"To get you released."

"Me? To rescue me?" The red-haired alien looked astonished. The expression was not typical of the way the good citizens of Kelvinia did it; his eyes widened and his facial lines seemed to click out starkly and then recede in place.

"Yes," Kelvin agreed dully.

"Foolish. Incredibly foolish. Worst possible motive I've ever heard."

"You'd do the same for me."

"I would, huh?" The man emitted his nasty laugh. The laughter boomed louder and bounced around the dungeon, striking one wall and then another. Kelvin had never heard of a building being tumbled by laughter, but it almost seemed possible, now. "Me rescue a dummy like you from a Minor frame?

Why should I care whether you're eaten?"

"It's only human," Kelvin said defensively. What was so funny?

Stapular laughed all the harder. With precise control he switched from mocking to insulting to humiliating. He seemed a laugh machine similar to one Kelvin's father had told him about, perhaps jokingly.

"Well gee," Kelvin said wistfully, reverting to a childhood expression, "it sounded right to me."

CHAPTER 8

Battles Strange

General Mor Crumb awoke, dressed, exited his tent and stretched. It was a fine morning; in fact a Chimaera's Copper

glorious morning. The sun was shining over Klingland and Klingland was waiting.

He hailed Captains Abileey and Plink, nodded to a second lieutenant, and exchanged perfunctory salutes with a passing private. The horses awaited, as did the mess. As was not customary in any army, he simply got in line. The privates, mostly from Throod, made room for him with haste, while officers tightened their lips at this display of what Mor felt proper. Since when did an officer act like a common man?

"Jerked spameef!" exclaimed one young soldier holding up a twist of reddish meat. His expression and tone suggested anticipation of a bad taste.

"Field rations, soldier!" Captain Abileey said. "What'd you expect, goouck and fish eggs? Be thankful it's not horse manure on a shingle."

The private blanched. Obviously he had not been long in uniform. "Sorry, sir, I guess I was hoping for something else."

"Probably," Captain Abileey said. "But we'll eat well enough later. After victory."

"Yes, sir." The boy brightened at the thought. Klingland was known for its fine shepton and poreef as well as less common cuisine.

"If we don't delay we'll reach Bliston by noon. There's supposed to be only a small garrison, so there shouldn't be much of a fight. Then Gamish and Shucksort and finally the double cap itself. I make it three days."

"I know that, sir. But thank you anyway."

One way or another, they all filled up on dry rations washed down with steaming mugs of cofte from the army pot. In no time at all they were assembled and on their way, riding single file. The officer in official charge rode at the head.

I don't know why we're doing this, Mor thought, looking ahead at the blur of green. Klingland never did anything to us that I know about. Why didn't we just give old Rufurt the thumb in the nose?

Maybe it was that wine. Yes, that was probably it. I've never been this complaisant about soldiering before in my life. But he did make me a general. Not that I asked for rank or even wanted to volunteer to fight.

Prod, prod, prod.

Someone, probably one of the officers, began the "Horse Manure, Horse Manure" song. It felt good to belt out the familiar lyrics, and Mor found himself bellowing jubilantly with the rest: "Makes the giries scream. Horse—" And so it went. All morning went, little by little, unnoticed by man or horse, undisturbed by sniper's arrows or any appearance of armed locals. It was, he had to admit to himself, a dream march. Absolutely nothing was going wrong. Ahead and to the sides the green blurred steadily.

Chimaera's Copper

At noon they stopped and rested, ate field rations and drank spring water from canteens while the horses chomped grass. In due course they remounted and proceeded as before.

Prod, prod, prod.

Mor was bothered, perversely, by the ease of this. He didn't trust an easy campaign. Only in dreams was everything perfect—until the dreams turned bad.

"Horse—"

A horse whinnied. It was Mor's own. Then, as though urged by the song, it defecated. Mor, for no particular reason, turned in his saddle and looked at the steaming dung as the horse's hooves pounded the ground.

Prod, prod, prod.

Something was not right. Something definitely was not right. The horse should have outdistanced its dung in its first stride. Yet the horse walked and the dung remained directly behind. The horse walked but the ground kept pace. So did the smell.

Mor frowned, trying to understand, and to shake the unnatural euphoric mood he was in. All morning it had been this way. Almost as if he had drunk heavily of wine and experienced nothing but its exhilarating effect. He could hardly damp down the feeling, though he knew it was unnatural.

He was after all on the way to a fight. Fear was a better emotion than contentment!

There it was, horse dung, steaming and fragrant, gathering flies.

Finally it registered. "Damn!" he swore, appreciating the subtle beauty of it. He knew what was wrong.

"Captain Abileey, Captain Plink," Mor said. "We are in deep manure."

"Why is that, sir?" Captain Abileey's boyish face just missed being ecstatic. Mor knew that this was going to be difficult for him, because he was entirely taken in by the illusion.

"We're making good time, General," Captain Plink said. "No opposition all morning. We must have come a good twenty—"

"Bliston's not that far," Mor pointed out.

"Well, sir?" Captain Abileey inquired. His cheeks were as ruddy as if he'd just stepped from a tavern. Unquestionably this was one of the most contented moments of his life. But Mor, nominal leader, had no choice but to end it.

"Look there," Mor said, pointing.

"Yes sir." The young captain's nose wrinkled. "Horse droppings."

Chimaera's Copper

"Watch."

Prod, prod, prod.

"We're not moving, sir!" Captain Abileey was astonished. "We're—something's wrong! What can possibly be wrong?"

"Magic!" Captain Plink said, appreciatively. He was older, and had seen more oddities; he was thus more ready to grasp this insight.

Mor sighed, and said with equal appropriateness, "Horse droppings!"

After that there was nothing to do but call a halt. There was horse manure all around; they could not get away from it. The joy of the advance diminished.

Lester Crumb saw them first: the Kance soldiers riding down on them, poised, swords drawn, in an all-out charge.

"Archers! Crossbowmen! Pick off the leaders first!" It was what his father would have ordered.

Sensible and right: officers, after all, had ordered the charge.

Lester's men formed a line, ready to fire at Lester's signal. Les dropped his hand, readying himself for the sight of death. Why was this army charging his own army so suicidally? Like a lot of things lately, it didn't seem to make much sense.

Arrow strings twanged. Crossbows fired. The missiles flew straight for their targets. But the enemy cavalry neither swerved nor slowed in its charge. The arrows and crossbow bolts fell well beyond them. The charge continued, unaffected.

"What? What?" Les couldn't believe it. Not one of the enemy had fallen, or even taken a hit. Every shaft had missed!

The distance between the two forces became smaller. Les imagined that he could see the angered eyes, the set lips, even the sweat on the attackers' foreheads. How could they be immune to arrows?

"Cease firing! Form a phalanx!"

The troops formed the square, spears pointing out protectively on all sides. The enemy riders came closer, closer, while all Les' men waited. There was muted grumbling; they didn't like taking a defensive posture when they plainly outnumbered the opposition.

Damn, he thought, what was there to do?

"Sir," said Captain Barnes, his second in command. "It's magic!"

Chimaera's Copper

"I can see that, Captain."

"We need the Mouvar weapon, sir. To turn the magic back on them."

"Agreed, Captain," Les said tightly. "Unfortunately we don't have it." Kelvin had the weapon, and why, oh why wasn't he here, when so much depended on him?

Lester stared gloomily at the ever-charging cavalry. He had to wonder whether they were going to have to squat here and wait indefinitely until Kelvin returned from his brother's wedding.

Then he had a new thought, an alarming one. If King Rufurt had been replaced by the king from another frame, what then had been the rightful king's fate? And if Rufurt had been destroyed or somehow magicked, what then of Kelvin? What was going on, in that other frame?

St. Helens should have felt great. Leading troops again—not that he ever had before, exactly. But campaigning was something he knew from the ground up. So why wasn't he happy, now that he was at the head end of it instead of the tail end?

Charley Lomax rode by his left and young Phillip at his right, and behind them stretched the Hermandy army. All seemed to be in order. So what was his problem?

"Sir," the young guardsman whispered, bending near in his saddle. "Have you noticed our well-wishers?"

St. Helens saw what the lad meant. A few sullen faces were staring at them from passing yards and doorways. There were no flowers strewn in their path, no cheers or patriotic cries of well-wishing.

The faces were mostly glum and the bodies often ill-fed. The populace of Hermandy reminded him of another. Would the former king of Aratex be reminded? St. Helens turned in his saddle and glanced.

Phillip's face was wreathed in boyish smiles. Taking no notice of anything around them, he appeared as happy as when he was beating St. Helens in chess. After viewing all the death and destruction in Aratex, he still was thinking of glory. St. Helens knew how it was for him because he had once been that way himself.

"I don't think the military is popular in this land," he whispered to Guardsman Lomax. "Considering that the Hermandy government is highly repressive, that's normal. It was that way in Aratex, and, not long ago, before the roundear, in Rud."

"And after this war it will be different here also?"

St. Helens had had a top sergeant once who answered each and every question a private could muster with irrefutable logic. The answer was always the same in St. Helens' experience. He used that sergeant's answer now. "Shut," he said reasonably, "the hell up!" They rode on through deeper Chimaera's Copper

and deeper gloom brought on by the fact that nothing was as either of them would have wished.

Helbah had to smile as she gazed into the twin crystals. One showed Mor's difficulty, the other his son's.

"Yes," she said aloud, perhaps to Katbah, her houcat friend. "Yes, old Helbah knows a thing or two!

Never could defeat my evil frame-sister, but I kept her from invading us long enough! Glad she's gone! She's my malevolent mirror image, you can bet!"

"Meoww," Katbah remarked, arching his slick back. He would rather be battling a leaf or climbing a tree. Instead he was here in her defense headquarters giving her support.

"Now, then," Helbah continued, checking her brewkettle in the fireplace and giving it a stir with its ladle, "here's our plan. Once we've got them stopped we wait until they go back discouraged or until their decent leaders come and surrender to us. No killing. You like that?"

Katbah rubbed his head against her gnarled hand and purred. It was a gentle soothing sound that befitted a feline creature that never, ever killed birds. From the same gentle frame and mold as Helbah, he preferred finding and returning baby birds that had tumbled from their nests. Yet feline was feline, and Katbah, her familiar, responded as only a familiar could.

Helbah looked down at the touch of the velvety smooth tongue on her hand. She ruffled the black fur, tweaked the triangular whiskers, and stared into the oval eyes.

"Katbah, I think we've won. But—" She frowned as she thought of this. "I wonder why? Not just that we've won, but why the invasion. This is utterly unlike pleasant, ineffective King Rufurt of Rud. Or whatever they call that kingdom now. Kelvinia—that's it, after that good lad."

Katbah rubbed against the third crystal on the table. This one was a smoothed square. His paw reached out and tapped it. The crystal was opaque.

"Yes, yes, I'd better. I hate spying, Katbah, but now and then I have to. There is too much of a mystery about this matter."

She drew the square crystal across the rough wooden table to her. She held her clawed fingers above the smooth surface, closed her eyes, and concentrated. In a moment she felt the quiver in her arms and the lightning sparks from her fingertips.

She opened her eyes, staring into a universe of tiny bubbles. Now where? Where? To Kelvinia to find out the cause of the attack. She visualized a man with a big nose, wearing a crown. Yes, there he was, reflected in the crystal as though in a glass box. Rufurt.

Why, she wondered, why? Under her prodding thoughts the view widened. The king was in his bedchamber and he was not alone. Helbah frowned, not wanting to intrude on a private moment Chimaera's Copper

between king and—

The woman in the bedchamber turned. As she did, Katbah raised his fur and spat.

Red-as-dragon-sheen hair. Eyes the color of green feline magic with little cometing lights in them.

The eyes might have been directed right at her!

Zoanna! Zoanna, the evil queen all thought dead. Hadn't she drowned? Yet here she was with the king, whom she had despised in life. Could this be Rufurt, the real Rufurt?

She peered close, moving in on the man with her thoughts. There was a mean look to him, an insane light in his eyes. His ears were tipped, but with a tipping that was new.

This was not good King Rufurt.

So, then, it was another paired set, like Melbah and Helbah, from other frames. Similar appearance, dissimilar nature. Only the ears gave such folk away, physically.

And the queen?

Helbah moved in on the queen. The face, just as haughty, just as inhumanly cold and devoid of genuine feeling. The original Zoanna, without a doubt.

So the queen had not died. She had hidden, and now returned with a look-alike to replace Rufurt.

Rufurt had been easygoing and appreciative of life, but Zoanna had manipulated and misled him.

When he and John Knight were released from the Rud dungeon, having sprung themselves during the battle, Rufurt had been just the same. She had checked up on him from time to time, not to interfere but to assuage her curiosity and make sure that no mischief was afoot. This, she was now sure, was not he.

Zoanna had been taking something from a wooden stand. She held up a round crystal. Her face a study in suspicion, she closed her eyes.

Now what? The couple had evidently been about to make love, but now seemed to be up to something else. Had Zoanna learned magic? Her father, Zatanas, had known little, though he had faked much. But Zoanna had been absent for some time. Perhaps she had learned. Maybe she had developed a dormant witch-sense.

In the crystal Zoanna held, Helbah's own face appeared. Zoanna's eyes opened as she peered at it.

"Helbah, I thought that was you! Are you so hard up for thrills that you have to spy on the pleasures of your betters?"

Horrors! She had learned magic! She had felt Helbah's questing, and challenged it. Only a few selected people, male or female, were able to master sorcery, and even fewer ever made the attempt.

Zoanna had evidently discovered that she had the ability, and now had developed it. Here was real mischief!

Chimaera's Copper

The king bent forward, also looking. "She the witch?"

Zoanna ignored him. To Helbah she said: "Your time has come, old woman. You won't exist much longer. We're taking over the brat kingdoms. When we complete that chore, you will die. We shall throw you away like the garbage you are."

Katbah leaped at the crystal in sudden fury. Sparkling sharp claws raked the crystal, producing a screech that hurt Helbah's ears. It was the way she herself felt.

"I have stopped the armies," Helbah said. "Just as in years of yore."

"Yes, witchy bonebag, but not for long. I now have means of countering you."

"You can nullify my spells?" Helbah asked skeptically.

"Watch." Zoanna gestured. In the crystal she held was Mor and his army in Klingland. They were paused, looking at a pile of horse droppings. Zoanna took a small vial from a drawer in the stand and sprinkled an orange powder. The crystal flared bright. Zoanna held a finger pointed, and the horse manure lifted from the ground and hovered in midair. A sudden cutting gesture, and the dung fell.

A horse leaped. Mor assumed a startled expression, as did his officers. Then they were riding on, into the target territory.

"No you don't!" Helbah snapped. She made a gesture of her own, and the advance, though it seemed to be going forward, stayed even with a tree.

"That is the last time that will be tolerated," Zoanna said grimly. She made a new gesture, and the movement resumed.

Angered by this insolence, Helbah raised a hand. At that moment Zoanna raised her own hand.

There was a loud snapping sound, the smell of ozone, and all three of Helbah's crystals vibrated.

"I can keep this up, bag," Zoanna said. "I can keep this up until they crack."

Helbah reluctantly directed a thought, and all three crystals abruptly turned opaque.

She looked at her familiar, who was now glancing all around, as if fearful that the queen were hiding right in this room.

"Yes, Katbah, she's going to be trouble," Helbah said. "Far more than ever before, I fear."

Katbah spat, angrily and knowingly. Meanwhile, Helbah felt drained.

"Yes, I greatly fear, Katbah, that it is going to be a long, wearying fight. Who could have guessed that that evil queen would return, worse than before?"

The question was rhetorical, but the situation was grim. Helbah wished she wasn't quite so old and Chimaera's Copper

tired.

Rowforth looked from the now-opaque crystal to his consort's face. He didn't like what he had just heard. This witch sounded like trouble. "Can you keep her from stopping us?"

Zoanna came as near to smiling as she ever did. The expression she normally used was an artifice that affected only her lips, unlike her tepid analogue in the other frame who smiled with her whole face, on those few occasions she had reason to smile at all. This was one of the things he really liked about Zoanna. "Stop us? You must be mad, lover mine. She'll never stop us. Nothing can."

He wanted to believe her. Then, as he looked into her eyes, he very nearly did.

Torture, torment, pain. With her help, all would be inflicted on their enemies, and especially those treasonous ones who had defeated him in his own frame. That Kelvin, how he would enjoy strapping him up in each newly created torture device! But would the iron maiden, the strappado, and the rack be enough? For that soft young man who yet had caused so much mischief he would devise some special pain.

He began dreaming of the child the roundear's wife was to bear. With Zoanna's help it might come out so hideous as to cause both parents unremitting anguish. Yes, that would be fitting—and fun!

"Zoanna, have you heard of a beast called a chimera?"

"Chimera?" she asked blankly.

"With three heads and a scorpiocrab tail."

She smiled. "Oh, you mean the chimaera! Of course, though it is almost extinct. What a lovely beasti!"

"Could the—could the child of Kelvin be made to resemble that?"

Her artificial smile slowly became genuine. "My dear, you are a genius! Why not?"

So confident, so certain. Surely he would have had to look through all the frames before finding so ideal a consort!

CHAPTER 9

Fool's Return

Chimaera's Copper

"What's this armor you're wearing?" Kelvin asked his cellmate.

Stapular, as usual, managed to look as if he were sneering. In a tone just to the right of insulting he said, "What's it to you, Minor World dolt?"

Kelvin sighed. He tried so hard to be polite and Stapular always ruined it. He took another big handful of fruity mash from the trough and munched it, eying the redhead speculatively.

"That's right, go ahead and stuff! Put on some fat so you'll be just what old triple-head wants! You don't see me gulping that stuff! But you do what you want. Maybe it'll fry you. Sauté you with a little onlic. Yes, that should be good."

Kelvin shuddered. He had never liked onlic. The other man was obviously trying to nettle him; what made it worse was that he was succeeding. If the chimaera was going to eat him, he almost preferred that it eat him raw.

Still, he was hungry, and he wanted to keep up his health and strength, so as to be ready to escape if any opportunity presented itself. He finished chewing the mixed nuts, fruit, and grain mixture, reflecting that it wasn't bad, in fact it was delicious. He then lay down at the edge of the little stream and sucked up water. Good, crystal-clear spring water, the best. He had to admit that the monster had excellent taste in food and water.

At last he stood and faced Stapular deliberately. Have to control the body language now, he thought.

Don't want to appear hostile.

"I asked, cellmate, about your armor."

"Why should I tell you?"

"I told you about the Mouvar weapon."

"I didn't ask you to. Does that mean I'm obligated?"

"You want to get out. You want to save yourself. Surely you don't want to be eaten."

Stapular hesitated. He was doubtless trying to think of a reason to refuse Kelvin's reasonable request.

Even the most unreasonable people liked to appear reasonable, oddly.

Kelvin reached out and touched the transparent plating. It covered all of the hunter except the head and the hands. Just like the armor worn by his Knights of the Roundear and the royalists fighting for the queen. Only this armor was not metal. His father had labeled it "Some sort of glass or plastic." It looked very light, but felt hard.

"The chimaera lets you keep this on. Surely it will take it off you before it dines on you."

"That it will, pale hair. How'd you guess?"

Chimaera's Copper

"Seems sensible. I don't think Grumpus could dent this."

"It won't have to. The armor's stout but that's not its value."

"Then—"

"It insulates against the electric bursts. The bolts can climb all over it but not get inside. Particularly when—" He touched something inside his collar with a nudge of his chin. Instantly a transparent hood that covered his entire head sprang up from in back and snapped securely down in front.

Similar hoods in the shape of gloves snapped over his hands, and others protected his feet. Stapular was now fully encased.

Kelvin was amazed. "You mean the chimaera couldn't have hurt you at all if you'd done that?"

"Where's your brain? Of course it could. It just couldn't have electrocuted me."

"But—"

"The sting could have pried me right out. Likely Mervania will get me out with lye."

Kelvin shivered. Lye! But he had known that was in the monster's plans, and indeed that had figured largely in his return. Still, it angered him to think that Stapular had remained back in the cell and not attacked the creature's elevated sting from behind, when Kelvin was distracting it. That jointed abdomen must have a weak spot, and if the lightning couldn't strike him...

"You think I should have jumped on the tail, right?"

Kelvin nodded, and refrained from saying something nasty like "How'd you ever guess, idiot?"

"Dumb, Minor World imbecile! It would have whacked me against the roof! Maybe flung me over its heads and against you!"

Surely a fate worse than death! But Kelvin refrained from making that sarcastic comment too. "I could have dodged, or even caught you and helped you get your feet."

The man merely glowered at him.

Kelvin tried again. "I once saw a dragon attacked in almost that manner. Of course the heroic knight paid for his bravery with his life, but at least he'd made the gesture, and perhaps saved the lives of his companions."

"You think I should have, don't you?"

Idiot! "You were wearing the armor," Kelvin pointed out. "You might have survived. It might have given me a chance to—"

"To what? Attack with your sword and magic gauntlets?" The tone made this seem ludicrous.

Chimaera's Copper

"Better than nothing." He didn't like the disparagement and contempt at all, but realized that this was just Stapular's way. Did the man have any love-life? That thought almost made Kelvin laugh.

"You think so, do you? You know how quickly one of the bolts would have shriveled you? If the chimaera hadn't been playing with you, you'd have been charred."

Undoubtedly true! But Kelvin pressed on. "I will be charred later anyway, according to you. Why not in a fight?"

"Because there would be no fight! The chimaera controls great quantities of electricity it makes in its body. You'd be no threat at all."

Kelvin tried to consider that, mindful that Stapular was repeating his prior argument. Yet the redhead was after all from a world he called Major.

"Nothing to be done, then?" He remained perplexed by the man's seeming reluctance even to oppose his fate.

"No."

"But you were going to attack it. You and your companions. How?"

"With lasers, of course. Some of us would have been destroyed, but we'd have lopped off the heads and tail."

"That tail means something to you, doesn't it?"

"Yes, profit."

Kelvin wondered about that. Could copper be so valuable where Stapular came from? It didn't seem possible.

"You're confused, aren't you, dolt? Huh, let me tell you those stings are no minor matter. Conductors of electricity while they're growing and attached, and afterward—"

"Yes?" Stapular had shut up, as if catching himself revealing too much. What could be so secret that it couldn't be told even to a companion in death?

"Other," Stapular said. "On Minor Worlds, at least."

Conductors of other on Minor Worlds? Minor Worlds were magic-using worlds. That suggested that the stings were conductors of magic! The revelation made his knees sag.

"What's the matter with you?"

"There's a fence made of those old stings outside. You saw the lightning leap."

"So? A fortune, but not for us. For the next hunters perhaps."

Chimaera's Copper

"Magic, Stapular. Magic."

"What are you getting at, Minor brain?"

"Conductors of magic. Magic to fight the chimaera with."

"You're crazy!"

"So you have remarked. I have my levitation belt and my gauntlets now, and I come from a world where magic exists. If I can get outside again, get one of the spikes uprooted, hold it with the gauntlets and channel magic through it—"

"You've got magic?" Stapular seemed less skeptical.

"Y—" Kelvin had never been so tempted to lie before. But deep-grained habits were hard to break.

He converted what he had been about to say to the exact truth. "—es. My gauntlets are magic. They often know what to do when I don't."

"Seriously?"

"Yes." But a pang of conscience forced him to add, "Swords, shields, crossbows—they even used a laser."

"But do they know how to use magic?"

"M-maybe. Perhaps."

"And perhaps not?"

Kelvin shrugged. "Any chance, it seems to me, is better than none."

"Right, Minor brain. Right. So what are your plans?"

"To get a sting. To confront the chimaera with it."

"While I distract it, I suppose?"

"You'll have to."

"And if it knows your thought? I can keep it out of my head. Can you?"

"I'll have to."

"Easily said. But when it's around, your mind is open to it. You know you can't conceal your plan.

Whatever plan."

"Then that is why we must do it now," Kelvin said. In that moment he realized that the only plan he Chimaera's Copper

had was for him to get the sting while Stapular interfered with the chimaera. That would be difficult, even if Stapular was effective.

"You could grab hold of the chimaera's sting. Hold on to it. Keep it from directing its bolts."

"I could put my entire weight on it and I don't think I could hold it."

"But you will try?"

"I will try," Stapular said.

Kelvin dared hope. He had finally gotten the man to cooperate. That meant they had a chance, maybe, however small.

Kian looked at his father in astonishment. "What will we do, Father? We can't leave him!"

"No. Of course not. But it's a long way back. We were carried before, remember?"

Kian nodded, looking at the transporter and thinking secret thoughts. Darkly secret thoughts.

Kelvin was his brother. Half brother, anyway. He should not, would not abandon him, especially since Kelvin had followed them to the serpent world. Kelvin had saved them all, several times. He had first saved their homeland of Rud from Kian's own mother. Following the Rud revolution which Kelvin had led, Kian had gone through the transporter searching for his missing father and mother.

In the frame-world that was so similar and yet so different from his own, Kian had found his missing father, and the girl he now wanted so desperately to return to. Kelvin had arrived late, defeated the royalists, and gotten Kian and John Knight out of King Rowforth's dungeon. Now Kian had a chance to repay all that.

But damn it all, damn it, Kelvin had been stupid! Going back to that monster-lair to save that—that poacher! No one with any sense would have done that! No one but an idiotic hero!

"Maybe," John said, "we can get help from the squarears. They do want us out of this frame."

"If they'll let a hunter be destroyed, they'll let a fool be destroyed." Immediately he regretted the application. Kelvin was at times a fool, but he was also his brother.

"I'm afraid I agree with you," John said. "But if we just start back through the swamp, we'll be caught by the froogears. Then it will be the same as before."

"Will it, Father?" Kian wished there were some other way.

"It will have to be."

Kian scuffed at the floor of the chamber with his toe. "Father, do you think they'd rescue us all over Chimaera's Copper

again?"

"I don't think we can count on it."

"Neither do I. Why should they have patience with fools?"

"Why indeed!" John exclaimed with an ironic laugh.

"If only Kelvin had left us with something. He took the levitation belt and the Mouvar weapon.

What have we got to fight with?"

"One pair of magic gauntlets and our swords. Plus our wits," John said.

"Lot of good they'll do."

"I'm not so certain. That fruit the froogears rolled in here—do you suppose that grows nearby?"

"Suppose it does? It'd knock us out if we breathed the scent from it."

"Yet the froogears handled it."

"Maybe they're immune. Maybe it just doesn't affect them, Father."

"Hmmm. Possibly. I'm not saying we could use it, just thinking of possibilities."

"The gauntlets, do you suppose they can lead us through the swamp to the island?"

"Possibly. Just barely possibly. They have a wonderful sense of direction, you remember."

"But only the one pair."

"I'll tell you what." John Knight stripped off the right gauntlet and handed it to him. "I'll wear the left and you the right. That way we'll both be protected to some extent."

"Thank you, Father." Kian put on the gauntlet. Though his father's hand was larger than his, the soft dragonskin contracted and made a perfect fit. Had his hand been larger, it would have stretched, magically.

John shrugged. "Why should I let my son be in avoidable danger?"

That was rhetorical, but it made Kian feel warm. He knew that Kelvin was the hero, the son borne of the woman John truly loved, and sometimes he doubted John's feelings for the son of the evil queen.

Kian flexed and unflexed his right hand with the gauntlet. He drew his sword, made some experimental slashes at the air, and returned it smoothly to his scabbard. How, he wondered, would his right-handed father handle his sword?

John Knight was already adjusting his scabbard on his right side. He drew the sword left-handed, swished it expertly, twirled it, and resheathed it. The glove made any hand dexetrous!

Chimaera's Copper

Kian nodded appreciatively. "That's better than I believe Kelvin could do."

"I'm not so certain. He fought most of the war in Rud with just the left gauntlet. Remember?"

Kian remembered. Lying on the ground in the swirling dust kicked up by the war-horses. His right gauntleted hand locked with Kelvin's left. The two gauntlets wrestling for their wearers, moving their fingers and wrists, pulling their arms and bodies along. It had been a draw. It had been the first indication he had had of the full extent of the power of the gauntlets.

"I'm ready, Father."

"Yes, I thought you would be."

With that they turned their backs on the chamber, and its transporter and all of Kian's waiting dreams. Together they left the cave and walked step by step, never faltering, to the greenish swamp and its incalculable dangers.

There were many, many steps, and many, many wearying days ahead.

Bloorg, the squarear chieftain, scratched his straw-colored hair on his blocky pate and indicated to Grool, his second in command, the crystal. In the crystal were two tired, hungry, insect-bitten roundears, slogging their way through hip-deep greenish water. The roundear known as John Knight suddenly grabbed a serpent in its left hand and flung it far. Kian, the younger roundear, congratulated him.

"Should we let the chimaera have them?" Grool asked. "They are innocent, and intended no harm."

Bloorg shrugged. "Innocent is as innocent does. They are also stupid."

"Stupid. Yes, by our standards. Still—"

"Still they have chosen. They could have gone their way."

"But the other one chose first. If he had not gone back—"

"Yes, as the hunter says, he was very stupid."

"But can we just leave them? Let our cousins the froogears take them again for tribute?"

"It is our ethics not to destroy or allow to be destroyed the purely innocent. Yet once made wise—"

"No longer innocent!" Grool sighed, fluttering her triangular eyelashes above her blue and squarish eyes. "It is an old, old truth, as old as our civilization. They should have learned."

"But it bothers you?"

Chimaera's Copper

"Yes, I don't think they intend other than a rescue."

"Unaided? Hardly that."

"Then they are doomed."

"Assuredly. As certainly as the other and the hunter in the chimaera's larder."

"A shame."

"Isn't it."

Bloorg made a magical gesture with entwined fingers and the crystal flickered and went blank.

The chimaera was digging in Mervania's garden. It had a nice assortment of herbs growing for use as condiments. Onlics tossed their purple heads in the breeze blowing over the island, their bulbs waiting below ground.

"I don't know why you bother with this!" Mertin grumbled. What he really meant was that he was not all that enamored with the flavor of onlics, chilards, and musills.

Grumpus' head suddenly snapped upward, and its mouth opened. At the same time the chimaera sting elevated. A bolt of blue sparked from the tip and into the sky above. Sizzling, smoking, still on fire, a foolish swampbird fell into Grumpus' waiting maw. Grumpus crunched, chewed, and swallowed. The chimaera's abdomen unbent and its sting lowered.

"Now, Mertie, you know you like the stew I make," Mervania chided her headmate. "None of us refuses it. Even Grumpus likes it."

"Ain't fittin'," Mertin said. "We, a superior species, eating like our foodstuffs!"

"Nonsense." She patted the dirt lovingly over the bones she had brought from the pantry. Good fungus would grow up out of those eyesockets. It always seemed appropriate that they be buried here. "You know you're just saying that. Fitting and not-fitting has nothing to do with it."

"Groowth," Grumpus agreed, licking singed feathers from his mouth.

"Our kind always used to eat 'em raw, Grumpus. But Mervania had to take up with baking and frying and stewing and pickling."

"Oh, I'm so glad you reminded me!" she exclaimed. "I need some dilber seed. I've decided on pickling that young hero. His arms and legs are so nice and slim."

"Bah!" said Mertin. "Me and Grumpus would just as soon—"

Chimaera's Copper

"Yes, yes, I know," she said impatiently. "You've made your point dozens of times."

"Well, it's still true. We would rather eat them au naturel."

"Speaking of the heroic roundear, I wonder what he and his lardermate are up to." Having decided, instantly she reached out with her thoughts. The thoughts she encountered surprised and excited her.

"Oh my! Oh, my!"

"What is it?" Mertin asked. "Sneakiness?"

"I'm afraid so. They actually conspire to fight. At least the roundear thinks they do. The pearear's thoughts are impervious, as a pearear's always are."

"Shame to disappoint them," Mertin said.

"Oh, we won't, we won't, Mertin."

"Roast it, Mervania, must you always play with our food!"

"Yes, Mertie. After I do, its taste is delectable!"

CHAPTER 10

Sticky, Sticky

This war was getting to be what St. Helens had once called a bummer, and it hadn't even started. He was just now leaving the border between Hermandy and Kance. Behind him was a file of Hermandy troops. Ahead were forests and lakes and streams almost to the twin capitals. Why didn't he feel great, being a general?

Because this was not a war he liked. Hermandy reminded him too vividly of a country and dictator that had made history on Earth. King Rowforth, if that thing in the palace of Kelvinia were truly he, had really put him in a bind.

"Gee, this is exciting!" Phillip said. Practically in the important general's ear.

"Excitement doesn't start until the arrows fly," remarked young Lomax. "That's what they told me, at least."

"You're right, Charles, only this time it'll be terror. The first time in battle always is. And the tenth time, only you learn not to show it."

St. Helens thought he'd put it right, but the boy was frowning, first at the young man, and then at St.

Chimaera's Copper

Helens. "Oh, I know it's not a chess game, St. Helens. Real blood will get shed. But gee, just to be leading an army at last!"

"You're not leading it, I am."

"Yes, you're the witch this time."

"Don't say that!" Brat! he thought. "I've seen all the witches I ever want to see. Your Melbah was enough witch to last me for a greatly extended lifetime!"

For a moment there was silence from the boy. Good!

Then he popped up again. "St. Helens, you do know that we'll be fighting against a witch?"

"WHAT?" He was momentarily dumbfounded. The dictator had spoken of troops and of two brat rulers, but not a witch. He might have known. And here he was without gauntlets or levitation belt!

"Helbah. A Melbah look-alike."

St. Helens allowed himself a groan. "I suppose she creates floods and fires and earthquakes.

Probably throws fireballs as well."

"I haven't heard that she does. But she might. It's what witches do. Melbah didn't like her."

"That's something," St. Helens conceded. Any witch that Melbah hadn't liked couldn't be all bad. Or could she? Maybe one more powerful than Melbah? Melbah, after all, hadn't invaded this other witch's territory.

"I've heard she stops troops cold," Lomax spoke up. "Confuses them with illusions. What's called benign magic."

"Why haven't I heard about it? I'm supposed to be leading this outfit! Even if Bitler didn't tell me, you'd have thought I'd have heard!"

"You never asked," Phillip explained. "And you wouldn't have talked to Melbah even when she was in her guise as General Ashcroft."

St. Helens bit his lip. "This one a general, too?"

"She might be. Melbah never talked about her enemy, and as you know I had few friends."

"I can believe anyone cared for by a witch and manipulated the way you were had few friends,"

Lomax said. It was a camaraderie he had developed. "St. Helens was your friend, wasn't he?"

"Yes. He was my first real friend."

St. Helens felt uncomfortable. The boy had had playmates, he knew, and as he had grown tired of them the witch had disposed of them like outworn toys. Was the lad still subject to such tantrums?

Chimaera's Copper

He doubted it, and yet Phillip remained a puzzle. He'd better hope that he didn't attach himself to Melbah's rival.

"I was wondering about those brats," Phillip mused. "Hermandy's king mentioned them and I've heard them mentioned before. Young, aren't they?"

"They are," Lomax said. "Rumor is that the witch keeps them that way."

So she was more powerful! Great! Just what the commanding general needed to hear!

Glumly, General Sean "St. Helens" Reilly resumed his tight lips. He rode on with all the silence he could muster, importantly leading a dictator's brutally trained and brutal troops plus the best mercenary soldiers money could buy.

This was certainly getting to be tiring, General Morton Crumb thought. They were now outdistancing trees and horse droppings, but moving far slower than was natural. Every horse-stride forward carried them only half a stride's distance. It was like moving underwater. Yet the trees and the hills and the silent farm buildings moved slowly, slowly by as they rode the deserted road. They were after all making progress.

"Her magic may be weakening," Captain Abileey said. "Witches too get tired."

"I've heard that," Mor said. Unhappily he was recalling the unequal battle in Deadman's Pass in what was formerly Aratex. That old witch hadn't gotten tired until she'd raised flood, wind, earthquake, and fire. Could this one tire from doing far less?

Captain Plink drew abreast of them. Turning his head, watching the captain's horse, Mor had the impression that the swiftly moving hooves were, though a blur of motion, moving slowly.

Something about time-slowing, a trick that was said to be in some witches' repertoire.

"I think we'll get there in a month, General," Captain Plink observed. "We're slow but not stopped."

"Right." Nor would a complete stoppage have bothered him more. If the witch was just playing with them, what would she do when she got mad?

"General Crumb, sir, this may be a little out of place, but why don't we stop and forage the farms? At the rate we're going we will be out of rations long before we're done."

Mor sighed. True enough. This was after all an invasion. It wasn't stealing, though that was what it felt like.

He called a halt. Watching the horses' legs he saw them drift down to the ground. All were halted in what seemed a normal amount of time, though just how much time he was taking to think he could not actually say. His stomach growled as he gave orders to pillage the closer farms.

Chimaera's Copper

"Six men to a farm. Eggs, milk, a chicuck or two. Take nothing but food, no more than necessary, and no liberties with the women. Be quick!"

The soldiers ran off at top speed, drifting on their mounts, as Mor saw it. He shook his head, knowing that even this was taking longer than normal. A roasted chicuck would put a smile in his belly. There had to be something that would help him feel decent. An end to the war might, though he would have had to have been a mercenary to feel that it was right.

How had he gotten into this in the first place? It must have been magic tampering at the Kelvinia audience. Something in the wine that made him receptive to orders he couldn't justify, and made him even a bit eager to fight. King Rufurt using magic? But it was not Rufurt, he felt certain. Rufurt, the rightful king, must have been slain or had something else happen to him. He had known, he did know, but he felt helpless.

"General! General Crumb, sir."

"Yes?" Mor didn't stand on ceremonies with enlisted men.

"We can't get near the buildings, sir. The air holds us back. Neither we nor our horses can enter the driveways."

"Magic again," Abileey observed. "If we run out of rations before she runs out of magic, we'll have to return home."

"I'm certain that's what she's counting on," Mor said. Since he really wanted to return he should have felt elated.

Why did he feel certain that this time the witch's tactics were not sufficient to stop them?

The charging cavalry had long vanished. Lester, searching in vain for some evidence that an enemy had really been there, was forced to consider implications. Arrows, crossbow bolts, and spears were lying spent, beyond an area where there never had been an enemy force.

He gave orders that the various projectiles be recovered. His men fetched them. Thus went the day that could hardly be termed a fighting day.

That night Captain Barnes walked over to him at the camp fire. He saluted smartly as a Throod-trained mercenary naturally would. Les had to think what he was supposed to do, and finally remembered and returned the salute.

"At ease, Captain. What's on your mind?"

"Magic, sir."

"Mine too."

Chimaera's Copper

"If every time we encounter the enemy, the enemy turns out to be unreal—"

"We'll end up with no weapons other than swords."

"Yes, sir. But suppose we encounter the enemy and the enemy is real? Suppose they have real arrows and crossbow bolts and spears; suppose ours have been lost to the phantoms? I mean, if real ones come right after the phantoms, and we don't know the difference?"

"Good point, Captain. Pass the order, no one to fire as much as one arrow until we determine that our attackers are real."

"Yes, sir. Immediately, sir."

Later that night Lester was trying to sleep and was thinking that one of the mercenaries really should be in charge. The long, mournful howls of wolotes came from all around, chilling human blood with their canine songs. He drew his sword and stepped from his tent, intent on nothing. Outside he blinked in the firelight and breathed a deep breath of cool night air. The wolotes must be in the woods just past the fire.

Suddenly there was a great, gray shadow, with glowing red eyes, leaping at his throat!

He raised the sword and struck, all in one motion.

The animal was gone. In its place, completely in uniform, was a large Kance soldier. Before Lester could recover, the enemy had a sword to his throat and a shield protecting his vitals from a dying commander's retaliation.

Les thought of Jon. His eyes saw starlight and drops of oil on the sword blade. The enemy had only to shove the sword. Les' blood would gush out over the blade and arm and against the armor of the man. His breath would go WHOOSH, and he would fall and everything would turn black.

The soldier smiled, wickedly. A light of triumph sprang up in his eyes, and then—

As suddenly as he had come, he vanished.

Les stood alone in his tent opening. He swallowed, and swallowed again.

This sort of thing could get quite discouraging to an invading army. In the past it must have worked effectively many times.

Why was it, Les wondered, as his knees weakened under him, that this time it wasn't going to?

Zoanna watched as Rowforth, looking so much like the king she had married, rowed the boat with strong pulls of the oars. The eerily luminous lichen on the walls gave a feeling of late in the day. Yet it was early, just before sunup.

Chimaera's Copper

She smiled her coldest smile as the swirl of water marked the installation. Such a little thing, so easily missed. No roundear had ever discovered it, and none would if she and others like her had their way. Rowforth was enormously privileged.

Moving carefully so as not to rock the boat, she stripped her soft, velvet robe from her creamy shoulders, and fluffed back her beautiful red-as-dragon-sheen hair. She felt Rowforth studying her naked body, appreciating her soft, round breasts with their firm, rosy nipples. His eyes were traveling down her flat stomach, lingering, enjoying in his lecherously honed way. She was no longer young, but discipline and magic had preserved much of her physical youth, and this was always useful when it came to handling men.

"Now," she said, and slipped over the side. She swam skillfully, like a slick-skinned ottrat, diving deeper, deeper. Carefully she expelled her breath. Above, she knew, her consort would be waiting, leaning on his oars, anticipating the moment when she would again break the surface.

Her eyes saw a fish or two, and then the airlock. Grabbing its edge she pulled up her legs, ducked her head, and somersaulted over and inside.

She gulped air. The interior always had air because of the membrane material that removed it from the water. Here one could breathe and rest and hide a century if need be. Here one could take a transporter and go to a world where magic and witchcraft reigned supreme.

She had been here first as a child, and then later as a young woman. Then there had been a long time when she had not been to this place, or used the transporter. During her last trip, after the defeat of her father's weak magic and her tame guardsmen at the hand of Kelvin's Knights, she had done it right. She had gone back to school and learned what she should have learned as a child. Because of what she had learned, she now had power, more than her pathetic old father and his bloodthirsty dwarf ever dreamed. And what had been the price of this knowledge? Only what she had in infinite store.

She lowered herself onto the waiting platform, rested a moment, smiled contentedly to herself, and then entered the room. The transporter awaited her, and it would be but an easy step, and she would be back at her school. The horned and horny teacher would get her her supplies. How surprised Devale was going to be! Even while they embraced, he had not realized the extent of her ambitions.

She was prepared to offer him a thousand children from defeated kingdoms. In return she was certain he would give her what she needed to defeat Helbah, and the chimaera powder as well. She twisted her mouth as she thought of it: the Roundear of Prophecy's deformed and monstrous child.

She checked the controls on the transporter and then stepped into it. Space-time flashed through her being. Then she was being lifted up in a man's strong arms.

"Professor Devale! Damn your shiny horns, you sensed me!"

Professor Devale did something quite improper for a decent man, that was quite customary for him.

Chimaera's Copper

"Zoanna," he said, squeezing her close and intensifying his actions. "Of course!"

Heln woke with a startled cry.

"What was it, Heln?" Jon asked. In the days that they had been here, she had become used to Heln's nightmares.

"The monster!" Terror made her voice shrill. "A terrible thing! Three heads! Two of the heads were human, and the other was a dragon!"

Jon took her hand. "That's pretty wild, Heln. I've never heard of such a monster. This one must have been imagination."

"No, Jon, it wasn't!" Heln shook from head to toe under the bedclothes. "Kelvin was with it, and, and—Jon, I think it was going to eat him!"

"The dragon head?" Jon was curious, despite the dream's evident horror for Heln.

"No, all of them! It was all one beast!"

"Impossible."

"But it was! And, and that female human head! It had copper tresses, and eyes just the color of copper. It wore a copper tiara and had copper rings in her ears."

"Pretty detailed," Jon said. "I never dream like that."

"Neither do I! That's why I know it wasn't just a dream! It's like the time they were in that frame with the serpents."

"Yes, you did dream accurately then."

"Jon, I'm afraid for Kelvin! I'm afraid for his life!"

"He has to come back," Jon said. "He has a prophecy to fulfill."

"Yes! He must return!" Not really reassured, Heln lay back and closed her eyes.

Kildom pulled Kildee's nose, arousing him from sleep. "You big dunderhead!" Kildee protested.

"Don't hit me, stupid! We need to talk."

"What about, dumbbutt?"

Chimaera's Copper

"Helbah. I think she's really worried."

"So?"

"So we should help. Be kings like we're supposed to be."

"Lead an army?"

"Why not? We've lived twenty-four years each. We're as smart as any twenty-four-year-olds."

Kildee scratched his thin red hair and climbed from the bed. He stood in front of the mirror, looking at himself and his brother, both apparent six-year-olds.

"Well, I admit we don't exactly look our age," Kildom said.

"So?" The reflection didn't change.

"Let's ask her to make us big."

"If she could, she'd have done it long ago."

"You think?"

"Yeh. Uh, I don't know."

"Come on, then."

Kildee followed as his brother led him to the witch's private quarters, where they were strictly forbidden ever to go. Naturally they went there all the time, kings being kings and boys boys, and them more than both.

Helbah, her back to them, was talking to her familiar. "Katbah, I don't know if I can. I just don't! If her powers are now greater than mine, and I can't stop her..."

Kildom let the door swing back into place. Finger to his cherubic lips he pulled Kildee away from her possible hearing.

"See? It's just like I said. We're going to have to do something!"

"But what?" Kildee was now genuinely and maturely concerned, as indeed he should have been.

Kildom screwed up his face. He pondered the matter, trying hard. "I'm sorry," he said finally. "You and I are just going to have to watch for our chance."

CHAPTER 11

Chimaera's Copper

The Berries

Kian and his father were lost. Kian had to admit it to himself the second day when they awoke in their tree-perch beds and saw nothing but swamp below them all around.

"Father," he said, grasping a crawling spider the size of a small bird with his right-gauntleted hand and crushing it, "I do believe it's time."

"I hate to have you do that, Son. It never seems to me to be safe."

"I've done it before, Father. Besides, if we want to save Kelvin—"

"Yes. All right." John climbed down from the tree next to his and stood in ankle-deep slime. "You'd better position yourself there in the bough, because it's too wet here."

"Right, Father." Stoically, but not without apprehension, Kian took the dragonberry from its associates in the armpouch and gulped it down. He could have used a sip of water, he thought, grimacing at the taste. Unfortunately, fresh, safe water was scarce in the swamp, and the hollow gourd they had filled was rapidly emptying.

As usual, he imagined that there would be no effect, that this time it would not work. This business of astral separation was difficult to believe anyway. Then he noticed that his father was noticeably lower than he had been, and that in the next tree there was a body. The body, he realized with his usual surprise, was his own.

The berries had performed as usual, separating his awareness from his body so gently that it seemed it wasn't happening, until it was done. They would kill pointears, but Heln had discovered that roundears suffered only partial death. This had turned out to be an extremely useful thing.

But he had business. There was nothing to do but find their route. To think of Kelvin, and be drawn to him like a needle to a magnetstone. Of course he'd far rather think of Lonny, but Lonny was in another frame and reaching her right now posed difficulties.

He discovered he was going toward the transporter. His thought of Lonny had started him that way!

That was the danger in letting one's thoughts wander, when one's mind was in a condition most resembling thought.

He formed a mental picture of his brother's face. Instantly he was going back the other way, over the swamp. The greenery below blurred. Now and then a bird winged past or through his astral form.

There was a special exhilaration to this kind of travel; there was no freedom like astral freedom!

Then, abruptly, the blurring stopped. He was over the island. He saw the ancient castle where they had been confined, and the chimaera itself was there, doing something in what seemed to be a garden. Willing himself to join Kelvin, he drifted cautiously down the path that was bordered by the pointed posts. Those posts had green patinas, intriguingly. He floated straight through the barred Chimaera's Copper

wooden door.

Kelvin and Stapular were there, both alive and—miracle of miracles—talking to each other. They were hunched side by side at the trough, whispering. Should he eavesdrop, or get out? One berry would not last long, and he needed to return slowly enough to memorize the way.

Another thing: he didn't want to risk getting trapped. He had been snared by a flopear once while in astral form. He had been lucky to survive, and he had vowed never to risk that happening again. The chimaera might be sensitive to the astral form as were dragons and flopears. The fact that the monster had one dragon head meant he could be at risk, for dragons were the original users of dragonberries.

"There's this mental block," Stapular was whispering. "Huh, I can do it but you can't. With my help you can."

Kelvin nodded. "It's what my father would call hypnotism."

"Right. Posthypnotic. You forget until it's time. I don't even show a thought."

"I don't know, Stapular. If I trust you—"

"You have to, if you want to make your play."

"All right. All right." Kelvin seemed determined. "You hypnotize. You make the block."

"Huh. I'll hold up a finger and you focus both eyes on its tip. I'll move the finger back and forth in front of your eyes. All you do is keep your eyes on the fingertip."

"You're certain it will work?"

"It will unless you're an idiot! Now, stupid—"

So they were planning something! Kian thought. Hard on the heels of that surprise came another: a startled thought that was not his.

Another! Another! There shouldn't be! Mertin! Grumpus! HELP!

Kian wasn't staying around to find out. Instantly he visualized himself going to his father. He envisioned his father's face as he had Kelvin's.

Blurring greenery. He didn't try to slow it. He had to get back, back to his physical body before he was trapped. Once he was in his body he didn't think he'd ever leave it again! He was so panicky that he noticed no details until he saw the froogear staring into his face.

Mervania was shaken. Physically she was standing there in her garden, sting upraised in fright.

Chimaera's Copper

Never, ever had she thought to—ever!

"What is it, Mervania?" her companion head asked. "You catch a thought you didn't like?"

"Another. Another," Mervania said, awed.

"You said that. Also 'HELP!' Help with what? You losing your wits? Don't do that. I don't want to have to talk with just Grumpus."

"Shut up!" she exclaimed irritably. "I'd thought it legendary. Mythical. But it isn't. It's real! What a discovery!"

"What are you blathering about?"

"Grwoom," Grumpus said in turn.

"Shut up, both of you! Can't you see how distracted I am? There was a disembodied human in there!"

"Disembodied food? Doesn't sound appetizing."

She turned on her masculine side and snarled. "Soul-stuff, imbecile! ASTRAL!"

"Ghostly, huh? I thought only humans believed in that."

"It's true. Dragonberries."

"Dragonberries?"

"I should have known! But I thought it was just a myth. Anything that fantastic isn't logical."

"What's logical?"

"Shut up. They take the berries, and then they separate, astral from corporeal. They just move around and they hear and see everything. I should have known when I learned that the young hero was from a world with dragons. That's where dragonberries are supposed to be!"

"How come I don't remember that story?" Mertin demanded.

"Because you're obtuse!"

"Grooomth!"

"That goes double for you, big teeth! Both of you put together haven't the brains of a pickled human!"

"Now see here, Mervania, I resent—"

Chimaera's Copper

"Oh shut up! I'm too thrilled to argue with you." Her head darted forward, and she kissed him quickly on the mouth. That startled him into silence. "Listen. With those berries we wouldn't be confined. We could swallow them and go anywhere we wanted. To—"

"Gwroowl!"

"Oh very well!" she said impatiently, and kissed Grumpus too, on the nose.

"Food?" Mertin asked.

"No, not food! We wouldn't eat in that form. But we could see and hear everything!"

"Why would we want to do that?"

"Entertainment, moron! Discovery! Adventure! We could visit distant lands, other worlds, other frames. Astrally we could go and see and hear anything there is!"

"Who cares?"

"I do! And you would too, if you had half the brain of a froogear! I want dragonberries! Listen, Mertin, we might find more of our kind the squarears don't know about! We could visit them astrally, and maybe even—"

"Go to them and mate?"

"Maybe. If the squarears cooperate."

"Would they?"

"I don't know. But think of it. We could be a whole colony. A whole world, perhaps."

"Sounds stupid to me. Why should there be more than two? Two's enough to mate. I could take care of that while you sleep."

"Several would be better. Because that's the way it is. The companionship. The communication."

"One more like you would talk me to death."

"Grwoompth!" Grumpus agreed.

But Mervania refused to be dampened. She wanted those dragonberries, no matter what the cost!

Squirtmuck stared into the roundear's face with puzzlement. He had thought this one dead, but now it was awake and looking back at him. Could it be something like the deep sleep in the mud? He could not be certain, and he did not think more about it now that the surprise was gone. But this roundear was reaching for something under its armpit. A weapon? Quickly he grabbed the ugly Chimaera's Copper

creature's pale, knobby wrist. The roundear resisted him and struck at him with its other hand. The gauntlet that had been on that hand had slipped off and dropped into the slime while the creature was unconscious.

Firmly, Squirtmuck placed a webbed hand against the creature's loathsome face and held it while he explored under the disgusting smelly arm. What he found was a bag with a drawstring. He pulled it loose, stood back, opened the sack, and peered inside.

The roundear cried out. "No! No! Father, it's got the—"

"Shut up!" the other roundear said. "You're not helping things."

The creature in the tree bole subsided. But his eyes were big and round as Squirtmuck smelled, prodded with a fingertip, and finally tasted one of the dried berries.

"That will kill you!" the roundear cried. "It's poison! To anyone but roundears. It's magic! Big magic!"

Squirtmuck spat out the bitten berry. His tongue burned and he stuck it out and scrubbed its forked tip with his well-slimed hand. He was not too sensitive to tastes, but this was revolting. He retched and spat. Then, to his great distress, he choked out a perfectly good leech. He took in several deep breaths of good swamp air before recapturing the leech with a quick grab and reswallowing it. Good food was not to be wasted!

The roundear for some peculiar reason was vomiting itself. Squirtmuck looked at the mess in the water but saw nothing wriggling. Roundears probably had peculiar tastes like other eared races; it might be that they ate food not even alive. No wonder it made them sick! The roundear quit heaving and wiped its mouth. Any self-respecting froogear would have licked his own mouth, not used his hand.

"Father," the roundear said, "I think they've got us. Again."

"Tell me something I don't know, Son."

Squirtmuck ignored them. He furrowed his head hard, trying to decide what to do with the dried berries. He wouldn't eat them or give them to another froogear even if it was someone he disliked.

Possibly they were magic, as the roundear said; in that case the squarears would be interested. He decided to put the berries with the rest of the loot, and not hide any of it except in the great tree hollow where such forbidden objects were placed. Yes, he'd do that, and the god or the squarears might reward him in this or some other life.

Clearing his throat he looked around at the members of his band busily examining the objects they had taken. One, a brother to one of his wives, had the belt and sword that had been on the big roundear. Another froogear had gathered up the two gauntlets and was sniffing them. Others had the younger roundear's sword and several knives.

Chimaera's Copper

"Come!" he said, motioning. Under his watchful eyes certain objects were placed in the bole of the collecting tree and others held out as tribute to the god.

That night, while the foragers feasted and splash-danced, Squirtmuck tried to feed and talk with the captives. He was unsuccessful in both attempts. For some reason the roundears tightened their mouths at the sight of fresh, squirming provender. When all reasonable questions were asked, they answered with foolishness about having great magic and powerful friends.

Long before daylight Squirtmuck considered burying them deep in the mud and forgetting that they had ever been. Alas, the god had to be served, and the squarears placated. In the morning they commenced the trek.

Bloorg left his dinner and activated the crystal with a thought. His thought was of the roundears in the swamp. He concentrated on the area between the transporter cavern and the chimaera's island, made a sweep, and found them.

The older man and the younger were both captives of froogears, again. Both on their way back to the chimaera, to be eaten.

He sighed. There was no help for it. They were just too troublesome to save twice.

He scanned back to the collecting tree. Yes, all their things were there, waiting. They would not need them now, but the objects would be re-collected. Sometimes he could wish to give such artifacts to the froogears, but that he knew could be dangerous.

There was no help for it. No help at all. Sighing with regret, he blanked out the crystal. Then, exerting great effort, he strove to erase all memory of the roundears' existence.

Grool asked what he was doing.

"I don't know," he said. "But I think I was successful at it."

Satisfied with himself, now, he sat back down at his table and resumed eating the fire-blackened swampfish and chilled lettuage salad he had interrupted.

The chimaera was really in a troubled state. Mervania kept remembering what she had glimpsed with her mind in the larder room. Mertin, maybe just to be mean, kept pooh-poohing the experience.

"We have to make them show us!" Mervania said. "Even if we don't eat them."

"GRRROOOMTH! WAHH!"

"Oh shut up! You'll get raw meat enough! But this is something we can't ignore! All our life I Chimaera's Copper

thought it couldn't be, and now I know it is. We just have to get those berries! Why, with those, Grumpus, we could go see dragons!"

"GWROOMTH?"

"Yes! That's what I've been telling you! And Mertin, try to think at least as well as Grumpus! All the sights we can see. The chance of finding us a mate!"

That did strike some interest. Mertin had had time to ponder the pleasures of mating, and was working up some urge for them. "If we can get the berries."

"Yes. That's why we have to get these creatures to bring them. We can't get out, but they can if we let them."

"But they won't come back. With or without berries."

"True, but if we can offer them something in exchange, they might."

"What?"

"Our old copper stings. You know how they value those."

"But they're dangerous! Even to us!"

"But if we make a deal—?"

"We'd be risking all our heads. No thanks, Mervania. To toy with food is one thing; to deal with it another."

"GWROOMTH!" Grumpus agreed.

Mervania felt despair. She knew the lesser heads were right, yet she hated to give up. There were so many places she would like to see again and never could in a physical way. There was that beautiful flower world, for instance, where big-headed wizards with greenish skins grew strange crops. How she had relished the meatloaf plants and the maiden's-blood flowers! Grumpus had had his fill of juicy torso trees and gut vines, while Mertin had gone into ecstatic burps after his first feast of rumpkins and chucquash. Those had been great meals and great times, and the wizards had not begrudged them but let them revel. Why had they ever left? Some mischief on the part of the wizards, or just plain wanderlust? She could not recall.

"Mervania, what are you doing, daydreaming again?"

"I thought you said I talked too much," she said curtly.

"You do. You also daydream too much. But they're coming now. They're outside."

"What are you talking about?"

Chimaera's Copper

"Use your mind, Mervania. Your supposedly smart mind."

What was she doing, letting Mertin tell her things? She searched past the wall of their island. There she encountered thoughts.

If I hadn't taken that berry, we wouldn't have gotten caught! That was stupid of me! Stupid as Kelvin!

Kian Knight, one of the escapees! And—

I got the boy into this! I should have watched better! Now he'll never see his bride!

Kian's father! John Knight.

Mervania started their body walking daintily for the big gate. The tribute had been fetched across the swamp and the escapees were back in their power. All was as it should be. Except—

She still wanted those berries. Oh, yes, indeed, she wanted them.

She did not bother with her head-over-the-wall trick. She knew who was there and how they'd be waiting. Such teasing only worked once, unfortunately.

Pushing open the gate she looked after the disappearing row of bubbles and then at the thoroughly bound and helpless Knights.

"Welcome home," she said. "This time it's really no surprise."

"W-what do you mean?" Kian gasped.

"Why, that you were here before, visiting. Did you think I would not know?"

"I deny that! Whoever was here, it wasn't me!"

Poor human foodstuff. So very slow to grasp.

CHAPTER 12

Helbah

"Here they come!" Phillip was so excited he couldn't contain himself. He was pointing at the Kance cavalry charging down on them. They kept coming faster and faster in overwhelming numbers and still General Reilly, alias St. Helens, did not give the order. At their backs was the open Kance plain and the Hermandy forest they had left.

Chimaera's Copper

"Those horse and riders could be phantoms. Illusions," Lomax said. His voice squeaked boyishly, causing Phillip to look surprised. A very few years older than Phillip, so he might have seemed to the former boy-king to be above fear.

"Back into the forest!" St. Helens ordered. "Take refuge behind trees. Don't fire a shot until you see that these are real!"

The men obeyed, as good soldiers should. St. Helens wasn't certain that these Hermans were good, but he knew they were disciplined. They waited behind the trees, arrows nocked, crossbows cocked, swords, shields, and spears ready should these soldiers turn out to be genuine.

The Kance cavalry halted just out of bowshot. A tall Kance general stood high in his stirrups and waved the Kance flag of blue and white. "Truce!" he called out loudly. "Talk between commanders!"

St. Helens relaxed. His caution in taking cover had been justified; this was a real force, not a phantom one. He was glad to have a truce. Better talk than battle, though battle was probably inevitable.

"Agreed!" he called back. "We meet midway." Then to his men he shouted, "Anyone who breaks the truce dies! Second in Command Lomax, you see that that order is carried out!"

"Yes, sir," Lomax squeaked. If necessary he would die for his general, and St. Helens knew it.

"Phillip—keep the faith."

"What faith is that, General St. Helens?"

Would the kid never learn? "Earth expression. Just do right. Be alert for any truce violation on the part of these regulars."

"Yes, sir, St. Helens. I'll do that." The boy seemed eager, and his old chess-playing self.

"Fine. Then—" St. Helens walked out to meet the Kance officer. The ground was a little wet from yesterday's rain and the smell of damp ground and grass would have been a treat to his nostrils if they had not come through the forest. How did the Kancian know if they'd emerge right here at this particular spot on the border? Reconnaissance, of course. Surveillance by an ancient craft that he'd come fully to believe in. To fight an army was one thing, but a witch? He put the thought out of his mind and walked resolutely ahead.

"General Reilly, Army of Hermandy," he said, approaching the other.

"General De Gaulic, Army of Kance," the other said. The man was big and ugly and had a large nose; the nose was his most impressive feature.

Now there was nothing to do but talk. The Kance general had called the truce, so he would speak first. St. Helens waited.

Chimaera's Copper

"General Reilly, also known as St. Helens, you serve a madman. Your people have no quarrel with mine and never have. You should go back."

Direct. Also depressingly accurate. "I serve the interests of he known as the Roundear of Prophecy, Kelvin Knight Hackleberry. It is for the newly formed Republic of Kelvinia that I lead this invasion force."

De Gaulic's dark eyes speared him. "You lie, General Reilly. You serve she who the Roundear fought."

Damn, this man was sharp! "Zoanna?"

"None other."

I might have known! That temptress wouldn't just have drowned! But why didn't Kian and Kelvin find her? Has she been in a different frame?

"You are surprised, and yet not surprised, General Reilly."

"Yes, I—"

"Do you want to serve her? Her interests?"

"No. No, of course not. But—" He hesitated, unsure what he should say.

"You do not wish to serve her? You do not want to attack in her name?"

"Not in her name," St. Helens said. He felt more confused about this than he dared admit. "I'm a soldier and I serve a king."

"A false king."

Damn! De Gaulic must know everything! The witch must have spied it out. Does he know, then, that we can't help ourselves? "It is not the place of the servant to question the master."

De Gaulic smiled. "Yet you hesitate, General Reilly. Do you ask yourself why?"

St. Helens pulled himself together. It was most uncomfortable, standing here like this, having the truth rammed repeatedly into his unwilling mind. "I serve an ideal. A purpose. A good purpose. I have to invade.

"There will be dying. Much slaughter."

"I know. I'm sorry about that. Surrender to me now. Then when the roundear comes he'll make everything right."

"Will he?"

Chimaera's Copper

I hope. "He made things right for the people of Aratex."

"Will he with Kance? With Klingland?"

"Both. There shouldn't be fighting."

"And where is the Roundear of Prophecy now?"

"Otherwise occupied at the moment."

The general's expression showed that he knew that there was no certainty of Kelvin's ever returning, but he did not challenge the statement directly. "And yet there will be an evil man in control."

"The Roundear isn't evil!"

"Kelvin Knight isn't in control of Kelvinia. Another person is. He whom the Roundear once defeated in another place. That king and Zoanna, the queen you thought gone forever. Zoanna with more magic at her command than that possessed by her father."

St. Helens felt as if he had been punched. The big-nosed general had better information than he did, and was using it as he might a superior deployment of troops. De Gaulic had just informed him that the worst two people were in control. St. Helens had known it without daring to acknowledge it.

Now the truth was undeniable, and pain was in his gut. "Damn!" he muttered.

"I see you will not turn back, General Reilly. You have made up your mind."

St. Helens wanted to say something different. He wanted to explain that he was just a tool, a pawn.

The prophecy might compel his son-in-law, with a little help. Yes, it was like a chess game. Kelvin had the power, but others had to make the moves and the sacrifices. Others like St. Helens. He was locked into his slot, unable to escape it.

"I wish there were some other way." He started to turn away, knowing that he was on the wrong side, hating it, but stuck.

A feathered projectile whistled through the air and struck the Kantian general. It made an ugly whacking sound and spun him half around. He cried out, an aged woman's cry, and grasped the crossbow bolt stuck high in his chest.

His chest? No, for on the instant the general was an aged woman. Melbah! his mind told him, but he knew that though she had the features, it could not be that one. Melbah was dead.

So the general was the witch! Someone on St. Helens' side had disobeyed his order and the disobedience might mean a victory. Might.

Horses and soldiery raced across the plain. Bowstrings snapped. Shields caught projectiles and bounced them away. The Kance cavalry was charging his force of Hermans.

Chimaera's Copper

The woman wavered, then resumed the appearance of General De Gaulic in blood-spattered uniform. His voice was hers, aged and whispery. "Is this how you keep your word, Reilly? Is this the truce of an honorable man?"

"I had nothing to do with it! I swear!" But how could she believe that? He was the man in charge; he was responsible. His side had committed the treachery.

But it was also smart. It was smart of someone back there to realize. Anything against a witch was justified. Take her out and they had a chance!

A chance to win a campaign he might do better to lose. What a mess this was!

Rough hands grabbed him on either side. He did not try to resist, though for him that was difficult.

He expected to be slain immediately, but instead his hands were bound and he was put on a horse.

Two Kancian soldiers rode on either side of him. Two others rode with the general. The witch-general.

Looking back he heard cries of wounded and dying men and boys, and the screams of horses. Dying because he had led them here. How quickly it had dissolved into carnage! He hoped Phillip and young Lomax would survive. The Hermans hardly had his sympathy, but those two boys were enough like him to be his sons.

They arrived at the caps and the joint palace in what seemed like a remarkably short time. The witch was being helped by a soldier to stay on her horse. Then they were at the palace itself: half blue, half white, the color division running right through the big gate and the drive.

They dismounted, and as they did the general turned completely witch and collapsed. She did not move, lying across equally divided blue and white flagstones. She could be dead. St. Helens watched with the Kancians for any sign of life.

Two very young boys ran from the palace. One was dressed in blue, the other in white. Both had large lace collars. Both ran to the witch and dropped down by her, grasping her, holding her, crying.

Poor kids! St. Helens thought. She was all they had.

Suddenly the boy in blue was on his feet, pointing, face twisted and red. A golden crown on his head pronounced him ruler.

"Kill him!" the child shrieked. "Slay us that man!"

The childish finger pointed at St. Helens.

Charlain looked up from her cards. "She's pregnant," she said.

Hal froze in his tracks. "What?"

Chimaera's Copper

"Easter Brownberry. I think you had better marry her, Hal."

"But—"

"The cards told me. I know I haven't been what I should to you, Hal. It was only natural that you find someone else. We had better divorce, so you can marry her before her condition shows."

"But you—the farm here—"

Charlain nodded. "It is true. The farm won't run itself. But I can handle it for a time. Perhaps we can work something out. But first things first. We shall divorce, and you shall marry her. She's young, so really needs your support."

"You are a generous woman, Charlain," he said, amazed.

"You are a good man, Hal, and I haven't treated you fairly. I hope this makes it up for you."

Soon he was gone. Charlain knew she had done the right thing. But even so it had come as a shock.

She had put on a businesslike front, but now that she was alone the pain overwhelmed her. She put her face down on her arms and wept.

Lomax drew back a bloody sword from the chest of a Kancian soldier. He hadn't time to question it now or to feel shock at what was happening. With blood on him and fighting going on every side, all he could do was act continually to save his own life.

He ducked around the tree, narrowly missing getting chopped. An arrow from a Herman took the new attacker in the throat and toppled him from his mount, the sword burying its point in the ground.

He looked at the young Kance soldier's terror-filled eyes and he wanted to feel sorry for him and he wanted to be thankful that his own life had been spared.

A voice screamed pain. A young voice. Phillip's? He hoped not, but there was no chance to look. He battled another soldier and just when he should be feeling the blade in his innards the handsome young Kancian folded over as though made of rags. Not his doing; another's blade had darted in to take the Kancian's life.

"Lomax!"

"Phillip!" The former boy-king had blood on his face and clothing and on the sword he had just used on Lomax's attacker. The boy looked happy, as if he were having the time of his life.

"Lomax, we've got to retreat! We're outnumbered!"

Yes they were, obviously. What had happened, anyway? He hadn't seen who fired the crossbow. St.

Helens had warned them, had trusted him. He was in charge, like it or not.

Chimaera's Copper

"We've got to get!" Phillip insisted. "Give the order, Lomax! Now!"

Lomax, lacking a signaling horn, shouted "RETREAT!" He charged through the brush, hoping others would take the hint. Around him he saw Hermans backing, retreating little by little into their home territory.

After a long, long time—probably several whole minutes, subjectively distorted by the pressure of the situation—he determined that the Kancians were not following. Around them was the supposed safety of Hermandy trees and bushes. Through the bushes he could see the road down which they had marched. Defeated and driven back, but not all killed.

St. Helens had trusted him and left him in charge. He would have to find out who had fired the crossbow bolt at the Kancian general. If the man was still alive, he'd have him executed. After that, taste for it or not, he'd order the Hermans back into Kance by a roundabout way.

St. Helens, Lomax thought savagely, you will be avenged!

General Mor Crumb was eating a handful of bright yellow, exceedingly tart appleberries when Klinglanders descended on their camp. Phantoms, he thought. Wasn't the witch going to learn?

A Throod mercenary screamed and fell back, a short-shafted arrow protruding from his throat. Blood stained the ground and the arrow shaft.

Damn! Real this time!

Mor shouted orders, climbing upon his horse, drawing his sword. In a moment they were battling for their lives. A Klinglander raced for him on a big bay mare, spear leveled at his chest. It was like a dragon spear, Mor thought, positioning his shield to take the point. He braced himself for impact, knowing it would be the last thing he ever felt. The point was at the shield, ready to shatter it and take his life.

Then spear, spearsman, and charger vanished, leaving him alive and shaken.

Damn! Another phantom! Mixed right in with the real combatants! Thank the gods, this time.

"Watch out, General!"

He moved his head aside and caught a sword low on his mailed sleeve that almost dislocated his arm. This one was real! Damn!

"Fight for victory, men! Fight!" He hoped his words would do some good.

Swords and shields clanged steadily. Bowstrings twanged. Men and horses screamed and both died.

Blood bubbled in crimson puddles from torn throats and pierced chests.

Chimaera's Copper

On and on into an increasingly weary day. Whoever had thought that war was glorious should be here now!

General Lester Crumb positioned his army for the big charge at the oncoming cavalry. He did not know why he felt so certain about it, but he knew the Kancians were real this time. Real with death and the means to deliver it.

An arrow narrowly missed him and thunked into a rock. That one was real, at least.

Then they were met on the plain behind the row of hills. Ignorant armies, as John Knight would have said. Ignorant armies clashing just before the fall of night.

He had his sword out and was clanging it with a Kancian. The enemy soldier was very good, and he did his best not to lose to him. A second Kancian came in fast and cut him on the arm above the left elbow. He winced, sickened and weakened all in a heartbeat. He opened his mouth to shout, and then the first Kancian lunged hard.

He barely managed a grunt as the blade skidded off good mail and then penetrated, going deep into his chest. He fell, and his thought, strangely enough, was of his father and what he must be experiencing in the adjoining kingdom.

"Commander! Commander!" a voice shouted in his ear.

But by then he was hearing everything as though it were far, far away. Horses' hooves, poundings, screams, swords clanging against sword, shouts—all changed for him, as if to a babbling of a crowd or a murmuring of a brook.

Faint, fainter, faintest.

Jon could hardly give the war a thought. She was too concerned with Heln and what was happening to her. What was happening to her? Jon wished she knew. Every single morning Kelvin's wife was sick and vomiting, and it was no innocent morning sickness. It was so violent that sometimes there was blood speckling it, and that didn't seem to her to be right.

Jon, watching Heln's pale face as she picked at her tray of fancy palace food, wished that she had been a girl. She hadn't been, really, until she got together with Les. Growing up she'd avoided girl things. Climbing trees, slinging rocks at targets she moved farther and farther away, angling for fish in a way her foster father enjoyed—these had been her things. Soft girlish interests and especially those having to do with a girl's interest in boys she had dismissed with contempt. She had never worn dresses if she could help it, and her interest in infants had been nil. Now as an adult, as a woman, she had to feel a lack.

Chimaera's Copper

Was there a difference between roundears and pointears when it came to birthing? Jon had no way of knowing. How many roundear women had there been in this frame? Heln was the only one she had known, though there had been two females in John Knight's small band of roundears. Two females with round ears somewhere in this frame, maybe having babies in the natural way. Jon wished she had known one.

Heln gave a gasp, rose from her chair, and ran for the bathroom. Sick again, and not gently so. If this was natural pregnancy, Jon wanted no part of it for herself!

Jon picked up the orangmon fruit from Heln's plate and sniffed it. The fruit smelled fine. She didn't believe it was this that was making Heln sick. But just in case it might be—she ate the fruit, finding it good and taut and satisfying. She was wiping the yellow juice from her mouth when Heln returned, looking pale and worn.

"Heln, I'm worried about you," Jon said as her brother's wife resumed her chair. "You've been sick every morning lately. I don't think it's the food; I just tried some."

"It will pass," Heln said almost disinterestedly.

"Yes, but when? You have to think of the baby, Heln. This may not be good for it."

Heln looked impassively out the window at the gardener working on the tulppies and poplics. The flowers were really beautiful this time of year, their red and white, and blue and white blossoms a solace for their eyes. She didn't answer Jon.

That does it! I'm going to get Dr. Sterk to prescribe for her vomiting.

But then a troubling thought: did she trust Dr. Sterk and his medicine! Considering the way he was acting she wasn't sure.

She wondered about it as the sunlight crept over the flower beds and brightened the windows as the birds began to sing. She worried all that morning, and worrying was not like her. Then before she knew it, it was the next day. The oddest thing was that Heln herself did not seem to be worrying; in fact she seemed to have very little interest in anything. What was the matter with her?

There was of course no answer.

Heln was in the royal bathroom, vomiting.

CHAPTER 13

Stapular

Chimaera's Copper

"Father! Kian!"

They all embraced there in the chimaera's larder while the alien hunter looked on. As Kelvin had gradually come to accept, looking on was what Stapular did best.

"You've got your belt, Son! And the Mouvar weapon! And your gauntlets! Even your sword!"

"I have, Father." And a lot of good they've done me so far! "I've tried the Mouvar weapon but it had no effect. The chimaera could have taken everything from me, but it seems contemptuous and didn't bother."

John Knight heaved a big sigh. "It's something, being prisoners of a creature that doesn't fear our weapons, apparently with reason."

Kian jerked a thumb at Stapular. "The chimaera must fear his kind. They came here to kill it."

"Did, perhaps." And probably never will again. "How'd you get caught?"

"Coming back for you," Kian said, seeming annoyed. "We guessed you'd run into difficulties."

Politely he did not mention that it had been Kelvin's own choice.

"You were right," Kelvin acknowledged. "The chimaera's too much for me."

"Too much for anyone," Kian said. He did not quite say that that should have been obvious.

"Too much for anyone from an inferior frame," Stapular sneered. The alien had moved away from the wall. One of his hands reached into the trough, picked up a luscious nectarfruit and squeezed it.

Pulp and juice squirted from between Stapular's fingers. His hands had to be quite as strong as the gauntlets, yet he had launched no attacks on the chimaera. Kelvin hadn't seen him actually eat, either, though probably he sneaked that in when Kelvin was asleep. Didn't want an inferior observing a superior taking nourishment like any other person, no doubt.

Distracted by Stapular's actions and his own thoughts, Kelvin tried to think of something the two of them had talked about. But had they ever really talked? He remembered trying to interest Stapular in doing something to save their lives, but the hunter had been as adamant then as now.

His father slapped him across the back in a friendly fashion he knew was calculated to build his courage. "Well, Son, we're in trouble!"

"Father, when were we not?" The awkwardness of the situation, and his father's attempt to make light of it were hardly lost on him.

"Say, Stapular, you old phony," Kian said, turning to their cellmate. "You ready to break out of here?" It was a return dig for the hunter's taunt about inferior life-forms.

"Stupid inferior being!" Stapular snapped. As usual his thinking seemed centered on that. Maybe it was because he feared that he himself was mentally deficient?

Chimaera's Copper

"Well, we have to do something, don't we, Father?" Kelvin asked. Desperation made his voice squeak. He hadn't felt so unsure of himself since Mor Crumb had propelled him into his first sword fight. The single gauntlet he had then worn had saved him then and many times afterward. Would that it and its mate would do so again!

"I could wish for a laser," his father said. "Unfortunately your father-in-law lost the last one before we fought the final battle for Aratex."

Kelvin remembered. According to St. Helens it was either drop the laser over the Aratex courtyard or let Heln tumble to her death. Although his father-in-law had done many things of which Kelvin didn't approve—in fact, the man had been downright aggravating at times—he had to feel that this was one time he had made the right decision. Now Heln was back home, quietly preparing to have their baby. How glad he was that she wasn't in any of this horror with the chimaera!

Kian spoke up. "A pair of magic gauntlets once propelled me to the top of a huge silver serpent.

Once I was up there they knew how to keep me there and how to fight. Kelvin, do you suppose that if you got on top of the chimaera behind the sting—"

Stapular laughed bitterly. "Dumb, inferior life-form!"

"The sting can send out blue lightning bolts," Kelvin said, cutting through his brother's annoyance.

"It shot them at me, and—" He launched into his tale.

"Electricity!" John said when he had finished. "It has to be! Like the electric eels we had back on Earth! That's why an antimagic weapon had no effect! Electricity is science!"

"Brilliant!" Stapular said. "For a dumb inferior life-form."

"Listen, Stapular, I'm getting tired of that!" John said, whirling on him. "If you're so brilliant and superior, why don't you tell us how to save ourselves?"

"Because there isn't any way," Stapular said. "You either kill the chimaera with laser bursts or you get caught by squarears and eaten by it. After you're caught you're finished. All you can do is enjoy the food, until you become food."

"You were planning something," Kian said. "You and Kelvin."

"When was that?" Kelvin asked. Never before had he been so puzzled by anything his brother had said. With the puzzle came a lancing pain through his head. This business must be wearing him down more than he thought!

"When I was here before. Not physically. I mean when I returned in my astral form."

"You were here? Astrally?" Now Kelvin understood it, or almost did. His head continued to hurt, as though protesting something. Why was Stapular making that mechanical frown and motioning as if for silence?

Chimaera's Copper

"I was. I had those dragonberries we brought, and—"

"Shut up, all of you!" Stapular said.

"Why?" Kian glared at the red-haired, glass-armored cellmate. His expression suggested that he didn't want Stapular ordering them to do anything.

"Because the chimaera reads minds that don't know how to block and compensate."

Oh. They all fell silent.

It was the nearest Stapular had come to admitting that there might actually be a plan.

Mervania tugged at her copper earrings and considered the matter carefully. They had been planning something, Stapular and Kelvin. Probably they intended some ruse, some trick. Stapular, being a hunter, would have controlled his thoughts. But Kelvin—impossible. She considered what she needed to do.

What she wanted was those dragonberries. They would work on her kind, if the legend was correct.

They worked for roundears and dragons; thus she, Mertin, and Grumpus all qualified. Together or singly they could search this frame for interesting sights.

What a release that would be! Their body might remain prisoner here on the isle, but their minds would range everywhere! They could spy on squarears who were their keepers. They could watch the froogears at their yearly secret rituals. It would be such a relief to the boredom they suffered here.

Then, too, there was the possibility of visiting other frames, of seeing even more entertaining sights, of listening in on the talk and thoughts of strangers, humans and their superiors. Oh what fun, what incredible fun they could have! As well as, just maybe, finding a potential mate, somewhere.

All of it dependent on dragonberries. There was the treasure beyond reckoning!

"You thinking of that trade plan again?" Mertin grumbled.

"Yes, Mertin, I am." She felt pleased that Mertin was actually asking her thoughts. Maybe she had succeeded in interesting him in something other than food or sex. Of course he would probably just want to use the astral travel to spy on the matings of assorted creatures. Still, if that made him cooperate with her effort, it would be worth it.

"Offer them freedom," Mertin advised. "Let the older roundear go with the one who had the berries.

Tell them to find the berries for us, get them back, and bring them here. Then when they don't come back, we eat those who are left."

Chimaera's Copper

"Mertin, that's perfect!" she exclaimed, thrilled as much by his support as the notion itself.

"That's logical, Mervania, as you should be."

"Grrrromph," Grumpus added, clicking his mouth as if sampling the tender flesh of a captive.

Mervania sighed. Neither of them had much use for feeling; that was her department. Nothing to do now but go to the larder. She could take along some of the fruit they liked so much, and then she could ask. She did hope they would be open to reason. They should be, but human foodstuffs were notorious for being less than smart about certain matters. Suppose they said no? She tried not to think about that. Maybe if they said no and she butchered one and she and her companion heads ate it while the others watched, that would help them see reason. Yes, if they said no, that indeed might be necessary. Just so long as at least one survived to fetch the berries.

She touched the companion minds and they flipped up their tail and scuttled across the ground to the orchard. She and Mertin filled their joined arms with nectarfruit, and Grumpus pinched a cantemellon from a vine with their pincers and stuffed it inelegantly into his own mouth.

Properly loaded with fruit and plans, they scuttled for the larder.

Squirtmuck could not get the collecting tree out of his mind. The objects taken from strangers had never interested him greatly, but those berries were tempting. The one he had sampled had made him embarrassingly sick, but if a roundear's stomach could handle them, then so should his. It was so intriguing, the thought of dying as the young roundear had done, then coming back to life.

Squirtmuck had never thought much about it before, but now that he did, the thought of what existed after dying was intriguing.

Irresistibly, bit by bit, he toyed with the notion. Late during the day, while searching for squiggle worms, he managed to get back to the area of the tree. He looked around, saw none of his mates, and made a splashing run for it. Soon he was there, looking into the cavity and its collection of visitor artifacts.

If he took just one of the berries, would anyone know? Suppose it killed him, and he did not return to life. He wasn't quite old enough to want to die. True, he was tired of a lot of what made life, but not tired enough to give it up yet.

He thought about it for a moment more, while the sun started setting and dappling the trees and the greenish water with orange. Why not, he thought, why not indeed? He might not have another chance.

Reaching into the tree's cavity, he drew forth the bag.

Chimaera's Copper

Bloorg scratched a square ear and remembered that he had not used his viewing crystal yesterday.

As leader of his people and official greeter of visitors he should check the transporter. As usual there would be nothing, but then again there might. There was always that hope.

Sighing, he picked up the squarish crystal from its stand, held it before his eyes, and concentrated.

At first, as was usual, he saw nothing but his own square pupils in his own square eyes. Then he could see into the pupils that expanded and expanded, and then he was seeing back at the transporter cave. It was as he had last seen it, with a drying narcofruit left by the froogears near the exit.

Why was he here? Oh, yes, to check for possible visitors. There were none, as he had expected.

So he would direct his thoughts elsewhere. He should check briefly on the froogears, and then maybe the chimaera's island. It was a chore, but his job. Work, work, work, always the same boring necessities.

He drifted his sight across the swamp, finding the froogears at a camp on a platform of floater weeds. They were doing froogear things. Here one froogear dived off the platform and crawled along the bottom, finally surfacing with a wriggling stinkfish firm in his jaws. There a female covered her breasts and stomach with greenish muck, the better to attract a lover. There child froogears splashed joyfully at the edge of the platform and took turns diving under. The male with the stinkfish in its jaw swam up to the platform and the female. The female took the fish from his jaws, bit its head, and oogled his form. The male climbed up beside her. In a moment the two would be joining. At such moments Bloorg, bored, moved his viewing elsewhere.

He had almost brought his sight back to the crystal when he remembered the froogear leader. Where was Squirtmuck, anyway? Efficiently he moved his sight in circles, checking froogears. Squirtmuck was not there.

What an irritation! He had to search until he located the missing creature, or was assured that it was dead. Wider and wider he viewed, until finally he thought to check the collecting tree.

Squirtmuck was there. He held a bag in his webbed fingers and from it he took a berry. He held it poised in front of his mouth.

Berry? What berry? As from a great distance—which of course it was—it leaped at him: dragonberry!

"No, Squirtmuck, no!"

But it was already too late. Squirtmuck, propelled by some incomprehensible flight of froogear fancy, had suddenly and forcefully thrown away the entire bag.

The bar dropped outside the door. All stood back as the chimaera entered, carrying fruit. Kelvin felt Chimaera's Copper

strange, watching it. The head called Mervania still seemed to him to be that of a beautiful coppery-haired woman, a roundear at that.

Thank you, Kelvin.

The male head, Mertin, could have been on the shoulders of any of the soldiers he had directed against Rowforth in the silver-serpent frame.

Forget it, foodstuff!

The dragon head reminded him all too clearly of the dragons with golden scales that he himself had slaughtered.

GWROOOOFH

While the beast as a whole reminded him of nothing so much as a—

The chimaera had entered, while he was thinking. Now it elevated its deadly tail. Kelvin hastily suppressed his thoughts. The monster dumped its load of nectarfruit into the trough. It smelled lusciously good. Even though he knew it was fattening, he could hardly wait to start eating!

He edged away from the wall, his feet seeming to have a mind of their own. Suddenly he was running, right past the chimaera to the open doorway.

Mervania's pretty head dipped toward his as he passed. "Going somewhere, little toothsome?" she inquired sweetly.

He put on the skids, without knowing why. Now he was standing right beside the monster, with the female human face almost near enough to kiss.

"Well, if you feel that way, Kelvin—" she started, amused.

Kelvin, astonished, realized that she would kiss him, even though she intended to eat his flesh later.

Because she liked to play with her food.

Suddenly Stapular acted. "Go!" he shouted, and grabbed the tip of the sting, which was now pointed at the ceiling.

There was a flash, as from a close lightning bolt. Kelvin found himself weak and gasping and tingling all over, just outside the door. His feet must have carried him here! Inside the cellar his brother and father lay sprawled, unconscious or dead.

Amazingly, the chimaera too was down. Only Stapular was alive and moving. "Quickly, before it comes to!"

"What?" Kelvin struggled with the thought. His feet wanted to carry him, but he could hardly stand.

Chimaera's Copper

"The electricity in this confined space took them all out. But I'm not certain how long before they wake! Hurry!"

Abruptly he was remembering. Stapular waving his fingers at him, implanting a course of action deep within his head.

Kelvin ran to the fence and grabbed a post. The post, slippery and solid, resisted his strength, but he was determined. Then the gauntlets took over and wrenched it from the ground.

"Come on! Get your posterior in motion!" Stapular cried.

He was to run with it back to the chimaera. He was to raise it like a great dragonspear and drive it deep into every living eyesocket the monster possessed! He—

He stood there, his weapon poised before Mervania's fallen face. She looked almost angelic, her eyes closed, her features relaxed. She had been about to kiss him. Drive the point into one of those lovely eyes?

How could he? The chimaera was helpless. It might be a monster, but Mervania was as womanly as any woman he had known, with the possible exception of his own mother. And his wife. Yet here he stood, feet wide apart, tip of the greenish-tinged sting raised above her face, his eyes and muscles concentrating hard on her coppery—

"Now, stupid, now!" Stapular ordered.

Something snapped. Kelvin trembled and pointed the sting away from the lovely face.

"Ineffective Minor World fool!" Stapular screamed. He charged across and took hold of the shaft.

"I'll do it myself! I should have known better than to trust a lesser creature to do something important!" He pulled.

Kelvin resisted, pulling back with the strength of the gauntlets.

"You fool, you idiot, you brainless nothing!" Stapular yelled. "Can't you see that it's about to wake?"

True, surely. Yet Kelvin did not yield. "No, Stapular! I can't do it this way! We only want to escape."

"That's all you want, maybe, you imbecile! I want more!" Stapular exerted considerable strength, and it was as if he wore magic gauntlets of his own. Kelvin was pulled off balance, but his gauntlets maintained their grip.

"Let go! Let go! Let go!" They fell together, struggling over possession of the copper sting. They rolled over and over on the floor, with Stapular's unexpectedly heavy weight and the armor pressing hard against his simple rustic body coverings.

Then they were up against the trough, and Stapular was bending him back. The edge of the trough Chimaera's Copper

struck his head and he saw stars. Then—

Stapular had the sting! He held it poised above the Grumpus head, searching out the dragon's eyeball and its path to the brain. Kelvin had killed dragons that way, and Stapular had learned from his telling, if he hadn't known it before. "Die, beast!" Stapular said. His body tensed.

Without realizing how he did it, Kelvin was upon him. One incredible leap propelled somehow by his gauntlets; then he and the hunter were going over on the floor. Again they were rolling, fighting for control.

"You fool! You moron! You Minor World trash!"

Kelvin paid no attention to the words. He saved his breath for the combat. It was almost as though the gauntlets had taken weird control over the whole of him. To destroy the monster should be his greatest desire, yet now it was as if his greatest wish were to save the chimaera.

The great beast stirred. An arm with a man's hand on it reached out and grabbed the shaft of the sting where Kelvin and Stapular held it.

"Let go that!" Mertin said. The scorpiocrab claws clicked warningly.

Stapular did not let go. Thus he remained in place as the huge claws reached out, took him around the middle, and lifted him into the air.

"Now see what you've done!" Stapular cried. "Minor World idiot!"

Kelvin released the sting. With a quick motion he brought out his sword. He swished it at the pincer and then struck. Copper gleamed brightly where his blade bit. The pincer would have a scar, but that was as deeply as his blade penetrated. At the same time he felt the shock of impact from wrist to shoulder. Ouch! His arm felt numb!

"You really must not fight!" Mervania said. "You really must not." Her head was awake now, staring at him.

Suddenly the hunter had hold of his own left wrist. He pulled at the transparent gauntlet. It came off— along with the entire hand.

Kelvin blinked, but the sight remained. Where the man's wrist should have been was a metallic something that could hardly be bone.

From the foreshortened arm a ruby laser flashed out. It cut through one of the pincers. The pincer and Stapular hit the floor simultaneously.

"Now you'll see!" Stapular said, rising and pointing the stump. "I came prepared! It was planned that I be the last, and hide this until the last moment! I didn't want to have to reveal my nature, but this Minor World scum forced my hand." He glanced briefly at the hand he had removed. "Now, Chimaera—"

Chimaera's Copper

Mervania screamed. Mertin made an exclamation of dismay. Grumpus growled. If a monster could tremble, this one was doing so.

Casually Stapular lanced off the second pincer. With his back against the wall, immune from being grabbed, he could proceed to cut off every arm and head.

"Listen, Minor World being," Stapular said. "You wouldn't have it the conventional way! You had to make me ruin my cover! Now listen to the death cries of the last known surviving chimaera in all the frames!"

"No, no!" Mervania cried. It sounded very much like a woman's pleading, and indeed there were tears in her eyes.

Kelvin could not have said how it happened. Suddenly he raised, reversed, and flung his sword forward. It was the gauntlets' doing. For the moment the gauntlets appeared to have chosen a strange side.

The sword turned in the air, the point coming to the fore. The blade penetrated Stapular's throat precisely in the middle. Stapular looked surprised. Then he raised his intact hand and yanked the sword partway out.

Something black gushed forth. Alien blood? No, not blood at all, Kelvin realized. Oil! Stapular was what his father called a robot!

Whatever it was, the fluid was necessary for the thing's functioning. As it poured out, Stapular collapsed. He could not function without oil pressure any better than a living creature could function without blood pressure.

"You have saved us! You have saved us!" Mervania exclaimed, and even Grumpus growled something that sounded appreciative. Monsters valued their lives as much as other folk did.

Now John Knight and Kian were opening their eyes, returning to bewildered consciousness.

"It was all a trick!" Mervania babbled indignantly. "A trick of the hunters!"

"That thing never would have tasted right!" Mertin said with disgust. "It would have given Grumpus indigestion."

"GROOOOMTH!" the dragon head agreed with a disgusted expression.

Kelvin looked quickly to his father and brother, and back to the faces of their captor. Now they were in for it, he thought. Now they were all going to be rewarded in the worst possible way for his colossal stupidity and for the gauntlets' interference. Now they had no way to escape being eaten by the chimaera.

Chimaera's Copper

Grumpus snapped his big jaws and darted forth his forked tongue as if hungry already.

CHAPTER 14

Turnings

St. Helens prepared himself for death, as well as he was able. He expected a spear to be rammed through him or a knife slitting his throat. Yet even as this child-king who was not a child screamed

"Kill him!" the witch opened her eyes and stared piercingly at the men holding him.

"No, precious," she said, her eyes flicking back to the child. "He must be a prisoner."

"He killed you!" the child shrilled.

"Not yet, precious. Not yet. Please, darlings, humor me. My kind are hard to kill." With those words the old woman ceased speaking and closed her eyes as though for death.

St. Helens heard a sword snick out of a scabbard. She had spoken too late, or died too early, he thought. Now the brat-king would have his understandable revenge.

"No!" the little guy ordered. "Don't kill him! Put him in the dungeon! As for Helbah, take her in!"

"But—"

At that moment a large houcat, very black, ferocious of eye, leaped from behind the second young king and ran to Helbah's apparent corpse. For one moment St. Helens felt the sharp yellow eyes, and heard the wickedest, deepest, longest-drawn hiss he'd ever heard from anything feline. Then the houcat was on the corpse, breathing in and out against Helbah's worn mouth.

Suddenly the houcat stiffened all over. Then it collapsed like a black, empty bag. The blackness stayed there and seemed even to be melting as a soldier jerked St. Helens' arm.

Now there were two corpses, he thought. Witch's and witch's familiar. But whatever else he might think of her, he knew that the witch had saved his life.

The soldiers rushed him away.

Lomax steadied his young resolve as he looked up and down the line of survivors of the recent fight.

They had lost only about a dozen men in addition to St. Helens, but twenty more were wounded seriously enough to be sent home. The remainder, Lomax determined, were going to cross that Chimaera's Copper

border again. But first there was this other matter.

"All right! Who did it! Who fired that crossbow bolt! Who violated the truce?"

No one spoke. All the Hermans remained impassive, while the mercenaries were interested rather than apprehensive. Judging from appearances, none here were guilty.

"You, Phillip, did you—"

He was going to say "see someone do it?" but the boy interrupted him.

"Yes, I did it! I did it! I'm the one!"

"YOU! But why?" His head swam even as he asked it.

"St. Helens plays chess! He knows you have to take out the dark queen!"

"You've killed him! You're responsible for his death!"

"He's my greatest friend! Oh, Lomax, please, please hang me as he asked!"

Lomax shivered. "You really—"

"Please. I did it for him. I did it for all of us. So that we could win. The same as when Kelvin destroyed Melbah in Aratex."

"Damn!" Lomax said, pained and unenthusiastic. The kid really did think it a game! Doubtless he thought that afterward the dead simply woke up and resumed living, ready to play the game again.

Kids!

"Please," Phillip repeated. "It was my dearest friend's last request. He was not only my dearest friend, he was my only friend!"

Lomax shook all over, unable to stop himself. "You really want me to give that order? You really want to hang by your neck and choke, your eyeballs bugging out? You want to die?"

"Yes."

He considered it. He liked Phillip in spite of himself. Would St. Helens really want him dead? St.

Helens had saved the former figurehead king of Aratex from death, and had treated him as a friend.

Should he, could he now follow what had been St. Helens' command?

"NO!" he said forcefully. "That'd be too easy on you! You have to go back with us into Kance! You have to fight the enemy and make up for what you've done!"

"Oh, thank you, thank you, kind, gentle friend!"

Was that for refusing to hang him, or for visiting on him presumably worse punishment? There were Chimaera's Copper

tears in the boy's eyes, but his voice was not devoid of sneaky triumph. What game was he really playing?

Well, the reality of battle would sweat that out of him, if it didn't kill him first.

St. Helens, Lomax thought in what was almost a prayer, I promise you will be avenged even if it costs every one of our lives!

The phantoms were not coming now, Mor thought. They'd quit appearing and disappearing in midbattle. Yet his men were losing, losing badly, and not to witchcraft.

He finished off the Klinglander he was fighting and then wheeled his horse. Dead and dying men lay everywhere, and yes, the tide of battle had definitely turned.

It galled him to do it, but there was no alternative. He lifted the horn to his lips and blew the signal for retreat.

Their only consolation, he thought, was that in the forests grew bloodfruit for the treatment of the wounded. Before this war was over, the magical fruit would save a lot of lives.

Thinking grimly of the surgery that would have to be set up, Mor turned his horse. A forest with bloodfruit was reasonably close behind.

Zoanna stared into her crystal and laughed a most unbeautiful laugh that Rowforth found deliciously chilling.

"Look! Look!" she ordered.

He was looking. He saw the witch who controlled the kingdoms of Klingland and Kance lying motionless without a visible sign of life. There was that black houcat lying on her face, melting into it. There were the Kancian soldiers dragging a bewildered St. Helens away.

"Does this mean we've won?" he asked. He felt stupid asking a woman about anything, even Zoanna.

He felt particularly stupid now, knowing that he had done nothing to direct the battles or secure the triumph.

"We will have won if she never recovers," Zoanna said. "We must see that she doesn't."

"You will use more magic?"

"Magic won't be needed in the war. Of course my not helping our side will mean many more casualties. Some of those will be our former enemies."

Chimaera's Copper

"A shame," he said smugly. "They'll fight their hearts out and never know why."

"Yes, they'll die for us, one way or another. Those who survive the battles may have to die later."

"Slowly, with our help, and with much pain."

"Of course. That is what we both want."

They embraced, the battles revealed by the crystals fading from their minds. Soon, he thought, there was going to commence the fulfillment of all his dreams. It would be brutally, bloodily, ghastlily glorious.

Lester Crumb imagined that he was back fighting the Queen's Guardsmen, with Kelvin's Knights of the Roundear. Then he opened his eyes and found that the man bending over him wore a different uniform. He strove to think, to reorient, and then it came, the pain of the wound high in his chest.

Where was Jon? Jon had saved his life and then gone on to become his wife. What had happened?

Different war. Different battle. Different circumstances. Jon was far away. Safe. Oh, he hoped she was safe!

A gnarled hand mopped at his brow. He felt the sweat that was all over his face, soaking his undergarments, the blanket he lay upon. Overhead was the roof of a tent. The tent was flapping dismally in a wind that howled like disembodied souls slain in battle.

"We were fighting Kance soldiers," he said. "I fell. Someone saved me. It was almost like another battle when I was unhorsed."

"Save your strength, Commander."

Commander? Him? He could hardly remember. His head hurt and pounded like a drum beaten to announce someone's death. Oh, if only Jon were here to hold him! He tried remembering the officer's name. Klumpecker, that was it! Lieutenant Karl Klumpecker from Throod.

He looked into the deep blue eyes, noting the blond hair and the smile so typical of Throod mercenaries. Big shoulders, too, and a strong frame, though not quite as great in these departments as his father.

"Did we win the battle?"

"No, Commander, we lost."

Somehow he thought he'd say that. "Many casualties?"

"I'm afraid so, Commander. On both sides."

Chimaera's Copper

"Can we win the war?"

"Eventually, Commander. When Commander Reilly and the Hermans and your father and his troops and ours all reach the caps."

"Yes, the caps." Insane business, two capitals in one. Governed, theoretically, by two very slowly maturing boys. Governed in fact by a witch identical in appearance to the one Kelvin had destroyed in Aratex. Would Kelvin soon return? Would he return as in Aratex to put everything right? When he had started this adventure he had been certain. Now wounded, now defeated in battle, he was no longer certain of anything.

"Commander, your wound is so serious that—" The lieutenant paused, seemingly searching for words.

"If I cannot command, you must, Lieutenant. We must not surrender! We must fight on! My father and St. Helens are depending on us!"

"Yes, Commander Crumb. We will fight our way into the caps and into glory."

With me or without me, Les added in his own troubled thoughts. He wanted to pass out, even to die, but thoughts of Jon would not allow it. Then it seemed that he was but a little boy, that he was lost, and that all others were gone.

Charlain moved her copper locks out of her violet eyes with a quick sweep of her slender hand. The cards she was laying out on the kitchen table had come out the same as before. Every time the Blind Fool headed Kelvin's file, designating great danger and uncertainty for him.

"Does the prophecy still apply?" she whispered to herself. "Can it still?"

She tweaked her right pointed ear to keep herself awake. John Knight had been intrigued by that habit of hers. Strange man, John. She had once thought of him only as a way of fulfilling the prophecy. He, a roundear, would mate with her, a pointed-ear person, and their son would be the one mentioned in the Book of Prophecy. It had all seemed so simple when she was young. John had come straight from the queen's dungeon, torn, lonely, and confess it now, handsome. She had wanted him from the start, and they had married quickly and without attracting attention. They had had their son, and then a daughter. Only roundeared Kelvin could relate to the prophecy, but pointeared Jon had supported him loyally.

In time Kelvin had indeed slain dragons, and freed their kingdom of Rud from the tyrannous Queen Zoanna. The prophecy was being fulfilled, as she had foreseen.

Then things had changed, and nothing was as she had expected. Perhaps her action in implementing the prophecy had caused the fabric of the situation to change. Kelvin had left this frame and returned to it just in time to save Rud and Aratex by uniting them, just as in the prophecy—but that had been Chimaera's Copper

by the skin of his fingernails! Now "joining four" were the next words in the verse that applied to him. He was supposed to join four kingdoms. But how could he? Kelvin wasn't even here! He was in another frame, and the prophecy that he would rid his homeland of a sore was rapidly being nullified. Sometimes she almost thought that John Knight had been right.

"Nonsense, this prophecy business! Nonsense!" John had said, sometimes sitting at this very table.

She had soothed him, calmed him, knowing even then that he would not always be hers. He had suffered himself to be soothed, not because he accepted magic, but because she was beautiful in his eyes (and perhaps in others' eyes too), and he liked to be close to her. So his contempt of magic had been muted at times, until finally he began to believe. Then she had lost him, through no choice of either of theirs, in the necessary tragedy of the times.

Now things were changing again, becoming even less settled than before, and the cards reflected it.

"John," she whispered, pretending that he was there. Oh, how she loved him! Her second husband was a good man, taken as the law allowed on the extended disappearance and assumed death of her first. But John, John had been the stuff of story. Round ears, for sorcery's sake! And from another frame, a world too strange for comprehension. Moving pictures, talking boxes, horseless carriages, and more, much more. Strangest of all was John's insistence that none of those were magic.

"Well, John, I know you are alive now," she murmured through her tears. "I never would have remarried had I known. I know now that somehow the cards lied, or I misread them, and that you survived what seemed a certain death. I know that I was not your first woman, or your last, and you were not my last man, but I love you and want you, and hope that you will still want me." But there had been others to consider, including the man she had married. Hal Hackleberry—she hated to admit it, but she was relieved that things had fallen out with Hal as they had. Perhaps she had suspected what would happen; the cards might have informed her, but she had resolutely avoided reading them with respect to the Brownberry family, after that first crisis. Even so, she had known that they had a buxom and lonely daughter...

Hal was good but fallible. Most men were. She had wept when she lost him, as much for her own complicity as for the loss. She had never been able to love him properly. "But you, John..."

She found herself weeping, and this annoyed her. Witchy people who read cards and tried to foretell events were not supposed to be soft and blubbery. She had to remember that. She forced herself to face the truth. She was dissembling when she told herself she had not loved Hal completely. She knew now that she had never loved Hal at all. She had told him she did, and tried to believe it herself, but it had always been John. So she was as much at fault as Hal for what had happened.

Maybe he had known, and so had suffered, and been vulnerable. Certainly she hardly blamed him.

She had said that before; now she believed it.

When in doubt, deal some cards.

She dealt them out, asking in her mind, Where is John? Where is John Knight who was my husband?

John was with Kelvin. Both in another frame. Both separated from her as though by death's gates.

Chimaera's Copper

The Blind Fool leered and danced, promising naught. They might or might not return.

She turned a card. There it was again: the Coupling card. Kelvin was already married, to a nice girl named Heln, a roundear like himself. The Coupling card was an unmistakable reference. She placed it on file and turned the following card. The Birthing card. So they were going to have a baby, a fact she had already learned. But then a third card, to follow the Birthing card—and it came up, yet again:

The Twister card. Meaning grave danger and an uncertainty of outcome.

Poor Heln! Poor frightened little mother-to-be. You are in for great difficulties.

But would it be just the birth, or something happening to the child during the birth? Afterward?

Stubbornly the cards would not say. Actually, it was wrong to blame the cards for being perverse; they were perverse only when the situation made them helpless. For example, when something they might reveal would be changed when they revealed it. If they told her she would stub her toe when she left the table, she would be careful to avoid that, making the cards wrong. Paradox incapacitated them. So they compromised by presenting the Twister. They weren't willfully difficult.

Maybe she should be with her daughter-in-law for the delivery? Usually that was not a mother-in-law's place, but under the circumstance...

Yes, she would go to Heln and try to help her. With the Blind Fool dominating Kelvin's fate and the Twister twirling in to link hers more closely with his, there was no alternative.

"I don't like to interfere," she said aloud, "but what else is a mother to do? Heln, I'm going to come visiting!"

Jon did not like the way Heln looked! It seemed less like a healthy pregnancy every day. Not only was Heln disgustingly sick at frequent intervals, she was now having bad dreams.

"Jon, oh Jon!" Heln sat up in bed, her face pasty, her eyes wild and glassy. "I saw it again, the thing with three heads! Two of them baby heads and the other a dragon's. The baby heads were crying, and—"

That settles it! Jon thought. I'm going to get something for her from the doctor. Dr. Sterk has to know something! He was royal physician before I was born!

"Where are you going, Jon?"

"I'll be back."

She met Dr. Sterk in the hallway. He looked straight ahead with his birdlike eyes and pressed a small decanter into her hands. "Three drops twice a day in her tefee," he said, and passed on.

Chimaera's Copper

Well, she thought, at least she hadn't had to press him. Evidently he'd noticed it too. But did she dare trust his medicine, considering his evident toadyism?

She reentered their room. Heln gazed at her with eyes seemingly reflecting horror. That was not the way a young mother-to-be should look!

That settles it! Jon thought again. Enough torment is enough! I just have to trust. Who after all would want to harm an infant? Aside from certain royal figures...

"Heln, it's time for your tefee." She pulled on the cord to signal the servant. In a moment the servant was there with a big steaming pot of the beverage and a plate with a selection of bite-sized cooakes.

Jon poured the tefee into the cups and carefully added three greenish thick drops to Heln's. She stirred it with a spoon and the syrupy medicine blended into the dark greenish hue of the beverage.

"Here you are, Heln."

She watched as Kelvin's pretty dark-haired wife took the cup listlessly, and slowly sipped.

Heln's eyes widened. She raised the cup again, in both hands. Eagerly she sucked down every drop.

That was good, Jon hoped.

CHAPTER 15

Disappearance

Mervania's head moved close to Kelvin's and spoke in that disturbingly seductive tone she affected:

"Kelvin, since you saved us by destroying the cruel hunter, we will not eat you or your companions."

"You are letting us go?" Was she toying with him again? Playing with her food, as her fellow head put it? Kelvin did not in the least trust her.

"Yes, yes, but there is a price." It was prettily said, her face almost touching his. Even her breath was sweet as she said it.

"What price?" They were already in its power. Anything Kelvin or his companions had, the chimaera could take away, for reason or whim. Surely she wasn't bargaining for a kiss!

"Those dragonberries Kian used—I want some." Very plainly spoken, no artifice showing.

Kelvin looked unhappily to Kian. He hated speaking for him and he hated not to.

Chimaera's Copper

"Lost," Kian said, helping John to his feet. "Froogears."

"Unfortunate," Mervania said. This time there was just a touch of sadness. If the dragonberries were lost, then they were lost, and there was nothing to be done about it. Which meant that the human party had nothing with which to bargain.

"Groompth," remarked Grumpus. He opened his dragon's mouth wide enough to display his swordlike teeth.

"Now we eat!" Mertin said, making a superfluous translation. He didn't sound at all sorry. If dragonberries were of great importance to Mervania, they were less so to him.

"Wait! Wait!" Kelvin cried. He had never felt so panicky in his life. To fail to say the right thing now would be to condemn himself and his companions to being eaten. "Suppose—suppose we get you some? Maybe we can bring you some seed so you can grow them here on your island. Then you'll always have a supply."

Mervania's head tipped coyly to one side. "That would be nice, Kelvin."

Yes, Kelvin thought. If we can get the seeds back home, and if the squarears will let us.

"I read your thoughts, Kelvin," Mervania said reprovingly, "the squarears will let you. But you must tell them first."

"We will," Kelvin said. Unconsciously he picked up the old copper sting with its green patina scratched from being dropped on the floor. Then he looked over at Stapular, now silent and unarrogant, the oil no longer flowing from his pierced throat.

"You may take back your weapon," Mervania said, "but you must not touch the hunter's."

"Fair enough," Kelvin said. He crossed the cell to Stapular's pinned body, and without his willing it his right gauntlet reached for the sword haft. Fascinated he watched his arm lift the sword from the oil. The blade was covered with a thick dark grease that probably would help preserve its metal. The gauntlet wiped off most of the stuff on a clean section of the body, then sheathed the sword in its scabbard. Kelvin's arm was his own again.

"You must tell the squarears about this," Mervania cautioned. "They must know what was planned.

They will come to get this robot and its weapon and guard against this ever happening again."

"I'm glad to have been of service," Kelvin said. He looked into the open blue eyes of the robot he had believed to be a person and was forced to think Junk, nothing but junk. Not flesh and blood at all.

"Yes," Mervania said. "An excellent imitation."

Yet he had felt that Stapular was living. Had he been, or was that magic?

Chimaera's Copper

"It is what your father calls science," Mervania said. "You are now free to go. Do not forget, though, what you have agreed to do."

"We'll talk to the squarears," Kelvin said. "If they will permit us, we'll get your dragonberry seeds."

Unconsciously he hefted the sting in his left hand.

"You may take that with you," Mervania said. "To me it is of no more importance than your hair and nail clippings are to you."

"Thank you," Kelvin said. "Thank you for—"

"Come!" his father said. "Before it changes its mind!"

"Minds," Kian corrected.

Kelvin had only one objection: they didn't have a boat, and he doubted that they could swim all the way back to the swamp.

"You will be met," Mervania said, knowing his thought. "Froogears will come."

"They—know?"

"Some are quite near. Their minds, like yours, are always open."

"Oh." That was all he could manage. He looked at his father and brother, but they were already on their way out of the larder and into the gloriously warm and mild sunshine beyond.

Kelvin looked once more at the dead robot. Why did he persist in thinking of it as a once-living man, though now he knew better?

"You have a quaint human way of anthropomorphizing," Mervania said. "You want to believe that thing was human because it seemed so, even though all it did was insult you in order to keep you from getting too well acquainted and perhaps fathoming its secret prematurely."

That must be it. He looked at the Mervania head. "I—"

"Just as you persist in thinking of me as a pretty woman, though you know even better that I am nothing of the kind. Your human capacity for willful self-delusion is amazing."

Just so. Kelvin turned and walked after John and Kian.

"I like you too, Kelvin, perhaps as foolishly," she murmured almost inaudibly. "I would have missed you, after we ate you."

Bloorg withdrew his mind from his viewing crystal and considered the implications. He had just seen and overheard the conversation of Mervania Chimaera and the visitors. So they had agreed to Chimaera's Copper

return with dragonberry seeds for the chimaera. That should be fine, so long as they thereafter stayed away. If those berries kept the chimaera entertained, better yet, and should it actually manage to fulfill its dream and discover some other creature of its kind, making a mating unit, that would be wonderful. How interesting that the man's magic gauntlets had fathomed all that, and acted correctly despite temptation to do otherwise.

Yes, he thought, rubbing his square ears with his usual afterviewing massage, that should work out very well. They would meet the human party at the transporter cave and make certain the visitors got their correct transporter setting. After that there would be an end to commerce. Who would ever have suspected that the foolish visitors would not only survive, but benefit the situation!

Think-whistling an inspiring song, Bloorg stepped outside his dwelling and prepared to summon his underlings for the start of a new day.

The trip away from the island and back through the swamp was one Kelvin had not expected to make. He looked over at his father and Kian as the froogears carried them, wondering whether they were as amazed as he at the turn of events. If they survived this journey in good order, he planned to give up this life of involuntary adventure. Nothing was going to pry him away from Heln and his home again! Froogears, squarears, chimaera... just too much! Back home things were sensible with only a bit of magic and sorcery and golden-scaled dragons to break the monotony of everyday life. It was so much better to be among normal things, instead of out among exotic and unnatural things like robots and laser weapons!

"I can't believe it," Kian said. "I'm actually going to see Lonny again!"

That was right! All this had started when they headed out to attend Kian's wedding! But Kelvin was ready to skip that event at this point, not wanting to risk another journey through the transporter. He just wanted to stay with safe, normal Heln and their safe, normal baby on the way.

John Knight said nothing, and the froogears splashed away, transferring them from the lake to the swamp and then, by infinitely slow progress, to the edge of the swamp and finally the transporter cave.

Squarears were waiting there. The big squarear with the chimaera's sting greeted them. "I am Bloorg, the Official Greeter and Sender, Keeper of the Transporter to Other Worlds, Keeper of the Last Known Existing Chimaera, Chief."

That had been his ritual greeting before. Kelvin wondered if Bloorg wondered why they had not left.

"I know," Bloorg said, "where you have been. I know you were to have been eaten but I would not have interfered, after freeing you the first time. You are forbidden to go to the chimaera's island again."

"Mervania wants—" Kelvin gulped and started over. "Dragonberries. They are the price of our Chimaera's Copper

release."

"I know." Bloorg lifted a squarecut crystal of smoky color in his hand. "The Chief of the squarears tries to know all. Watch!"

With a wave of his boneless fingers Bloorg changed the flat smoky surface into a living picture. In the picture was a chimaera, a now-animate Stapular, and Kian, John, and Kelvin.

Kelvin gulped. "That's in the larder. Where we were kept. And—is this television?" That was another unnatural wonder he could live without!

"Watch!" Bloorg commanded.

In the crystal a tiny chimaera was attacked by an even tinier Stapular. As Stapular hung on the sting there was a flash of blue light. The chimaera, John, and Kian fell unconscious. The tiny Kelvin staggered outside, struggling to tear up the sting from the ground. He pulled the sting out of its row and ran back with it. Stapular mouthed at him, and he was over the Mervania head with the sting positioned above a very feminine eye.

"No! No!" Kelvin cried, reaching for the crystal. He would not do it! He would not, though it happened over and over in a countless number of crystals a countless number of times. No crystal was going to make him do what he refused to do!

"Watch!" Bloorg said for the third time.

Kelvin controlled himself as well as he could. The miniature Kelvin did not destroy the chimaera with the sting. Instead it happened the way it had in life. Now he and Stapular were fighting, rolling over and over. Now Stapular was pulling off his own left hand, and the ruby light declawed the chimaera. Now the creature was at the mercy of Stapular.

"No! No!" Kelvin protested again, but the crystal merely showed what had happened. Gradually he realized that the image was not a separate thing, but an actual rendering of what had occurred, and could not change the outcome. The miniature Kelvin had out his sword, threw it, and Stapular appeared to die. Now the Mervania head and Kelvin were talking.

At the wave of a strange hand the picture vanished and there was only a smoky crystal in which the tendrils of smoke gradually stopped swirling. There was nothing there anymore except stone.

Kelvin's heart had been beating hard. He felt breathless, as though he had been running. The picture-show was over and he was back, though he had never left. Again he wished he were back in his old familiar, normal world with Heln and his mother Charlain and even his irritating sister Jon, who were surely leading a dull and safe existence.

"What will happen to the oil-blooded man?" he asked.

"The robot will be returned to its makers," Bloorg said. "They may or may not repair it."

Chimaera's Copper

"So Stapular may live again?" Did robots actually live? What was living? Stapular had spoken of them as though the living folk were inferior to it in every way.

"It may again be activated, but such a construct will never again deceive us, and none will get close to the chimaera. We owe you our thanks for discovering and nullifying that threat, which would surely otherwise have destroyed the last member of a unique species. We had been aware that Stapular was artificial, but not that he had a built-in laser. As for those doubts of yours about the nature of living, who is to say? There are scientists and sorcerers who hold that there is only thought and that all else is thought's product."

"I—I don't think I can absorb—"

"Never mind. It is only philosophical and abstract. What is important to us is what we perceive.

What we accept as real, is real, and what we know to be illusion is generally illusion."

"I... see," Kelvin said, not seeing. Ask a simple question, get a lecture in metaphysics with particular emphasis on epistemology. From near infancy he had thought he had more sense.

"That is correct," Bloorg said. "He survives best who does not question too vigorously."

"Stapular won't be back to bother the chimaera again?" He wanted to be quite sure he had understood that correctly.

"Never."

Good enough. He was more than ready to go home.

"But you will return with the seeds," Bloorg reminded him.

"But you said—"

"Correct. You will not go to the island. You will bring the seeds here. They will be carried there by a froogear I designate."

Oh. "You will be waiting? I won't have to—"

Bloorg tapped the crystal. "I will keep watch."

"We will find the same setting? On the transporter?"

Bloorg seemed to have infinite patience. "You will if you look. Come."

They followed Bloorg to the transporter cave and inside. Bloorg showed them the dial on the transporter and where it was set. "Remember this mark. Turn the arrow until it points here exactly.

This is where you will need to set the control in order to return. Remember this, all of you."

John nodded. "I don't think I could possibly forget."

Chimaera's Copper

"Now you wish to return home. Here is your home marking. Place the dial exactly, or you may go to a world that is not the one you left, such as the serpent world, here." He indicated another setting.

Kelvin reached out and twisted the dial until it clicked at the &, a symbol that reminded him of a coiling dragon but might stand for something else. He had seen his father make a symbol like that while writing. The other setting Bloorg had indicated had a ~ symbol, obviously a serpent.

"You will return now," Bloorg said, and disappeared with a definite pop and a slight scent of ozone.

"Well, Father, Kian—" Kelvin hated to do this, but had to ask. "We had been about to go to the serpent world—"

"I want to see Lonny first," Kian said. "Maybe we can get married right away, and then—"

Kelvin had been afraid he would say that. "Bloorg wanted us to return to our own world now. Maybe we should go there first, and then—" Then Kelvin could make an excuse to stay in his own frame.

"Bloorg doesn't know Lonny."

"Boys," their father interposed. "Can't we compromise? We brought dragonberries with us, but the jar of seeds labeled 'Astral Berries' was left in the installation by Mouvar. I suspect the seeds are still there. Kelvin, you could go back and get them while Kian and I wait here."

Kelvin frowned. Were "astral berries" and "dragon-berries" really the same, as his father assumed?

Was the jar still there? It seemed to him now that he hadn't noticed it. Someone had changed the setting on the transporter or the three of them would not have ended up here. Whoever had used the transporter could have taken the seeds. Could it, he wondered, have been Mouvar? If so, what did it mean?

"Well, Kelvin?"

But if the jar remained there, this would be the easiest way to settle things. He could bring it back, give it to Bloorg, then explain that he was worried about Heln, and beg off the trip to the serpent world. "All right."

He took a firm grip on his resolve and stepped into the closet with all the clocks on the outside.

The usual things happened. He stepped out of the closet into the familiar chamber. Things looked the same. Nothing had changed a bit since he and his father and brother had left. Still, he was nervous.

Any slight oversight could land him in serious trouble, as the recent adventure had shown.

He checked the table. As he had feared, the jar of seeds was missing.

Well, then, he would have to check to see if the boat was still on its ledge. He crossed the chamber, ducked his head out, saw the boat, and sniffed at the underground river. Time to return.

He checked to make certain the setting was for the chimaera's world—the # mark, surely for Chimaera's Copper

squarears—and stepped back into the closet. When he stepped out, nothing had changed in the chimaera's world except one thing:

His father and brother were gone.

Kian had no difficulty in persuading his father. "We'll just hop over and make certain we remember this setting. If we're wrong, we'll hop right back. Bloorg can almost certainly set the control right if I misremember." Kelvin had been standing before the control when Bloorg discussed it, so they hadn't seen the actual settings he had indicated to Kelvin.

"I think it was just before this mark." His father pointed at the & mark.

"I think, Father, that it was just one of the five intervening clicks short." He set it on the % mark.

"You want to try it that way?"

"Yes." Kian was so eager to reach Lonny that he was sure it was right.

"All right. Just be prepared to step out and then back if it's not the right world. That's what we should have done last time." John wasn't worried, because he knew they could check several settings if they had to, until they got the right one. Just so long as they didn't smell any spice!

"Yes, Father." Together they stepped into the closet.

They did not see the same display they had a moment ago when Kelvin exited, but then they were in a slightly more familiar chamber with a soft bluish curtain of light at its far end and a large glowing EXIT sign.

"Come on, Father!" Kian said eagerly, starting across the smooth floor.

"Wait, Kian! You agreed we'd go right back."

"We will. I just want to step outside and make certain!"