Kelvin 3 - Chimaera's Copper Piers Anthony

This is the third novel in a fantasy series in which the inhabitants of alternate worlds are distinguished by the shape of their ears. In the first novel, Dragon's Gold, young round-eared Kelvin and his point-eared little tomboy sister Jon managed to kill a golden-scaled dragon and later save the kingdom of Rud and their father John Knight from the clutches of evil Queen Zoanna. In the process, Kelvin found love with round-eared Heln, and Jon with Lester Crumb.

In the sequel, Serpent's Silver, Kelvin's half brother Kian discovered an alternate world where most folk were round-eared, but it wasn't John Knight's world of origin, Earth. Some folk had flop-ears, and many folk were similar to those of the point-eared world, except that their characters were reversed. Here good King Rufurt was evil King Rowforth, and evil Queen Zoanna was good Queen Zanaan. Instead of golden-scaled dragons there were silver-skinned serpents. Again the forces of evil were finally thwarted—but the mysterious Prophecy of Mouvar had not yet run its full course.

The third novel, Chimaera's Copper, covers another stage of that prophecy. But that does not mean the outcome is certain; for one thing, there are those who doubt that the prophecy has any validity.

There are many characters, and versions of characters, so it may be best to refer to the following descriptions of characters when there is confusion. They are listed approximately in the order of their appearance or relevance to the story, and of course there is much about them that is not told here. Things are often not quite what they seem, when magic is involved.

CHARACTERS

Mouvar—fabled roundear who made the prophecy and set up a chain of scientific transporters Chimaera's Copper

linking the frames

Queen Zoanna—beautiful, evil former queen of Rud in the pointear frame; lost in dark nether waters near the Flaw

Professor Devale—demon sorcerer and educator

King Rowforth—evil king of Hud, deposed. Analogue of good King Rufurt in the pointear frame Queen Zanaan—the good version of Zoanna, in the roundear frame Broughtmar—former aide and torture-master to King Rowforth; a mean man Zotannas—good magician, but little real magic; Queen Zanaan's father. Analogue of Zatanas, evil magician of the point-eared frame

Kelvin Knight Hackleberry—the unlikely hero of the prophecy, and thus of all the novels of this series

King Rufurt—good king of Kelvinia, a gentle and somewhat ineffective man Charley Lomax—one of the king's guards

John Knight—traveler from Earth, stranded in the magic realm; father of Kelvin and Kian Slatterly—another guard

Kian Knight—Kelvin's half brother, the son of John Knight and Queen Zoanna Lonny Burk—girl of Hud whom Kian loves

Heln—Kelvin's roundeared and pregnant wife

Jon—Kelvin's younger sister. His ears are round, hers pointed. He sometimes calls her "Brother Wart" because she once posed as a boy

St. Helens—familiar name for Sean Reilly, Heln's father from Earth; once a soldier in John Knight's platoon

Lester "Les" Crumb—Jon's husband, son of Mor Crumb Charlain—Kelvin and Jon's mother; wife first of John Knight, then of Hal Hackleberry Hal Hackleberry—Charlain's second husband; a good but simple man, whose name Kelvin and Jon took

Easter Brownberry—Hal's girlfriend

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Old Man Zed Yokes—river man who ferries others across Phillip Blastmore—former boy-king of the kingdom of Aratex before it became part of Kelvinia Morton "Mor" Crumb—former leader of a band that helped Kelvin overthrow the evil Queen Zoanna of Rud; now a general

King Bitler—king of Hermandy, one of the seven kingdoms Chimaera—with three heads: Mervania, Mertin, and Grumpus Dr. Lunox Sterk—Royal Physician of Kelvinia

Stapular—prisoner of the chimaera

King Kildom—boy-king of Klingland

King Kildee—boy-king of Kance

Helbah—old sorceress of Klingland and Kance, good version of Melbah of Aratex Katbah—Helbah's houcat familiar

Bloorg—Keeper of the Chimaera and official greeter of travelers Captain Abileey—officer in Mor Crumb's army

Captain Plink—officer in Mor Crumb's army

Captain Barnes—Lester Crumb's second-in-command

Grool—Bloorg's second-in-command

Squirtmuck—a froogear leader

General De Gaulic—Commander of the Army of Kance

Lieutenant Karl Klumpecker—mercenary officer from Throod King Hoofourth—monarch of the kingdom of Scud

Bert—a guard at the transporter cave

Scarface Jac—outlaw of Scud, analogue of Cheeky Jac in another frame, and of Smoothy Jac Queeto—evil dwarf companion to Zatanas

Heeto—saintly dwarf companion to Zotannas

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Smith—or a man by a similar name, member of Jac's band Marvin Loaf—analogue of Morton Crumb

Hester—Marvin's son = Lester

Jillip—member of Marvin's band, analogue of Phillip Corporal Hinzer—soldier in Lomax's camp

Redleaf—member of Marvin's band

Bilger—member of Marvin's band

Commander Mac—in charge of the Recruitment House; similar to Captain MacKay and Captain McFay

Trom—guard

Mabel Crumb—Mor Crumb's wife

Charles Knight—Kelvin's son

Merlain Knight—Kelvin's daughter

PROLOGUE

NIGHT

She knew where she was going, if only she could get there. She had prevailed on the foolish John Knight to bring her this far; now she had to go on alone.

She stepped off the raft and sank into the dark water. One arm was useless, but she could still move the other, and her legs. She swam as well as she was able, down, down toward the bottom, not even trying to hold her breath, for it would only buoy her body. The air in her tired chest squeezed out of her nose and mouth and bubbled up in a silvery stream toward the raft and the confused man. Let him go; his usefulness to her was done. The current would carry him into the dread Flaw.

She found the lock, and managed to drag herself into it. In a moment she came up in air, gasping.

She sprawled onto a platform, and finally let her consciousness fade.

Sometime later, in the dead of the eternal night that ruled here, a figure came. It was gross and masculine. "You have returned, Zoanna," it rasped.

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She roused herself. "I need your help, Professor," she said weakly.

"I see you have broken bones. I can heal them. What will you pay?"

She struggled, and managed to turn over, so that she lay on her back. She spread her good arm, and her good legs, and smiled despite the pain.

The figure stared down, interested. It reached out to squeeze a breast, as if checking its freshness.

"For how long?"

"I want—I want to go to school, this time," she said. "To learn sorcery. For as long as it takes."

"That is long enough." The figure heaved her up and carried her away.

MORNING

The wide man had once worn a crown. Now he wore only a torn robe and many bruises as he stepped from the transporter into the empty chamber. This was the world they had come from, he was sure. He had watched from concealment as they climbed the ladder to the ledge. Then he had followed, certain of what he would find: their gateway between worlds.

In the otherwise empty chamber on his home world he had not hesitated before using the transporter to follow. What was there for him at home, now, as a usurped king? Nothing but death at the hands of Broughtmar, his former aide, or some other disgruntled soldier. Or possibly at the hands of Zotannas, his queen's treacherous old father. If not death, certainly imprisonment, or life as an outcast. No, there was nothing there for him! Better to plunge boldly into something new, where his chances might be better and could hardly be worse.

Besides, there was something else. It was as if some mysterious impulse drew him along, as if someone were calling him. Someone he wanted very much to meet.

There was a subtle difference between this chamber and the one he had entered. The one on this world had no exit sign. It was cleaner and there were no dusty footprints on the floor. But the smooth sphere-shaped walls were similar, and there was the same magical radiance, that lit the machine and the table holding the parchment.

He hacked, coughed, and rubbed the bruises on his arms, legs, and face. What treachery Broughtmar had shown him! How he would like to go back and destroy the man. Well, someday he might.

Meanwhile, he could relax at night by dreaming up torments for his former torture-master. He had thought the man worshiped his master above all men and gods. It showed that no underling could be trusted.

He read the parchment:

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To whom it may concern: if you have found this cell, you are a roundear, because only a roundear could penetrate to it without setting off the self-destruct mechanism.

I am Mouvar— and I am a roundear.

But because the natives look with disfavor on aliens, I masked my ears so that I could work among them without hindrance. I used the technology of my home frame to set things straight, then retired, for it was lonely. I set up the prophecy of my return, or the appearance of any roundear, to facilitate better acceptance in future centuries.

The tools of my frame are here, and you may use them as you find necessary.

If you wish to contact me directly, seek me in my home frame, where I will be in suspended animation. Directions for using the Flaw to travel to the frame of your choice are in the book of instructions beside this letter. Please return any artifacts you borrow. Justice be with you.

The man who had been king looked around and saw no artifacts. There was only the closetlike transporter, the table, the parchment, and the instruction book. He read the book. Phew! There was extraordinary power here! He could change the settings, and—

No, it was better not to tempt fate further. He wanted to leave no evidence of his presence at this time. Later, when he had a better notion of the situation outside the chambers, he might return and do something. All in good time. He was amazed at what he had learned already.

Smiling with satisfaction at the change in his fortune, he crossed the chamber to the big, round metal door. He pushed the lever. The door opened onto a ledge above an underground river—a complete change from the high cliff at the entrance to the chamber on his own world. The surface of the water was eerily lit by luminous lichen on the rock walls. And there, as if specifically placed for him, was waiting one small boat.

Former King Rowforth of Hud, the kingdom in the other frame, smiled his crudest smile and clapped his big, powerful hands. Again he felt that mysterious influence, as if this had been prearranged.

Ordinarily he would be suspicious of such a thing, but in this case he was thankful, because he suspected that it had saved his life and freedom. Maybe it was destined: he was fated to survive and dominate. If that smooth-skinned boy, Kelvin Knight Hackleberry, could claim a prophecy applied to him, why could not he, a legitimate king, have a preordained destiny? All his life he had believed himself destined to conquer, so why not here first, instead of his home world? Might he not eventually conquer all kingdoms in all worlds? The notion was intoxicating!

There came a kind of laughter in his head. Rowforth jumped. It was like his wife's voice, his queen, yet also quite unlike hers. This was the sound of victory and cruelty, while his wife was a submissive and kind creature, fool that she was. Insanity? No, surely not, for he was a king, and a king could not be insane. It had to be some kind of magic.

With rising excitement, the king launched the boat on the somber river, got into it, and applied Chimaera's Copper

himself to the oars. The wood handles, though splintery, fit his hands as well as those he had used at home. He put his back into it, eager to see what destiny had in store for him.

Ahead was a black, roaring falls with deep, deep darkness and stars and moving points of light. This was no ordinary night, he knew; it was the dread Flaw! He bypassed it, fighting the current. He knew he didn't want to get swept into that horrendous abyss.

He guided the boat away from the walls and out into the middle of the water as he rounded the bend.

He was getting near to something now, and he was feeling it. He believed it would be his aid to destiny. His aid to conquest.

Suddenly he stopped rowing. He seemed to have no choice. What was guiding him?

He gazed down into the water, seeing nothing but his own bruised features. In this world there was a king who looked like him in a country not unlike Hud. That king, unlike himself, had pointed ears.

He knew this without knowing how he knew it, or questioning its validity. Here in this world existed a king whose place he might take, if only he hid his ears.

He stood up in the boat, not knowing what he was doing, and peered deep, deep into the murky water. Nothing, not even fish. Only the dim reflections of himself and the boat, and the rock walls gliding by, illuminated by the lichen.

Yet again he felt that mysterious impulse. He took a deep breath and dived. Swimming competently, conserving his breath and energy, he stroked down. Truly he was in the hands of destiny, now.

He dived deeper, deeper, though his body was growing hungry for air. His arms and legs worked steadily, refusing to be halted by fatigue. Silvery bubbles floated from the corners of his mouth. Into a tunnel, its smooth walls coated with more glowing lichen. He had better be going somewhere, because no way could he turn, let alone reach the boat again before drowning.

Then up, up, and suddenly the water parted. Air! He gasped, his chest working like a bellows, pumping in the air. That had been close! Yet he had been guided, somehow.

As his panting eased and his vision cleared, he realized that he was in a chamber not dissimilar from the one he had recently left. There was a woman here, holding a crystal ball. She had very red hair, and eyes incredibly green. Zanaan, his docile queen!

But there were two things distinctly different about her. This woman had no bruises, and her expression was not at all submissive. Also, her ears were pointed.

Pointed ears? Zanaan?

AFTERNOON

Chimaera's Copper

Rufurt, king of all Kelvinia, rode his favorite mare to the ruins of his old palace. With him were two guards with whom he joked in what was his unkingly yet customary fashion.

Leaving the road, he pulled up by the pile of crumbled, fire-blackened masonry. He dismounted just as if he knew what he was doing. Actually King Rufurt, though a hefty enough man, was the soul of innocuousness, and lacked any real force of decision. That, he realized with a certain mild reflection, might be why they considered him to be a good king. He seldom knew exactly what he was doing, but he depended on good subordinates, and they enabled him to govern the kingdom well.

"Stay here," he ordered his guards, and walked casually away. The whim that had taken him was unusual, but perhaps he wanted to urinate behind a tree in privacy.

Around him were piles of ashes, blackened timbers, and the broken statues of former kings of Rud.

Many a piece of once-valued art was buried here, though no one cared to recover it, remembering the history of this place. His evil Queen Zoanna had wrought horrendous evil here, and it would be a long time before that was forgotten.

Almost of their own accord, his feet carried him through the ruins. He went down the three flights of crumbling stairs. There, just as he knew it would be, was the underground river.

Standing there on the final landing, he remembered the words of an ancient prophecy: A Roundear there shall surely be

Born to be Strong, Raised to be Free

Fighting Dragons in his Youth

Leading Armies, Nothing Loth

Ridding his Country of a Sore

Joining Two, then uniting Four

Until from Seven there be One

Only then will his Task be Done

Honored by Many, Cursed by Few

All will know what Roundear can do

To think the Roundear had come in his reign, and then in the unlikely form of someone who seemed to be but a boy: Kelvin Knight Hackleberry! Kelvin had saved the kingdom, and then saved it again.

As the prophecy had foretold, he had joined two kingdoms. Rufurt still ruled, thanks to Kelvin, whose nature was almost as benign as Rufurt's own, but now he ruled more than twice Rud's former territory. The merged kingdom was called Kelvinia, after the boy, and Rufurt begrudged him none of that credit. But for Kelvin, Rufurt himself would probably be ignominiously dead now.

Why was he thinking of this, and just why had he climbed down all those awful stairs? His legs ached abominably. He needed to rest, but something screamed at him that he must go back or rue the consequence. At the same time he realized that he hadn't really wanted to climb down these stairs.

Chimaera's Copper

So why had he done it?

Something went "Click." Something that had no business being here.

He half turned. As he did, a sudden chill formed somewhere in the region of his heart. It was uncanny what was happening to him. It was something he was sure had never happened before.

She stood there behind him, holding a crystal ball. Her hair was as red as dragon sheen, and her eyes the green of feline magic with sparks like tiny stars. Her pointed ears identified her with a horrifying certainty.

"Zoanna," he said. "Zoanna, I thought you dead."

"Yes, one-time king, once my feeble husband. I have returned to reclaim all that I once had and all that has since been gained for me. I am back to rule, Sweet Husband. Back to punish the likes of you, and to destroy the likes of that Hackleberry brat."

"No! No! You drowned! I know you drowned, and—"

She made a pass over the crystal ball with her hand. A repellent shade of red immediately suffused the crystal.

King Rufurt clutched his chest in sudden agony.

"Yes, yes," she murmured, her white teeth glistening as she smiled. "Did I ever tell you how pretty your ears are, my erstwhile liege?"

He fell forward, trying vainly to talk. The dock, when he struck it, seemed to be and not to be, while he—

EVENING

When the king finally emerged from the ruins the sun was setting. His face had somehow gotten bruised, though the bruises had the appearance of those acquired days before. His clothes were now soiled, and he wore a stockelcap pulled all the way down over his ears despite the warmth of the day.

He wore an expression that was not at all typical for Rufurt: malevolent.

"Your mare, Your Majesty," said Lomax, the tall guard. Though his voice was controlled, he was upset. This is not right, not right at all. What had happened to the king, this past hour?

The king went to place his foot in the stirrup that was being held for him. A hoof came for him, grazing his hip. The king stumbled and fell. When he rose a moment later there was no mistaking his expression: mean, extremely mean. Lomax had thought he might be mistaken before, but now there was no doubt. How could this be?

Chimaera's Copper

"What's the matter with you, idiot?" the king demanded. "Can't you control a stupid horse?"

The young guardsman swallowed. "Your Majesty—" The king drew a riding whip from its harness scabbard and lashed the mare across her face. The horse reared, and Lomax was so startled he let go of the reins. The mare took off, running as though for her life.

The king swore, using an oath Lomax had never even heard. "I can't abide an unruly animal! Catch it and slay it!"

"But Your Majesty—" Lomax started, horrified.

"Do it, idiot!" The whistling lash just missed taking his eye out. Lomax swallowed and ran after the horse. She had stopped some distance away, her white-rimmed eyes as frightened as he himself felt.

What is going on here?

"Here, girl, here," he said, holding out his hand.

The mare let him take the reins. But as he turned to lead her back he saw that the king had drawn a sword. The king intended to kill this beautiful horse! Unbelievable!

Sensing what the man sensed, the mare yanked hard on the reins. This time Lomax deliberately let them slip. The horse ran off.

The king glowered at him. "Never mind, Your Majesty," Lomax said quickly. "I'll catch her again.

She caught me by surprise; she isn't usually like this. It may take a little time. Perhaps—" He strove desperately to think of something. "Perhaps you would prefer not to wait. It's a long ride to the palace. Another horse—"

"Yes," the king said grimly. "Another horse, in any event." He spoke roughly to Slatterly, the other guard. "Bring me that roan!"

"Yes, Your Majesty," Slattery said, and obeyed with alacrity.

Slatterly held the reins and the king mounted. The guard handed up the reins.

The king raised his whip and brought it down first on Slatterly and then on the horse. "Get on your own horse. You ride ahead of me!" he ordered. "Fast! I want to reach the palace by nightfall!"

"Yes, Your Majesty." Lomax had never seen Slatterly move so fast before. But Lomax himself was moving fast, pretending he was going to catch and possibly slay the king's favorite horse.

Hoofbeats, and the king all but rode him down. The roan whirled, raising dust, and the king turned a terrible face down at him. "You, I want you to get that horse!"

"Yes, Your Majesty. Yes, of course."

"And I want you to ride her."

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Hope leaped suddenly in Lomax's boyish chest. "Ride her, Your Majesty?"

"Until she drops! Ride her to her death!"

"Majesty, no—"

The whip caught him across the face, stingingly, telling him more plainly than words that this was not the same man who had entered the ruins. "You will do as I order! If you don't, I'll see you in the torture chamber!"

"But Your Majesty, you haven't—haven't got—" He swallowed, knowing that what he most needed to do was shut up.

"Haven't what?" the king demanded ominously.

"Haven't a torture chamber," Lomax said reluctantly.

"That," the king replied, "will be remedied. Now find that horse, ride her until she drops, then beat her to death. Failure in this will cost you your life in much the same manner!"

Lomax watched the bay whirl as the king rode away after Slatterly. He felt tears welling in his eyes, and knew they weren't entirely from the sting of the whip.

"What's gotten into him? What's gotten into him?" he asked the trees and rocks. He didn't know and wasn't certain he wanted to know. Witchcraft? Magic? Something old and evil and ugly? That ruined palace—who knew what evil spirits lurked in there!

But he was only a guardsman. These were, alas, questions his kind was not authorized to ask. But he knew that this was not his king—not the real king, whatever the body was.

There were tears on his face as he went after the mare. It was as though all the good that the roundear had done were now undone, and the bad was returning with a vengeance. How could this happen, so soon after the great victory of the forces of right?

When he caught up to the horse he discovered without surprise that he simply did not have the heart to hurt her, let alone kill her. She was not at fault; she had reacted to the alien nature of the king, being more forthright than the guardsmen dared be. She was too fine an animal to destroy.

He approached the proprietor of a farm where there were a number of horses. "I will trade you this mare for your worst mare of this color and size," he said. "Provided you keep the transaction secret."

"For how much gold?" the sharp farmer demanded.

"No gold. An even trade."

The man studied the mare. He could see that she was as fine a horse as existed in the kingdom. "You stole her?"

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This was getting complicated. The truth was better. "She inadvertently offended the king. He ordered me to kill her. I can't do it. Give me a mare I can kill, and never speak of this."

The farmer nodded. "Now I understand." He brought out a scruffy-looking mare. "This one's ill, and due for slaughter anyway."

"She'll do." Lomax rode off on the new mare. When he reached a suitable place, he dismounted, drew his sword, and stabbed her carefully in the heart, so that she died quickly, without extended suffering. Then he took a whip and lashed the body, leaving stripes all over it. He paid special attention to the head, so that it became unrecognizable. This horse now looked as if it had been cruelly beaten to death. The original scruffiness of the animal only enhanced the effect.

He left the corpse there for others to find, knowing that the news would reach the king soon enough.

He walked away, not looking back, thinking that if it were not for a certain lady, and not for his love for his homeland, he would desert for another kingdom. He had no pride in what he had done. He knew he had only reduced the evil somewhat, at great risk to himself. If the living mare were ever recognized—

Late in the day he slunk silently into the royal stable. There he found the groom cursing ceaselessly as he treated the deep welts on the roan.

"Rufurt," Lomax whispered softly to himself. "Rufurt, good king, where are you and who is this impostor who so boldly wears your face?"

CHAPTER 1

Travel

Kelvin was not at all happy about returning to the world of silver serpents, but Kian had asked him to please come and be his best man, and their father was after all going to attend. It was, he vowed, going to be the last time he'd travel there. If Kian and Lonny wanted to visit, let them come here, or better yet, let them move here and live here. This world was the way a world should be, without monstrous silver serpents that could swallow a person or capture his soul. Of course in this world there were golden dragons, who had been known to gulp people down, but that was natural.

He was seeing things more clearly as the five of them rode along. His wife Heln was accompanying them as far as the palace ruins, as was his sister Jon. Heln was getting into the later stages of her pregnancy, but she had insisted, to his mixed pleasure and dismay.

"I still say," Jon said in her argumentative way as her horse pulled up alongside his, "that a pointy-eared person could use the transporter."

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"Yes, Jon, once," he replied patiently. "Then there'd be no point-eared person and no transporter."

"You can't know that!"

"I know it certainly enough. Look, Brother Wart, has Mouvar ever lied to us? You know what that parchment says."

"Well, it just doesn't seem right," Jon fumed. "And I've asked you not to call me that. It makes people think there's a big mole on my nose or something. It might have been cute when I was little and dressed up like a boy, but now—"

"Right, Sister Wart."

Jon, as was her custom, raised a hand as if to strike him. Kelvin pulled back on his reins so that she rode ahead and he now rode beside his growing wife.

"Teasing Jon again?" Heln asked, flashing him a grin.

"She started it."

"She always does, doesn't she? Why is it you two can't act like adults?"

"Because we're brother and irritant," Kelvin said, proud of having thought of it.

Predictably, Jon turned in her saddle and stuck her tongue out.

"Now that's really adult behavior. Ladylike, too."

Jon said some naughty words that drew an immediate frown from Heln and a bit of amused head-shaking on the part of Kelvin's father. "Who's a lady, you—you—" Jon demanded.

"She's got you now, Kel," John Knight interjected. "Ever since St. Helens showed up and talked about Female Liberation she hasn't wanted to be one."

"She never did, Father. You didn't grow up with her as I did. If she could have grown a penis she'd have done it."

"Darn tootin'," Jon said, affecting one of St. Helens' cleaner expressions.

"Somehow I don't think Les would have approved," Kelvin remarked, referring to Jon's absent husband and his own good friend. "But she would have interests appropriate to her anatomy."

"Kelvin, that's enough!" Heln scolded. Jon, seemingly taken aback, merely rode on ahead.

"I'd think she'd get over that," Kelvin said.

"Kelvin, you really have to grow up a little! You and your sister both."

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"Yes, Mama," Kelvin said.

For a moment, just a moment, Heln looked as if she'd stick her tongue out. Little crinkles formed at the corners of her mouth but she managed not to laugh.

Kelvin got her message. She really was annoyed with him and she wanted him to appreciate it. Well, he appreciated. So maybe he'd try not to tease his sister as constantly. He just hoped she was resolving the same about him.

John and Kian had been all but dozing on their horses. Kelvin could imagine that both were thinking of their return to the land of silver serpents and of Lonny. Kian hadn't any doubt he could wed Lonny, and John really seemed smitten with the former queen who so resembled Kian's own mother in outward aspect. But why was he, Kelvin, returning? he had to ask himself. Why when Heln was carrying their baby and might need him, and couldn't use dragonberries to separate her astral self at this time? Why? Because he was John Knight's son and Kian was his half brother. Because each of them had saved the other's life. Because they were roundears on a world where roundears were uncommon, and kin. As his mother Charlain had said repeatedly, claiming it was a saying from John Knight's Earth: "Blood is thicker, Kelvin. Blood is thicker than air, earth, fire, or water. It's stronger than any magic, any witchcraft." So what did that mean? he'd asked, and she had talked about kinship.

John suddenly spoke. "I never knew the ruins were so far away."

"It's the riding," Kian said. "You're not used to it."

"That's for certain," John said. "To ease my backside I'm tempted to use the belt." He referred, of course, to the levitation belt that had been in the Mouvar chamber and was now around Kelvin's waist.

"That wouldn't look right, Father. You know how nervous people get when they see magic." Kian himself had once been nervous about such things.

"Science! Confound it, science! Magic is—magic is what that witch had and that the Mouvar weapon put a stop to."

"But then it has to be magic, doesn't it, Father?"

"No! At least I don't think so. It's antimagic, so it can't be magic. It has to be science."

"You know," Kelvin said thoughtfully, speaking up and surprising himself, "it just could be we're in some sort of war. Not a war between armies, exactly, but between science and magic."

"Horse droppings!" Jon said. As happened more and more frequently these days it was a slightly more acceptable version of an expression used by Heln's father.

"Now I don't know there, Jon," John said, easing himself up in the stirrups. "Kelvin just might have Chimaera's Copper

something. Back on Earth there was sometimes talk about a war between faith and technology. That was not the same as here, in this frame, or in that frame with the silver serpents, but it's close.

Mouvar seems to have science, albeit advanced. The citizens of this world, and the one we're going to, don't. Here or there a sorcerer might fly with a spell, but on Mouvar's world or mine it would be with a mechanical apparatus or belt."

"That's different?" Jon inquired. For once there was no sarcasm. She must really be curious, Kelvin realized.

"Well, I'd say so. But then you have to remember that I'm from a world and a culture where magic wasn't. As a boy I often wished there was magic, but then there were cars and radios and TV sets and airplanes. Unfortunately there were also scientific horrors that I don't like to think about."

"Horseless carriages, talking boxes, glass with moving pictures of sometimes living and sometimes dead people in them," Jon enumerated with satisfaction. "Though why anyone should want to listen to corpses talking I sure don't know! Machines that fly and what you called atomic explosions. Gee, Father, what would life have been for you if you had just called it magic?"

"Only Mouvar knows," John said. Then, fast, as if correcting a blunder, "I mean Mouvar's people, of course. And possibly others who have lived with both."

"Both magic and science? You think that possible?"

"That's what I was asking, Sister Wart," Kelvin said. So much for resolutions, he thought. But the seriousness of the subject seemed to nullify the previous conversation. "I mean, you take these gauntlets, for instance." He raised them high, as if for inspection. "Are they one or are they the other or are they both?"

John gave a sigh that seemed to owe nothing to the chafing on his backside. "You know I wish I could decide. The gauntlets seem magic, but then so do many things that are science."

"I personally don't see what it matters," Jon said. "If something works, why not just accept it? Why did people on Earth have to deny magic anyway?"

"There you've got me," John said. "Magic doesn't follow natural laws, we are told. Magic doesn't follow our logic, so we say it has no logic. Magic, simply, unequivocally, can never, ever exist.

Why? Because magic is impossible, that's why."

"That sounds stupid," Jon said.

"I agree. Magic does exist here, now. But on Earth where I grew up things were entirely different.

To say you believed in magic was to be laughed at, or worse."

"Well I for one don't believe in science!" Jon said stoutly. She was so emphatic that each of them were forced to laugh. When the laughter died down, and her face was flaming, John gave her a most serious look.

Chimaera's Copper

"You have to believe in cause and effect, Jon. That's what science basically is. If something happens it has a cause. I still believe that, only today I often don't know the cause and so I accept with other people that the cause is magic. I admit it took me some time to get this far. Beliefs are hard to change."

"Like the transporter," Jon said. "And the spell on it that will destroy it and me if I try to use it."

"If you say so, Jon. To me it's science, but the results are certain to be the same. You and Heln rest overnight and then go home, once we reach the ruins. I know you'd like to follow, but I know too, as you must, that your trying to follow would be disastrous."

"I... know," Jon said. Then in a very small, slightly defiant voice: "Magic."

Late that day Jon repeated her now legendary feat of downing a game bird with her sling. They all enjoyed a hearty meal and a good night's sleep. At least Kelvin slept well, he reflected as they approached the site of the old palace, its blackened stones and burned timbers looking ghostly in the morning mist. He wasn't sure about the others.

"I suppose we'll need to get a boat from Old Man Yokes," Kelvin said.

"Where else, dummy?" his sister demanded, as politely as he felt she was capable.

"Of course," John agreed.

So again they met the old river man who had once indirectly saved Jon's life, and through that action the lives of John and Kelvin and possibly even Kian. Yokes was as before pleased at the company and after he and Jon had embraced like fond grandfather and gentle granddaughter, they had to tell everything that had occurred in the interim. This meant that Kelvin had to relive in his memory the experience of almost being killed by a curse and almost swallowed by a serpent. For Jon and Kian it meant telling of days in a dungeon, among other things. Jon sat fidgeting through the recitals until they got to the part about the witch at home and her own very small part in defeating her. Somehow Jon's part became larger than Kelvin remembered it, but the old man's eyes sparkled so that he forbore interrupting and telling it right.

After the stories were all told over steaming mugs of cofea and a plate of mufakes generously spread with aplear jelam, Yokes leaned back in his old rocker and sighed.

"Makes me feel I was right along with you," he said. "And now you're going back?"

"The girl I met," Kian explained. "We're going to be married. At least we are if I have any say."

"Ah, the only one in either frame for you, eh?"

Kian nodded, face flushed but obviously content.

Chimaera's Copper

"It was that way for me once," the old man said, and launched into the tale of an improbable courtship with an improbable young woman who later became an improbable wife. The tale took a long time, and Kelvin was surprised to find his emotions stirring as the gentle, aged voice cracked on the sad parts. He hadn't thought of worn old men as having been young and romantic once; he had pictured Old Man Yokes as being old from the moment he was born. It seemed it wasn't so, if the tale was to be believed.

Much later than they had intended, the men of the party said goodbye to the women of the party and staggered down the long flights of stone stairs with a boat. Before they'd had help, but this was a working day and Yokes had neglected to call in the distant neighbors. By the time they reached the bottom landing and the old dock, Kelvin was sweating. The gauntlets made the lifting easier, but hardly the carrying. The legs that supported the boat's weight were entirely his own, however light it seemed to his arms.

"Look at this!" Kian was pointing. At the dock was an old, worn boat.

"Why that was on the ledge!" Kelvin said, remembering. "The ledge outside Mouvar's chamber!"

"One of those old men probably towed it in," John said. "Now that everyone knows the river is here, there are bound to be people exploring it."

"I hope nobody enters the chamber," Kelvin said. Would any pointy-eared person really be destroyed along with the chamber as the old parchment claimed?

"Anyone who gets down here will have heard about it," John said. "The story's widespread. I wonder that Yokes stood for all our retelling of what even he must have heard."

"He was being polite," Kian said. "Anyway, that's what Jon would have said."

Kelvin smiled, but then he wiped it. Time to think of his sister's annoying ways at another time. Now there was work.

Thus it was that they launched the boat, got into it, and rowed by natural rock walls covered by eerily glowing moss. They bypassed the terrible falls that emptied into a darkness filled with stars, negotiated the bend without difficulty, and were at the ledge. To Kelvin it looked different without that boat there.

He was still thinking about the missing boat as they entered the smooth chamber. He almost expected things to be different here, but things were as before. There was the parchment and the book on the table, and the closet with knobs on its outside that was the transporter.

Something struck Kelvin as the three of them prepared to step together into the adjoining world.

Those knobs on the outside of the transporter appeared to him to have slightly changed positions. If the knobs had been moved, that might mean that they would not go to their proper destination and might, for all he knew to the contrary, be unable to return.

Chimaera's Copper

His gauntlets began to tingle. That meant danger. In fact—

But even as that thought occurred, he was in motion into the transporter, his body not responding in time.

There was a flash of white that covered all existences. The three of them stood in a transporter in a Mouvar chamber, but not the one they had entered. Nor was it the chamber in the world of silver serpents. This one was rounded like the others, lighted by strange ovoids on the chamber's walls. It was definitely not the same. The open door was the giveaway. That and the orangish daylight filtering in, revealing a grouping of large prickly plants and an assortment of rocks and heaps of red sand just outside.

"This is wrong!" Kian said. "We're not where we should be!"

"Someone changed the settings!" Kelvin said. "I thought those knobs were set differently, but I didn't realize it for sure until—"

"Don't panic," John said. "We'll just step out, step back in, and we should be back where we started."

Kelvin felt a great doubt stirring as the gauntlets tingled on his hands. Could the air here be poisoned? No, Mouvar's people wouldn't have built a transporter on a world like that. Still, there was something. Trembling in spite of himself, he stepped out with the others.

"I wonder," John said, walking to the doorway.

"Father! Don't!" Kelvin cried. He felt ridiculous the moment he said it.

But his father was pushing his head out around the rounded edge of the metal door. Curiosity ruling his actions, he was about to see where they were.

Suddenly John gasped. His shoulders slumped, and he dropped there in the doorway.

"Father!" Kian echoed Kelvin's earlier cry. With a quick leap he was beside John, grabbing his shoulders, seeking to turn his face. Then, with a similar gasp he collapsed on top of his father.

Kelvin stared for one horrified moment. Then he snatched out his Mouvar weapon from the hip-scabbard and leveled it at the doorway. If there was hostile magic being used, this would stop it and send it back to the source.

He squeezed the weapon's trigger. Sparks and a low hissing came from the bell-shaped muzzle. No magic, then. He replaced the weapon in its sheath and drew his sword. He took a step for the doorway and the unmoving bodies of his kin. Too late he saw the small purple fruit lying there. Too late he realized that he could have stepped back into the transporter and been gone.

He breathed a spicy fragrance. He noticed that the sword was slipping from his fingers and that the gauntlet wasn't even trying to hold on. He noticed the floor and the sand and the dust near the doorway. Then he noticed that the fruit was near his face, and—

Chimaera's Copper

What a spicy, spicy smell!

CHAPTER 2

Summoned

Sean Reilly, better known as St. Helens, was elated. As the king's own messengers left the cottage's yard he leaped up into the air, waving his arms like a boy. He came down, oof!, on the soles of his aching feet, put his head back until his short black beard pointed skyward, and whooped.

"Did you hear that, Phil?" he asked the pimply faced youth at his side. "Did you hear that?"

"I think all Kelvinia heard it," the former king of Aratex said. He had been staying temporarily with St. Helens while his hereditary palace was reconditioned, to better accommodate the newly appointed government. His position had been reduced to that of figurehead, but that was what he had been all along anyway. Kelvin and King Rufurt had if anything been too generous with him.

"We're going to the palace, boy! To the Kelvinia palace that used to be just Rud's. King Rufurt is finally getting around to honoring me proper! And he wants Kelvin and his brother Kian and John Knight and Les and Mor Crumb there as well! I tell you, there's going to be a place in the new administration for us, just as I always thought there should be! There may be medals for those of us who fought! Maybe a complete pardon for you!"

"I'm not going," Phillip said. He picked at a pimple. "I wasn't included in the royal command."

"Who cares! I'm certain you'll be welcome. You don't know the king! He's the most friendly man in the kingdom!"

"I was pretty friendly," Phillip said. "With you, I mean. I gave you sanctuary, protected you from Melbah, and allowed you to beat me at chess."

"Allowed me! Why you young pupten!" St. Helens bellowed, outraged. Then he got hold of his notoriously volcanic temper as he realized that he had again been had. Phillip was not even trying to hide his smirk.

"All right, all right. So you were a good friend and you resisted that old witch Melbah some, and after I rescued you from defeat—"

"You rescued me!" Phillip cried. Then, more calmly. "Oh, I see what you're doing. What you call tit for tat."

"Tat's correct," St. Helens said, in the manner of a long-ago other-world quiz master. "Now we're Chimaera's Copper

even." Which of course they were, and had been for some time.

"Another game?" Phillip asked, asking for another game of chess.

"No, no, I've got preparations to make. You've got preparations to make. We've got to get to the Crumbs. We've got to get to Kelvin and the others before they get to the Flaw! What a time for them to take off for a wedding, now that there's something important happening."

"The messengers will get to them," Phillip said. "St. Helens, don't you realize anything about how things are done?"

St. Helens glowered back at him. That was a snottish thing to say, and another time he might have exploded mildly, but now it hardly mattered. The fact was he had never been in the officer class, let alone the governing class. He had always been a common soldier, and proud of it. "I, uh, guess they will. The old man's just a little excited."

"A little excited?" Phillip rolled his eyes upward, looking less like the ex-king and more like the young scamp. Looking at him, St. Helens was forced to think that if his wife had borne him a son instead of a daughter, his kid would have been just that impudent.

"I guess we'll all ride together, Phil. I just hope they head off Kelvin and his party in time. I wonder if the girls will ride along. Cursed if I don't think Kelvin's wife, my daughter, should share her husband's and her father's triumph."

Lester and his father were working on a wall when the king's messenger appeared. Les hopped down from the scaffolding, mortar on his hands and the trowel he held, and gazed at them openmouthed.

"Don't get excited, Son," his father said from the top of the ladder. "It may not be anything bad.

Maybe something good."

"I knew I shouldn't have let her go," Les said, meaning his wife. As he had found out repeatedly since their marriage, cute little tomboyish Jon had a mind and will that was hers alone.

"You know you couldn't have stopped her," Mor said. "Short of chaining her. And then you'd probably have gotten a lump on your head."

Les unconsciously raised a hand to his sweaty forehead and immediately felt the mortar on it. He would have cursed if the messenger had not been dismounted and there at the gate.

"Lester Crumb. Morton Crumb. You are both summoned to appear before His Majesty King Rufurt, acting king of Kelvinia. You have three days to comply."

Les frowned. "That sounds more like an order than a request."

"I just deliver 'em," the messenger said. "My orders say I'm to tell you three days."

Chimaera's Copper

Les looked up to where his father was straddling the wall and glaring down. They had never been summoned in quite this fashion before. Not by King Rufurt. What did this mean?

Mor held his peace until the messenger had left, then spat. "Danged king! Double his territory, and he treats you like dirt!"

"I wouldn't have thought it," Les said. "But maybe it's an honor, a place in the government or something."

"Maybe," Mor said, scowling.

Jon was the first to see the riders approaching. Instantly her hand was on her sling, rock in place, ready just in case history should repeat. But these were no kidnappers from a foreign nation, she saw with relief. They were two of King Rufurt's finest, their Guardsman Messenger uniforms bearing the winged insignias. Now they were slowing their horses and coming up to them at walking speed.

The messengers pulled up. They glanced down at those in the temporary camp. "Mrs. Hackleberry?

Mrs. Crumb?"

Jon found herself nodding, as she saw Heln doing. She'd never been approached by a King's Messenger before, and she knew that Heln had not. She waited, wondering.

"Your husband, Mrs. Hackleberry—has he gone to the Flaw?"

Heln nodded. "He, his brother, and their father."

"Then we're too late. We were to give them a message. They are supposed to be at the palace in three days."

"Why?" Heln asked. "Is there trouble, or—?"

"We're only messengers. You ladies are also summoned. The Crumbs, Lester and Morton, will be there as well. So will the roundear Sean Reilly, alias St. Helens."

"Alias?" Heln asked sharply, not liking this reference to her father.

"All of us at the palace!" Jon exclaimed. "Something must have happened!"

"The messages have been delivered. The king ordered us to stress that you have but three days."

"You know Mrs. Hackleberry is pregnant?" Jon demanded. "Does Rufurt still expect—"

The messengers rode slowly away without answering.

Jon swore.

Chimaera's Copper

"Now really, Jon, you shouldn't!" Heln reproved her. "You know—"

"I know those goldbuttoned monkpes weren't polite! What's gotten into Rufurt, sending out creiots like those! Why they're not fit to wear their uniforms! Just wait till Kelvin hears! He'll tell them how to talk to his wife and sister!"

"Hush, Jon. Hush. It doesn't matter."

"Yeah? Then what did they mean by 'alias' St. Helens?"

Heln frowned. Her name derived from that of her father, so there was a certain personal as well a familial interest. "I'm sure it was just a misspeaking."

"Sure." Jon whirled her sling and let a rock fly to the rump of the horse bearing the sauciest messenger. Stung, the steed jumped, bucked, and almost threw its rider. Then the big war-horse leaped forward, and the other horse speeded up as well. Horses and riders disappeared in a whirl of dust.

"Jon! You shouldn't have!" Heln exclaimed. But her protest lacked force, and there might even have been the merest trace of a hidden smile.

"Maybe I shouldn't have," Jon said. "But I did." It felt good, she thought, secretly pleased with herself. "Well, come on. We might as well get loaded up and meet the others at the palace."

"But Jon, we haven't good clothes! All we have is our riding togs, and they've been slept in."

"Who cares?" Jon demanded. "If we're invited to a ball, Rufurt neglected to advise us."

Angrier than even she thought she should be, Jon began packing their cooking gear and gathering up their blankets. She knew herself to be a liberated woman. No mere king, let alone king's messenger, had the right to treat her as less.

Charlain laid down a card. "Yes, they need help, Hal," she said. "They are too proud to ask for it, but they need it."

"I'd better go, then," Hal Hackleberry said. "The Brownberry folk have helped us when we needed it."

"Yes. I can manage here well enough for a few days."

He got his things ready, then kissed her goodbye. He set out on foot, walking the two hours' distance to their neighbor's farm. It would have been faster on the horse, but Charlain would need the horse here.

As he walked, he pondered. He had been trying to suppress the awareness, but it was becoming Chimaera's Copper

difficult. Charlain's kiss had been perfunctory, without passion. Once she had been more attentive, but never enough actually to bear his children. Well, attentive, maybe, but she was a woman who bore children only when she chose, and she had not so chosen with him.

He knew what it was. He was her second husband, and she had never stopped loving her first husband, the roundeared John Knight. She had thought John dead, and needed a man to support the farm, and he had been there. She was such a lovely, competent woman that he had been thrilled to join her on any basis. Hal knew himself to be a good but simple man, the kind seldom destined for greatness or success with women. He had done his best, and treated Charlain's two children as his own, and indeed, he had come to like both Kelvin and Jon very well. There had been no stepfather problems with them. Now both were married and on their own, but they always welcomed his occasional visits and made him feel at home.

But then John Knight had returned. He had not been dead after all, only imprisoned. John had been scrupulous about staying clear of Charlain, letting their divorce stand. But Charlain—any passion she might have had for Hal had evaporated with the knowledge of John's survival. Oh, she hadn't said so, but he had felt it. Their marriage had become a shadow.

But what could he do? He loved her, and could not bring himself to leave her, selfish as he knew that to be. Also, there was no certainty that John Knight wanted to return to her. Kelvin had been mostly silent on what had gone on in the other frame, but it seemed that there was a beautiful and good queen there who looked like John's first wife, the nefarious Zoanna, and who was in want of a man.

If Charlain still carried a torch for her first husband, John might carry one for his first wife. So there was no point in Hal's doing anything; it might only hurt the woman he least wanted to hurt. If only she loved him back!

They gathered together in the second audience room. Wine was brought, and all sipped it except Jon.

Of the five, only St. Helens was smiling. Jon had to wonder why. Knowing Heln's natural father, she would have thought he'd arrive still smoldering, ready to blow his top on any pretext. But maybe the messengers had treated him with a little more politeness. Maybe they hadn't called him "alias" to his face. Yes, that was probably it; men like those messengers treated women and absent men with habitual disrespect.

"I'd guess we're about to get our due," St. Helens whispered. "Even you, Jon, for riding with the Roundear."

Jon glared at him. Though he had told her about Female Liberation, she sometimes considered him a chauvinist. No one had helped him more than she. Why if she hadn't grabbed Kelvin's hand and aimed the Mouvar weapon for him, the witch would have won! Maybe she should tell him about the alias bit and see how snug his infamous top was then.

But was this really about that? St. Helens seemed to think they were here for some sort of reward or recognition, but he could be, and usually was, mistaken.

Chimaera's Copper

Curtains were pulled open by two lackeys in royal livery. There sat King Rufurt on his throne.

Instead of his crown he wore an absurd, tight-fitting stockelcap. He also wore a deep frown, which was even more unusual for him.

"Hackleberry, Crumbs, and Sean Reilly, alias St. Helens, you have been summoned to my presence without explanation. You are wondering why."

This was not, Jon thought, the king's customary way of speaking. But she couldn't ponder that right now; she was too busy trying to look covertly at St. Helens to see how he liked that "alias"!

But the fool hadn't even picked up on it. "Your Majesty," he said, "I suspect the recent conflict with Aratex and its annexing has a little something to do with it."

"Roundear, I did not give you permission to speak," the king said sharply. "My patience has been severely strained lately. Do not strain it further."

St. Helens looked surprised. In a heartbeat or less he'd realize he'd been insulted and get angry. But even as Jon thought this, the king was standing, glaring at them. Judging from his expression, he was about to order their executions.

Jon found that she was doing what everyone else was doing. All five were trying hard to close unsightly gaping mouths.

"You know of course about Klingland and Kance," Rufurt continued. "Those two related kingdoms ruled by brats Kildom and Kildee. Long have they been a thorn in your kingdom's side."

"But—but Your Majesty!" Mor exclaimed, unable to hold his peace. "There has never been trouble between our kingdoms! Never, in all of history!"

"You're a historian, Crumb?"

"N-no, Your Majesty. But it's common knowledge. With other of the seven kingdoms, such as Aratex before we annexed it, there might have been trouble, but never—"

"Silence!" the king shouted. "You will not interrupt again! Not on pain of torture!"

Mor looked as if he were about to choke. After having been treated as an equal by King Rufurt, this was embarrassing in the extreme to him.

"As I was saying," Rufurt continued grimly, "there have always been difficulties. Only recently it has come to my attention that these two kingdoms plan aggressive war. We must take action before they invade our territory. The roundear should have known this. 'Uniting four,' the prophecy says, but just when the 'hero' is needed, he's gone. Probably dallying with wenches in a far foreign land."

"Your Majesty, I protest!" Heln exclaimed, for once not philosophical about a slight.

"Silence!" the king roared. "Do not presume that because you are mated to the roundear and carry Chimaera's Copper

his brat that you are above punishment!"

Heln gasped, started to open her mouth, then closed it. Jon, though furious herself, was glad that the woman managed to stifle her reaction. This had gone beyond error or thoughtless affront. This was deliberate insult, by the last person expected to do it.

Something was not right, here. This wasn't the king who had spent all those years in his own dungeon with her father. It couldn't be!

"So they plan aggression, and we must move fast," the king said, as if satisfied with his logic.

"Fortunately there is another kingdom willing to be our ally: Hermandy."

"Hermandy!" Les cried. "But Hermandy has always been—"

Again the king's eyes glared around, as if with a hatred of all present and, indeed, of all mankind. It was a look that had never been seen on Rufurt's face, even during imprisonment and humiliation.

There was more than hatred there; there was madness.

Jon swallowed. That didn't help, so she swallowed again. Something was starting to form in her mind, something she dared not consider directly right now. But it pushed forward relentlessly.

In the other frame there had been such a king. She had not seen him, and none present had, but Kelvin had, and John Knight, and so had Kian. Oh, if only they are all right! If only they are safe in that other frame with nothing more serious than flopeared persons and overgrown snakes to worry about!

Les hung his head. "I'm sorry, Your Majesty. I did not mean to interrupt."

"Do not do so again. As I was saying, the situation is critical. Obviously I will have no help from the Roundear, so I am ordering you male Crumbs to lead troops into Klingland and Kance. And you, Reilly, do you have that belt that allowed you to fly?

"No, Your Majesty. Kelvin has that, as well as the gauntlets and the Mouvar weapon."

"Typical," the king said sourly. "Irresponsible in an agent of prophecy. But never mind that. You are ordered to proceed forthwith to Hermandy, as my personal messenger to King Bitler."

St. Helens looked startled. "Your Majesty, I've never been—"

"Those are your orders. Are you refusing to obey?"

What an attitude! The king seemed to be trying to provoke dissent, so he could claim treason. "No, Your Majesty," St. Helens said. "It's just that I haven't been to Hermandy and I haven't dealt with kings."

"You dealt with Phillip of Aratex."

Chimaera's Copper

"Yes, Your Majesty. But—" Then, seeing the way the king was looking at him, St. Helens reverted to his charm, which was a considerable asset because it was normally well hidden. "Though I haven't had the honor to serve you in such a capacity before, I certainly will now."

If the king was charmed, he did a remarkable job of concealing it. He turned brusquely to Mor and Les, as if he had never even spoken to St. Helens. "And you, Crumbs?"

Mor shrugged, perhaps not trusting himself to speak. There was something about the way the king had pronounced their name that made it seem derogatory. Les answered for both of them. "We certainly will follow your orders, Your Majesty. Though neither of us have been in uniform since the recent war, we'll endeavor to serve you as we must."

Again this graciousness was wasted on the king. "You will do that." His dour attention now turned to Heln. "Since your errant husband is not here, you will stay at the palace until he returns or the royal physician delivers you of child. Whichever event occurs first."

Heln had the wit not to show by her expression that this was the last place she preferred to be. The king had not called her a guest, and it might be more like imprisonment.

Jon straightened her shoulders. She was next, she knew.

"And you, Jon Hackleberry, sister to the hero and mate to Lester Crumb—" The way he spoke those words made it sound like a disparagement. He was suddenly very good at sounding bad! "You will stay with her as her companion. Is that acceptable?"

"Very acceptable," Jon said tersely. As it has to be. But at least I'll have the chance to watch over Heln. She'll need an ally. Until Kelvin's return. Until he's back here, and knocks your lying carcass off the throne you usurped, you impostor!

"Then this audience is at an end." Uncharacteristically, the king clapped his hands, and retainers who had assuredly not been here during their recent visit took them in charge and led them from his presence.

When they were alone, getting their breath, getting their color back, Jon said what she had been thinking. "He's not."

"Lass, I've thought that myself!" Mor said. "But if he isn't who he looks like, then—"

"That other king, I think. The one Kelvin talked about."

"King—" He paused, his brow furrowing. "Rowforth. Of Hud? King Rowforth of the torture chamber and the serpents?"

"Who else?" she asked, and saw no disagreement in the others.

"But how—?"

Chimaera's Copper

"I don't know. I thought they were going to execute him," Jon said.

"Kelvin wouldn't execute anybody in cold blood," Heln said.

Jon nodded. "A pity, maybe. He must have escaped. It has to be. How else?"

Mor nodded. "Uh, I don't know. But it just doesn't make sense. Even if his own people didn't kill him, and he got here, there's Rufurt."

"Which is why we have to play along, Father," Les said. "For the sake of the real king."

"You really think he's not?" St. Helens asked.

"Don't you?" Mor returned.

St. Helens said some volcanic words. Heln turned away, but did not seem to take strong exception.

"But kings will be kings, as the saying goes. It could be he's had a lot on his mind. Maybe his imprisonment is catching up with him, a gear loose somewhere. A bad situation coming up, a bad time for it, and—"

"You don't believe that," Jon said.

"No," St. Helens admitted. "We'd better do just as this one says. If he's not the Rufurt we fought for, then it will be out with him."

"And if there's a war started as a result?" Les asked.

"Hm, there is the prophecy."

"St. Helens!" his pregnant daughter said. "You really want to be fighting again? I thought you'd had enough. After your crossbow wound and after old Melbah—"

"Yes, yes, it was a close thing. But Kelvin did come back in time, didn't he? Just in time. Right, Jon?"

Jon found herself nodding. "We stopped her," she said. In her mind she saw again the moment of the Mouvar's weapon finally going off and sending its antimagic to turn the evil back on its sender. But that seemed almost a lifetime ago. The situation now was not that desperate. But would it become so? She was very much afraid it would.

St. Helens was smiling. He liked the idea of a war that would fulfill that prophecy line. He liked it, though the last two words, "uniting two," had almost cost his life and the lives of Les and Mor.

You'd better not give me any trouble, St. Helens, she thought viciously. I'm a liberated woman, and I'm on to you. You're an opportunist, but you won't opportune your way with tyrants. Try, and I won't wait for Kelvin. Succeed, and I'll rock your charming head off And she made a tiny motion with her hand, as if using her sling to hurl a rock at someone's head.

Chimaera's Copper

CHAPTER 3

Tribute

Kelvin opened his eyes to see a squat, ugly being with a head growing out of its shoulders and no neck at all. The being was crouched down, turning the Mouvar weapon over and over in webbed, long-fingered hands. The creature's arms and legs and webbed toes matched its fingers. On either side of the blunt head were round, flat spots resembling those on the head of a froog. More than anything it seemed like a giant froog with human additions.

As he turned, he could see the others of his party, also conscious. His father looked as bewildered and helpless as he felt. Kian looked, if anything, worse, as though all his buoyancy and confidence were now replaced with despair. Froog men and women were all about them in this steamy swamp.

All their weapons were being inspected and chatted over. Kelvin and his companions themselves were bound hand and foot.

"Ohhh, we're not where we should be," John Knight said. "I'm sorry, Kelvin, you were right. The controls on the transporter were tampered with."

But by whom? Kelvin dared not speak the question. There were more immediate matters. One of these squatted directly in front of him and thrust a large, flat thumb of a greenish webbed hand into his face.

"You godhunters go to god," the creature said. Its voice was liquid and bubbling, as if breathed out under water. Throat sacks just beneath its head vibrated as it spoke, obviously with difficulty.

"We're not godhunters," Kelvin said. Whatever they are.

"We see," said the being. "We see. God see. God see all."

What god? A god to creatures who looked like these could be evil and multieyed. He imagined a serpent with eyes all along its back and belly and sides: gigantic, looking down at them from concealment in those prickly tree branches, or invisibly from the orangish sky.

"There won't be any wedding," Kian moaned. "I'm sorry, Kelvin, Father."

"You didn't bring us, Son. We came of our own accord." Trust John Knight to try to make them feel better. "We'll get this straightened out and then we'll go to the right place and get you and Lonny married as planned."

"You go to god," the froog-eared creature said reprovingly. "Strangers, tribute. Tribute, strangers."

Chimaera's Copper

As it spoke, another of the creatures was poking a stick with sticky needles on it into the Mouvar weapon's bell-shaped muzzle. Its webbed fingers touched and squeezed the trigger. Pretty sparks and a low hissing amused and possibly delighted the meddler, doing no harm. There was no hostile magic so the display was entirely meaningless.

"I'd say these are real primitives," John Knight said. "Not sophisticates like the flopears."

Kelvin knew what he meant. The flopears of the other frame had been extremely savvy and tough creatures. It might be nice if these were their analogues in this strange frame. The beings here seemed to have no inkling. If John had insulted them by calling them primitives, they did not realize it.

The froog-face in front of him repeated, "You go to god. You go to god. All of you together to god."

"Persistent devil," John remarked. "You lads have any idea how to define a godhunter?"

"One who hunts a god," Kelvin said. Stupid talk, but it was necessary to keep their courage up.

Where was the levitation belt? He had worn it around his middle and now it was gone. His father-in-law St. Helens had become quite expert with it during the late unpleasantness, and afterward Kelvin had practiced with it and gotten quite good himself.

Where was that belt? With it, he could extricate them all from this predicament.

A great cry went up. One of the froogears was strutting about wearing it over its naked loins.

"Oh, boy," John said. "If—but maybe it won't."

Just then it did. Webbed fingers found and pressed the pretty red button. The froogear went sailing up. Froog-faces turned upward, greatly excited or indifferent as suited the individual. Some of the faces made croaking sounds. The biggest of the creatures stretched out an arm and croaked advice.

The fumbler fumbled some more. Off he went, first to the east and then to the west, and finally smack into a prickly tree. While hanging there, not seriously hurt or alarmed, the aeronaut moved the lever at the side of the belt forward and back. The result was that the creature worked itself deeper into the prickly branches.

The big froogear stepped over to John and nudged him with a webbed toe. "Get him down!"

"I'm tied," John said, reasonably.

"Tell how. Get down."

John considered briefly. "Press red button. Move lever to middle position. Climb down tree."

The big froogear turned his face treeward and croaked an evident translation. Almost immediately the adventurer was visible sliding and scrambling among the branches. He fell partway, landed in greenish mud, and got up laughing. A quick roll in a pile of red sand and he approached the leader Chimaera's Copper

and held out the soiled but unharmed belt.

"Did we win one, Father?" Kelvin asked. "Are they going to think twice before croaking us in some form of sacrifice?"

"I'd like to think so, Son. These aren't flopears. Maybe they've got something like our dragons, and maybe something like the serpents the flopears sacrificed to. But if they've got the brains of a fleouse they'll be impressed."

The impression seemed to relate only to John Knight. The leader and his followers acted almost as if levitation belts weren't really strange. What was with these creatures, anyway?

After a suitable interval, during which all their gear was examined and reexamined, the leader gave orders. The prisoners were lifted and carried on slippery smooth froogear shoulders. The creatures might look clumsy, but they were quite strong. Behind them, Kelvin managed to discern, other green shoulders carried everything they had brought that was not presently attached to them, including all weapons.

Well, now. If they had any chance to escape, they could grab one of the weapons and make it good.

Evidently the froogears didn't really understand the nature of those devices.

Then most of the stuff, including the weapons, was deposited in a hollow tree, and left behind.

Kelvin's hope sank; so much for having their things handy!

They were carried an interminable distance. Through vast expanses of swamp. Between prickly tree trunks that looked like something that ought to be growing in a desert. Past huge piles of reddish sand sometimes shading to an orange the color of the sky of this world. Through brush growing in greenish water and up from patches of semiliquid land. Swamp creatures like allidiles splashed out of their way, snapping great toothy snouts, slapping broad tails that made muddy waves.

"Father, do you think one of those?" Kelvin asked, nodding his head at one of the toothy horrors.

"Their god?" The thought was revolting, but had to be considered. Allidiles fed most nastily, and these scaled reptilians were the same except bigger.

"Let's just try to wait and be surprised," John said. "And be alert, both of you! Don't give up hope.

There just may be—" He broke off to curse as a froogear snatched a wriggling orange serpent from his chest. The snake hissed, bared dripping fangs, and snapped at the face of the froogear—but immediately lost its head in the crunching jaws of the froogear. John's rescuer chewed, spat, then raised the still squirming body and directed the squirting blood into its wide, open mouth.

"Gross!" Kian said, using one of the expressions his father had taught him. "That's worse than anything I've seen on two worlds."

"Or three worlds, for me," John agreed. "Ugh! What must their god be like?"

Kelvin didn't say anything. He was trying not to vomit on himself and his carrier. Some hero, he Chimaera's Copper

thought again. Some legendary hero to upchuck just at the sight of blood.

The froogear squeezed its very fresh lunch. Now other juices escaped through ruptured tissues and mixed with the blood. Yellow, brown, black, and mixtures.

Kelvin lost his battle of the gorge. With no transition at all he was vomiting. The contents of his stomach splashed out across the froogear in front. He was afraid the creature would turn and kill him, or at least drop him in the swamp, but it took no notice at all.

Much later, a year or two by the feel, Kelvin's retching abated. Feeling horribly weak and nauseous, he hardly noticed the slowing of the party. When he did manage to notice, they had come to a complete halt in greenish mud before a flat, still, scum-topped lake. Great prickly trees grew in the water, seemingly out of the scum. An island of some size soaked up orange sunrays and seemed to wait, curiously idle and foreboding. A rock battlement fronted the island and disappeared around the sides.

The froogears repositioned their loads, startling Kelvin and causing his father to give a groan of apprehension. Then the froogears were in the lake itself, wading, and finally swimming with their powerful hind legs. Somehow the froogears kept them above the surface.

This is where it is, Kelvin thought. Now we'll meet their god, or what they think of as a god. He shivered and felt cold, though the orange sun beat down with fiery waves reminding him of an overheated stove in his mother's kitchen.

They splashed up a ramp. There, concealed until now by the black thorny tree branches, was a huge gate. The froogears put their prisoners down on a dry surface and backed off. Kelvin saw some of them as they dipped back below the scum; bubbles traced their route away from the island.

Tribute, he thought. They've brought their tribute. It was almost like the time the flopears had tried to sacrifice Lonny. Kian had rescued her, then, and started what turned out to be a significant interaction. He hoped Kian would have the chance to marry her! At the moment that seemed doubtful. He wondered whether Kian appreciated the parallel, and debated breaking the silence to tell him. No, it probably wouldn't be kind.

In an aperture high in the wall there was suddenly a woman's comforting face. She wore a coppery crown on coppery tresses, with coppery rings dangling from two definitely rounded, not pointed ears. She was, Kelvin had to notice, a beauty. But what could such a woman be doing here in this ironically godforsaken place? Or was she another captive, brought here for tribute?

The woman looked down at them from disturbingly coppery eyes. She spoke one word: "Tribute."

Gods, Kelvin thought, she read my mind! But who is she? Is she the froogears' god? If so, she can't be the monster I've expected. She's absolutely lovely!

"Thank you so much, Kelvin Hackleberry." Her voice tinkled almost in the manner of a bell. She was looking right at him, reading his mind!

Chimaera's Copper

Kelvin felt himself blushing. What would Heln think?

But now the beautiful face was gazing at his father. "Oh, and you, John Knight, trying so hard to get that knot untied! What a great pleasure to meet someone whose original home is far down the Flaw!

With your son Kelvin, a hero! And your other son, Kian, wanting to wed his truelove in still another frame!"

What was this? Were they supposed to respond? Should he be the one to break their silence? What should he say? Should he ask this queenly woman for their release and her help? For obviously she was a queen, which the froogears took as a goddess.

"Oh, but you mustn't judge by appearances," the woman told him in her musical voice. There was just a hint of reproval. "I am more—very much more—than you imagine." But human, he thought carefully. A human being who thinks and speaks and has the power of life and death. That is correct, isn't it? You do have the power either to save us or destroy us?

"Why of course I have those powers, Kelvin!" she agreed brightly. "What do you think I am?"

A compassionate queen, he thought with hope. "Physically," she prompted him.

Kelvin tried not to picture the phenomenal contours he was sure her body had, hidden by the wall.

"Ah, you are married, so you hesitate to conjecture," she said, smiling. "Yet suppose I were to offer you your freedom, in return for that conjecture?"

She was toying with him, he knew. Yet try as he might, he could not stop his mind from picturing that gorgeous body. Was she naked? Was that why she kept all except her face concealed?

She laughed. "Oh, it would be delightful to make you do with me what you so dread! Perhaps I should indeed free you, instead of saving you for a late-night snack."

Kelvin felt the hair prickle at his nape. Her face and tone were beautiful, but the words were teasing to the point of discomfort. A late-night snack? Was that figurative, or—?

"Go on, Kelvin," she said encouragingly. "It is such a pleasure, following your thoughts."

There seemed to be an admixture of cruelty. Beauty and cruelty were not incompatible, he knew. He remembered Queen Zoanna, Kian's lovely but evil mother. But there could be another reason for her to hide her body. Was she something other than she appeared to be, physically, as she had hinted?

Perhaps old, as the witch Melbah had been, yet able to assume the semblance of youth and beauty?

The coppery tresses tossed. The laughter was that of a cheerful hostess. "A witch! Me? Shame on you, Kelvin! A hero of your stripe should know better. You have heard of me, or of something like me. Certainly your father has. He told you, too, though you thought he was speaking nonsense. And you as well, Kian. Indeed, I am not like your mother!"

Chimaera's Copper

Insane, Kelvin thought with a chill. But even as he thought it, there came another voice. This one was gruff and masculine, reminiscent of the toughest of working men:

"Mervania, do you always have to play with our food?"

"Of course I do, Mertin," said the pretty tresses. "And why not? Aren't human females and felines that way? Here I have almost coaxed this innocent young man into lusting after my luscious torso! It can be fun, accomplishing that!"

"GWROOOWOOF!" growled a decidedly unhuman voice. Certainly that dragonlike roar had come from no human throat! The vibrations hurt Kelvin's ears.

"Oh now, Grumpus," Mervania said, "you know it's not really feeding time yet."

"GROOOOWOOF!"

"Yes, yes, I agree. We will have to show ourself. But it's going to be a surprise. Particularly for Kelvin, who is resolutely focusing on my forbidden sex appeal. Kian is thinking of his Lonny, and John of his Charlain and of another named Zanaan. Naughty, naughty John! Only one can be your wife. But you, Kelvin, you are thinking of me, and that is the naughtiest of all."

"That's not entirely true," Kelvin said, embarrassed by the amount that was true. "I'm thinking also of Heln."

"Yes, that night you got her pregnant. But now she is gravid, and doesn't look quite like that, whereas I may—"

Mervania's face moved away from the wall opening as if shoved aside. Replacing it was a man's face: coppery eyebrows and copper warrior helmet emphasizing high cheekbones and a bulging forehead. He scowled, and snorted through his nose in the manner of a bull. "Mervania, these aren't even fat!"

"But it will be fun fattening them up," Mervania's voice said. "If I could somehow pose as Kelvin pictures me, voluptuous, almost naked, plying him with succulent grapes—"

Damn that mind-reading! And damn his errant mind! She was so infernally good at tuning in on what he most wanted to suppress!

The man's face disappeared. There was a clumping sound, as of something huge and unseen. Then in the opening appeared the snout of a dragon. Its scales were copper rather than a more normal gold, and the eyes it turned down on them were as coppery as its scales. A forked tongue emerged from its terrible mouth, vibrated, then shot down at them. The tip of it dripped coppery saliva and was much too close for comfort.

"Father! Kian!" Kelvin cried. It was quite involuntary. He had been this close to dragons of the golden-scaled variety, but never while bound. The dragon's head drew back. A loud female laughter Chimaera's Copper

filled his ears. It was not pretty; rather it was taunting.

It had to be illusion, Kelvin thought. It had to be magic—witchcraft. There couldn't be a dragon here! Not that close to human beings! It would have gobbled them up. Even the sorcerer Zatanas had not been able to control dragons that well. True, Zatanas had ridden one, but that was a treacherous business. No magic could safely handle a magical creature for long.

"I think I know what it is," his father said. "Remember when I was telling you stories about Greek myth? Remem—"

He broke off. With horror, Kelvin realized that his father was helplessly rolling his eyes as if stricken. Magic used against him by Mervania? Magic used so that he would not talk?

The coppery tresses reappeared at the aperture. The coppery eyes that no longer seemed entirely human looked down on him. "You are quite right, Kelvin. I did stop your father from speaking. A simple paralysis hold on his vocal cords. It's wrong for him to want to spoil your surprise. I'd much rather share your naughty vision of me leaning forward to feed you a delicacy, my breasts becoming more visible as my gown falls away, their delightful contours—exactly how does that go, after that?"

Kelvin thought desperately of what his father had been saying. Greek myth, all mixed up with history and therefore partially true. His father had told of such things as the Hydra, a great serpent with nine heads, or was it seven heads; cut off one head and two others grew magically in its place.

Then there had been Medusa, a monstrous woman with hair filled with living, hissing snakes. Why did everything he thought of have to involve snakes?

"Keep thinking, Kelvin," Mervania teased. "Keep thinking. There was also Circe, with whom Odysseus dallied for twenty years before returning to his wife. Now there was an example for you!

Will poor little Heln weave a tapestry by day and unravel it by night, waiting for your return?"

"I think I know!" Kian said. "It's—"

Coppery eyes glanced at his brother. Kian choked and went silent. A spell like a serpent's gaze?

Why, oh why couldn't he think!

"You can, Kelvin," Mervania said encouragingly. "You just have to try. You are getting warm, as you used to say in that children's game. Multiple heads. Yes, that's close. But do you recall the particular mythical being that caused you the most terror? I'll give you a clue: it wasn't your wife's namesake, Helen of Troy." She paused, tilting her head prettily. "Oh, excuse me! She was named after her father, a figure of quite another nature!"

He thought hard. Multiple heads. The trinity? Something like that? But something Greek. Something legend. Something that had worked on his boyish imagination and given rise to a nightmare.

"A great hero fought this one, Kelvin. But then they always did, in your father's frame. One of us visited that world back in its infancy, and that's the source."

Chimaera's Copper

Kelvin felt as though he were failing a test. All he could think about was the face at the aperture, and whether there was any clothing on what was below it, and his bonds, his father and his brother.

"Dunce!" she snapped at last. "I tire of this. I'll show you my fascinating body. I'm coming out."

The gate clicked, then swung wide on creaky hinges. Back of the opening Kelvin saw a walk, a garden, and a building. Then the face, the beautiful woman's face, was peeking around the gatepost.

"Mervania," he started.

The face kept coming. It was on a long, coppery-scaled neck.

A serpent woman! I knew it! Gods, she's a snake!

"Oh, fiddle," Mervania said, and stepped all the way out.

Kelvin drew in a disbelieving breath as he took in the sight.

On clawed feet, a coppery scaled body of immense size. Beside her head, a dragon's head, and beside the dragon's, Mertin's. All three heads were on the front of a body that was all coppery scales, but was otherwise that of a scorpiocrab in all but size. Great pincers reached and clicked in front while at either of the monster's two sides were two human arms: scaly feminine ones on Mervania's, scaly muscle-bulging ones on Mertin's. On the farthest end of the body, coming up last, the tapering crustacean posterior and the long sting, this one of copper.

Kelvin was forced to think, now. The one creature he had been suppressing because of a nightmare.

Modified greatly, but recognizable. Instead of a goat's body, the body of a scorpiocrab. Instead of one lion head, one goat head, and one dragon head, two human heads and the dragon. Instead of a serpent's tail, a scorpiocrab's sting. The realization overwhelmed him. To think that he had imagined peeking at the luscious feminine body of that!

"Chimera," he whispered.

"Chimaera," she said. "Or Chimæra, if you can fathom it. Get it right, Kelvin."

Chimaera. A monster that had to be far smarter and even more dangerous than the one the ancient Greeks had known.

CHAPTER 4

Amb-assador

St. Helens rode the big gray war-horse down the country road, musing to himself as he shooed a Chimaera's Copper

buzzing insect away from his black beard. It was a sunny, nice day for a ride, but this was to be a long one.

Damn! Special messenger to King Bitler of Hermandy! Sounds great, but I don't like it. What skills do I have for dealing with kings? Charm, right? But from what I hear, Bitler is about as nice as old Adolf! Sometimes I wish I were back on Earth, I really do. I don't feel like an ambassador for anyone, particularly that guy at the palace. That just can't be Rufurt, it can't! I feel like an ass.

Ambassador. Ass. Amb-assador.

"St. Helens! St. Helens!"

He turned in his saddle to see the former boy-king Phillip Blastmore riding down on him. The boy had evidently been awake after all. Naturally the lad would have followed him, waiting until he was well started on his journey before showing himself.

"Damn!" He pulled up and waited until Phillip's brindled gelding was alongside his mare. "I thought I told you to stay! This is official. Damn it, I don't need a kid along!"

"I'm coming to keep you out of trouble." His mouth smiled, but St. Helens suspected that truth resided in that statement.

"YOU! Keep ME out of trouble?! You, young pupten, have been trouble since you were hatched!"

"I wasn't hatched. I was found under a rock, same as you."

"Probably you were. And old Melbah then took complete charge of you."

The boy's face fell. Immediately St. Helens regretted saying it. Bantering insults were one thing, but real ones were another. There was too much truth in Melbah's early influence over the lad.

"I'm sorry, St. Helens." Phillip's voice trembled. "If you really don't want me along—"

"Now where'd you get a dumb idea like that! Of course I want you along! Glad to have your company. What would I do for trouble without you?"

"But you said—"

"I say a lot of things. Curse of the Irish—one of the curses, anyhow. Haven't I taught you about jokes?"

"Eh, yes. Like when you said 'That girl has nice jugs!' when anyone could see she carried wine bottles."

Ouch! Under Melbah's evil care the young king hadn't gotten out much. A trip or two with the old man might add immeasurably to the lad's education. "You happen to notice anything else about her, lad?"

Chimaera's Copper

"She had an excellent figure. I'm surprised you didn't realize that."

Well, maybe there was hope; he was beginning to catch on to the basics. "Maybe next time."

"I can really be a lot of help, you know. I was king once, if only in name. I can tell you the protocol that's expected, and then you won't embarrass us."

"Tell you what, Phil. If you catch the old saint crapping on the carpet, you speak right up."

"Oh I will, St. Helens, I will. Only you didn't do that, even in Aratex. I'd have smelled it if you had."

St. Helens rolled his eyes upward. Smart kid, but sometimes he was a smarty pants. A little dusting of the britches cured that, but royal posteriors presented problems.

"Just let's say that I'll appreciate your help. Whenever and however." And if ever.

But Phillip was now looking back the way they had come. A horse was approaching with a rider. As the horse drew closer the uniform of a palace guard was evident.

"Now why would one of those fellows be riding after me?" St. Helens asked. "Something new come up?"

The rider was a young guardsman St. Helens had seen at the palace but not spoken to. He could have sworn the fellow rode the king's favorite horse.

"Messenger Reilly," the guardsman gasped. "I'm from the palace detail, but I'm on my own. I've heard a lot about you, how you fought the witch and all. Sir, I'm Charley Lomax."

"I recognize you, close enough. What's the urgency?"

Lomax eyed the boy. "It's for your ears alone, St. Helens."

"You can speak in front of Phil. I trust him."

Charley Lomax, Royal Guardsman, breathed rapidly in and out. His brows knitted as if he were forcing a difficult thought. "Sir, I beg permission to accompany you on your mission to Hermandy."

"The king send you?" This was indeed strange.

"No, sir. As I said, I'm doing this on my own."

St. Helens had heard, but hadn't assimilated it. "You mean you're deserting your post?" He didn't like this. Deserters always had his sympathy, but helping one was trouble.

"I mean I wish to serve the true interest of my king and country. I know that you do too, Messenger Reilly, so—"

"You serve your king by deserting him?" St. Helens asked sharply.

Chimaera's Copper

"I don't believe the man at the palace is the king."

There it was. "You did right. Very right. Certainly you can accompany me." Then, after a pause:

"And call me St. Helens."

"Thank you sir!" Lomax exclaimed, breaking into a grin. "St. Helens, sir!"

The man was in trouble with the man who wore the crown, he thought. If his guess was correct, all of them were about to be in similar trouble. If they couldn't head off that trouble, they would have to prepare to meet it head-on.

They rode on together, the three of them, on Messenger Reilly's mission to Hermandy.

Lester, sweating under the new bronzed helmet with its ostark feather marking him as officer, reviewed the assembled troops. Up and down the columns he rode. From the back of the fine gelding he had been given he looked down into the disciplined faces. Now and then he inspected a sword or crossbow. Briefly he examined the mobile catapults. He felt, he had to admit to himself, and only to himself, like a total fool. Here he was pretending to be an officer when he had never before been one. Serving a king who was probably an impostor, he couldn't have said why. It was one bad, bad situation.

He pulled the reins on his horse's bridle and steered around the huge wheels on the last catapult in line toward his father. Mor, though having been born to fight, looked as uncomfortable in a general's uniform as he felt.

"General Father," Les said in a low voice, "you see anything wrong with these?"

"Top-notch," Mor replied. "The finest mercenaries and equipment Throod had."

Yes, Lester thought, the finest bought fighters. Each trained to kill or die for the cause that pays and never once to question the rightness or the wrongness. Each trained to believe soldiering the highest calling. Good soldiers all, damn it, and not the sort to doubt.

"You want to make the speech, Father? You've got the wind for it."

Mor gave him an almost invisible frown, then stepped his horse around the catapult. He was a big man, on a big war-horse.

"Men," Mor boomed, "we are about to march into Klingland and Kance, the twin kingdoms ruled by twin brothers. Half of you will go to Klingland. Half will go with my son, General Lester Crumb, into Kance. While we are marching, Sean Reilly, whom you know as St. Helens, hero of the war with Aratex, will be on a secret mission to secure Hermandy as an ally. Our armies will meet after victory in the twin capital of Lonris on the Thamesein River. Any questions?"

Chimaera's Copper

As Les had expected, there were none. Military commanders normally did not speak that way to troops, and certainly did not ask for questions. The troops might be bemused by this approach. But Mor and Les were not militarily trained except in the fires of revolution. In the war for Rud and then again in the war with Aratex they had served interests they had entirely believed in. It was too bad the same could not be said in this case.

"Then we march. And may the gods smile and bring us united to an easy victory."

Yes, but what victory? To Les, victory was holding Jon lovingly in his arms. That little tomboy could be extremely feminine when she chose! Sticking a sword in a stranger wasn't in the same league. Oh, if only Kelvin comes to our rescue again! Oh if only, for I fear we are making a mistake.

Unbidden, a thought came to him. If their king was really an impostor from the frame Kelvin and his brother Kian had visited, then could Kelvin be safe? If the impostor had done something evil to their rightful king, what of the roundear who had bested him? Wouldn't that evil man want revenge?

He was afraid to come too close to an answer. Anyway, it was time to march.

The Brownberries had been in need, all right! The man was struggling to bring in the harvest before the season turned, and the woman was ill with the ten-day fugue. The daughter was just fifteen, and willing and able to work, but could not do enough.

The crux of the problem was this: one man could cut and haul the brownberry plants if he had to, with the help of his good horse. But immediately after cutting they had to be brought inside and the long fibers separated before they hardened. That was a two-person job. If the man took the time to work with his daughter on the separation, he would not have time to complete the arduous cutting and hauling, and much of the crop would be spoiled. But if he did not, the separation could not be done.

Hal's unexpected arrival had been welcomed with something almost like tears. He was not skilled in brownberry farming, but that didn't matter; the girl was.

So now he was seated opposite her in the curing shed, holding the root-end of each plant while she deftly separated each long fiber at the blossom-end, and stretched it out until it came neatly away from the main body of the stem. A good stem could have as many as a dozen of the tough fibers, each of which could in due course be woven into the developing fabric of a new brownberry shirt.

Then the squeezed juice of the berries would dye that shirt the traditional brown. Those shirts were the best and cheapest staple of local apparel; almost every rustic wore one.

This also meant that Hal had spent the day doing little except gaze at the young woman opposite him, Easter Brownberry. She had seemed like a plain girl, but now that he saw her in her area of expertise, her hands moving quickly and cleverly, he realized that it was only her shyness. Her hair fell down around her shoulders, the exact color of brownberry, the tresses moving like snakes as her head turned. Easter was well endowed for her age, and her face was attractive as she concentrated.

Chimaera's Copper

Her breasts shifted slightly within her own brownberry shirt as her arms drew out the fibers. Every so often she glanced at him and smiled, letting him know that she appreciated his help, even though he was only holding. She became even more attractive when she did that.

Then he took a turn, because Easter was tiring. She had to take him through it in pantomime first, standing behind him and reaching around to guide his arms in the necessary motions. The fibers did not just let go; they had to be tweaked just so.

Hal felt her bosom pressed against his back. It was almost as if she were embracing him.

He went a little crazy then. He turned within her arms, coming to face her. He kissed her.

Easter was so surprised she almost fell. "Mr. Hackleberry!" she exclaimed.

Damn! Why had he done that? He was not a man to take advantage of a girl young enough to be his daughter!

"I'm sorry," he said immediately. "I'll leave."

"But—but the job isn't done!" she protested.

True. "Then I will do it. I promise not to touch you again. I don't know what happened."

They resumed the work. But now when Easter glanced at him, she did not smile. Hal felt terrible.

Finally, shyly, she asked, "Mr. Hackleberry, did you mean it?"

"Of course I did! I had no business touching you, and I won't—"

"I mean," she murmured, blushing as she averted her gaze, "when you kissed me?"

"I said I had no business—"

"But did you?" she persisted, still blushing.

"Yes," he said. "You are a most attractive girl. But—"

"You really think so?"

"Of course I do! But that's no excuse to—"

"I guess you want a quiet affair."

"I never intended to—" he began.

"Mr. Hackleberry, I think you're great, the way you came to help us out. Nobody ever thought I was pretty, before. So if you want to go to the loft—"

Chimaera's Copper

"No!" he protested.

"I've never done it," she said. "But I'd sure like to do it with you, Mr. Hackleberry."

Hal stared at her, realizing that she was serious. He was helping her, he found her attractive, and she was flattered, so she was ready to jump into the hay with him. The worst of it was, he was so strongly tempted.

Heln was worried and she let Dr. Sterk know it. It wasn't that she had any great faith in the physician as anything other than a doctor, but talk she must.

"Hmmm, young lady," the royal physician said, his eyebrows rising like a crest and making his sharp features even more birdlike. "You say the king is not the king, and—"

"Yes! Yes! He must be that look-alike Kelvin told us about. If he is, he's got round ears like mine and Kelvin's. He can't have pointed ears like you and King Rufurt."

Dr. Lunox Sterk did a little hop from one foot to another, a characteristic that heightened his bird impression. "I think, young lady, that you're imagining. Many women think strange things when they're with child."

"Damn it, Doctor," Heln said, feeling herself getting angry. It was awful to be treated like an unreasonable person, especially when one felt that way already. "You can at least look, can't you?

King Rufurt never wore a stockelcap in his life. This king always wears one pulled down around his ears. Isn't that strange?"

"Young Lady, the king is the king. What he wants he does. It is not for you or me or any other subject to question."

"Horse droppings!" Heln said, adopting one of her natural father's crude expressions, slightly edited for decency. "We have to find out if it's the king with the round ears. You have to find out!"

"Young lady, you are being most difficult."

"Darned right," Heln said, now trying a pose of Kelvin's sister, again suitably edited. "And I intend to be more difficult. Either you get a look at his ears and tell me that they are pointed, or—or—I'll leave the palace!"

"Leave the palace!" Dr. Sterk was alarmed. "Really, that would never be allowed. I have my orders.

Your husband wouldn't want—"

"Wouldn't want me here if the king is the evil impostor!" she retorted smartly.

The doctor held up bony hands. "Calm yourself! It's not good for you to get excited. For the sake of the child, be calm."

Chimaera's Copper

"I'll be calm if you'll check his ears. Will you?"

He sighed. She had him over a barrel. If she miscarried or left the palace, he would get much of the blame. "Yes. Yes, I will try to. But the king isn't acting irrationally, for a king. Kings are different.

He may be losing his hair, or it may be turning gray, so he's covering it up. Kings can be even more vain than women."

Heln realized that the good doctor thought he was exaggerating for effect. She managed to disregard the insult to women, and fixed him with her eyes. "Forget the hair. Check the ears."

"I—will try. If it's the hair that is disturbing him, I can prescribe a magic ointment."

Victory, maybe! "Now, Doctor," she said in her steeliest tone. She wasn't good at this, preferring normally to be soft and feminine, but she was desperate.

He went to the chamber door as if dismissed by royalty. Without another word, he exited.

Heln lay back on her pillow in the big four-poster bed and sighed. How totally unlike her! But it was necessary. Why have a sister-in-law like Jon if not to learn from her?

Yes, she thought dreamily. Yes, now we'll all know the truth of this matter.

But then a dark thought came, unbidden and bothersome. "Suppose it is Rowforth?" she whispered to the bust of Rufurt's grandfather. "Suppose it is that evil king Kelvin encountered? What of Kelvin? What of your grandson? What of all Kelvin's gains?"

The bust made no reply. Try as she might, Heln could not make it wink.

"How's she doing, Doctor?" Jon stood outside the chamber and caught the royal physician exiting.

She had been standing there throughout his examination, knowing how embarrassed Heln was about her swollen abdomen.

"Delusional, I'm afraid. She has this fear that other-frame folk are coming here. She thinks our king is the one your brother helped defeat in the other frame."

"I think she's right," Jon said. "As a matter of fact, I know it."

Dr. Sterk shivered the full length of his skinny body. Disappointment was on his face. He had wanted agreement. "She wants me to look at the king's ears."

"So do I." Jon felt there was no sense in denying it. If she was to be thrown into a dungeon, too bad.

In the meantime, she would hold the sling she had, with the rock that was just the right size for a false king. "There's risk?"

"With royalty, Mrs. Crumb, there's always risk."

Chimaera's Copper

"Not with the real King Rufurt. Remember how he laughed? Remember how he enjoyed a joke?

This king seems never to enjoy anything."

"I remember his manner. Perhaps some sorcery has brought about a change."

"You will find out?"

"If he'll let me. Yes, yes, I will try."

"When, Doctor?" They had to pin him down. Otherwise he'd be stalling forever. Men were like that, and doctors especially.

"I suppose I must request that he have an examination. If he refuses—"

"Tell him it's his regular examination. He won't know."

"I... sup... pose." He seemed to speak ineffective volumes in the pauses.

"Now, Doctor."

"Oh, very well." With as much dignity as a man with birdlike beak and ungainly gait could command, he left her for the royal quarters.

Jon sighed. For worse or much worse. I hope for all our sakes I'm wrong. But if I'm right... gods help all of us!

Dr. Sterk entered the royal bedchamber and stopped. The king stood there wearing his stockelcap and nothing else.

"Well, Doctor? I haven't all day!"

Knowing the king's usual routines, Dr. Sterk doubted that. Nevertheless that was his signal to go to work. He tested the king's muscle tone (excellent), listened to his heart (beating strongly), and tested his breathing (powerful, like that of an athlete). He checked everything that he was supposed to.

Except for the ears.

"Well?"

"Your ears, Your Majesty."

"What about my ears?"

"You're wearing a stockelcap. I need to look in your ears for bugs, and—"

"You think I've got bugs in my ears!"

Chimaera's Copper

"Check your hearing. It's just the regular checkup, Your Majesty."

"Oh, very well!" The king whipped off the covering.

Dr. Sterk blinked. Those women had been so convincing! But here were two ears as pointed as he had ever seen. A little bit cleaner than he expected, and not quite so hairy, but—

"What are you doing there?"

"Nothing, Your Majesty." He swallowed, trying to remember that he was the doctor. He really had to ask it. "Why, Your Majesty, wear the stockelcap?" Certainly it wasn't because of developing baldness or gray hair.

"Why? Because I want to!"

"Oh." So he wouldn't find out!

"I caught a little head cold in the ruins. Started giving me the sniffles. But they're gone now."

"Y-yes." Now just what was a head cold, and what was sniffles? Some sort of curse? But the king was right about one thing: he was healthy now.

Dr. Sterk was quite relieved when he finally left the royal presence.

CHAPTER 5

Chimaera

It was strange being picked up and carried by two left scaly human female arms and two right scaly male arms. Kelvin watched the bulge in the male pectoral muscles where they joined the side of the creature. He hardly dared look at the female side where he imagined there was a bit of breast beneath the coppery sheen.

"I hate to disillusion your fond conjectures, but my kind don't have breasts," Mervania told him.

There was a slight reproach in her tone, as though he had insulted her, or perhaps disappointed her.

"Perhaps if my body was of the goatish nature envisioned by Earth's Greeks, I'd have an udder or two on my chest. But as you can see," she clicked the huge claws that were helping to support his weight, "my main body is of the Crustacea."

Yes, he had noticed. Oh, did those pincers feel hard! He was almost disappointed that her body had turned out so unlike his guilty expectation.

Chimaera's Copper

"Why thank you, Kelvin!"

He tried to stifle his further thoughts. Now they were descending a ramp. At the bottom a door was ajar and his father and brother lay still bound hand and foot with the froogears' vines.

There was a third individual, unbound, rather plump, wearing a suit of transparent body-covering armor. Through the armor he could see a body-length undergarment that showed neither seams nor fasteners. The stranger had dark red, wirelike hair, a stern slash of a mouth, and ears that were not quite round as his own, but pear-shaped.

"Why didn't you run out?" Kelvin demanded of the stranger. At that moment the chimaera dumped him on the floor. The scorpiocrab pincers reached past his face, sending a thrill of alarm through him, and neatly snipped the vines. His bonds fell away, and he scrambled to his feet as the monster released the others.

"Because, stupid, it's a chimaera!" the stranger snapped.

Kelvin noted the iron rings set in the stone wall. This place was evidently a dungeon beneath a castle. There were piles of straw for beds. The only other furniture was a trough that stood chest-high and held an assortment of chopped fruits in some sort of gruel. Kelvin could not believe the mouthwatering smell coming from that trough, and he realized that his stomach was really empty. In the far corner he could see an open drain. There was a small stream of water running through a narrow stone depression that entered one side of the cell and exited the opposite. The water looked as inviting as the food, and cool.

"Go ahead, eat, all of you, make yourselves fat!" the stranger said. "If the monster eats you first, that's longer for me!"

"Goodbye for now," the Mervania head said dulcetly.

"Hearty appetites," the Mertin head added.

"GWROOWOOTH!" spat-snarled the dragon head. Huge jaws opened. A forked tongue reached out and just missed licking Kelvin's flinching face.

"Grumpus, no tasting!" Mervania chided.

With astonishing ease the huge mixed-up beast turned, its long copper sting scraping first the wall and then the ceiling as the tail elevated and curled over the back. With a fast scuttling motion the chimaera exited. It turned around its massive copper crustacean body and its human arms grasped the door's edge. The heads looked in at them as the door swung shut. From outside came the sound of a heavy bar dropped firmly in place.

The cell was not really dark. Light filtered down to them from narrow slits spaced at intervals near the ceiling. By that light, Kelvin could see his father and brother rubbing their arms and legs to restore circulation. The chimaera had not bothered to take the vines. Contemptuous of any plans they Chimaera's Copper

might form, it had left their bonds where they had fallen.

"I would have thought there was nothing worse than a golden dragon or a silver serpent," John said, rubbing his feet. "But a chimaera, for god's sake! And copper!"

"Huh," said the stranger. "Where you stupids been? A chimaera could eat your golden dragons and silver serpents for breakfast! Most probably have!"

John Knight gazed at the stranger. "You've encountered them? Other frames?"

"Certainly. You think other worlds don't have transporters?" There was something mechanical and metallic about the stranger's voice. Maybe it was merely its arrogance.

Kelvin watched his father's face. For someone who imagined his own world as far more advanced than others, it was a shock. Kelvin felt a little of the shock himself, and he hadn't his father's illusions.

Kian tiptoed to the door. He listened for a moment, then walked back. "It's gone. I don't think it's listening."

"So we can speak freely now, huh?" The redhead laughed as contemptuously and falsely as could be imagined.

Kelvin found himself looking from stranger to father to half brother. This was a totally incredible situation, even by adventuring standards. Trapped in a chimaera's dungeon with a know-it-all stranger from a different world! That armor had the appearance of glass or plastic, though Kelvin knew of these invisible substances only from his father's description.

"We've never been here before," Kelvin said. "In our frame the chimaera is thought to be only legend."

"You're here by accident?" the man inquired sneeringly.

"Why else?" John Knight demanded, stung by the stranger's manner. "Why else would anyone come here?"

"For the chimaera, of course. Just for the sting of it." Again that incredible, irritating metallic laugh, as though deep inside himself the stranger pushed a button. He seemed at times to be almost as inhuman as the monster.

John's mouth tightened. If the stranger kept irritating him, there would be trouble. No one made fun of John Knight.

"We're all on the same horse," Kelvin said quickly. It was an expression he'd learned from his mother, his father having a similar expression about boats. "We might as well get to know one another. I'm Kelvin Knight Hackleberry. This is my father, John Knight. This is my half brother, Kian Knight. Father came to our frame by accident, and together we came to this frame by accident.

Chimaera's Copper

We were hoping to arrive in a world like ours but with silver serpents instead of golden dragons."

"Real novices, huh? Call me Stapular. I'm a hunter. I'm here by design. I'm the last of my party that's left."

"The others in your party, they were—"

"Destroyed, of course. Damned locals' fault. They interfered, or we'd have gotten it."

Kelvin felt more and more helpless. Just how had he gotten to be the mouth for his party? Yet of the three of them he felt he was best qualified. Stapular was the most irritating person he had encountered, next to his father-in-law, and he wasn't certain his father or half brother could endure that long.

"You mean a superior, frame-jumping party came here to find a chimaera, and was captured by lowly froogears?" Kian voiced the question before Kelvin thought of it. Kelvin had to suppress a smirk; his half brother did have a certain talent for implied sneering, when he chose to exercise it. It was a legacy from his heartless mother, Zoanna.

Stapular responded to the rudeness as rude people often do. "You want your nose flattened, roundear?"

"He just wants information," Kelvin said quickly. "We all do."

"Do, huh?" Stapular's mouth snapped shut as if he intended to keep all the information he had.

"And exchange. Though there's little we can tell you that will help."

"Nothing I can tell you that will help either." Stapular seemed satisfied.

"We were captured by froogears. That fruit they rolled into our chamber—"

"You fell for that, huh? Hah!"

"Yes," Kelvin said evenly. Was this oaf trying to bait them? "We are, I guess you'd have to say, unseasoned in frame travel. We didn't know this world existed, and as I've mentioned, we thought chimaeras a myth."

"Mythstake, wasn't it?"

Kelvin tried not to grind his teeth. Whether Stapular's superior attitude, his repeated use of "huh" or his grating laugh were the most irritating qualities he couldn't have said.

"Well, I'll tell you, Calvin. Unlike your roundear trash, some of us travel freely to any world not proscribed."

"Proscribed?" Ignore the messed-up name and the insult, he told himself. Go for the information.

Chimaera's Copper

Keep the oaf talking.

"By the green dwarves. You've heard of them?"

"No. Unless Mouvar is one."

"Mouvar is. He visits the Minors. My world is Major."

Kelvin's head whirled. Major, Minor. Minor, Major. How little he knew about things Stapular took for granted.

"The Major worlds—they have more magic?"

Again that irritating laugh, indicating no humor. "Magic! Does this," he tapped his transparent armor so that it gave out a crystalline ring, "look like magic?"

"To us it does. But then we're ignorant."

"Yours must be a science world, then," John Knight said. "Like Earth."

"You claim to be from a science world?"

"More science than magic. As a matter of fact, magic isn't supposed to exist, though some in my frame do believe in it," John said.

"Huh, then you are science."

"Sort of. We were just getting around to discovering frame worlds, perhaps, and—"

"Horseless carriages, flying machines, moving and talking pictures, boxes with little living people imaged inside," Kian offered. It was as though he were intent on reporting all the wonders of his father's birthworld in one breath.

"That's primitive science," Stapular said. "You say you were discovering frame worlds?"

"Not me personally," John said. "My people."

"Then you went from a primitive Major to an even more primitive Minor?"

"If that means science world and magic world, yes. It was all an accident with us. Can't you tell us how you came here?"

Stapular nodded. "It wasn't froogears. It was the squarears. They live here but separate from froogears. They're brighter than froogears, but Minors. They tried to keep us hunters out. When we ignored their ludicrous laws they used magic. They're protecting this last of the chimaera, even bringing it copper. Damn fools! If they realized what that sting is worth on other worlds—"

Stapular broke off. It was as though his flow of speech had been silenced with a switch.

Chimaera's Copper

"You're merchants! Traders!" John exclaimed. "Not only hunters but dealers. In fact, from what you say, you're poachers!"

"Hah, you think we'd risk chimaera for the fun of it?"

"No," John said grimly. "I doubt that you'd risk chimaera except for some great profit."

"The squarears don't know the sting's value. No way they can use the transporter and find out. Only roundears and those like us can use the transporter here. The dwarves have the transporters booby-trapped to keep Minors from mixing too much with Majors and vice versa."

"These squarears who live here," Kelvin broke in. "How'd they stop you?"

"Magic, of course. Huh, they used a spell before we could act. We didn't know they were around, and then we were paralyzed, our weapons useless. One of those timelock spells you probably know about."

John interrupted the pregnant silence that developed. "Paralysis we understand, but timelock?"

"Time stoppage in a small area. Gives 'em time. Very unscientific."

"Magic, then," Kelvin said.

"Magic."

"These squarears," John prodded, "they just left you for the chimaera?"

"They left us for the froogears. The froogears delivered us and all our equipment."

"Then it was just the same as for us. Only we didn't encounter squarears."

"Right."

"And the others in your party?"

"Eaten one by one."

"By the chimaera. That doesn't seem possible."

"Huh, a lot you know about it."

"I didn't say it didn't happen. Only it does seem strange. On any world I've ever been on eating something as intelligent as your species is unheard of."

"You're not as intelligent, stupid. Not even I am."

"I, ah, see." John mentally shrugged as he realized that Stapular regarded the chimaera as more intelligent than all of them. Maybe it was true, but the notion took some adjusting to. Was it that Chimaera's Copper

those two human heads counted double?

"Could the squarears stop the chimaera?" Kelvin asked. "With their timelock?"

"Magic is magic. Why'd they want to try?"

Kelvin couldn't have answered. It was just a long shot, that they might get help. Long shots seemed to be their best shots, now.

A sudden unbarring of the door drew all of their attention. The door opened enough to admit Mervania's head. She peered in at them, seeming so much the coppery-tressed woman as almost to fool them. She evidently liked doing that! Then the door swung wide and there was Mertin-head and Grumpus-head beside Mervania-head. The scorpiocrab body scuttled inside.

Mervania looked down on them while Mertin added more food to their trough from a large bucket.

Deliberately, teasingly, she lifted something large and green to her mouth and sank her pretty white teeth into it.

Kelvin felt his stomach twist. That thing she was eating. Like a giant pickle, but—

It was a forearm. Green, with little seeds stuck to it. Fingers, a thumb. A pickled arm.

Kelvin's stomach heaved, but it was already empty. He was able only to retch without substance.

"Really, Kelvin!" she said reprovingly, licking off her petite lips. "It is as you thought, a pickle.

Pickled arm. Very tasty with added copper." She took another bite, her teeth now showing points.

Kelvin retched again.

"And you, Stapular," she continued between bites. "I'm thinking of a new recipe. First I'll dip you in lye while you're alive, and then—"

"Mervania!" Mertin snapped. "Don't give away your recipes!"

"Oh, all right! I'll just leave that for a surprise." She sucked on some now-fleshless fingerbones, then bit them off with a crunch. Those dainty jaws were stronger than they looked!

"This is boring," Mertin complained. "We've slopped the stock; let's go."

Mervania's mouth curved into a frown. "Spoilsport!" she muttered.

Tail raised over its back, the chimaera departed.

"Whew," Kelvin said. "Whew!" Cold sweat beaded his brow in large drops. He felt even sicker than his stomach did.

Chimaera's Copper

CHAPTER 6

Dupes by Default

St. Helens wasn't happy about having Charley Lomax and Phillip Blastmore along. Young bloods were hot bloods and youthful self-control was not ideal. He himself had never had self-control at their ages, and look at all the trouble he'd seen! Yet the young fellows remained as good companions and took his few orders in soldierly fashion. He had been afraid that when they reached the palace in Herlin, capital city of Hermandy, there would be questions. But no guardsman of the dictator bothered the official messenger, and neither did the boys.

King Bitler looked mean. Ornery lock of black hair over his eyes, aggressive black mustache under sharp nose, he was just plain ugly. St. Helens mused on it as he watched the king unseal and read the official letter.

"Sean Reilly," the dictator's slightly mad voice said as his moderately mad eyes gazed down at him.

"Kelvinia and Hermandy are now allies."

"Yes, Your Majesty." And how I wish it wasn't so!

"Our mutual enemies are the twin kingdoms of Klingland and Kance. By order of Kelvinia's King Rufurt and myself you are to be put in full command of Hermandy's armed forces. Your rank is to be commanding general. Do you accept the commission?"

I'd better, St. Helens thought, or I'll never live to accept or decline another. You'd like that, wouldn't you, pigface!

"I do, Your Majesty."

"In that case you will proceed against the enemy as soon as you are issued the proper uniform." The tyrant leaned back, a palace flunky bowed to him, and then with a peremptory, sweeping gesture he motioned St. Helens out of the Royal Presence.

The audience with the Hermandy king was at an end. None too soon, by his reckoning! St. Helens knew that like it or not he would be fulfilling the wishes of both Bitler and the king he suspected was Rowforth. He felt his stomach do an experimental turn.

Mor Crumb rode the big horse at the head of the column of the finest troops money could buy, and silently and bitterly chastised himself.

We're on the way to Klingland, on the way to fight! To destroy boys like my Lester! Lester to destroy other boys in Kance. Damn my weakness! Damn my not standing up to that impostor! Damn, damn, Chimaera's Copper

damn!

Ahead was the border, its location marked by guardhouses on either side of the road. The guardhouses were empty. Though King Kildom must have received the declaration of war, the border here was wide open.

Now what, Mor the old soldier had to ask himself as they crossed, can that possibly mean?

Lester did not like generaling. Here he was in fancy uniform approaching the border between Kelvinia and Kance. His father would be at the Klingland border now. St. Helens would be getting fitted for a new black uniform. One way or another they were all going to war. This was not as it should be, kings and prophecies be damned.

Ahead were the wide river and the waiting ferry. An old man with bleary eyes took the pass and poled him and a couple of lieutenants across.

"Something's happening in Kance," the oldster said.

"Yes, what's that?" Les was watching the straining horses pulling the cable as the ferry crossed. He had never ridden a ferry before. The water was high and muddy, so the horses were working hard.

"No one here all morning. Unusual."

"There are usually soldiers on the Kance side?"

The oldster slapped his thigh and cackled. "That's a good one, that is!" he said with a mouth full of rotted teeth. "And you wearing the uniform of a general! With Hermandy for a neighbor and the caps so near the river who'd—" He stopped, aware that his mouth might betray him.

Yes, with the capital city for both Klingland and Kance so near to the river, who would leave the border here unguarded? He knew that there was a witch running things, but he had never heard she was stupid. Witch Melbah had guarded Aratex from Conjurer's Rock, but here there was no high rock overlooking a pass leading to the capital. Why leave the border open? Why not raise the river and a storm such as Melbah would have done?

The log raft dipped and rose with a wave, and the men at the Kance side prepared for its landing.

Stolid working types, they had their poles ready.

No problem, but no guards. The raft landed in its berth and Les and the lieutenant disembarked.

They watched the barge go back, the old man bending to his task with the sweeps. No one made comment.

So here they were starting an invasion. So far it was a picnic. Les had imagined there might be rows of archers on their shore. But there were no troops and no one to stop them and demand that they surrender. In a way Lester felt disappointed. He'd almost rather be made a prisoner at the outset than Chimaera's Copper

have to lead a fight he didn't believe in. He should have spoken up, but somehow he hadn't.

No soldiers waiting. No resistance mobilized. What did it all mean?

Hal gazed at Easter as they lay in the loft. "You know this is wrong," he said. "I'm married and you're too young."

"I've loved it every time!" she said. "I'm only sorry you have to go now."

So it seemed. He had lost count of the number of times they had done it, these past three days. It seemed she was a lonely girl who had never had this sort of attention before. He could understand her attitude—but what of his own? He was long since old enough to know better! "So have I, Easter," he said. "I think I love you. But—"

"And I love you, Hal! But I know how it is. You're married. You never told me wrong. But will you come again?"

"I shouldn't."

"But you will. I promise, I'll never tell! I just want to be with you, Hal."

Gods help him, he wanted to be with her too. She gave him the love and passion that Charlain lacked. But how could he leave Charlain? She needed someone to run the farm.

"I'll try," he said. And knew that neither storm nor drought could keep him away, wrong as it was.

Jon confronted Dr. Sterk in the hallway. "Well?" she asked with raised eyebrows.

The doctor sighed. "He does indeed have pointed ears."

"So then it is Rufurt, our proper king!" Jon had been so certain!

But the doctor did not look as if he believed what he himself had said.

Kildom faced Kildee in the throne room. Both were lying on the carpet on their bellies. Between them was the playing area for their cards.

"Now you take this one," Kildom said, slapping down a queen. The queen, like all playing-card queens, wore a smirk, as though she and the knave were up to naughtiness.

"No problem," Kildee said. Slap, down went the laughing sorcerer.

Chimaera's Copper

"Damn," said Kildom. "I forgot about that."

"You always do. This is the fourth game in which you forgot the sorcerer."

"Better to lose to magic than to might," said Kildee. He studied the face of his twin, so similar to himself that both had identical moles on their cheeks: Kildom on the right cheek, Kildee on the left.

That made sense, as Kildom was right-handed, Kildee left-handed. Both faces were quite handsome in childish ways. Today was special because it was the day both rulers turned six.

"Why is it," Kildom inquired, "that we count a birthday only every four years?" Every birthday he had the same question.

"Because," his baby-faced brother replied, "it's Leaping Day, also Monarch Day, a day that comes up on the royal calendar once every four years. If we'd been born on Zebudarry twenty-eighth instead of Zebudarry twenty-ninth we'd be twenty-four."

"True. Quite true." Kildom rolled over and stood up on little pudgy legs. He looked down at his twin, his hands toying with his lace collar. "If only our bodies were grown! Some days I don't think I can wait until I'm a hundred before taking a queen."

"What would you know about that!" Kildee retorted. "We're only six and what you have in your royal pants I have in mine."

"Do not! Mine's bigger."

"Bigger butt, maybe."

They tangled, arms and legs and heads. Kildee was on top and blacked his brother's right eye with his left fist. Then Kildom rolled over and blacked Kildee's left eye with his right fist. It was always thus.

"Boys, boys, boys!" Helbah said reprovingly. She was very old, far older than they had reason to think about. She bent over now and picked them up by their lace collars, shook them hard, and sat them down.

Kildom, king of Klingland, looked up at her wrinkled face and tried not to cry. His eye hurt, as it always did when his brother blacked it. "He hit me, Helbah!"

"And you hit him back. You both got what you deserved."

Kildom sighed. So true, so very true.

"You boys are going to have to exercise a little restraint. Your kingdoms have problems."

"They have?" This was news to them both.

"They do. Some people think you are babies. They don't realize that you have the intelligence of Chimaera's Copper

grown men."

Kildom wished that his emotions were not those of a six-year-old. He could convince his intellect of almost anything, but his emotions were another matter.

"Now we know," Helbah said, "that Kelvinia has made a pact with your hereditary enemy in Hermandy. We know because old Helbah has her ways."

"Magical," said Kildee.

"Witchy," said Kildom, not to be outdone.

"Yes, yes. Now we mustn't negate the craft by putting false names to it. Helbah has a power that is good and for your protection. She knows you are threatened and by whom."

"We understand, Helbah," Kildom said. He knew his brother would not have to withdraw his suggestion of magic. Magical or witchy, the powers were hers.

Helbah squeezed the boy's tiny hand. She looked into his face as if he were indeed all man.

"Kildom, your kingdom is now being invaded by forces led by Mor Crumb, the former opposition leader in Rud. Kildee, you have his son's invasion on your hands."

"Your magic can stop them, Helbah," Kildee said confidently. "It's more powerful than armies."

"Perhaps. You know that Helbah will try."

Kildom felt more alarm and saw alarm on his brother's face. If Helbah expressed caution, the matter was serious!

"You see," Helbah explained, "Hermandy would not attack you without magical assistance. Bitler wanted help from Zatanas, the sorcerer slain by Kelvin. Now Bitler has found the help he lacked."

"You are certain?" Kildee asked.

"I am certain that there is a power in the newly formed kingdom of Kelvinia. How well controlled and how powerful I can only guess."

"Then you do not know everything," Kildom suggested, disappointed.

"No. My clairvoyance is limited and my precognition all but absent. I know that Melbah, my duplicate from another frame, was killed by Kelvin. I did not know she would be killed or see it happening. There are limits to all abilities, including mine."

"Never mind, Helbah," Kildom said, impulsively grabbing her around the neck. "My brother and I will protect you."

"That's nice," she said, managing to look reassured.

Chimaera's Copper

Rowforth, formerly king of Hud in another world, now the imitation king of Kelvinia, looked into the mirror and laughed. His ears looked so preposterous to him. Newly pointed and with no more hair on them than on a baby's rump, they were the proper size and shape for this frame. They had to be, considering where he had obtained them.

Zoanna, his fully pointeared consort here, tweaked his left ear as she massaged it and pulled its point. "They are quite ready to show now, dear Rufurt. The magical ointment has worked its wonders."

"Don't call me Rufurt."

"It's your name now. You have to get used to it. You are after all taking the man's place."

"King's place," he corrected her. Though very bright for a female, she didn't quite seem to recognize the qualitative difference between mere man and godlike king.

"Yes, stoneheart," she said affectionately. She nuzzled the ear, as if liking her handiwork almost as much as him.

Rowforth rubbed his cheek against hers and wished that for all her beauty and her magic she were not so much the local. He had enjoyed punching her counterpart, Zanaan. He couldn't imagine punching Zoanna, since the queen had magic and would retaliate. Too bad, but eventually he would find other women he could beat and pummel and kick and bite with impunity.

"What are you thinking, my lusty king? About destroying those who thwarted me before? About tormenting those who robbed you of your kingdom in that other place?"

"Not exactly," he confessed. In the mirror reflection he did look like the rightful king. It was both reassuring and angering. Round ears, after all, were natural. "I've been thinking of revenge."

"The Roundear of Prophecy? Kelvin, spawn of the roundear John Knight?"

"Sort of. That woman in the palace is his wife. She carries our worst enemy's brat."

"Yes, yes." She seemed delighted with his dialogue.

"I plan on torturing her. Before his eyes."

"Yes, yes, yes." Her eyes were bright, her lips parted and wet. Her queenly robe was falling open, showing more of her intriguing figure. One would hardly have guessed her true age, looking at her body. Magic was wonderful stuff!

"And perhaps a bit of magic. Make pointed ears on them both."

Chimaera's Copper

"That would take time. It's not like something you do to extract a confession. Yours was a very special case. They don't have convenient doubles to borrow from."

"You could start now. Get Sterk to ointment her ears. Maybe give her something to affect the cub in her. If she could give birth to something misshapen and revolting before they all are allowed to die..."

"Oh yes, yes, yes! Brilliant! You are the greatest, most magnificent consort ever!" She put her hands to his head and turned his face to hers with a ferocity and eagerness that almost scared him. Zanaan had never been like this! She kissed his lips, pressing them hard with hers. Her passions were aroused by what he accidentally said. It seemed that the same sort of thinking aroused them both. He took her in his arms and then to the bed. She looked just like his consort in the other frame, but she was a world different! That malice and savagery lent her phenomenal sex appeal, while Zanaan's disgusting niceness made her appealing only when she was screaming with pain and humiliation.

"It's so early in the day!" she exclaimed. There were golden lights in her greenish eyes. Zanaan had had those too, but they hadn't ever lit up for him.

He enjoyed kingly privileges all morning in a manner he had seldom if ever done before. Thanks, he felt certain, to some magic substance added to his wine that gave him a seemingly indefatigable potency. The queen had done it, surely, but he didn't mind at all. What a lithe and joyfully vicious creature she was! Her rapture was almost like that of pain, which really turned him on.

During and after his exertions he thought not so much of Zoanna, or even of Zanaan. What he most thought about were delightful new means of extending torment in helpless folk, especially in attractive women. How similar the reactions of sex-making seemed to those of agony. Once he got into the real thing...

CHAPTER 7

Squarears

It happened so suddenly that Kelvin hadn't time to think. One moment he was trying fruitlessly to sleep on the straw bed the chimaera provided, and the next it was broad daylight and he was looking up at an orange sky with whippy yellow clouds. His back felt as though a stick was poking in it. He felt around with his hands and recognized the prickle of grass. He was on the ground, outside. But how?

"Greetings, visitors."

Kelvin sat up. The person who had spoken stood beside him: blocky of build, with straw-colored hair and ears that stuck out and were square. There were several similar folk beyond.

Chimaera's Copper

Kian and John were sitting beside him. Stapular was nowhere in sight.

"You—you—what?" Kelvin inquired intelligently. He wasn't yet sure whether this or the chimaera's den was reality.

"The squarears," his father supplied. "Remember Stapular telling us?"

Kian was looking past all of them. "We're back at the cave!"

"Very true," the squared individual said. He held a huge copper needle that seemed a duplicate of the chimaera's sting. "You are now free to leave here and continue your journey."

"But—" Kelvin said. Could it all have been a dream? But no, dreams never remained this clear.

Besides, he could still taste the mash he had eaten from the chimaera's trough.

"I am Bloorg," said their apparent rescuer. "Official Greeter and Sender, Keeper of the Transporter to Other Worlds, Keeper of the Last Known Existing Chimaera. I'm sorry that we did not check on you in time. We were preoccupied with more deliberate visitors."

"Stapular's people?" Kelvin asked.

"Yes."

"He's still there? In the chimaera's cellar?"

"Yes. He deserves to be, though I doubt the chimaera will find him tasty eating."

Kelvin shivered. Poor Stapular! But why had they been rescued, and that man not?

"That magic Stapular spoke about," John said, almost answering Kelvin's thoughts. "Timelock?"

"Yes," Bloorg said. "We simply took you away without the chimaera's awareness, or yours, or the other captive's."

"But why?" Kelvin demanded. It surprised him that he demanded anything, but the hero's role was gradually growing on him, "Why were we rescued, and not him?"

"Stapular's people were here deliberately. They came to do harm. You, in contrast, arrived by chance."

"You—you know?" Telepathic?

"Limited telepathy," Bloorg agreed. "Enough to know your thoughts, though unable to communicate that way."

"And the chimaera is telepathic," Kelvin said. "I know, because—"

Chimaera's Copper

"Because it exchanged thoughts with you. Yes, it is a complete telepath, able to receive and send, which is part of what makes it unique. But we have kept it confined for some time. We know how to keep it from our thoughts."

"You're like zookeepers!" John said. "You're a chimaerakeeper!"

"Correct."

"But why?" Now John looked as bewildered as Kelvin felt.

"Uniqueness. In all the frames we know of, this is the last of the chimaera's kind. Should it be destroyed, the victim of genocide, to satisfy an alien's greed?"

"No. No it shouldn't, but—"

"You think of your fellow prisoner and his claim to be from a Major world. Major and Minor are in the eyes of the beholder, as your people say. It was no love of knowledge that brought them here."

"But you did let them be slaughtered, eaten by the chimaera?"

"Of course."

Kelvin looked at his father and brother, and wondered. Were they as appalled by this as he was?

"Your property was also rescued," Bloorg said. He gestured with squared-off fingers. Other squarears stepped forward carrying the levitation belt, the Mouvar weapon, the gauntlets, and the swords.

"So we really are free, then?" Kian asked, seeming hardly to believe it.

"Yes. Go now to your wedding."

Something was not right. Kelvin almost knew, but could not quite pin it down. He buckled on his sword, the Mouvar weapon, and drew on the gauntlets.

"Well I for one am ready to go!" Kian said. "I've had enough of chimaera and poacher. I'm ready to go any time."

Kelvin looked at his father. John was frowning, maybe disturbed about the same thing that was bothering Kelvin. They had after all been confined in the same place. Driven by hunger, they had eaten from the trough Stapular must have eaten from. Kelvin had felt like a piog, gulping slops, but the stuff had been amazingly tasty.

"Do not waste your sympathies on the hunter," Bloorg said. "He is not quite as he seems, and he knew what he risked."

But dipped in lye? Cooked alive? Pickled? Eaten? It seemed all too much. Even the sorcerer Zatanas Chimaera's Copper

and the witch Melbah had received kinder fates, and they, more than gruff Stapular, had seemed to be of a different species.

"I repeat, your sympathies are wasted," Bloorg said. "Once you have considered the enormity of what they planned, you will agree that their fate was deserved."

Sympathy then for the chimaera? A creature that mocked them from a feminine face? A monster that munched human limbs with enjoyment? Was that where his sympathy should lie?

"No," Bloorg answered patiently. "You should not feel sympathy for either. They are what they are, and nothing you or we could do would make any difference."

Evil beings deserving nothing more? But Stapular had seemed human. Not likable, certainly, but human. And advanced.

"Advanced by what cosmic standard?"

Yes. Yes, that made sense. A person might think himself advanced, but that was as likely to be vanity as fact. Greed was after all greed, and cruelty was cruelty. But could a monster be said to be cruel? Wasn't its taunting ways simply part of its nature?

"You are remarkably philosophical for one so recently rescued." The squarear was looking at him from blocky pupils in blocky eyes set in a blocky head. Looking, seemingly, into the roundeared, roundeyed, roundheaded depths of him.

"It's my nature," Kelvin said. "I have to question."

"Of course you do."

Kian looked toward the cave. "Any time you're ready, Kelvin, Father."

"All right." John Knight stood. He held out his hand to Bloorg. "In my frame it is the custom to clasp the hand of someone who has saved your life, and say thanks."

"You are most welcome," Bloorg said. They shook, John wincing as he felt the other's hand.

Kian was already on his feet, extending his hand similarly. Kelvin, uneasy for no reason he could quite define, followed their example. When he took Bloorg's six-fingered hand he knew why his father and his brother had acted surprised. It was chilly, like a froogear extremity, but dry rather than clammy. The fingers wrapped around his wrist, showing that they were many-jointed, like little tails.

The alien feel of the appendage drove all other thoughts away.

"Come," John said, and Kelvin followed with Kian. It was farther than it had appeared to be, and it seemed to get no closer as they walked. Then suddenly it was much closer, and each step was taking them rapidly forward.

Kelvin looked back. The squarears were gone, vanished.

Chimaera's Copper

"Magic!" Kian said, also looking back. "I knew there was something funny about it. We weren't where we seemed to be."

Kelvin had to agree, though he was not elated. Somehow magic and the evident extent of the squarears' powers was depressing. True, the magic of the gauntlets had saved him many times, but it had always seemed to him that having magic was an unfair advantage. What chance did a master swordsman have, for instance, against a bungle-foot like himself, when his sword was clasped by a hand in a magic gauntlet? Kelvin knew himself to be no hero, merely a person whose ordinary abilities were amplified by magic. Now he had encountered creatures who seemed to be far beyond that magic. It was disconcerting.

"Hey, Son, you look glum!" his father said lightly. It was almost a doggerel rhyme, the kind he had done to cheer Kelvin as a child.

"I can't get it out of my head, Father."

"What, that you were rescued? That none of us will be eaten?"

Finally the thing that had been bothering him focused. "No, Father. That Stapular will be eaten." He let that sink, then plunged ahead. "Is that right, Father? Is it?"

"I wondered how long it would take for your conscience to catch up," John said. "You can't let anything be. You always have to work it out to the last degree, so that it makes sense on every level.

You are unusual in that, perhaps unique."

"I'm sorry," Kelvin said.

"Sorry! Son, that's what makes you a hero!" His father's friendly hand came around his shoulders.

"But look, Son, it's not right by our standards, but this isn't our frame. We shouldn't be here. We're here only by chance. It isn't our business."

"I'm going ahead!" Kian said, and ran on to the cave. He looked inside, looked back, and called,

"This is it, all right! Hurry up!"

"He doesn't care," Kelvin said.

"It's his upbringing. It was different from yours. Remember who his mother was."

Kelvin remembered. Evil Queen Zoanna, who had used magic to fascinate John Knight and seduce him and bear his child. Zoanna had evidently liked to play with men in much the way Mervania did, only Zoanna, being human, had been able to take it farther. "Yes, he's seen more cruelty casually applied."

"In the palace he did. His grandfather and his mother were not noticeably kind. Give him credit for turning out as well as he did, given that environment. He did not have Charlain as his mother."

Chimaera's Copper

That certainly accounted for the difference! Kelvin's mother was the finest woman he knew, though perhaps Heln approached her.

"Hurry it up, won't you!" Kian called.

"And you can't blame him for wanting to get on with his wedding," John said.

Kelvin abruptly stopped. "Father, I'm going back."

"Of course you are, Son. We all are. First to Kian's wedding, as we planned before getting diverted here, and then—"

"No, Father. I mean back to the island in the lake. Back to rescue Stapular."

"Son, you can't!" But something in John's expression suggested that he wasn't surprised.

"I can. I have the gauntlets now, and the levitation belt, and the Mouvar weapon. I can do it."

"No, wait! The chimaera can stun your mind! Think—"

Kelvin knew better than to think. A man of action he must be, though his nature was far more sedentary. Magic and a prophecy made him heroic despite himself.

He touched the control for "up" on the belt, and suddenly he was floating above his father's head, looking back at Kian's astonished form waving at the cave. It was exactly as it was when he practiced with the belt.

"Goodbye, Father. Wait for me if you will. If not, I'll follow you."

"No, wait, you idiot! What kind of a fool are you!"

"I'm a hero, remember?" And he knew his father understood, despite trying to restrain him. Heroes would be heroes, just as kings would be kings, to the wonder and dismay of others.

Sadly yet determinedly he nudged the control and floated smoothly swampward. A bit of acceleration and the swamp breezed by. Now and then he caught a froogear's surprised face in the greenness below, or sight of one of the swamp monsters. He had no doubt of the proper direction, partly because there was a treeless area that was almost like a road, but mostly because the gauntlets tingled ever so slightly when he started going wrong. Soon the lake and island with its imposing wall were in sight.

Have to think now. Have to think. Face the chimaera's power? Think to Mervania? Demand that it release the prisoner?

Down below was the gate where they had waited for the god of the froogears. He drifted over, slowing. Now there was that peculiar walkway bordered by the more peculiar fence. Even while carried by the chimaera he had noticed it. Greenish, tapering, almost thorn-shaped posts. Then there Chimaera's Copper

was the ruined castle with openings like vacant eyes. The chimaera, aware of him or not, was nowhere in sight.

He lowered himself cautiously, with a nudge of the belt control. Past moss-grown walls to a spot directly in front of the doorway to the dungeon. Still no chimaera. Was it going to be this easy? Was the monster going to let him get away with this, knowing that he was now magically armed? Or was the chimaera simply asleep?

He approached the barred door. He lifted the bar, grunting from the weight of it, glancing nervously back over his shoulder. The gauntlets felt warm, but the very existence of the chimaera could account for that.

He hesitated, then forced himself to proceed. He swung the door open.

The chimaera waited inside, sting raised on backward-bending abdomen. All three heads had coppery eyes focused on him.

"Welcome back, Kelvin!" Mervania said brightly. A lightning bolt speared from the tip of the sting and sizzled past his head. A warning shot, surely.

He was prepared as he had not been before. The Mouvar weapon was in his hand and properly set to contain any hostile magic. He pressed the trigger and the antimagic weapon emitted a few colorful sparks.

What was this? It wasn't supposed to do that! It was supposed to make a barrier to hostile magic.

The tip of the chimaera's sting moved, almost imperceptibly. Lightning leaped from it to one of the greenish posts. Sizzling, the bolt leaped from post to post. Now Kelvin realized, belatedly, that the posts were copper stings stuck in the ground. The chimaera was emitting lightning, and the stings in the ground received the lightning and made the spectacular display. A stench hit his nostrils that was partly ozone and partly something he had not known before.

"Stupid roundear!" Stapular cried from the cell. He wasn't even trying to attack, but was instead flattened at the very back of the enclosure.

Time to think about Stapular later. Kelvin's hands burned in the gauntlets and he didn't like ignoring their warning. Quickly he adjusted the weapon's control. Now it would not only block hostile magic from reaching him, as perhaps it had just done, but would turn it back on the sender. If it worked as he hoped, the magic lightning would double back on the chimaera itself.

"If you insist," Mervania said.

"Real dumb one, isn't he!" Mertin remarked.

"Groomth," growled Grumpus.

Kelvin pressed the trigger and held it down. Lightning shot from the tip of the chimaera's tail and Chimaera's Copper

sizzled right at his feet. He felt it, shockingly, through the soles of his feet and all through his body.

His hair seemed to be sparking. The Mouvar weapon, amazingly, did nothing but emit a few colored sparks and get very hot in his hand.

"Really, you must go back inside," Mervania scolded. The chimaera crawled outside as the Mouvar weapon sagged in his tingling fingers. The monster confronted him at close range, and another blue bolt sizzled at his feet.

About this time Kelvin realized one or two things. One was that a species that was near extinction was not necessarily a sweet thing to be near. The other was that he was in real trouble.

Slowly, unsteadily, hardly knowing what he did, he backed away. The chimaera moved after, clicking its pincers before it. He backed into the cell, past the trough, and to the wall beside Stapular.

The lightning stopped. He slid to the floor, as did Stapular. The chimaera closed the door, dropping the bar with what seemed a final crash.

Thank you for coming back, Kelvin! I know you'll be delicious!

Oh, the pain! The incredible shaking, tingling all over him. He felt it everywhere, even in the gauntlets. None of his weapons had been any use! Instead of rescuing Stapular, he had made himself prisoner again.

He rolled up his eyes, trying to adjust to the enormity of what had happened. He had tried to play the hero's part, and had only succeeded in playing the fool's part.

"Satisfied, stupid?" Stapular asked.

"It—it should have worked! Mouvar's weapon is antimagic."

"Antimagic!" Stapular laughed his annoying laugh, as nastily as ever. "Dumb, stupid, Minor World creature! The chimaera wasn't using magic."

"The lightning!"

"Electricity. The monster generates it in its body. Copper conducts. Nothing magical about it.

Science."

"Science?" Kelvin's morale and hopes plummeted. "Not magic?"

"Now you've got it, Minor World idiot! You've come back to be eaten! Doesn't that make you feel just great?"

"The squarears—"

"They won't help you twice. They have no more tolerance for fools than I do, fool."

Chimaera's Copper

"But I have my levitation belt. Once outside, I can—"

"The chimaera can shoot a bolt straight up and cook you in midflight. I've seen it fry passing birds that way. Any that are so stupid as to come within range. Most stay well clear."

"My gauntlets!"

"Won't help a bit. Didn't out there, did they?"

"No, but—"

"But you're back. And you're going to be eaten. Why did you come back anyway?"

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