other man. "You make good sense, snot-nose." He gestured with one hand. "Trouble is, we are entirely in the red here. I see no ordinary, or white, light in this place."

  "Then we must search until we find it," Mamakitty declared firmly. "And along the way, we must look for a means to capture and carry some of it back with us after we have found it, in the event our water bags do not serve." She kicked at the hardscrabble ground with one foot. An awkward place for a cat to go to the bathroom—but not, she reminded herself, a human. "It is fortunate only I emptied my bag, or else we should be in truly desperate circumstances."

  "Maybe," Cocoa wondered hesitantly, "we should leave this place and look farther afield in our own world. Maybe we should try harder to acquire color from the whole rainbow that spans the gorge."

  "A fine notion." Eager to return home, Cezer was in ready agreement. "Taj, you're the one who led the way in here. Now you can show us the way back."

  The songster lowered his eyes. "I'm afraid I can't do that. I thought I saw a path leading behind the falls. I ran for it, and instead found myself caught up in the rainbow and dumped here. I certainly don't know how to get back."

  Cocoa looked over at Samm. "You always said that color smelled hot. It certainly fits this place!"

  In the stricken silence that ensued, Oskar was moved to point out that there was no sign of their malevolent pursuers, either.

  "If Taj doesn't know the way back," Cocoa observed with inexorable logic, "then even if we can find and collect some white light, how are we going to return it, and ourselves, to our home?"

  Mamakitty was ready for that one. "First things first, my dear. One impossible task at a time." Bending forward to shake sweat from her face, she straightened and scanned the horizon. "First we must find a way out of this dreadful heat. I like lying in the sun as much as the next cat, but not the whole day long."

  "I don't know what you're all so worried about." Eyebro
wless Samm inhaled deeply. "I think it's quite pleasant here."

  Oskar found himself envying the giant his natural tolerance for heat. "I wonder if anything lives here besides misshapen plants and flat-backed bugs? If we could find someone to talk to, we could ask them about the presence of white light. If not here, in this land of everything red, then perhaps somewhere else."

  "Not a problem." Cocoa was pointing with a slim, girlish hand. "We'll just ask them."

  The cart that was coming toward them was drawn by a pair of short-legged, warty, carmine-colored creatures that looked like frogs who had been stepped on. Repeatedly. Instead of straps and buckles, they were harnessed in red-black nets that restricted their movements even more than normal tack would have done. Bulbous eyes bulged so far from the sides of their skulls that they were equally capable of looking backward as well as forward.

  The wagon they were pulling rattled along on eight wheels whose individual diameter was no greater than the length of Cocoa's arm. The bed was piled high with neat bundles of firewood and a couple of barrels that, even at a distance, reeked powerfully of distilled spirits. As for the pair of drovers, they were no taller than Taj but far more stoutly built. Their wide, flattened faces looked pushed in, their teeth were broken snags, and their eyes small and beady. One wore pants, shirt, and a wide-brimmed, floppy hat of some material resembling felt. The other was clad in shorts, suspenders, and a long-sleeved shirt that defied both the heat and common sense. His bonnet boasted fore and aft rims that shielded him somewhat from the merciless sun.