With the return of the glorious tints of natural life, musicians were inspired once more to make music. Hope returned to disconsolate painters in concert with their pigments. Accountants again took pleasure in the compiling of figures. The absence of color had not been a small thing in people's lives, and its sudden and unexpected return was the occasion for great rejoicing. Many were the children born that day who were joyously christened with the forename "Rainbow" or "Red" or some other descriptive reminder of the unexpected miracle.
Coloration returned to the rivers, to the fish and frogs that dwelled within them, to the trees and flowers that lined their banks, and even to the somber fortress of Malostranka that loomed above them. It flooded back into the faces of the melancholy refugees huddled within its sheer stone walls, reanimated the arms and armor of its defenders, and struck with unwholesome spots of mottled brown and green the gargoylish faces of those who besieged it.
No one, from the lowliest kitchen drudge sorting through the fortress's dwindling supplies to the most toadlike spear-carrier farting his way through the front ranks of the blockading Horde, escaped the import of the atmospheric transmutation. The latter drew much of their strength and determination from the knowledge that none could stand against the might of the Khaxan Mundurucu. When they were confronted with undeniable evidence to the contrary, a disorderly and disturbed murmuring arose among them that their officers were unable to suppress with fulminations and whips.
Within the castle Malostranka, Valkounin the Strong, resplendent in battle gear to which every glaze and patina had been restored, appeared before Princess Petrine, his face flushed with excitement and barely repressed zeal.
"Your Highness, something—we know not what—has broken the hex laid upon the Gowdlands by the Khaxan Mundurucu. Those of us who have survived to defend this fortress are the best, the toughest, and the most determined warriors remaining." Helmet tucked firmly in the crook of his left arm, he drew himself up to his full height. Around him and hanging from the rafters were myriad banners to which full glory had been restored. "I have been deputed to request your permission to mount a sortie, in an attempt to drive from our doorstep an enemy that is at present clearly flustered. If it should prove successful, we propose to move against the Horde in strength and push them out of the province. As word of our victories spreads, the dispirited folk of the Gowdlands will flock to join us."
Princess Petrine, who was wise beyond her youth and beauty, rubbed her fine, pale chin with one delicate finger. "What if this is a trick of the Mundurucu, to draw us out of the castle so they can destroy us?"
Terwell Dhradvin of the Barony of Umbersaar stepped forward to stand alongside Valkounin. "Reports are already flooding in to those few masters of magic who have survived among us, Your Highness. Everywhere throughout the Gowdlands, the curse is broken. If this is simply a ruse meant to draw us forth, why risk rebellion throughout the civilized countries by lifting the curse everywhere? Why not simply do it here, since we are the only fighters left who need be deceived?"
From behind the two general officers, a rejuvenated Captain Slale spoke up. For the first time in a very long while, he had something to live for. Why he spoke out of turn, and out of rank, he later could not say—only that his outburst seemed to have been prompted by memories of a silver box, and a handful of dust.
"Your Highness, I have looked through far-seeing glasses from atop the fortress walls. The enemy's confusion is too widespread to be faked. Some of them can even be seen to be deserting in the direction of distant Kyll-Bar-Bennid."
Muscles taut, Valkounin took a step forward. "Strike now, your Highness! Before they have a chance to regroup. Before the Khaxan Mundurucu themselves arrive to take charge of the siege and endeavor to resuscitate their hex."
Princess Petrine rose slowly, her pale embroidered robes, to which full brilliance had been restored, trailing about her. "Take charge of the brave fighters who still stand, and drive the heinous besiegers from our walls, bold warriors of the Gowdlands. I grant permission—on one condition."
Valkounin the Strong eyed the princess uncertainly. "Your Highness?"
Eyes glistening, she extended her right hand. "My backside is sore and blistered from doing nothing but sitting on this damned unyielding throne. Find me a sword!"
Within the crenellated tower rooms that occupied the highest point of the fabled castle Burgoylod, atop the central hill that dominates the great trading city of Kyll-Bar-Bennid, the Khaxan Mundurucu were taking their detestable ease when pint-size Klegl came running in from outside, his expression all wheeze and spittle.
"Brethren, my brethren! Kobkale and Kmeliog, Kwort and Kmotho—all of you, come quick, quick come!"
Displeased by the manic interruption, no less so because it came from one of his own, Kobbod rose from the backs of the whimpering young human children on whose ribs he had been composing a musical interlude and followed the squat, distraught Klegl outside. Kobkale and the others of the Clan who were present joined him, muttering various and inventive calumnies under their collective fetid breath. Their intention to pummel the obstreperous Klegl severely was forgotten as soon as they saw what had so unsettled him.
Approaching from the southeast, a veritable tsunami of roiling, coruscating color was rushing in all directions—including straight toward the castle. The fantastical phenomenon filled the sky, transfiguring the gray clouds as it embraced them, washing over and transforming any birds or treetops in its path. His heavy lower jaw dropping, Kobkale stared in disbelief as the onrushing chromatic juggernaut came screaming toward him. At the last instant he threw up his thick, short arms to protect his face. Around him, other clan members gasped or squealed in alarm.
The spectral surge passed over the castle with a great sigh and continued on its way toward the most distant reaches of the Gowdlands. When Kobkale lowered his arms and opened his eyes, he saw to his shock that the massive stone fortifications once more glittered with colorful crystalline inclusions. Color had returned to the pennants that hung limply from staffs, to the noisome liquids that stained the harsh stone underfoot, to the wood that framed certain of the windows—even to his own clothing.
A hand pawed urgently at his shoulder. Kesbroch was next to him, babbling incoherently. Drawing back his left hand, Kobkale dealt his relative a furious blow across the face that knocked him into a complete back flip. By the time he landed on his belly, the stunned but unharmed Mundurucu had managed to regain some control.
"But what are we to do? No one is powerful enough to break a curse of the Khaxan!"
"No one." Eyes narrowed, Kobkale was gazing speculatively into the distance from whence the prismatic storm had arisen. "Assemble the Clan. It appears that our work here is not quite finished. There remains one more overlooked detail that demands our attention."
He remained by the parapet, brooding into the southeast, as the bewildered Kesbroch waddled hastily back into the castle, bleating at the top of his considerable lungs.
It did not take long to gather the two-and-twenty. The return of color had left every one of them alternately appalled and confused, agitated and enraged. Several fights broke out among the assembled as they waited to listen to Kobkale: not because the respective combatants were particularly angry at one another, but because among themselves brawling and scuffling were a traditional means of releasing frustration.
Even those with teeth buried in a kinfolk's arm or leg, however, desisted when Kobkale demanded their attention.
"Our hex has been overturned," he declared, utilizing his toadlike mouth to the fullest.
"We know that," croaked Kushmouth. "What are we going to do about it?"
"Grork , that's right," added Korpbone. "If we don't put things back the way they were, some of these treacherous humans might start to get ideas." He ground one warty, pustulant fist into a leathery open palm. "Best to keep them crushed underfoot with their faces in the dirt."
Turning his head slightly, Kobkale spat something
vile over the wall. "While you were all running around with loose heads, I have taken care to mark the nexus of the countervailing conjuration. Calculating backward from the place where the ripples of color first were seen, I believe I know the place where it originated as well as the possible identity of those who perpetrated it." His eyes blazed. "The Clan will go there, and we will put an end once and for all to those who dare defy our mandate."
The bloodthirsty cries and shrieks of support that greeted Kobkale's avowal sent shudders through those humans in the castle unfortunate enough to have been conscripted to serve them. Fear was visible even on the faces of the members of the Horde who arrived shortly thereafter with a trio of recently transformed individuals in tow. But the expressions of the soldiers were tranquil compared to the looks on the faces of Quoll and his companions.
As the members of the Clan pushed and shoved, clustering tighter and tighter together on the high open platform that overlooked enslaved Kyll-Bar-Bennid below, Kobkale greeted the new arrivals. Halting in front of Quoll, the squat Mundurucu looked up at him and the two former vampire bats. Too much the berserker to be really afraid, Quoll glared defiantly back at him. Ruut and Ratha, on the other hand, were quaking with unashamed terror.
"What's the meaning of this?" The tightly bound Quoll glared at the silently seething Mundurucu. "Why have we been brought here like this?"
Kobkale's voice was dangerously calm. "It would appear, friend Quoll, that you have not been entirely truthful with your friends the Khaxan Mundurucu."
More mystified than frightened, Quoll stammered with repressed energy, "What are you talking about?"
"I have only just now been given reason to believe that the scorned wizard Susnam Evyndd's personal creatures not only survived the strange kingdom into which you insist they were exiled for all time, but have returned equipped with unsuspected powers." One arm rose to encompass their environs. "I believe that the return of spitefully cheerful color to this conquered country is their doing."
Wide-eyed, Ratha struggled futilely in her bonds. "That's impossible! They were to be banished from the last kingdom of color, but we saw them destroyed before our eyes!"
"You should not have relied on others to do your work for you." Kobkale picked something small, green, and not entirely deceased from between his front teeth.
"We had no choice!" Ruut objected. "We were compelled to—"
"You were compelled to do what you were told," the Mundurucu interrupted. "Evidently, not adequately."
"It won't happen again," Ratha stuttered.
"It certainly won't." Raising both hands, Kobkale uttered a string of suggestive phrases incomprehensible to prisoners and guards alike. Then, apparently satisfied, he turned and threw himself with ferocious energy into the churning pile of Mundurucu that comprised the Khaxan. Following the arrival of the last of the two-and-twenty, there was a violent implosion that momentarily sucked the startled onlookers forward, a loud phut that sounded like a diabolic entity casually breaking wind, whereupon the Mundurucu vanished. Every one of them. Disappeared, down to the last unkempt hair, exfoliating horn, deeply stained fang, and bilious eye.
Uncertain what to do next, the handful of guards eyed one another in confusion. Then Ratha screamed; a ghastly, quavering sound whose timbre trembled at the very edge of human audibility. She was echoed by her mate Ruut, and finally, though he fought frenziedly against it, by the defiant-to-the-last Quoll.
Very little there was capable of horrifying the fighters of the Totumakk Horde, but what unfolded before their eyes on that open platform near the topmost floors of Castle Burgoylod caused even the most hardened among them to recoil in terror.
Writhing and twisting, emaciated black worms began to emerge from the convulsing bodies of the three prisoners. Wracked with pain, they collapsed to the hard stone, every muscle in their bodies twitching and spasming, causing them to jerk and flop about like gaffed fish. Too lost in agony even to scream, they lurched and quivered like that for some time, until finally, mercifully, they lay still. Not black worms but the axons, the actual nerves, had erupted from their bodies. Now these lay in stagnant, lifeless coils about the motionless corpses of three former servants of the Khaxan Mundurucu.
Even in death, the red eyes of a certain maniacal marsupial seemed to burn with hatred for everything living that was not a quoll.
TWENTY-ONE
Cezer and Cocoa were locked deep in conversation. Taj was in the kitchen trying to catalog what edibles remained in the pantry. Samm was busy helping Mamakitty repair a few bare spots on the roof. As for Oskar, he was sitting in his favorite place, dining on bread and a meat roll on the front steps of the house, when an ascending whine pricked his ears. Rising, he cast a puzzled glance in all directions. At the same time he became aware that he was not alone in his perceptions. Similarly intrigued by the peculiar noise, his friends were coming to join him.
The whine ceased with a resounding thump as a tightly packed column of short, stocky, and exceedingly ugly creatures tumbled out of the open sky to land in a clumsy heap in the middle of the lawn. Recovering from their plunge with extraordinary dispatch despite arguing and scrapping among themselves, they gathered together in a milling but disciplined mass that sought a focus for their venomous energy. Multiple eyes shining with malevolence caught sight of the pair of former felines, the giant, and the two figures working on the roof before they came to rest, finally, on the solitary guardian of the front door. Surprised by the abominable apparition, an apprehensive Oskar took an instinctive step backward. His bread roll dangled absurdly from one hand.
A goblinlike figure slightly larger than the rest detached itself from the fractious, squirming mass of its fellows. "So these are the creatures of Evyndd who have been causing us problems. Seeing them makes one marvel at the incompetence of Quoll and the others. Just look at them! You can sense that they don't even know how they did it. They have no lore of their own. Animals! Aided by a simple posthumous transformation spell." His squashed nose twitched. "You can smell their innocence and ignorance. We are dealing with mere afterthoughts here." He grinned most unpleasantly. "Scraps to be swept up and thrown away." When he raised both hands high, so did his one-and-twenty kinfolk. The awful symmetry of the gesture was frightening to behold.
"This won't take long," Kobkale announced confidently. "Give them back their simple animal forms. Then we can be on our way and about the business of reversing this nonsensical, and temporary, flush of loathsome color." He glared contemptuously at the silent house, as if its former occupant could somehow hear the challenge. "The Khaxan Mundurucu do not suffer lightly their hexes to be trifled with."
"Look out!" Oskar yelled as he dove for the wholly inadequate shelter of the modest picket fence that enclosed a struggling flower bed. It was the only cover within reach.
He didn't make it.
It felt as if his insides had suddenly been caught in a wringer, wound and twisted about themselves until they were ready to snap. He tried to gasp, but could no longer feel his mouth. Momentarily suspended in midair, blinded by the flash that had completely enveloped him, every one of his muscles paralyzed, his last thoughts were for Mamakitty and the others. If the Mundurucu were concentrating their malignant energies on him, maybe one or more of his friends would have a chance to escape.
Then he hit the ground.
Panting hard, he discovered that he could roll over. His hands were gone, replaced once more by paws. Fragments of human clothing clung ridiculously to his legs. The Mundurucu had done it, and with seeming ease: he was dog once more.
His fur looked as he remembered it: the same mixture of silver and gray. But something was different. His paws were larger. Much larger, as were the claws that grew from them. He rose on all fours: the ground struck him as being farther away than usual. When he looked back at the rest of himself, he saw a coat that was smoother and less kinked than the one he recalled.
Something roared softly behind him. Turning, he almost jumped
out of his skin. An immense lion stood nearby, magnificent in mane and claw, staring back at him in complete bewilderment. Moving up to flank the great cat were a pair of spectacularly muscled female leopards: one with normal leopardish coloration, the other completely black—save for a most peculiar and unlikely white patch on her nose.
"Mamakitty?" He swallowed hard. "Cezer? Cocoa?"
"The Master's enchantment has been expunged," the black leopard replied in the language of humans, "and we have been returned to our previous condition—but with a difference."
"Some difference," growled Cezer. "What's happened to us?"
"We've grown, and not just in size. I suspect it is a consequence of how we grew during our travels, of what we endured, and of what we have learned. All that is reflected in this change. We have—matured." Padding past Oskar, Mamakitty confronted the assembled Mundurucu. They looked uncertain, as if a perfectly familiar, ordinary spell that had worked time and time again had suddenly gone haywire. It was as if a magician who had spent years pulling rabbits out of hats unexpectedly found himself holding a cobra, and was now unsure how to let go of it.
"I don't know how much the rest of me has matured," Cezer rumbled, deep within a throat that could easily have swallowed whole the house cat he had once been, "but my teeth sure have!" Letting loose with a roar that reverberated through the surrounding trees, and before Mamakitty could caution prudence, he leaped straight at the assembled Mundurucu, covering half the distance between them in a single bound.
Uttering a collective shriek, the panicked Mundurucu scattered. The decision on what to do next having been made for them, Mamakitty and Cocoa followed Cezer into the fray, sending squat bodies flying in all directions. Several of the Mundurucu fled for the cover of the nearest trees.
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