There was no stopping him! Talk about your anxious bridgegrooms! John started after him—and noticed something.

"There was dust on the floor before. We left our footprints in it. This chamber is clean! Either this is a different chamber, or someone's been here." John wasn't easy with either explanation; both meant trouble.

But Kian was already ducking through the shimmering curtain. He was as unconcerned as though it were sunshine. Not for the first time John had to marvel at how quickly they all adjusted to the unfamiliar and utterly strange. Still, the boy needed to learn proper caution.

Chimaera's Copper

"It's here, Father! The ledge, the ladder, and the tree! This has to be right!"

But John had doubts. "Come back inside!"

"All right. Just let me get a breath of—"

John waited for him to finish. When he did not, he grew alarmed. Fearful now, yet determined, he crossed to the glowing curtain and stepped through.

Outside. Fresh air. Beautiful day. High on a cliffside. He looked back. The illusion of a solid rock wall just behind was perfect. If this was technology, and he felt it was, the scientists responsible deserved congratulations.

But where was Kian? He advanced to the edge of the cliff. The ladder was there, made of something unfamiliar on Earth, a woven metallic substance he suspected would never age.

"Kian? Kian?" He was really worried now.

There was no answer. Had the lad climbed down into the tree below? Then why wasn't the ladder over the edge of the cliff and dangling down into the branches?

Fear prickled at him, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. He didn't want to leave Kian but his every instinct told him to return. Better to fetch Kelvin and come back for an organized search than to risk getting caught by whatever had happened to Kian.

He started around, ready to duck through the curtain. At that moment human hands reached from apparently solid rock and laid hold of his arms.

For an instant he thought the hands were Kian's. Then he saw that they were larger, and had dark hairs on their backs. This was someone else!

He had only time to grasp this before he was pulled forward, against a rock face that vanished to become a blue curtain of shimmering light at a spot he knew he had not left.

CHAPTER 16

Charlain

Charlain arrived at the palace at noon. In her bag on the dappled gray plowhorse were only her fortune cards and the remains of the lunch she had prepared. She had thought about bringing herbs in case Heln had nausea or other child-carrying complaints. Then she had realized that the doctor here was the best and that she wasn't versed in anything other than amateur prophecy.

Chimaera's Copper

How grateful she should be for that one lone skill, she thought, dismounting from her horse and turning the reins over to the stable groom. True, it had deceived her at times. She had known she would lose Hal after a time and she had feared it would be by death. Better to another woman, she had tried to believe. Better to have him happy than to have him destroyed. But what would John think of it? What would his decision be, should he ever return? The cards so far had revealed nothing.

"Mama! Mama! I'm so glad to see you!"

A sudden tattoo of feet and the shock of collision. A slim boyish figure was suddenly in her arms, hugging her as though life had trickled to its inevitable end.

"Not so hard, Jon, not so hard! Goodness, I can hardly breathe! Only boys are supposed to hug this hard, you roughneck!" She held her daughter back at arm's length. Long yellow hair, greenish eyes, properly filled bosom—she had produced a beauty! She and John. To think that when the children had left on their great adventure with the dragon, really not that long ago, Jon had more resembled the tow-haired skinny boy than the rapidly maturing girl she had actually been. Now Jon was satisfied to be all girl, and that was just as well.

Without knowing why she did so, Charlain reached out and tweaked her daughter's pointy ears. She had done that years ago, mostly from affection. Jon had always resented it because her big brother hadn't ear tips that could be tweaked as effectively.

"How's Heln?" No sense in delaying it. Get right to the problem.

"She's... doing well." Jon's tone nullified her words, just as they had when as a child she'd tried to conceal the full truth.

"You're hiding something." Just sharp enough to make her answer.

"Mother, why would I do that? You're the one who reads cards. You know everything."

Yes, Jon would still think that. Charlain permitted herself a smile. She walked meekly with her daughter into the royal palace holding her hand. Not long ago it had been she who had led her daughter.

Into the guest wing and down the hall, through a door, and they were there. Heln was sitting up in bed. Brown eyes gleaming, black hair shining as she brushed. She appeared well. Considering what the cards had shown, Charlain wondered.

"Heln." Simple, careful greeting to a daughter-in-law.

"Mother-in-law!" Heln put down the hairbrush on the comforter. Her tone was right but her action seemed mechanical.

They embraced. Heln seemed rigid, not at all the warm girl Charlain had met when she and Kelvin Chimaera's Copper

and his bride visited. Something was definitely wrong. She wished that she had been a little less mortal and had studied witchcraft. The cards actually told her very little, however much they suggested.

"You are feeling well, Heln?" A direct question seemed indicated.

"Yes." Almost mechanical, as had been her careful setting down of the hairbrush. Not at all as Charlain would have expected Kelvin's expectant wife to answer.

"She had sickness in the mornings," Jon said. As usual, she was volunteering information when she had the chance. "Dr. Sterk gave me something for her. I put it in her tefee."

"It helped?" Morning sickness was not unusual. She had experienced it while carrying both Kelvin and Jon.

"Cleaned it right up. She hasn't heaved since."

No smile from Heln. Yet Jon's words should have evoked one. Her daughter was a lady, but she did not always use a lady's words.

"We've got a lot of catching up to do," Charlain said, taking the chair Jon brought. "All the news, family and general."

"But Mother, you know everything!" Jon said, and laughed. Still no smile from Heln. She seemed as humorless now as when Jon had found her in Franklin's notorious Girl Market, where she had been raped. Indeed, her attempted suicide by eating dragonberries, then, had opened up the whole new world of astral separation, and given her reason to live after all.

"I'm really not too clear on this war situation. How'd we get into it? My cards won't tell."

"Well, Mother," Jon said, heaving a sigh. She was being quite formal, now, for her, in contrast to her private greeting. That was another signal of trouble. "The situation is complicated."

"Many situations are. Are you implying, Daughter, that your mother can't understand?"

"I can't understand it myself, Mother. Why Kelvin's away or why Lester's fighting. In many ways it doesn't make sense."

"Start from the beginning." Charlain took Jon's hand in hers, in much the way she had when she had wanted her to tell about some school fight.

"All right, Mother. We were all of us summoned to the palace and briefed by... by the king."

"King Rufurt?"

"Y-yes."

Chimaera's Copper

A lie. The tremble in Jon's hands said it clearly. Jon was not a trembler by nature except when she lied. For some reason Jon wished to conceal something about their king. Could it be that their king was not who he seemed? If this was true it explained the uncertainty card. Charlain felt a prickle on the back of her neck.

Later, when she was alone, Charlain laid out the cards again, checking on the things that had disturbed her most about her daughter's narration. Rather than ease her concern, this made the prickling much worse. Heln was in terrible trouble, about which Charlain could do nothing. But Lester, Jon's husband, was also in dire straits, and about this she could do something.

In the morning Charlain surprised Jon if not Heln by saying goodbye. "I have to get back to the farm. Hal's a dear, taking care of the livestock, and I know Easter will keep the garden weeded, but I don't want to impose on them."

"Mother," Jon said, taking her arm and leading her aside, "how can you—?"

"Because I'm not angry with them. Either of them."

"But—"

"I always knew I'd lose Hal, but the cards didn't explain. When the romance card came up, I knew. It was a relief! Better that he live a happy life than that he die. He was a good father to you and Kelvin and he worked hard. He never intended to do what he did; it was fated."

"But Mother, if Lester ever did such a thing, I'd—"

"Yes, of course you would, dear. But your foster father isn't Lester. It was in the cards. He really couldn't help it."

"But to start a child with that woman! That wasn't right!"

"No, of course it wasn't. But then your natural father succumbed to the queen of Rud and had a son named Kian. The marriage wasn't dissolved when he met me."

"But Mother, Zoanna betrayed her vows! You—"

"It's not the same, Jon. Easter is a good woman. Simple, young, but good. Hal loves her and she him.

I declared us divorced for their sakes. My marriage to Hal is now over. His marriage to her is valid.

They have a difficult enough course, setting up a homestead, without my making it worse."

"So you let them use your homestead!" Jon said bitterly. "How nice for them!" Her tone said that she would never have been that generous. "You're helping them get set up, by giving them free board, and even paying them for taking care of your farm!"

"Hush, hush. You mustn't sound that way. He was a good husband to me, and a good father to you, Chimaera's Copper

when we thought your real father dead."

Jon's eyes lighted with a sudden fathoming. "So you think you and my real father might—"

"I don't know, dear. We'll see. The cards don't show me quite enough."

"It seems to me they never did. Until afterward."

"Your father would say that. Well—" She hugged Jon one final time. "Take good care of Heln and the babe. We'll have a much longer visit another time."

"I'll take care of her," Jon said. "But I'm scared for her! Mother, can't you stay?"

"No. I told you why. Now don't pester." With that small lie she was off to the stable and her horse.

She did not look back to Jon, who was not following. Jon pretended not to have sentiment, but her mother knew that her outrageous daughter would be secretly wiping at her eyes. Reunions had a way of bringing pain, and this one did especially. Since Jon had turned fourteen and gone off adventuring with Kelvin, they had seen one another only on brief visits.

She rode away from the palace to the crossroads. There she turned resolutely toward Kance. Her sonin-law was in grave peril. The cards had revealed as much, though she had not revealed this to Jon.

Had she told her daughter, she knew Jon would be with her, carrying her sling. Charlain couldn't have that. Jon had to stay with Heln. Because it was obvious that something was seriously amiss with Heln, and she suspected hostile magic. Until she could get the cards to be more specific, she had to pretend ignorance, so as not to tip her hand. She could not help Heln directly, the cards said, but might be able to help indirectly, if she found out exactly what was wrong, and if she could find Kelvin and tell him privately. Since she had no idea where Kelvin was, she had to follow up on another course in the interim.

If she could save Lester, maybe then she could find the good witch Helbah, or let the witch find her.

It would take a witch to save Heln and the baby, she felt certain. She just hoped that she could do something to benefit both Jon and Heln, and that she would be able to do it in time.

"Cursed cards!" Charlain muttered. "Why is it you can never really tell me anything?" But she knew she was blaming them falsely. The cards could do only what they could do, no more.

She rode on, past the road marker, and into the forbidden territory of Kance.

St. Helens rolled over on the prickly straw and looked up through the bars of his dungeon cell. He rubbed dust from his eyes. The two boyish faces were still there. Two child heads, each wearing a crown of gold.

"Stupid-looking, ain't he, Kildee?"

"Yah. What you think we should do with him, Kildom?"

Chimaera's Copper

"Torture. Bend back his thumbs. Tweak his big nose. Put cream on his feet and get Katbah to lick it off. Shove a washcloth in his ears the way Helbah does to us!"

"That's good! That's very good! Let's!"

"Boys," St. Helens managed to say, "the witch, is she—"

"Wouldn't you like to know, blowtop!" Kildee said, and both kings chortled at his cleverness. He dropped a pebble down that bounced off St. Helens' face, and they chortled again.

St. Helens permitted himself a glare. Damn Katzenjammer kids! Those two need a good hiding! Best thing for bad behavior ever invented. Royal brats or not!

"Look, he's maaaad!"

"Yah, let's get some more stones!"

"Stones? How about darts?"

The boys rushed away, giggling. St. Helens lay on the dank straw, anticipating more mischief.

Then there was a dark, furry face where the boys' faces had been. Dark yellow eyes and a tail forming a question mark. The witch's familiar! He had thought it dead. According to lore, a witch's familiar was a part of her in a real sense, so that when one died the other died soon after. This probably meant that Helbah was alive.

But why was the houcat here? It did not look healthy. Why should it waste its energy spying on him?

The day wore on. The boys did not return. St. Helens, turning the matter over and over in his mind, saw no reason to regret their absence.

Lomax drew back his sword from yet another unfortunate Kance soldier and watched him topple from the saddle. They were winning the battle, mainly because they had come upon a small force.

Then he saw the real reason. Coming down the hill behind the Kance forces were other fighters dressed in the Kelvinian uniform. He strained his eyes to see through the dust. It was Lester's troops, it had to be! But where was Lester?

A scream took his attention. Turning round in the saddle he saw one of his men finishing off a Kance swordsman as young Phillip's horse shied and the boy pulled the reins.

The Kance soldiery retreated, pursued by the Kelvinian troops. Lomax rode over to check on Aratex's one-time king.

Phillip had an ugly open sword wound on his left arm. Blood stained the boy's clothing and dripped Chimaera's Copper

onto the shield he had dropped. Phillip stared wild-eyed at him, as if he couldn't have imagined that he might get wounded.

"It—it hurts!" Phillip said.

"That is the nature of a battle wound," Lomax said. He felt some sympathy, but dared not show it.

After all, he thought, hardening his heart, he's responsible for what happened to St. Helens.

"I'm not ready to die!" Phillip wailed. "I'm not ready!"

With that the boy who had been a king and more recently had shed blood and even more recently bled his own, shuddered as if he had plunged into snow. His face turned white as flour and then, like a sack of that substance, he swayed and toppled from the saddle.

Lomax drew in a sharp breath. Phillip had said he wanted to be hanged, but hadn't meant it. Now he might have died after all.

Mor was worried. The fighting was going just too well lately. What had happened to the phantoms that had plagued them? What about the magical slowing of time? Was the witch running out of magic? Was she dead?

Ahead, a great shout. "General! General! General Crumb!"

"Yes?" He waited for the excited scout to reach him and get his breath.

"General! General, sir! Ahead—"

"Yes, yes, out with it!"

"The caps, General! The caps are just over that rise! We've arrived, General! Arrived at last at the seat of our enemies!"

Mor, though he felt he should do otherwise, heaved a great sigh.

Zoanna looked into her crystal and smiled. The war was going so much better than she had anticipated. Here the Mor forces were already at the caps and the Hermans and the Lester forces less than half a day from joining them. It would soon be all up for the witch and the brats. The brats would look nice in a cage, while Helbah might even teach her a few things before Rowforth stopped torturing her. It had been a stroke of lucky genius to prod that foolish boy into breaking the truce and wounding the witch! The St. Helens commander had seemed about to back away from battle, but that had precipitated immediate combat.

She frowned. Would it be wise to keep the witch alive at all? Witches, while they lived, could Chimaera's Copper

always be dangerous. How well she knew, from her own experience! The traditional fate of the defeated witch was burning, because that usually killed her thoroughly enough to make her stay dead.

She studied Helbah through the crystal. The old woman didn't look as though she had power. Lying in bed, turning, tossing, covered in sweat. Her gaunt familiar sitting by her on a chair, staring at her from wild yellow eyes. Only the intercession of that familiar had saved her life on the battlefield; the houcat had lent her enough of its life force to sustain her until she was brought back to the palace doctor.

"I could destroy you right now, Helbah! I know enough now, and if need be I can always return to college." She smiled reminiscently at the thought of her horned instructor. She had but one coin with which to pay that horny one, but he was always ready for more of that. "But I don't think I have to, now. I don't think you're a menace."

Contentedly Zoanna blanked the crystal with a directed thought. The tiny bubbles swirled like a confined section of the creamy way in the night sky.

"Helbah, I'll keep you alive until I defeat you. And maybe for a short time after. I need to learn, and Rowforth needs his amusements. Maybe I can make you seem young and pretty, so that he'll enjoy your screams even more. Sadism is always better with an attractive and innocent-seeming subject."

Seldom had Zoanna felt so thoroughly content and so superbly confident.

Lester gasped as he stood holding on to the slim tree trunk and watched his men ride over the rise. A scout rode back accompanied by his second in command, Lieutenant Klumpecker.

"We've driven them off, Commander," Lieutenant Klumpecker said. "And St. Helens' Hermans are meeting our own men."

"The caps?"

"Less than a day's march away."

"St. Helens?"

"I haven't seen him. But the boy who is his friend—the former king of Aratex—is wounded."

"Bad?"

"I can't say. I wasn't that near."

Probably bad. Lester couldn't imagine St. Helens deserting his troops, so probably he too was dead.

That left his father Mor and himself in charge of Kelvinia's forces. He wondered how far away his father was. Had he come all the way through Klingland? Was he still alive?

Chimaera's Copper

"We can take the caps in two days?"

"Probably, Commander."

"Good." There was a chance, just a chance, he thought, that he might live to see it accomplished.

Holding that thought he gradually loosened his grip on the sapling and let his knees buckle with him all the way down to the sweet, green grass.

"Commander! Commander Crumb!" he heard, but the voice was uninteresting and far, far away.

CHAPTER 17

New Old Enemies

John found himself in a lighted chamber surrounded by men in uniforms. The uniforms were familiar because they had the same cut if not the color of the uniforms worn by the soldiers of Hud.

But was this really the same world? Or was it an almost-the-same world? Would he face gigantic silver serpents again? Was there an evil King Rowforth here, or a duplicate king almost the same?

He looked at Kian, held by two of the soldiers, disarmed. His own arms were similarly taken. With regret he watched the soldiers go through his pack.

"King Hoofourth will be interested," said the craggy-faced Lieutenant.

"King Hoofourth of what country?" John asked.

"Silence, prisoner!" The slap stung his face, as he knew the lieutenant intended. "You will speak when spoken to!"

Exactly as it had been in Hud! Only of course this could not be the frame where there was a kingdom named Hud or a kingdom named Rud. It would have a name that would be similar and much else would be similar, but not identical. Obviously the bad guys were in control here; there had been no hero of prophecy to set things right. It was almost like a movie that kept subtly changing every time it was watched. Only this was no movie, and like it or not he was a participant.

Movie—now there was one of the few things he missed in his home world. How nice it would be to go into a theater and have a vicarious experience! There was a lot to be said for vicarious experience; it didn't lock a person in a cell for months or years, it didn't threaten the person with death. He could break it off at any point and go home to the familiar. That would be nice, right now!

If he got out of this, maybe he would see about finding his way to his true home. It wasn't as if there were a lot to hold him in the magic worlds, now that his children were grown, and he had lost the Chimaera's Copper

one woman he really cared for. The last thing he intended to do was interfere with Charlain's second marriage, and his mere presence in her frame would do that. So it behooved him to go elsewhere and find his own woman, and try to forget.

"We'll take them to the capital. King Hoofourth will put them in a dungeon, torture them a little, and get answers from them before throwing them away."

"Answers?" the fellow officer asked.

"Like why are they here? What are they doing at the secret cave? Are they planning on invading us?"

"Oh, you mean routine stuff." The officer pulled his right earlobe. It was a round ear, similar to the others here. Once it had seemed that round ears were a sign of special qualities, but now it was apparent that their shape was all that distinguished them. There were truly special pointeared folk—he thought of Charlain again—and ignoble roundeared folk, such as evil King Rowforth of Hud. Unfortunately, King Hoofourth sounded similar.

"Now, out!" Pushing Kian and himself ahead of them the soldiers emerged from the wall of rock.

John had to shake himself mentally. That chamber they'd been in was identical to the other except that it had no transporter. Did the bad guys in this frame know about the network of transporters? If they did, why didn't they use theirs? If they didn't, why did they stay here, watching?

"You and you stay. Watch," the main officer commanded, using the celebrated army volunteer system to select two men. "You, down the tree. You, you guide the prisoners."

Without hesitation Kian moved ahead to the cliff and the ladder and descended after the two soldiers. John followed, feeling the unnecessary prod the man behind gave to his buttocks. The descent into the tree was one he had not actually made before, though he had climbed an identical tree and ladder in the frame of the silver serpents.

He wondered, as he carefully made his way down, branch by branch, if this time there would be a rescue. Maybe, just maybe, it was foreordained that he and his son were to die here. That would certainly simplify Kelvin's life, allowing him to complete the prophecy without interference.

Now I'm thinking like Charlain, he thought. Next I'll be reading her Book of Prophecy and studying her predicting cards!

But will there ever be a chance? Will I ever see Kelvin's mother again? Will I ever even see her duplicate?

He sighed soundlessly. Obviously his heart wasn't in his resolution to stay out of Charlain's life. But if he should encounter one of her alternates in another frame, and not an evil one, what then?

Actually there had been another woman in his life, evil Queen Zoanna. In the serpent frame he had encountered her good version, Queen Zanaan. Now there was a prospect to conjure with! If Kian could marry in that frame, why not John himself?

Chimaera's Copper

His feet touched the ground, bringing his mind to reality. What use were dreams, when he wasn't free to do anything about them? There were more troops and horses waiting here. There was no chance for escape.

At the commander's orders they mounted horses and rode what seemed a very familiar path. Would they meet flopears, he wondered? Maybe Smoothy Jac's duplicate? What about Lonny? Would her duplicate appear? And Zanaan—suppose she was here, too? That could really complicate things!

They rode on, through what became a very tiring day.

Kelvin stepped out of the transporter closet into an empty chamber. Kian and his father were nowhere in sight. Yet they must have come here. Should he stay and search? Or go back and ask the squarear's advice?

He decided to have a look outside. This seemed to be the frame of the silver serpents, but wasn't quite right. There wasn't the dust he remembered. Of course that could mean that this was the right frame and that others had since been here.

He crossed the chamber and walked through the shimmering golden curtain under the glowing EXIT

sign. Outside, the cliff behind his back, he saw the tree and the ladder he expected. Only the ladder was down into the tree now, and it had been pulled up. He frowned, wondering, and then his gauntlets began to tingle.

If there was one thing he would never do again, he had promised himself, it was to ignore the gauntlets' warning. Obeying them as much as his own thoughts, he drew his sword and whirled.

A uniformed man, half in and half out of what appeared to be solid rock, was about to strike him on the head with a short club. His sword confronted the man, and at the same time he found his voice, letting the gauntlets somehow choose his words and rap it out as a command.

"Freeze! How many of you in there?" he demanded.

The man was evidently startled to have the tables so abruptly turned. "J-just two. Me and Bert."

"Tell him to come out. Slowly, without a weapon."

"You hear that, Bert? He's got a sword against my gullet. Don't be a hero, Bert. I'm your friend and the commanding officer isn't."

Bert came through the rock, unarmed.

Kelvin sighed with relief. He had been afraid the hidden man would fire an arrow from cover. Give the gauntlets a chance and they took control!

"Where are my friends? Do you have them?"

Chimaera's Copper

Bert spoke, looking scared. "Those two men? On the way to the king's dungeon."

"King? What king?"

"King Hoofourth, of course!"

So it was a different frame! He had thought so, when he saw the setting at %, but was taking nothing for granted now. "King of what country?"

"King of the Kingdom of Scud," the crafty-faced roundear said.

So it was a frame not too different from the silver serpent one, but not identical. "Tell me, is there an outlaw somewhere in the desert by the name of Jac?"

"Jac? You mean Scarface Jac?"

Why not? "Enemy to the king?"

"What else? An outlaw has to be, no matter what else."

"Skin thief?"

The soldiers looked puzzled. "Skin? I don't know what—"

"Silver!" Kelvin said impatiently. Not that it mattered, but the silver skins of serpents had proven to be of great importance.

Both men shrugged. Bert said, "I know he's robbed, but—"

"Doesn't matter." Kelvin decided he'd pay the local Jac a visit before planning his rescue of his father and brother. Even with his gauntlets and the Mouvar weapon and the levitation belt he was just one person. This frame, like every frame he had visited, probably contained some surprises.

"Tell me, can anyone in this frame levitate?"

"You mean fly? Mouvar is said to have flown."

"Good enough," Kelvin said briskly. "Turn your backs."

The two men obeyed him and he wasted no time in activating the levitation belt. Silently he rose above their heads and above the cliffs that towered higher than he remembered, then moved out over the tree and the river. The river was much broader than the rivers in the other frames. He looked back and saw the two soldiers still standing with their backs turned. Good, no arrows would be following him!

He settled down to the business of flying. It wasn't nearly as hard as he had once imagined. His father said he had a natural ability, as he did himself. He gathered that some people couldn't get used Chimaera's Copper

to the ground sliding away beneath their feet, the clouds rolling in front of their faces. It wasn't anything to do with bravery, for he certainly wasn't brave. Nor could he credit the gauntlets for his acceptance of flying. It was just a case of being lucky in one thing and unlucky in others.

As he drifted dreamlike over the rolling hills of the kingdom of Scud, he found himself thinking about luck. He had been lucky. Time after time he had been saved from impossible situations by what seemed chance. The silver serpents that could have swallowed him, for instance. The chimaera that could have cooked him with tail-lightning and eaten him steaming hot. Was that the effect of the prophecy, as his mother would say? Was that what was protecting him? To him it felt like mere fortune, that could reverse at any time. He really didn't have a lot of confidence in the accuracy of the prophecy, at least not as it might relate to him. It might be talking about some other roundear entirely.

But that line of thinking led only to mischief. It was better to believe that his mother was right. That the prophecy applied to him, and that he would prevail. So he would do his best to believe that, so that he could rescue his father and brother.

Down below was the first of the connected valleys. Serpent's Valley, home of great silver serpents and their spiritual brothers the dwarf flopears. He looked close but saw no serpents. No holes in cliffs that could be serpent tunnels. Sad to think that they were not here. What would Hud have been without its serpents and flopears? What would Scud be like? Whatever dangers he faced here he hoped—no, knew now that he could handle them. With his levitation belt and his gauntlets and his antimagic weapon there just couldn't be anything against which he couldn't triumph. Unless there was another chimaera here, which seemed highly unlikely. Like it or not he was a hero, uncertain nature and weak stomach aside.

He left the valley, passing over the cliff where Kian had once fought a flopear and, almost miraculously, survived. The flopear had also survived, he remembered, falling with his club off the cliff and down, down, to land with a probable splatting sound. As Kian had told it the tough little warrior had not only survived the fall, but had a short time later intercepted him and Lonny at the base of the cliff! Obviously Kian too had lived through great dangers, but so too had that murderous flopear. If it was really the same one.

How familiar the country looked! How very familiar. He flew at near minimum speed into the desert. At home they called this land the Sadlands, while in Hud it was the Barrens. In Scud it would be called something equally appropriate. Strange, though near duplication in people and geography prevailed in related frames the names always changed. Fortunately, perhaps, otherwise the confusion for a frame-hopper would be even worse. Suppose he were to meet his mother's duplicate in this frame, and she not only looked like his mother and acted like her, but had his mother's name? Or suppose his wife? If he met Heln here and she looked the same as the Heln he had left at home, and had the same name, he'd think of her as the same person. That could be very bad, and he was thankful that duplicate individuals bore separate identification. For one thing, the only way a local Heln could have the same name was if she had married a local Kelvin. Was he ready to meet himself?

Chimaera's Copper

He shook his head, trying to free it of burgeoning concepts that threatened to make it explode. Flying along at a little over a good running speed he began some unaccustomed philosophizing. It was what he had warned himself against. The squarear had said it was bad to think about such things, but now he did. The thought was, which was real? Was it home or was it the silver-serpent world, or the chimaera world, or his father's Earth? Bad question, and quite senseless, maybe. For of course all realities were real in equal proportion. It depended where a person was, and when. Thus the warriors of the past, and ancestors he had never seen or known existed—they seemed unreal, yet were the very substance of reality, for who would exist without that ancestry? Likewise every possibility, every slight change with infinite variations was, by the very nature of things, real and leading to real realities somewhere else. When such realities mixed, as when folk used the Mouvar network to travel between them, or when John Knight and his band accidentally crossed over—

And there was an answer to one riddle! There would be no Kelvin here, no Heln, because they were the children of the members of that group. They would exist only in the particular world to which that band had come. There might be a Charlain here, but she could never have married John Knight.

Maybe Hal Hackleberry, or his equivalent, but not—

Head buzzing, as it always did when he tried to think about such things, Kelvin looked down and spied what had to be Scud's outlaw camp. He would land boldly, and—

But suppose it was the bad Jac who had stolen the dragon scale and kidnapped Jon? That was in his home frame, but couldn't a Jac of that nature exist here instead of the Jac he had more recently known? He hoped the answer was no, but he couldn't be certain. An evil Jac and an evil king in the same frame was more than he thought he could manage. Would Lonny be here? And another dwarf either as evil as Queeto or as saintly as Heeto? These thoughts were making his head more than just swim. The height did not make him dizzy, but the thinking it engendered did. He had to get down and put an end to this.

Since he did not want to be pierced with crossbow bolts or arrows, he would land a short distance away and walk in to the camp. Probably he should have been thinking about that instead of those other things.

Moving his fingers carefully on the control levers on the belt's buckle he came to a stop in midair and descended until his feet touched sand. Nothing moving now, as it had been while he was aloft.

He was once more on solid earth, and so his thoughts were grounded too.

Ahead was the camp. Horses, men moving. If they had not seen him in the air, they would spy him now.

Even as he thought this, two horses approached. As they came nearer he recognized the riders and men he had known, though of course these were not the same.

"Stranger, who be you? Quick, or die!"

That was poor unfortunate Smith, who had died such a ghastly death! Kelvin strove to get his Chimaera's Copper

thoughts in order, knowing that the threat was real and so were their weapons.

"I have business with your leader."

"My leader?" The man was incredulous.

"Scarface Jac. He is your leader, isn't he?"

This Smith seemed to hesitate as if trying to decide whether to use the crossbow he had leveled at Kelvin, or merely cut him down with a sword. Then, deciding it could do no harm, he circled his horse behind the stranger and said, "Walk into camp. I'll be watching you."

Kelvin wished he had landed closer. By the time he was among the tents he was sweating from exertion under the desert sun. A scorpiocrab scuttled out of his way, reminding him of the chimaera.

Other than that and a couple of thorny plants he saw no sign of desert life.

They emerged from tents almost as though by magic, Jac among them. He really was a scarface, with a scar that was twice the size and ugliness of Cheeky Jac's, the onetime bandit of the Sadlands.

He waited for Kelvin to speak.

"I'm Kelvin Knight Hackleberry," Kelvin said. "I need your help to rescue some friends of mine."

"Why?" Jac asked. It was a challenge as much as a question.

"Their captors are the king's men. My friends and I can help you defeat the king's men. You see, we're from a different frame."

"From a different frame and you want to help us defeat King Hoofourth, Scud's good and proper king? Just why do you want to do that and why do you think I'd be interested?"

Oh-oh, Kelvin thought. This wasn't quite as he had anticipated.

"In the other frame your king was a tyrant and had to be replaced. Isn't he a tyrant here as well?"

At that moment the first woman Kelvin had seen came from a tent and walked straight to Jac. She put her face against the bandit's brawny arm and looked up adoringly. It was Lonny, or at least her duplicate. The girl Kian wanted to marry.

But this wasn't the same frame! Here Lonny could marry the bandit, who had indeed been attracted to her in the serpent frame. There, she could marry Kian. There was no conflict. Just so long as Kelvin managed to rescue Kian and get him there.

"You call our king a tyrant?" the outlaw demanded. "You want him overthrown?"

Kelvin tried to tell himself that it wasn't genuine anger in the bandit's voice. Carefully he said, "It may be that I do not understand. In a world nearly like this one there was a king who was very bad.

In that world an outlaw named Jac fought and conquered him."

Chimaera's Copper

"You would have me commit treason?" Jac's face was very red, and the scar tissue in the star-shaped mark on his cheek stood out ghastly white.

"I'm not here to start trouble," Kelvin said. "But if your sovereign resembles this other, you must want to be rid of him."

"I must, must I?" This was spoken very aggressively.

This had to be a mistake, Kelvin thought. Time to rectify it. He fingered the controls on his belt and instantly was high above the bandits' heads.

"You come down here!" Jac the bandit ordered.

Kelvin ignored the order. He climbed to a suitable elevation, then moved the lever forward for full speed. He was just in time. Even at this rate of motion, he saw the arrows and crossbow bolts come perilously close.

He heard shouted orders and looked back to see men mounting horses. Fortunately the belt could outrun any horse, even the oversized battle steeds.

He sped away across blank desert, then swung to the east. He would catch up with the king's party himself. Even if the gauntlets and the Mouvar weapon couldn't handle the situation, he'd still have to try. If the prophecy his mother believed were true, he'd have to survive this frame and get back home to fulfill it at what he hoped would be some far future time.

But then, as the green hills appeared, a disturbing thought intruded itself. Just maybe the prophecy had no effect in other frames. He always had believed himself capable of getting killed, prophecy or no prophecy, and in a different frame death might be likely. He remembered unpleasantly almost dying when he first arrived in the frame so much like this one. If it hadn't been for Heeto, the heroic dwarf in that frame, he knew he would have died. No, no, the prophecy might or might not be real, but it was nothing to stake one's life on.

Down below the road that led, if the geography of this frame did not diverge too far from the frames he remembered, to the royal palace, there was a big cloud of dust. He slowed, hovered, and tried to make out what was happening.

There were horses prancing. Swords were flashing. Men were dying. Gods, he realized belatedly, it was a battle!

He lowered himself silently, trusting that the combatants would be too involved to look up. In the swirling dust he saw his father and brother kept back by guards wearing the Scud uniform. More uniformed soldiers were battling men who wore no uniforms at all but were clad much as were the bandits in the desert. Those who fought the soldiers must be the good guys. But were they?

Uncomfortably, he thought of the encounter he had just had. Similar frames were deceptive in their dissimilarities.

Chimaera's Copper

I can't take anything for granted, he thought. Just because they are taking Father and Kian to the palace doesn't necessarily mean harm to them.

But he was almost sure it did. Something about the way the soldiers had acted at the cliffs convinced him that the royal side just couldn't be the right side.

Having convinced himself, he acted. Skillfully he moved the lever. When he was at precisely the right spot he cut off the belt power completely.

He dropped, sword in gauntleted hand, like a heavy stone. He was about to join the fray.

CHAPTER 18

Healings

Charlain saw the dust clouds ahead and heard the drumming of horses' hooves, the clang of swords, and the screams of men. Battle. Men seemed to take such foolish joy in combat! It seemed to her that the very knowledge lent wings to her horse's feet. Not away from danger, but toward it. Toward Lester and whatever danger threatened his life, that the cards had shown her.

Why, she wondered, bouncing uphill on horseback, am I doing this? I haven't any magical witch's fire! I haven't any laser weapon! I haven't even a sword! What's to prevent some mighty thewed swordsman from swinging down on me?

A moment later she was at the crest of the hill, and saw just such a swordsman as she had feared. His sword blade was raised high and caught the bright rays of the sun here above the dust clouds. In a moment he would reach her and that blade would lop off her head.

She sat on her horse. She stopped it with a gentle "Whoa, Nellie," and waited with hands on reins.

The Kance soldier could see her plainly, could see that she was a woman and unarmed.

Of course there were other things soldiers did besides killing, as Heln had found out...

The soldier's horse slowed. The young man, hardly older than Kelvin but more heroically formed, stared at her, mouth agape. The sword hesitated. His blue eyes, cold but still youthful, studied her.

Then, as abruptly as he had appeared, he lowered the sword, sheathed it, and rode away. She watched him disappear over the rise and then down into the cloud of battle, and she hoped that he too would be a survivor this day.

What had done it? Certainly not her looks, though she believed she was still attractive. Was it because he saw his own mother in her eyes? She could not be certain, but she knew that an ancient witchery had served her well this day. Soldiers commonly killed soldiers in the heat of battle, but not Chimaera's Copper

unarmed, unresisting, and thoroughly helpless innocents. A warrior the young Kance soldier might be, but not a mindless, consciousless slaughterer.

She took a deep breath, and then she simply waited until the battle sound diminished and the dust settled in the valley. Soldiers in Kance uniform sped past her on lathered horses. Below, the color of the uniforms resolved themselves into Hermandy's muddy clay and Kelvinia's forest-green. The side that she had expected to win this battle had in fact won.

She was still waiting when the Hermandy soldier approached on horseback. Following after fleeing Kance warriors he had spotted her and turned. Now he rode forward deliberately. He was a big man with hair on his face and a cruel set to his mouth. When he stared into her eyes she knew instinctively that he would not be dissuaded as easily as the first had been.

Should she scream? Who would hear her? Should she wheel her horse and try to run? That charger he rode could readily overtake her mare. Should she look seductive and try to buy a little time? The Herman might not be interested. Judging from appearances, his lust might be mainly for causing pain.

She was not certain what she should do, so she merely waited. What would happen would happen. It might be a quick end, or a lingering one.

"Wait, Private!"

The young man wore mail over his uniform of a Kelvinian guardsman. He was covered head to toe with battle dust. The quarter-moon painted on his helmet proclaimed him officer, though she did not know the rank.

"Lomax! You want her first?" The toothy grin on the Herman was at least as disturbing as his drawn sword.

"I don't like your tone, Private! I know this woman."

"Do, huh." The Herman's horse came closer to Lomax's. "I suppose that means you want her all for yourself."

Without warning the Herman's sword swung at the guardsman. But Lomax ducked aside and sustained a bright coppery slash on his left shoulder. The mail he wore protected him, but barely. His own sword snaked out, and with more luck than science he speared the Herman through the throat.

The Herman toppled and crashed to the ground. He lay there on the grass, just another casualty.

Lomax cleaned his sword, then inspected his injury and the damage to his mail. Finally he turned his eyes to her. He studied her face for several long heartbeats. Then he said: "Mrs. Hackleberry?

Kelvin's mother?"

"Why yes." She was astonished at being recognized. "But how do you know? We've never met, have Chimaera's Copper

we?"

"We have met, but a long time ago. Remember when you read cards for people? You told me I'd be a soldier and do many brave deeds. I thought you were wrong and my mother thought you wrong. But then we had our war for freedom and afterward I became a guardsman for King Rufurt. Today, as you see, I'm a soldier, wearing Hermandy mail."

She shook her head, amazed. Sometimes even she didn't believe in the power of prophecy. "You and your mother. She wanted to know if you'd finish school and I said yes. Then I saw the other, the battle card, and I had to say."

"And you told her my father would die and she'd remarry. You were right."

"The cards were right. The cards that unfortunately can only indicate. They could not have told me how your father was to die or when, or if there was a way of saving him."

"Nothing's perfect. The cards indicated, and they were correct."

"It is always thus. There's nothing truer than prophecy."

There was silence between them, as pregnant as thought. Soldiers came up and dragged away the body of the private; they had seen what had happened. Then Lomax broke it with the logical question: "Why are you here, Mrs. Hackleberry?"

"It isn't Mrs. Hackleberry any longer," she said. "Hal and I are divorced."

"Oh." His face turned grave. "I'm sorry to hear it."

"Don't be. It was in the cards. I feared that he would meet an early death, and I'm happy he didn't. It was only his love for another woman that ended our marriage. It could have been much worse. But as to why I am here—"

"That too was in the cards?"

She smiled. She had been about to say something about Lester, but Lomax had put it correctly.

Without the cards' suggestion that she might affect things here, she would not have come. She had no experience in war, but well understood the risk she took coming here.

"We have many wounded," Lomax said, wiping blood. "Our only doctor was killed. Would you—could you possibly help?"

"I'm not skilled," she said. But Lester might be among the wounded. Besides, there would be others like this young guardsman. "I'll do what I can." She would have to trust the cards to guide her correctly.

She followed him, detouring around a horse and a man that were beyond help. She knew a little herbal lore, she knew how to suture and bind up wounds. If nothing else, she could do as her Chimaera's Copper

daughter had done at another place, and mop fevered brows and hold chilly hands.

They reached the bottom of the hill as the daylight faded and the sun eased down. The signs of battle were all around: dead men, dead horses, dropped weapons, and the groans and moans of injured and dying.

"This way, Mrs.—eh, Knight."

"Charlain will do." She followed him meekly to an isolated tent. He pulled back the tent flap and there, lying on a blood-soaked blanket, was what appeared to be a schoolboy. The lad's eyes were glassy and filled with terror and suffering.

"A witch! A witch!" the youth cried, pointing feebly at her.

"Not a witch, Phillip," Lomax said. "This is Charlain, Kelvin's mother."

"Don't let her touch me! Don't let her!" He struggled to sit up, blood spurting through knotted bandages. He shrieked at the top of a weakened voice: "Go Way! Burn her, Lomax! Burn—" His eyes rolled up until only the whites showed. He stiffened and fell back.

Hurriedly Charlain grabbed his wrist. There was still a heartbeat, but it was faint. A lot of his blood was missing.

"Why is he here?" she asked. She couldn't help but rage that such a young boy had been allowed to fight. It was her motherly instinct.

"He's St. Helens' friend. Former king of Aratex."

"Ah." Formerly the enemy, though it had really been Melbah who governed that country. Kings did get their way, ex or current. "Is there bloodfruit around?"

"There is, back a way in the forest."

"I'm not sure he can swallow the juice, but—"

"We'll make him. St. Helens wouldn't like it if he died."

"St. Helens is—" She wanted to avoid the word, but found no way. "Captured?"

"Yes. Or dead. He could be in the same state as this." His eyes flicked down to the boy. "Phillip here killed the witch."

"Helbah? Killed?" she asked, appalled.

"Yes. He wasn't supposed to."

"But Helbah is a good witch!"

Chimaera's Copper

"But on the other side. That's how the enemy got St. Helens. We broke the truce, and they seized him."

She thought: Helbah's still alive. I know, I've read her cards. But she may not remain so long.

"Can you get the bloodfruit?" she asked, turning to the immediate business. "A lot of it? If you have other wounded who have lost blood it could save their lives."

"I'll send some men back. It's a big grove, but a long ride. They might not be able to get the fruit back until daybreak."

"That will have to do." She gave the former boy-king a final check. Unconscious, colorless, he appeared dead. "Are there wounded to whom I can give immediate help?"

"Many. Some not this bad."

"I'll need help setting bones and severing limbs. Get me your doctor's supplies."

Lomax nodded, went outside, and began issuing orders. She joined him, and he took her to more wounded and dying than she had seen before in her life.

Men sought their foolish glory, she thought, but for too many this was the reality. It was a shame, but they never seemed to learn.

It was nearing dawn when the riders Lomax had dispatched arrived back with the bloodfruit. At her direction the fruit was boiled and the red syrup cooled and administered. First young Phillip, then man after man weakly swallowed a spoonful or a cupful depending on his need. In a surprisingly short time pale faces flushed and men were restored to full vigor.

It was magic fruit, the bloodfruit. The doctor had had the foresight to see it gathered, but in the fighting the wagon with the fruit was set ablaze and destroyed. The doctor had died trying to put out the fire. So until this new supply arrived, wounded men had continually died.

At first she did not recognize him. She had only met him twice, and that under better circumstances.

But then the pale, big man she was working on gasped a word, and the word caused her astonishment and joy.

"Jon!" the pale lips gasped.

Lester! This was Lester, her daughter's husband! He had lost a lot of blood but he should be all right once the syrup took effect. Revived by the prospect, she held the brimful cup to his lips and massaged his throat to force him to drink.

"You'll be all right, Lester," she murmured. "You will be, for Jon's sake."

Chimaera's Copper

He did not respond verbally. His pulse jumped. From his mouth a trickle of blood issued, thicker and darker than the syrup.

Gods, he was dying! Jon's husband was dying, and she didn't know how she could save him. Yet there had to be a way of restoring him. There had to be!

Desperately she checked through the doctor's bag. Containers of herbs, properly labeled, but often a mystery to her. She wished she had absorbed more herbal lore. Which herb, properly administered, would seal his internal wound and allow the bloodfruit to do its work? There had to be an herb that would do this, but was it the sealant root or the stitching flower? Desperately she tried to remember.

She had never anticipated being in a position like this! Her arms and legs felt weighted down. Fog filled her head. Invisible bees hummed in it. She was in need of reviving herself.

She took out the jar of sealant root. Should she try this? Suppose it was wrong? It just might be that sealant root was for some other use. Yet to do nothing, or to delay doing something, might mean Lester's doom. She had come to help him! If only she knew how!

When in doubt, ask the cards. It had been the one thing she had always believed in. Without hesitation she took the deck from her pack, shuffled it, and thought of Lester. Then, head swimming, body protesting more than the disapproving glances of assistants, she dealt out the column.

A single pawn card, representing Lester. A new card representing Lester's fate if she did nothing. It was the death card, skull and crossbones. Tell her something she did not already know!

She dealt again. She laid out the card, there on the bloody canvas. The Lester pawn. Now, administer the sealant root, and his fate would be—the death card.

Her hands shook as she riffled the cards and started the third layout. This time it was the Lester pawn card and the thought of the stitching flower. She held a jar of pink blossoms in her left hand, concentrating. She turned up a card: death card.

No, no, no! There had to be a restorative! Back in the palace she had read uncertainty. Here she read death, only death. Was she too late?

She checked the labels on the jars. Here was a jar filled with white flower blossoms, well dried. But this couldn't be the stitching flower! Yet it was! What then were the pink blossoms in the jar she had held as she turned the card? She read the label, her tired eyes squinting hard: "Stretching flower."

She had had the wrong jar!

Quickly she tried a fourth layout, holding the jar of white blossoms. Pawn card representing Lester Crumb, her daughter's husband. Now I will administer the blossoms in this jar, and—

The sun with a smiling face: recovery card! Lester would recover if she got the herbal medicine inside him in time.

How to administer it? She didn't know, but she had to be swift. Hastily she unscrewed the jar, shook Chimaera's Copper

dried blossoms into a cup, added water and a few drops of raspberry wine, stirred it, and held it to Lester's lips.

She massaged his throat, edging up the cup. Slowly, lest he choke, she poured.

He sighed. His color deepened. His eyes blinked. "Jon? Jon? I love you, Jon! I want you close.

Please, Jon, come to bed."

"Hush, Son," she said, stroking his forehead. "It's only your old biddy mother-in-law."

His eyes unglazed and focused on her. His color deepened until it was a bright red. "Thank you, Mrs.

Hackleberry," he said. Then, exhausted, he closed his eyes.

She had won this one, she thought, and with the thought she realized how tired she actually was. She had worked through the night and into the day, seeing nothing but wounds and blood. She closed her eyes, sank back against the doctor bag, and thoroughly relaxed.

Sleep, sleep, sleep, the natural restorative.

Helbah remained weak, but revived enough to take some of her own medicines, and they restored her greatly. But her hours of injury had put her dangerously out of touch. She fetched her crystal and oriented on the enemy battle camp. Soon she ferreted out the woman with the violet eyes doctoring the Kelvinian and Hermandy wounded.

A witch, that young man had called her. She looked the part, but Helbah had never heard of another practiced in these arts. She frowned, watching the healings, wishing that she were herself well enough to do more. Magic restoratives were wonderful, but at her age they could do only so much.

Later the woman in the crystal was reading cards beside a dying man and an open doctor case. She watched as the woman laid out a file three times and three times took up the cards. So that was how she was doing it! She was not trained in witchcraft or healing magic, only in the cards—but they were guiding her well. On the fourth try she found her answer.

Helbah watched as the woman gave the medication and restored the young man to life. Then, exhausted as only someone practicing the art could be, for it drew from the soul as well as the body, the woman sank to the floor of the tent, closed her eyes, and went instantly to sleep.

Interesting. She has the talent. Largely untrained, but there. Another enemy? Or could she— dare I think it? — become a colleague? An apprentice, someone to help me fight?

Without quite willing it, she fell asleep herself, dreaming a witch's dreams.

Sometime next morning Katbah entered the room with tail held straight up above his shiny back. He Chimaera's Copper

was lean from his ordeal of lending her his life force, but he had taken restoratives and was strengthening. He walked straight to her and stared into her face.

"Those two in trouble again?" She sighed. "Think what we'd have to put up with if they hadn't the minds of grown men!" Actually she was often in doubt about the maturity of their minds; sometimes they were just so confoundedly juvenile that she wished she could take a switch to their little posteriors.

With difficulty she got to her feet, using her cane, and followed her familiar.

St. Helens kept his eyes barely slitted and pretended to sleep. He had successfully ignored the pebbles and the lumps of dried dirt. Now a feather danced before his nose and threatened to make him sneeze. He considered grabbing the string and breaking it, and would have done so in another moment. But then the feather wafted out of his sight, mercifully.

From above he heard them whispering. Little dickens, what would they try next?

Suddenly moisture trickled down on the back of his neck, the side of his face, and on his beard.

Horrified, he rolled over and roared. "You brats! You filthy brats!"

At the window, two young faces with golden crowns above peered down, grinning.

"That got him, Kildom."

"You're right, Kildee. Guess this is where we should come next time we have to pee."

"We can fill up with appleberry juice. Come with a big load. Make him smell sweet."

St. Helens mopped at the back of his neck. If there had been anything in the cell to throw, he would have thrown it. He sniffed at his hand, shook some yellow drops from it, and swore an oath so villainous it threatened to char the walls.

"Oh listen to the bad words, Kildom!"

"He's a bad man, Kildee; what do you expect?"

The two dissolved into giggling. St. Helens felt like showing them just how bad he could be. Instead he fought to control himself. This was most difficult because his inner nature urged him to rave and rant and make a spectacular scene. It wasn't through having a saintly disposition that he was called St. Helens, but because his temper had once been as explosive as a famous Earth volcano.

"You brats are going to be in trouble!" he shouted. "You can't do this to a general! You're going to be punished! When I get out I'll warm your butts!"

"Listen to him, Kildom. He thinks he's getting out."

Chimaera's Copper

"Never, Kildee. He'll be here forever! Every day we'll come water him like an ugly weed."

"Until the whole cell fills up with appleberry pee!"

"And him swimming in it like a big fat froog!"

"He's already got a big fat froog-face!"

They dissolved into more giggling, unable to maintain their clever repartee.

"YOU BRATS! YOU FILTHY BRATS!" St. Helens exploded. He was repeating himself, but he couldn't help it. They were supposed to have the minds of men, so a little manly profanity couldn't warp them. Just maybe he'd remember that they were men in boys' bodies when he got hold of them, and then—then it would be more than a spanking he'd deliver!

"Do you think, Kildom, that there's another form of elimination! Plants need fertilizer as well as water, don't they?"

"Shit, yes! Let's!"

St. Helens felt his face going purple. He could imagine smoke curling from his ears and his head and body erupting in a geyser of fire. Never had he been more uncontrollably furious in his entire life!

Up in the window he saw that he was being mooned by a plump posterior. Only it wasn't going to stop at that. Oh, for anything to throw, such as a rotten tomato!

"What's going on here?" That sounded like the old witch herself! Unbelievable! Was she going to direct his torment herself? Was her aging anatomy going to replace that of the boys beyond the bars?

Abruptly the bare posterior got covered, but the brat remained standing before the window as if trying to conceal it. "Nothing, Helbah," one of them said with attempted innocence.

"Boys! Boys! You know better than to act like hooligans! You're going to have to apologize." It was evident that she wasn't even slightly fooled.

"We were just having fun, Helbah!"

"I'm sure it wasn't fun for General Reilly. Now come away from there this instant!"

The young faces looked down at his sullenly, then disappeared. He waited, but the witch did not take their place. Apparently she hadn't come here to torment him further, difficult as that was to believe.

The witch's familiar appeared, however. The houcat stared unblinkingly at him and at the interior of the cell, then flicked his tail and left without any sign of mischief.

"Witches!" St. Helens cursed. "How I hate the lot of them!"

Chimaera's Copper

Later, though not by much, the guard opened the dungeon door and motioned him out. Meekly, mindful of the drawn sword and the fact that he had virtually no chance to fight his way out of here even if he should manage to overcome this guard and take his sword, he climbed the stairs. On the way up, to his astonishment, the two young kings sped past him on their way down. Both boys carried a big bucket of sudsy water, a scrubbing brush, and a broom.

Outside, warmed by the sun and inviting, was a large tub of soapy water.

"Strip! Bathe! Deflea! Delouse!" the guard ordered.

For once in his life St. Helens was only too happy to obey. There was louse grease and soap and a brush and even a washcloth. With near joy for the relief he made use of all of them.

After a thorough cleansing and soak, he saw the guard motioning him out. The man even tossed him a towel. While he was toweling, the guard brought him loose prisoner clothes to replace the lousy uniform.

He felt remarkably good, he thought while dressing. He turned and there were the two kings, both red in the face. Their heightened color went well with their brickish hair and the plans he was making.

"We apologize, General Reilly, sir," the king on the left said.

"We'll never come to your window again," the king on the right promised.

St. Helens grunted, nodding his head in a curt gesture of acknowledgment. He was alert for a trap that was about to be sprung, but in the meantime he'd gotten what he'd wanted for days: a clean hide and the summary execution of the tenants of that hide. He hated lice almost as much as he hated brats!

The brats disappeared. St. Helens was returned to his cell. He stood and gaped at the door.

The cell had been scrubbed spotless. Fresh straw had been provided. What magic might have done readily, the young kings had evidently done laboriously.

"Good gods," he said. He sank down on the straw, physically more comfortable than he had been since capture. "Good gods, she really is a good witch!"

CHAPTER 19

Revolutionaries

The great war-horse gave a grunt of surprise as Kelvin landed on its broad rump. With his left hand, Chimaera's Copper

hardly thinking of what he did but just going with the gauntlet, he pushed the rider from the saddle.

Grabbing the horse's mane he took the soldier's place. The reins were loose, but that was no problem to the gauntlet which snatched them up without his thinking. Immediately he was confronted by a burly royalist swinging down at him, and the right gauntlet countered for him and quickly ended the man's life.

Kelvin caught a squirt of blood as the royalist corpse toppled. He felt his stomach heave, but somehow he was learning to ignore it. Assuredly he and the others here were in the midst of a tremendous fight. It was as if he were in a different plane of reality, something that had nothing to do with home and family and human values.

"Kelvin, watch out!" his father shouted. So much for being apart from his family! But already the gauntlets were blurring as they moved, transferring sword to left hand and reins to right. The new attacker ended his life on the point of Kelvin's sword, blood spraying from his throat, his own wild swing breezing Kelvin's right cheek. No time to think! Just swift positions, as the gauntlets acted, and the effort to fight with everything he and the gauntlets had, just to preserve his life. How he hated this!

Now one of the royalists' attackers was before him, his ally. It was a big man dressed in the plainest of clothes. Morton Crumb! No, not his friend and Jon's father-in-law, but this frame's very close look-alike. He focused on the man's round pink ears, neither bearing as much as a scar, and that alone kept him from shouting the name.

"You," the Morton Crumb look-alike rumbled, "fight against the king?"

The last time he had tried to answer that question, he had gotten into trouble. "I fight to save my friends," he said, nodding back at Kian and his father.

"Come!" As abrupt as Crumb would have been.

He maneuvered the horse with sure gauntleted hand and fought his way at the big man's side until they were directly opposite the prisoners. Kian and his father had their hands tied behind their backs, and that could complicate the problem of getting them away. The royalist guards might have been ordered to slay them rather than give them up.

"Father, I think we'd better retreat!"

It was the Lester look-alike who had just pushed in. With him was a younger fighter, the exact look-alike of Phillip, former boy-king of Aratex, except for his round ears. There were two riderless war-horses behind them. On the ground were two more dead royalists. On the Lester's sword was fresh blood.

Kelvin tried to think. This is not really Lester and Phillip, and this other man is not really my brother-in-law's father. It was hard to think of anything under the circumstances. He was likely to get himself or them killed if he did anything but concentrate on his business.

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He looked around. Indeed they were outnumbered, these revolutionaries. "Help me release them first," Kelvin urged.

"We're losing too many men," the big man protested.

"You help us now, we'll help you later. We have things you may not have. We're from another frame."

"I thought as much! I saw you flying down! But we can't help you if you're dead. If you've got power, use it!"

Kelvin realized he had a point. He nudged the control on his belt and kicked himself free of the saddle. He rose to just over the heads of the combatants. The fighting stopped.

It was only a temporary halt, he knew. In a moment the novelty would be absorbed and the slaughter would resume. He nudged the control forward.

The guards' faces came nearer, and so did those they guarded. They stared openmouthed, amazed at what they had been too busy to see when he arrived. In a moment more someone would think of a crossbow or other projectile weapon that could spell his end. But with surprise to his advantage and the gauntlets on his hands, he had his chance.

Quickly he disarmed the guard who raised his sword at him, then descended and stabbed the remaining guard through the throat. A moment later he was slicing through first his father's and then his brother's bonds, while renewed fighting raged ahead of them.

Now then, how to get out? The gauntlets knew how. Without his quite willing it, the magical grippers captured the reins of a war-horse. At their urging he vaulted into the saddle.

"Father! Kian! Up!"

They extended their hands to him, and the gauntlets pulled them up on the horse. The three of them made a crowded horseback.

"This is going to be difficult!" John said. "We're surrounded."

Kelvin's gauntlets snatched a passing sword and handed it to his father.

"Uh, thanks, but do you think—?"

"I'll clear a path. You follow. Close."

With that Kelvin lifted free of the saddle and just over their heads. The horse eyed him suspiciously, but didn't argue; after all, it was a load off its back. Then he pushed the forward lever and flew to meet a royalist riding down on them.

The attacking royalist died, and so did several others as Kelvin fought horselessly and airborne, to Chimaera's Copper

open his side of the crowd. The remaining revolutionaries fought inward, led by the Crumb look-alikes. The Phillip look-alike shouted encouragement.

The royalists, caught between enemies, fought hard, but still perished. The sword in Kelvin's hand never ceased its darting and its hacking, ignoring, as Kelvin could not, the cries of slain and wounded men.

Finally the last of the royalists melted from in front of his wild flying attack. There was the big fellow and the big fellow's son and the boy and half a dozen others whose faces had a familiar look.

They looked up at Kelvin.

"Now you can retreat," Kelvin said, "and take us with you."

"Thank the gods that's over!" the Morton Crumb look-alike said. "Follow us!"

They raced out of what would have been the pass between the twin valleys in the world of the silver serpents. Up the roads and into the hills, and finally, their pursuit lost, to a familiar-seeming region of farms and villages. Here the big leader of the far-smaller band raised his hand and drew up.

"Whoa. Time for a talk."

Kelvin descended until his feet once more touched the ground. He shut off the belt. He waited.

"Marvin Loaf," the big man said. "You strangers have any trouble with that name?"

"Not a bit," Kelvin said. So this was not Morton Crumb as at home, or Matthew Biscuit as in the world of the silver serpents, but Marvin Loaf. It made perfect sense.

"Good. Some think Marvin a peculiar name."

"No more so than mine," Kelvin said, keeping a straight face. "Kelvin Hackleberry. And this is my father John Knight, and my brother Kian Knight."

Marvin nodded. "This is my son Hester. And this young fellow we call Jillip."

As in Lester and Phillip. Good enough. Kelvin held out his hand politely. The custom of handshaking existed here, fortunately, as it had in every world he had visited with the possible exception of the chimaera's. His father and brother dismounted, along with the others of the band.

Everyone shook hands.

"We call ourselves Loaf's Hopes," Marvin said. "Sometimes Loafers. We haven't been doing much raiding lately." He paused again, but no one found any humor in the nickname. "After two years of trying to force a change, this is all we have."

Kelvin saw what he meant. Eight men in all, two of them with slight wounds. The rest who had been in the fight were dead or had been captured by the royalists.

"Your king is bad?" Again, Kelvin wasn't taking anything for granted.

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"The worst. He has to be overthrown. How I can't now imagine."

"With our help," Kelvin said confidently.

Marvin looked doubtful. "That flying harness of yours should help, but I'm not sure it's enough.

There's really only us eight."

"There will be more," Kelvin said. "All you have to do is get the word out once you've got your army."

"Army? What army? I tell you we're only eight."

Kelvin sighed. How elementary it all was. It really pained him to have to explain it. His father was looking at him warningly, but he went right on.

"If you haven't got huge serpents here that shed skins of purest silver, you have dragons that have scales of purest gold." Simple. Logical.

Marvin Loaf was looking at him with eyes that now bulged. His expression suggested that Kelvin was a lunatic.

"Serpents with silver scales? Dragons with golden skins?"

Kelvin abruptly realized why his father had sent the warning look. His morale plummeted. He had walked into another subtle but critical difference between the frames. Yet he owed these look-alikes something. There was a debt and he could not leave with it unpaid.

"My mistake. I told you we're from another frame."

"It must be a distant one. Silver serpents! Golden dragons! These are legend! Nothing like them can possibly exist!"

Nor should chimaeras with three heads, Kelvin thought. Oh, well, these good folk still had to have some advantage, and he had to provide it.

"Look," he said, unsheathing the Mouvar weapon. "This is something very special. It will nullify hostile magic and even turn the magic back on its sender."

"Magic? Magic is myth!"

Kelvin suppressed a groan. Another disappointment! This world seemed so similar to his own, yet it lacked dragons, serpents, and even magic? How could that last possibly be the case? But the robot Stapular had spoken of Major and Minor frames. Maybe this world was like his father's, where magic didn't exist but where magical results were achieved by something called science.

"All three of us can fly with this," he said, touching the belt. "We can hover still in the air as you saw, or move at the speed of a fast horse. That should be some help. It was back there in the battle Chimaera's Copper

we just fought."

"Back there I lost over half my men!" Marvin exclaimed, looking suspicious. "Is that belt all you've got?"

"Father!" Hester said, and it was impossible not to think of him as Lester. "Father, he wants to help."

"Good intentions don't defeat tyrants. Armies defeat tyrants."

Kelvin swallowed a lump. He still hadn't answered the big man's question. He glanced at Kian and he saw that his half brother's face was as pale as though he faced instant death. Then he looked at his father and saw that he could expect little help there. Yet his big mouth had gotten him into this, the same as it had with the chimaera. Somehow his big mouth was going to have to get him out.

"We have experience. We overthrew tyrants in two worlds nearly identical to this. And—"

Inspiration finally hit him. "If we need to, we can travel back to those worlds, and get what we need there, to deal with this tyrant."

"You think so, do you?" Marvin looked dangerous.

"If we have to. Bring you weapons you don't have. Maybe an army."

"Listen to him, Father. Listen!" Loaf's son urged.

But the big man was drawing his sword. "You've come here without our asking and now you'd leave and we'd never see you again."

"That's not true!" Why was this version of Morton Crumb so belligerent? But he realized that the question was pointless. Characters were similar in each frame, but also different, and the differences showed up most strongly in their personalities, rather than their bodies. So this Crumb was more aggressive than the others, and probably more dangerous to rile. He also seemed clumsier.

"Listen, Sonny," Marvin said, testing the edge of his sword with a callused thumb. "We have been this route before. We have had visits from other frames so often that the king has men watching the transporter! One thing we've learned: visitors are trouble!"

"But Father," Hester protested. "He can't know!" He was protesting, but there was a certain whine in his voice. He seemed to be more dominated by his father than Lester was.

"No, I don't know," Kelvin said. "I don't know about your prior visitors." He felt much as he had when Stapular pulled off his hand and revealed the laser weapon. His gauntlets tingled, but only moderately.

Well, he would use the gauntlets for guidance. He would keep talking, and change the subject if the gloves got bothered. "You have a kingdom where you can hire mercenaries, haven't you?"

Marvin's glower hardly eased. "We have that, Sonny, but we certainly haven't got golden dragons, Chimaera's Copper

silver serpents, or magic. Neither do we have riches!"

"But you do have round ears. You can use the transporter."

"Not for a mountain of gold!"

"I don't mean you personally, but at least one of you. Maybe Hester here?"

"The king's men guard the transporter," Hester protested. "And even if we got there, I couldn't use it."

"With my help?"

"No."

"Why not?" The gauntlets were not getting any warmer, which was not a bad sign, but neither was it necessarily good. He might just not be getting anywhere, good or bad. "Round ears means you can use the transporter." I hope.

"No way, Sonny. There's more than the shape of ears involved."

"But—" This was getting confusing! According to the Mouvar parchment, round ears were the tickets to use and other-shaped ears a sentence to destruction. Or was that only in his home frame?

Were there other rules elsewhere?

"Let me explain it, Sonny. Whenever any of us natives enter the transporter chamber we feel as if our fool heads will burst. So will you, if you attempt to go back."

"You mean—" He strove desperately to make sense of this, his head already feeling swollen.

"Magic?"

"Technology. What's the difference, as far as we're concerned? What it means is that it's a one-way transporter. No one can leave by it."

"No one?" Kelvin's knees began to feel like cooked macaroodles.

"No one. That's why the king's men don't use it."

Kelvin tried to think. To be confined to this dull frame forever. Never to see Heln again. To be, furthermore, in a world where there was no way to raise an army and defeat a tyrant? And what about the chimaera? The chimaera would be waiting for the dragonberries he had promised. He had every intention of fulfilling that promise, and would be mortified to renege on it.

"Perhaps there's a little hope," his father said unexpectedly.

All looked at him, the big stranger who had been mainly silent. Marvin looked hardest.

"Look," John Knight said, spreading his hands. "We're as much victims here as you are. But if the Chimaera's Copper

transporter is technology, or even if it's not, there may be a way."

"How?" Marvin demanded, showing some interest. "You going to kill off those headbees?"

"Maybe. The chamber beside the transporter chamber—I'm certain it didn't exist in any of the other frames. Maybe there's something that will make the transporter two-way. Possibly a control."

"The king's men would have found it," one of the men said.

"Maybe not," John said. "Not if they didn't know what to look for. I remember how difficult it was to make a computer work, when you didn't know the codes; you could make random guesses all week and never get anywhere, and the damn machine wouldn't tell you."

"You think you know what to look for?" Marvin demanded.

"I might. If it's technology."

Kelvin's gauntlets twitched. What did that mean?

Marvin put away his sword. His grim face showed acceptance but no real belief in John's words.

"There'd better be an army in this," he said. "There'd better be, or that's the end of all of us."

But the gauntlets were cooling. That gave Kelvin hope.

CHAPTER 20

A Meeting of Kinds

Charlain woke up rested. The camp was quiet now, the wounded up and around. It was—good heavens, it was late in the day!

She met Lomax as she was scrambling out of the tent. He was grinning as he came with arms wide for a hug. She let him embrace her and then tell her how many lives she had saved and how grateful they all were. "But now," he finished, "we'll be making our big drive and it's not fair to you—"

"You want me to leave."

"Before we reengage the enemy. Yes, ma'am. There will be more casualties, but we have a good supply of bloodfruit and you have discovered the mysteries of the doctor bag. We can manage, although—"

"Yes," she said. He wanted her to stay with them, she knew, and she didn't want to. She had after all come here for just one purpose, and that was to save Lester's fading life. She had done that, and now Chimaera's Copper

wanted very much to get well away from this mindless carnage.

"Then you—"

"I mean I will return home now, where I will be safe. That is what you were saying?"

He looked astonished, then crestfallen. He had asked from a sense of duty. She knew that the last thing he had expected was that she would comply. She felt guilty for disappointing him, but she did have to go.

"I'm not really a nurse or a magician," she said. "I'm sure you will manage with those who assisted me. My daughter may need me, and then there's my son and his wife. Heln is having my grandson."

"I—see." He was doing his unsuccessful best to mask his disappointment. If he were a very few years younger, he'd have to cry. It was nice that she was going to be missed.

"Keep the bandages changed, administer bloodfruit syrup as needed, and keep that boy out of the fighting."

"You mean Phillip?"

"That's the boy. He's reckless as my Jon was at his age. I read his cards and he's at continued high risk with the uncertainty card. Keep him safe."

"I'll try. But Phillip was a king. He's hard to control."

"No harder, I suspect, than Jon. And Phillip of Aratex doesn't have a big brother with magic gauntlets and a prophecy. If Jon was here you'd know what unmanageable is."

Lomax tried a grin, albeit weak. He motioned to a passing soldier. "Corporal Hinzer, saddle Mrs.

Hack—eh, Charlain's horse and bring it to her. Have two unwounded men escort her to the border."

"That won't be necessary," Charlain assured him. "I know the way and there shouldn't be any danger for one old woman."

"Not old!" Lomax protested in a manner that had to be automatic. "But if you're sure—"

"You need all your men. The war isn't over."

"Yes. Yes, thank you, Charlain. Thank you for your help. You saved many lives."

You may not thank me always, she thought with regret. When things go against you and I'm not there. Then you may want to curse me for abandoning you.

With some justice, unfortunately.

She waited patiently while her mount was brought, then climbed up and into the saddle. She was a little stiff from all that kneeling. She was about to ride out when Lomax came running to her, his Chimaera's Copper

face flaming red. He handed her up a packet and a jug.

"I forgot you hadn't eaten! Here's traveling biscuit, dried meat, and tuber fruit. Wine's in the jug. You must be famished!"

"Not really," she said. "We witches seldom eat."

"Witches?" His face paled perceptibly. For a moment he looked as though he believed her.

"It's what Phillip said when I got to him. And who knows, if I had had a good teacher he just might have been correct!"

She nudged Nelly with her knee, rode through the camp, and out to the road that led to the border.

It was half a day later at leisurely horse-walking speed that she met the cat. It came from the bushes, tail raised, yellow eyes fixed on her, and she knew instantly that this was why she had left the camp.

She said, "Whoa, Nelly," though the horse was already stopped. The cat came nearer. It was very black, blacker than mortal hide ought to be. It sat down, washed itself carefully, pawed down its whiskers, and then did what Charlain had somehow expected. It turned its back, looked over its shoulder once, flicked its tail, and proceeded up a path.

"Follow that cat, Nelly!" Charlain said to her mount. It was silly and impossible that she do so, but Nelly obeyed. That, she thought, had to be the result of magic!

She held the reins loosely in her hands and let the horse plod on at the cat's pace. She sighed and closed her eyes, resting. Not once did she question herself about why she was here or where they were going. She did not even wonder whether it would be a long or a short trip. Somehow she had known that something like this would happen. That had been part of her urgency to get away from the camp. It was as if she had laid down another card, and it had told her to leave the place where she was needed, to find one where she was needed more.

Eventually the path reached its end and they stopped. Here, in an otherwise empty glade, was a huge gnarled tree. Under the tree, waiting, was an old, bent woman, leaning on a stick. Now who would that be, except—

"Helbah? Helbah the witch?"

"Who else, Charlain?"

She felt a cloud lift from her. "I am here," she said without thinking. "Here, as I know you directed."

"You have done well," Helbah said. "Now you will do even better."

Charlain knew that Helbah spoke only the witching truth.

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Heln watched behind half-hooded eyes as Jon added seeds and crumbs to the tray on the windowsill.

Her task done, Jon glanced at her, saw her apparently asleep, and tiptoed out.

No sooner was the door closed than Heln was out of bed and scuttling, a way she found natural of late, across the room to the window. She stood stealthily waiting until the dark-headed sparren lit on the tray's rim. Bright-eyed, the little bird regarded her carefully. Heln remained frozen, unblinking.

The bird picked up a corbean from the tray, cracked it, and proceeded to eat. Pleased with the fare, it put its little head back and warbled cheerily.

Instantly Heln's hand shot out like a snake. Her fingers snapped closed like jaws on the tiny bird before it could flutter. She raised it to her mouth, her stomach growling for sustenance. The bird raised its beak desperately.

Heln opened her mouth. Easily, without seeming volition, her head snapped forward. Her teeth closed on the bird and crushed it.

She was just swallowing, and brushing crimson stains from her lips, when Jon entered. Jon stared at her and the tray. There were feathers on the tray. There was blood on Heln's mouth.

"Why, Heln, what—" Jon was too surprised and confused to finish the sentence.

"An eagawk dropped on a sparren. I tried to get here and chase it away, but—"

Jon's eyes were large. She was suspecting if not actually aware that Heln lied. Disbelief fought with another suspicion. The kinder, more logical thought survived.

"Oh, Heln, how terrible for you! I know how you love songbirds, how you enjoy seeing them! To have an eagawk drop on one right on the tray!"

"It was only following its nature," Heln said. Stealthily she wiped blood from her mouth and lips, sweeping her hand as if brushing away a crumb.

"Yes, I know, but—Heln, did you hurt yourself?"

"Bit my tongue when I tried to shout at the preybird." She turned all the way from the window. She forced herself to move slowly, as a pregnant woman should. Without another glance at Jon she got back into bed.

"Don't you want to go for a walk this morning?"

"No!"

"But it's so nice out!"

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Heln merely closed her eyes as if bored with Jon's presence, which was hardly an exaggeration.

Jon moved to her side and felt her forehead. "You have no temperature, Heln. You seem cool—cooler than I'd think natural."

"You ever been with child?"

"You know I haven't!"

"That's the way it is. For roundears, at least."

"Oh." Jon never seemed to accept that her ears were different from her brother's and Heln's. It was as if the girl thought they were all of the same species. Little did she know!

"I might take another cup of tefee," Heln said, making another attempt to get rid of her.

"I'll pull the cord for the servant. Would you like something to eat, too, Heln? You hardly touched your groats this morning. You aren't sick again?"

"No. I told you I'm all right." When would this nuisance of a girl go away?

Two of Jon's fingers reached out to the corner of Heln's mouth. They picked out a tiny feather. Jon eyed it, and her.

"I was too close to the kill," Heln said. "Blood and feathers sprayed on me."

"That must have been it," Jon said, sounding unconvinced. She held the feather, then carried it as though to dispose of it. But she walked not to the pullcord but to the door. She hesitated, giving Heln a peculiar look, then exited.

Heln delivered herself of a long, low hiss. So good to be rid of that one, if only momentarily. She'd like to be out in the sun, soaking up its rays, warming herself and the other through and through. But Jon, she knew, would think it strange, and the doctor would find it unacceptable. Later, after the other was born, she might go with it into the sunny desert and bask in the warming light and practice—what? She had lost the thought, frustratingly.

A mosqfly buzzed near her mouth, attracted by the stains. It lit on her upper lip, the foolish thing.

Instantly her tongue darted out and rolled it into her mouth. The insect buzzed as she swallowed it.

At the same moment she felt the scuttling inside. Reaching down she patted her bulging stomach.

Don't fret, Little Three Heads! Mama will feed you well.

There was no coherent answer, just a mental growl. It was too soon for the human minds to manifest.

But soon that would change. All she had to do was find proper food.

Another mosqfly buzzed through the open window. She waited, rock-still, ready to capture it.

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Dr. Sterk listened quietly as Jon described Heln's recent behavior. It was unfortunately evident what was happening to her. "And you're certain she ate it?" he asked.

"She must have! Blood all over her mouth, and this feather." She held up the tiny feather to show him.

"The mind comports itself strangely in pregnant women. Her behavior may seem abnormal, even bizarre, but I assure you it's all part of the process."

"Really, Doctor?" The girl had understandable skepticism.

"Really. Just keep watch and report anything that seems different. If necessary, I can always administer a stronger medicine."

"Oh, Doctor, you've made me feel so much better! You don't know how concerned I've been!"

"I can imagine. But even pointeared women develop strange appetites and behave oddly while carrying. Just go on as you have been, and everything should be all right."

He ushered her to the door and out. Then he allowed himself the grimace he had been suppressing.

Everything would not be all right, he thought dismally. Everything pointed to the chimaera syndrome. If that was what it was, and he was sickly certain this was the case, nothing would save that girl and her child except a certain powder.

And for that, he thought bitterly, I'd have to go to a dealer in such powders. Alas, he knew full well that any dealers who existed had to operate in some far-removed universe.

St. Helens heard them talking through the thick door. Then their jailer had the door open, and they were coming inside. He stood, reminding himself that they were royalty and that, as the saying went, brats would be brats.

They stood there with their golden crowns on their heads, two identical and apparent young boys.

"I'm Kildee, General Reilly," said the one on the right. "I'm Klingland's monarch."

"I'm Kildom," said the other boy. "I'm king of Kance."

St. Helens permitted himself a slight bow. In name only, he thought. In name only are you the rulers.

And in his home world of Earth, any royalty that still existed in England and France was purely nominal. No two frames were quite the same, but certain trends did seem to carry through.

"It is our hope," said Kildee, "that you will agree to come over to us."

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"You mean—" St. Helens could hardly believe this, "switch sides?"

"That would be appropriate, General Reilly," said Kildom. The boy reached up and took off his crown; he held it down at his side as though respectfully. His twin brother duplicated his actions.

"In what way would it be appropriate? I'm a soldier and I do what's required of me." Strange little tykes. Did they really think as men did?

"General Reilly, you are not a bad man," Kildee said.

"Thank you. I try not to be, though with imperfect success." If this was a game, it was better than their pee game, so he was willing to play along.

"But your side is bad."

I've suspected that. But you can't know about the prophecy.

"There is a prophecy," Kildee said. "We know of it from Helbah."

He should have known! Witches had their infernal sources. "You know about a prophecy? The one concerning a roundear?"

"Yes. Concerning Kelvin of Kelvinia."

"Then you know," he said, sighing, "that there is little to be done to alter it."

"Perhaps in reality but not in truth."

This was puzzling. He hardly expected obscure philosophy from these kids.

"'Uniting four,'" said Kildom, "may not mean uniting through warfare the kingdom of Kelvinia with those of Klingland, Kance, and Hermandy."

"No? Well, what then does it mean?"

The boy frowned. "Prophecies can be devious, Helbah says, and subject to interpretation."

"You don't think it would mean uniting Kelvinia with the remaining three kingdoms? Throod is where every warring kingdom goes for mercenaries and weapons, while Ophal and Rotternik haven't even been penetrated since before Mouvar's visit! As far as latecomers like me are concerned those kingdoms might not even exist!"

"Nevertheless," the boy said pedantically, "Kelvinia may not have to conquer us."

"Don't tell me you want to surrender!" St. Helens found himself hard put to conceal his mirth. These two were really just what they seemed to be: children.

Kildom looked at Kildee and shrugged. Kildee returned the shrug. They both looked back at him.

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They waited.

"Well, is that what you want?" St. Helens demanded rhetorically. The punch line of their joke was about due.

"It is, General Reilly," Kildom said.

St. Helens started to laugh, but his mouth froze partway into it. Could it be that they were serious?

"We have discussed the matter out of Helbah's hearing and we are prepared to raise the surrender flags," Kildee said.

St. Helens felt floored. In his wildest dreams he had never anticipated this! They were playacting.

They had to be. But suppose they weren't?

Better to play it serious, at least until one of them burst out laughing. "You really want to surrender?

Why?"

"To save us," said Kildee. "To end the fighting."

"And to save our Helbah," Kildom added.

Whoa! This was more than just interesting. "Those would be your terms? Your only terms?"

The two boys looked at each other again. "Yes, General Reilly," they said together.

St. Helens let out a breath. This was incredible. It seemed he had won the war single-handed! This was even better than he could have imagined!

If it was true.

But if it was true, then for whom had he won it? For what? For the usurper in Kelvinia?

"Will you take our surrenders, General Reilly?" Kildom asked.

Would he? Could he? He didn't want the winner to be those two back in Kelvinia's capital. And would the prophecy be said to hold if Kelvin himself were absent? Kelvin, off in some other frame, doing the gods knew what, and unaware of what was happening here?

"I'll have to think about it, Your Majesties. I'll have to think things over."

Now they were gaping. It seemed that they had never imagined that he would demur!

He swallowed, wanting nothing quite so much as to sink down on the pile of straw. "Please close the door tightly as you leave. I don't want to escape, and I don't want anyone rescuing me."

The two exchanged another glance. Maybe they did understand. Certainly they knew that he was on the wrong side.

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They left, leaving him with his chaotic thoughts.

CHAPTER 21

Return Journey

Kelvin hung suspended above the ledge, watching for the king's guardsmen. The updraft from the cliff was shockingly strong, much more than there had been in the other frame. He trusted his levitation belt, but this was a balancing act that made him a bit nervous.

He had left just two living men at this site, but more might have come while he was rescuing his father and brother. His gauntlets were tingling a mild warning, and that could mean that he should act while acting was still possible. The others in his party had already begun ascending the tree, certainly a more difficult task than in the world of serpents and flopears. It was time that he and the gauntlets act.

The chamber was to the left of the transporter chamber. No sign of it either from here or the ledge.

He would have to just step through the rock face at the right spot, and find himself in either the transporter or up against guardsmen with swords. There was really no choice except to trust the gauntlets.

He landed on the ledge, facing the cliff face. Was he following the guidance of the gauntlets properly?

He drew his sword. All right, I'm a hero!

As though annoyed, the gauntlets yanked him forward, into rock that vanished.

He was in a chamber lit by the glow. It was otherwise unoccupied, and sparsely furnished for the comfort of vigil-keeping guardsmen. A couple of blankets, discarded crusts and rinds from lunch, and one broken wine bottle. Some vigilance!

He put his head out the shimmering blue curtain in time to see his father pulling himself up the ladder at the cliffs edge. Below him was Kian and below Kian were the others.

"Guardsmen back there! Six of them!" his father called. The updraft really pulled at him as he struggled the rest of the way up. "Redleaf got 'em with his crossbow! Good man, that! He picked them off so fast and at such a distance that they never knew what happened!"

Kelvin sighed. More dead. That was one reason he knew he was a fraud as a hero: he hated killing.

Well, it couldn't be helped. At least his kin and Loaf's Hopes were intact.

Chimaera's Copper

Kian came up, followed by Hester. His gauntlets gave them a hand as each arrived at the ledge.

Below, Marvin Loaf was having trouble with branches and updraft. Jillip climbed past their leader, grinning broadly and devilishly as only a young rascal could. There was something insulting about the way he hung by one hand and pretended, only pretended, to give Marvin a leg up. Was it a joke, or insolence, or was the kid merely a slacker?

"Sort of slow, ain't he?" Redleaf remarked.

"Comes from too much bleer," Bilger cracked. He had to be the thinnest, with the possible exception of Jillip.

"Bleer, you must mean Cross-eyed Jenny at the tavern!"

"Hey, I thought it was the girls who got fat!"

The Hopers chuckled and laughed at their own great wit, and generally acted like fools while Marvin wheezed along, never slowing and never wasting breath. Before he'd quite reached the top and Kelvin's reaching hand he looked up, very red in the face. "How many you get?" he inquired.

"No guardsmen," Kelvin said, giving him the hand. "The two live ones and the dead are both missing. The men you stopped must have been replacements."

"Very likely."

Kelvin heaved on Marvin's arm and he came the rest of the way. As big around in girth as his look-alike, and with all the muscle, he was not built for trees and ladders. He breathed deeply for a moment, then looked down at his ascending men.

"What's the matter?" called Redleaf. "You a little winded, old man?"

"Redleaf, if you weren't the best crossbowman in existence I'd jump down there and kick your butt!"

Jillip tittered, then corked it. The big man's scowl suggested that he showed good sense.

Still grinning until the top rung, Redleaf, Bilger, and the others battled the updraft until all were together on the wide ledge.

"All right, there's no going near that transporter," Marvin said. "But that anteroom where the guardsmen go is another matter. Have you been there, Sonny?"

"It's empty," Kelvin said. "As I told you, no guardsmen. I made certain, just as we agreed."

"Well, let's have a look." John felt about until he located the entrance. He disappeared into the rock face, and Kelvin followed. One by one the others joined them. Jillip picked up the empty wine bottle and stood examining that while everyone else felt the walls.

Every wall felt solid, with the exception of one spot at the far end where there was a flat area with a Chimaera's Copper

transparent section at eye level. Looking through this "window" as his father would have called it, Kelvin saw the transporter.

"I don't see any button or lever in here or in there!" John complained. "Give your gauntlets an order, Kelvin. Let them search!"

Kelvin was quick to comply. The gauntlets did search, just as he mentally told them to, but they did not find anything on the flat area or its window. He wanted to go, but the gauntlets were reluctant, and kept his hands and fingers moving and pressing in various patterns.

Well, Kelvin thought sadly as he let the gauntlets play, I suppose I can get used to living here. But I'm going to miss my wife and the chimaera is going to think ill of me. I wanted to get the seeds for it. I'd promised, and I always keep my word.

Stupid mortal, relax and let the gauntlets do your work!

Kelvin jumped. Mervania— is that you?

What other head would it be, stupid? You must have known I'd keep track of you!

But you don't have the dragonberries!

No, but I do have a mind! The mind is not limited in intelligent species.

But if you've found me, and—

I have stayed with you. If I had let go I would have lost you for good. I must admit I am growing tired of it. You are most boring. You don't like bloodletting at all. You wouldn't even have had the ferocity to attack those guardsmen if the gauntlets and I hadn't urged you on.

Kelvin glanced around at the others. It seemed impossible to him that they did not know what was going on in his head.

What do you want me to do, Mervania? He hated to admit it, but he felt better having her along. His mind did feel inferior at times.

Why thank you, Kelvin. You are quite correct: your mind requires buttressing. Very well, I will tell you what to do. Bring the entire crew here to my frame. I can help them.

You could eat them! He shuddered, just thinking of it. Then he saw Kian looking at him as if he were crazy. He had been showing his emotions!

Stupid mortal! Mervania thought with something almost like affection. Of course I could! But I won't. I want those seeds you're going to get. Then I won't need to cling to your frail mind in order to travel across the frames.

But why help these others?

Chimaera's Copper

Because I'm a good creature, that's why! You assume I'm evil merely because my dietary habits differ slightly from yours. That is a narrow view. Besides, I don't like tyrants. I've eaten a lot of them, and believe me, every time their minds gave my stomach trouble.

You've eaten tyrants?

Of course! You don't think I was always confined, do you? All humans are devourable, but some are tastier than others.

She likes to play with our food, her brother head interrupted. Actually it was only a couple of tyrants.

One proclaimed itself a god, and the other built pyramids of human skulls. Delicious thought!

Mertin, don't mess with my concentration! It's tedious enough keeping such a tiny mind on line!

Grumpus, what is that you're chomping? Spit it out! Do you want to make us sick? Gag, gag, gag.

Urp, urp.

Kelvin felt his own innards twisting and fluttering with the monster's retching. This was a disadvantage of telepathy he hadn't thought of!

Then the gauntlets pressed his fingers against either side of the window. There was a pop, and the flat area slid away, taking the window with it. There was now an open doorway between them and the transporter.

"What did I tell you!" John Knight said. "Holy—YOW!" He clutched first his temples and then the front and back of his head.

Everyone else in the chamber was reacting similarly. Someone screamed. Two of the men dropped to the floor and writhed.

Kelvin knew why. There was a buzzing sound so loud and painful that it seemed to fill every crevice in his head. This was the head-splitting effect they had been warned about!

Well, I'm certainly not going to put up with this! Get yourself out of it, stupid mortal! I'm leaving!

No, no, Mervania, wait!

Abruptly he felt her absence, but not an end to the pain. She had made good on her threat. The gauntlets, unperturbed, were feeling carefully above the doorway.

"You want to use that transporter? Go ahead!" Marvin charged clumsily toward the front of the chamber. His men quickly followed.

Kelvin was growing faint. But the gauntlets suddenly pressed hard on a round area above his head. It was a flat, dark spot where the top of the door had been.

CLICK!

Chimaera's Copper

Silence. Sheepish faces turned. There was an end to panic.

"You've done it!" his father exclaimed. "Now we can go!"

"Not without us!" Marvin said. He had stopped just short of the shimmering curtain. "You're going to help us, remember?"

"Of course we'll go together," John said, while Kelvin just stood there for a moment, supremely gratified by his success. "You'll get your help, Marvin, just as my son promised. My son always comes through."

Marvin nodded, coming back to them. "Got to admit he's doing that! First two of you transport, then my men, and you and I last. Agreed?"

Spoken like a leader, Kelvin thought. A cautious one.

"It will be a bit startling to see," Kelvin told Hester. "We'll step in, there will be a purple flash, and then we'll be gone."

"What's it like to experience?" Hester asked.

"Uh—"

"Does it hurt?" Jillip interjected.

"No. No, it doesn't hurt," Kelvin assured them. "You'll find out what it's like soon enough.

Just—follow me!"

As boldly as though it were just an everyday occurrence, he stepped into the adjoining chamber. His gauntlets didn't tingle, so he walked over to the transporter. There he found the chimaera's sting that he had apparently dropped and left. Oddly, he hadn't thought about it. Could that have been Mervania's doing? She had evidently been in his mind all along, until the awful sound drove her out.

She might have made him forget about something like that.

"What's that? Copper?" Marvin seemed more than just curious.

"Yes. There's a lot of it where we're going."

"Copper? Lots of copper?"

"Yes." The revolutionary leader's manner was puzzling. Why should he be concerned about copper, when he could go after gold?

"It's rare here. It's our most valuable metal. One copper coin is worth three gold or two silver."

"We'll get you copper," Kelvin said, a mental dawn breaking. So copper was the most valuable metal, here! "Enough to buy your army. You do want that army?"

Chimaera's Copper

"Want it? I'd kill for it!"

Expressions had a way of carrying across the frames, Kelvin thought. His father had spoken that way at least once or twice about matters of lesser importance.

Taking a deep breath and a firm hold on the sting, he stepped with faked confidence into the transporter. He was confident that it would work, but not about the rest of this misadventure.

Bloorg was waiting. In his hand was his copper sting, point on the metal floor. Kelvin nodded to him and waited also, feeling that it was the thing to do. The squarear could pick up from his mind what was going on.

Soon they were all there, with the exception of his father and Marvin. Then John Knight stepped from the transporter, and the group leader.

Marvin's eyes widened as he looked at Bloorg. His hand went to his sword.

Kelvin's right gauntlet grabbed the big revolutionary's wrist. "Don't! The squarears are in control!"

"Copper!" Marvin gasped, straining at the gauntlet.

"Friend." Maybe. In authority, anyway.

Bloorg spoke. "You were to bring the chimaera its seeds."

"We reached the wrong frame," John said, pretending not to notice the struggle going on.

"My fault," Kian explained. "I'm sorry. Even after you told us the setting—"

"I told you the setting for your own world. You disobeyed."

"I was there," Kelvin said. "I went to our home world for the seeds. They were not where Mouvar left them. I'm certain we can get the seeds, but it will take time to find the berries and harvest them."

"So you came back empty-handed."

"Yes." Kelvin felt uncomfortably like a schoolboy being scolded. It wasn't as if he hadn't run into difficulties.

"Who," Bloorg suddenly demanded, "are these others?"

Kelvin was sure the squarear already knew. But he answered hastily: "From the world we reached by error. They have a purpose in being here. The chimaera was in touch with me mentally. The chimaera approved their coming."

"The chimaera does not make policy. The chimaera does not make law."

Chimaera's Copper

"But—"

"You have disobeyed by returning here without the seeds. You have broken law by bringing others."

"I'm sorry," Kelvin said. He had known of no such law, but realized that ignorance was no excuse.

Bloorg was like a teacher about to mete out punishment. But perhaps if he explained—

"The cost of our returning was that we help these people," he said. "You see, they have a tyrant, and—"

"Keep your mind still!"

Kelvin tried to relax. He knew that Bloorg was getting the story from him, and he hoped he was getting it right. There were so many things that he himself did not understand. For instance, why had the transporter been one-way until the gauntlets made it functional?

"Mouvar has his reasons," Bloorg said. "The people of that frame were not and are not ready. The transporter was for others."

"Mouvar watches over us all, doesn't he?" The thought slipped out into speech before he realized it.

Bloorg's eyes glowed. "You too are not ready."

Kelvin did a mental shrug. In time maybe his kind would be considered adults by the like of Bloorg and the chimaera. For now they were children or animals who weren't ready yet to learn.

"Precisely. Animals. Mentally inferior life-forms."

Now Kelvin groaned mentally. He wondered how much of this conversation was being followed by Marvin and his men. It probably didn't matter, but they would be affected by the outcome.

Snick, snick, snick! Marvin and his fellows had their swords drawn, Kelvin had stopped watching them and had released Marvin's wrist as soon as Marvin seemed accepting. Now he realized that either he or the gauntlets had made a mistake.

"No squareheaded foreigner calls me an inferior life-form!" the revolutionary leader boomed.

Bloorg waved a hand. The blades glowed red. The men cursed mightily as their swords clanged to the floor.

"They have powers," Kelvin explained belatedly. "In many ways they are more advanced than we are. They have magic here, while in worlds like yours and my father's there's only technology."

"Do you know what you're talking about?" Marvin snarled. He shook his hand, his eyes narrowed with the lingering pain.

"Not really," Kelvin confessed. "Only that it's well to do what Bloorg says."

Chimaera's Copper

Marvin wrung his hand. "It's burned!" he said, looking at the palm. "It's burned bad!"

"Is it, Marvin Loaf?" Bloorg asked. His hands did marvelously strange tricks, the fingers twining and untwining like snakes. One finger snapped out at Marvin and made a circle of all his men.

Marvin looked astonished. "It's stopped! It's not burned anymore!"

"Mine neither," Hester said, amazed.

"Or mine!" Redleaf exclaimed, holding out his hands and staring at them.

Awe held the strangers from the wrong frame transfixed, silencing them.

"Now that that little demonstration is over," Bloorg said, "we can proceed with business. The chimaera had no authority from me to do what it did. The chimaera deserves to be punished."

"More than it has been?" Kelvin demanded. "More than being confined to one little island?" Kelvin was astonished by his own words. He must have had some help from the chimaera in forming them.

"Quite right. The chimaera shaped your thoughts and you spoke them as your own."

The chimaera was getting him and all of them into more trouble!

"Wrong. I am quite aware of the chimaera's reasoning in this matter. But I do not understand why it wants to give up its supply of copper to these simple beings."

"Because," Kelvin said, knowing that this was the chimaera's thought and that Bloorg would recognize it as such, "I am tired of being a target. Every inferior life-form with access to a transporter comes after my shed stings. I don't need them now, especially if I can locate others like myself. All I need is enough copper in my diet to keep from growing pale and weak and unmetallic.

These roundears had a one-way transporter and can have it again. Let them take the copper to their own world and keep it there, confined. Whenever I shed an old sting they can have that as well.

Then let the inferior life-form poachers go to that world to steal the copper. They will discover that they are as much prisoner as I am!"

Hoo! Kelvin thought. That would serve the poachers right! It would also rid the other frames of them. They would have to settle down to honest work in their primitive prison frame, hating every minute of it. The chimaera had a beautiful notion!

Thank you, Kelvin, Mervania's direct thought came. I am rather pleased with it myself.

"That's very commendable, Mervania," Bloorg said. Now Marvin Loaf's face changed, as he caught on to what was happening. Perhaps the chimaera had touched his mind, too, with a bit of explanation. "But what about the sting you now have? Your kind have been slain through the centuries for single stings. Indeed, the robot Stapular would have slain you earlier, had he not been waiting for your latest sting to mature. That was why he was able to deceive me; I assumed that Chimaera's Copper

since he allowed his living companions to be slain, he had no weapon sufficient to harm you. Surely there will be other poachers."

"That," Kelvin/Chimaera said with asperity, "is why I am confined to an island and why you guard the transporter! I expect you to do a better job in the future."

Bloorg's eyes closed and opened, their lids making an audible click. It seemed the chimaera had scored tellingly. "That might reduce the number and strength of expeditions, Mervania, once it is widely known."

"It will be," Mervania/Kelvin said. "And if the transporter is kept locked, at Marvin Loaf's outlet, and these inferior life-forms do not use the sting in magic—"

"We won't!" Marvin exclaimed, evidently willing to ignore the remark about inferior life-forms. "We don't even believe in that stuff! Much. All we want is the copper. Any horserear poachers come for it, we'll know what to do with 'em!"

"Agreed," Mervania/Kelvin said.

"Agreed," Bloorg echoed.

Kelvin was surprised and relieved. He had been afraid that all of them, the chimaera included, would be punished. Evidently the chimaera had understood the situation better than he.

Naturally, Kelvin, Mervania's thought came.

CHAPTER 22

Apprentice

"Grip my hands tighter," Helbah ordered. "Let your essence and mine mingle."

Charlain tried to do as directed. The glade, the trees, the animals peering on, even the aged face, all blurred. It was the dizzying twirl Helbah had made her do, and that bitter wine. Now her arms and legs felt numb. Her fingers tingled. She was, was...

Helbah's hands. Helbah's arms. Helbah. Where did Charlain end and Helbah begin? She could feel her heart beating in Helbah's chest, feel the pain of Helbah's reopened wound, feel the blood seeping, seeping through her black satiny wrapper.

"Helbah! Helbah! I'm you!"

"We're we. Notice which mouth you're speaking from."

Chimaera's Copper

Charlain noticed. She had spoken from a nearly toothless mouth with sagging cheeks—Helbah's. But when Helbah spoke it was from a mouth that had all its teeth and was perfect except for a bitter aftertaste.

"We can do it now!" one of the mouths said. "Concentrate!"

Charlain tried to remember. Her legs and arms jerked her. Over to the huge tree. Over to the big crystal sealed in its hollow. Her eyes fixed on its surface, then below. Murky smoke swirled and twirled. Then—

Soldiers fighting. Klingland uniforms against Kelvinian uniforms. In the background, through clouds of dust, the huge dome of the Klingland capital.

Swords clashed. Crossbow bolts flew. Men died. More dead lay in the red uniforms of the Klinglanders than the green uniforms of the attackers. Even as she realized this, more died.

"Hurry! Hurry!"

They had to be helped. They had to be given new strength. She could almost feel the weakness in those red-uniformed arms. She wanted them stronger, stronger, stronger, their minds and bodies refreshed.

It was like a great wind blowing through her, out of her, into the crystal, into the bodies and minds of the defending soldiers. A green-uniformed soldier was knocked from his saddle with a broad sweep of a defender's sword. Now another, and another! The green-uniformed men were going down like harvested stalks of grain! Now they were panicking, turning, running. Their horse's hooves raised dust as they rode into their dust, pursuing them, chasing them, forcing them to keep retreating and not turn back.

"Now! Now! Now!"

Dust rose, twirled, and—

Blurring twin capital domes, city, hills, forest, big hills, bigger hills.

Another army. Green uniforms with a few black uniforms. Bigger than the force driven from Klingland's capital. Fighting soldiers wearing the bright orange uniforms of Kance. The green uniforms and the black uniforms were winning. Orange uniforms lay with dead or dying bodies in them in the valleys and across the hills. There was no doubt the orange-clads were being driven back, closer and closer to the twin capitals.

This must not happen!

Strength, strength, strength surging through her arms. Out of her arms, to the bodies and minds of the defending warriors.

Chimaera's Copper

A green-uniformed soldier dropped his. sword and died. A second was cut down in similar manner.

Here a black uniform screamed its agony until a great war-horse's hoof crushed the unfortunate Herman's head. More and more, the green- and black-clad died or were unhorsed. More and more the orange-clad struck down their opponents and fought with renewed force.

Now the orange had stopped retreating. Now the armies were facing each other in unyielding lines.

Now the spears flew and the swords clanged and the spectacle was increasingly ghastly.

The Kance army was fighting well now, but remained outnumbered. No matter how hard the orange fought, they were certain to be cut down in the end. They had to have help. Magic help. Witch's help.

With an intensity she had not imagined she had, Charlain felt the buildup, the great ballooning of rage. In her body, in her soul. Growing, growing, growing. She believed the mechanism to be good and just, yet the force was so strong she could not begin to control it.

In the crystal, above the armies, there developed a great roaring ball of flame. All fighting stopped.

The soldiers of both armies looked up. The blacks and the greens trembled. The orange-clads waved and cheered. For the ball was orange. Orange was on top.

With a sudden swoop the ball shot over the invading army. It descended. Men threw up their arms, trying vainly to ward off its heat. It glowed, and the horses danced, spilling their riders and stampeding in terror. Little tendrils of flame grew out of its sides, reaching down, touching, burning, crisping as it sped. Men cowered and threw away their fire-hot weapons. The horses bolted for elsewhere. There was chaos.

The ball imploded with an earthshaking report. Sparks showered down on the Kelvinian army.

The Kancians charged. Encouraged by the panic in the enemy resulting from the witch's fire, they met little fighting resistance. Their swords swung freely. Their spears darted. Men, good, bad, and indifferent, choked and died.

"Oh Lester," Charlain whimpered, remembering how it had been with him, knowing that similar horror was now being visited on so many more on his side. But there was no stopping it. The invading army was retreating, racing headlong for safety.

Charlain felt herself falling. She felt her face against the ground. She felt blades of grass in her nose and tickling her ears. She felt that she herself was dying.

"Oh what have I done?" she moaned. "What have I done?"

"You did what had to be done," said her other mouth there above her. "What I had to do and you had to help me do."

"But all that killing! All that death!"

Chimaera's Copper

"This is the idiocy of men. We cannot redefine their nature. We can only intercede to enable the right side to prevail."

"Meow!" said Katbah, her other body's familiar. Gently, soothingly, the creature rubbed against her head and sounded a comforting purr.

Zoanna stared at the crystal with disbelief. The Kelvinian fighting men and the pick of Hermandy's fighting men were being routed! They shouldn't be. She had endowed them with special strength through her newly acquired powers and had weakened the enemy with others. Now they were losing, and this was contrary to reason. What had happened?

Then she knew. "Helbah!" she cried aloud. It didn't seem possible, for she had seen the old witch almost dead. She should have known that the only good witch was a dead witch, not an almost dead witch.

In the crystal a burst of witch fire formed above the Kelvinian army. Men fell from their horses, grass browned in places, and the mud from a recent rain dried.

That settled it. It was definitely the witch.

"Damn her! Damn!" Zoanna swore. She would do that literally, as effectively as her powers allowed.

First she would have to get the witch's image in the crystal, and then by all the evil in existence she would crisp her to a cinder!

The crystal's image swirled and opaqued without her willing it. The opacity vanished, leaving a clear crystal with Helbah's grimly wrinkled face inside.

"Helbah, I'll get you! I'll finish you!"

The face smiled grimly. "Will you, Zoanna? Try!"

The challenge was too much! Zoanna raised her hands, spoke the words of power, and sent forth a ball of fire.

It backfired. She was thrown across the room, flat on her back amid a pile of smoking furniture and room furnishings. Behind her there was a large crack in the palace's wall.

She sat up, gasping, feeling her ribs, blinking her eyes. She focused on the crystal. There was Helbah's image, with a pleased expression.

"Helbah," she gasped, amazed. "You're strong!"

"Stronger than you, Zoanna."

"We can become allies. We—"

Chimaera's Copper

"You are going to leave this frame forever. You and your impostor of a monarch are to vanish.

Leave on your own, or be destroyed."

"You can't threaten me, you old bag of bones!"

"Zoanna, I do not threaten. I, far more than you, have the power to destroy."

"Prove it!" Zoanna screamed, losing all control. "Prove it, you old hag!"

"Certainly, Zoanna."

In the crystal the aged face was replaced by a gnarled hand. The fingers separated, spreading to their maximum. Behind the hand, on a level with it, were two deeply burning feline eyes.

"No! NO! NO!" Zoanna cried, panicking.

"Yes, YES, YES!" mocked Helbah's voice.

The crystal grew pink, then rosy. Belatedly Zoanna tried to put up some mindscreen to abate what was happening. She had become so enraged that she had neglected to ready her defense.

Suddenly there was a loud splintering sound. The crystal turned black and cindery. Then it imploded with a great whoosh of air. Zoanna, who had climbed to her feet intent on retaliation, was back on the floor. Bits of broken and powdered crystal covered her from head to foot.

"Damn you, Helbah! Damn you!" she cried. The gritty stuff was in her mouth and eyes. She had never felt more frustrated or angry.

"What's the matter, dear?" Rowforth had chosen this moment to come casually strolling into this wing of the palace. He appeared unperturbed by the disorder, and in fact he seemed hardly to have noticed it.

She glared at his pudgy form, seething. How dare he act as if nothing had happened!

"YOU!" she screamed at him. "It's your fault!"

"That it is, dearie," Rowforth said in Helbah's voice.

Zoanna stared at him, appalled.

"Goodbye, wicked woman," Helbah said. Then her projection faded, leaving only Rowforth, standing there with a bewildered expression.

Zoanna gazed for some time at the vacant spot where the crystal had been. This was once, she realized, that she had been outmagicked and bested. She had underestimated Helbah, and thought her dying and finished, and so ignored her. That had been a colossal mistake. The witch had survived and recovered, and gathered her magic for an effective retaliation.

Chimaera's Copper

Well, Zoanna could do that too! One more visit to Professor Devale, and she would be ready. But first she had to see what she could do to shore up the crumbling attack forces she had launched.

Otherwise the war would be lost before she was ready to finish Helbah.

Needing something to occupy her mind, she rehearsed the brutal tongue-lashing she would give Rowforth the next time he gave her the slightest pretext.

St. Helens listened hard. The sounds that had been growing nearer were now receding like an outgoing wave. Why?

"I wonder, I wonder," he said aloud. There was nobody to hear him except an apparently deaf raouse that went right on nibbling his hunk of bread. Halfheartedly he threw his left boot at the rodent. The boot missed by the length of its tail. He drew off his right boot and threw that with as little effect. He went back to pacing his clean cell.

"Those boys, they said surrender, and I thought it was because they were losing. But now it sounds as if our side has been driven off. More witchcraft?"

A commotion at the dungeon door did not quite startle him. He stood back and waited as another prisoner was brought down the stairs. His cell door opened, and a big Kelvinian was pushed inside.

"Mor!" St. Helens exclaimed incredulously. "Mor Crumb!"

Mor rubbed at a spot of blood on his right cheek. He shook his head as though trying to clear it of cobwebs. "Yah, they got me, big mouth. Me and a hundred or so more they stuck in a stockade.

Gods know how many died!"

St. Helens' mouth went slack. "You're blaming me? You're calling me big mouth?"

"That's what you are! You were all for this war. You could hardly wait to get your commission!"

"Mor, I never wanted to fight! But there's the prophecy, and the king—"

"The king you knew is not our beloved Rufurt! He's a nasty imitation from another world! You knew, and yet you approved everything he wanted!"

St. Helens felt his face flushing. At another time he would have exploded like his namesake, but this was a friend. Moreover he knew the man to be right. "We were all of us witched or magicked. It's Zoanna, I'm certain."

"Zoanna?" Mor repeated, with disbelief. "She's dead!"

"I wish she were. We all wish. But she must have escaped John's wrath. She must have gotten away and brought back King Rufurt's impostor from that frame Kelvin visited. It's the only answer."

Chimaera's Copper

Mor glared at him, then took his fists out of his ribs and crossed to the straw. He sank down, wearily, as though all his air was out.

"St. Helens, what are we going to do?"

"I fear we are going to lose."

"Can we lose? With the prophecy working?"

"I never believed as completely in that as you pointy-ears do," St. Helens said. "Kelvin isn't in this frame. He might not even be alive."

"That would cancel the prophecy, I suppose." Mor sighed noisily. Clearly he was as much at sea as was St. Helens.

"There may be a way," St. Helens said.

"What way? My men were running as if they'd never stop."

"The boy-kings. They're sort of friends of mine, maybe. Nice little chaps. They even cleaned this cell. They offered me their two countries' surrender."

"WHAT?"

"That's right. Only I'm not sure the witch would let them. Only she's a good witch, not the Zoanna kind."

"Witch's tits! You mean actually surrender?"

"That's what they said. They're afraid for themselves and for Helbah and I think for Helbah's cat.

They're only kids, younger than Phillip."

"They're twenty-four," Mor said. "They age one year for each of our four. They only look like six years old."

"So it is said. But they want to surrender, that's the important thing. What should I tell them?"

Mor looked down at the clean floor and scratched a flea he'd brought. "You could tell them yes.

Zoanna and her consort we can get rid of once the fighting's over."

"We hope. It was tough going before, wasn't it?"

"Yes. I'd hate to fight a revolution all over again, and this time without a roundear."

"I have round ears," St. Helens reminded him.

"Yah. Yah, you have. But St. Helens, you're no Kelvin."

Chimaera's Copper

"It don't look like he and his father and his half brother are coming back. Be nice if they did."

"I don't like to say it, but I figure their disappearing and the evil one appearing may not be coincidence."

They sat in gloomy silence for several long moments. Then Mor spoke his thought: "If they're winning, they won't surrender."

"Probably not. But they're just kids."

"The witch would prevent them."

"I don't know. She bosses them and spanks their butts, but maybe they have the governing decisions."

"You think?"

"Naw. I think they're only kids."

"Difficult situation."

"Yah." Halfheartedly he picked up a boot and threw it at the raouse, missing completely again. The rodent looked up in annoyance, grabbed another bite of bread, and streaked for its hole. St. Helens wished he could do that himself.

"All right. All right. If they'll give the surrender I'll take it. If it's legal it should end the fighting."

The raouse came back out of its hole.

Heln held her tummy and cocked her head to one side as she listened to a conversation in a distant part of the palace. Her hearing was getting more acute than it had been. And something else.

Something she hardly dared think about.

"And you really want me, Your Majesty?"

"Of course. Who wouldn't? You're lovely."

"But the queen. Your Mrs., Your Majesty!"

"What Zoanna doesn't know won't hurt her, will it? Now just turn over and I'll unbutton—"

Heln pulled her round ears flat down over her head, pinning them and making them hurt. It didn't drown out the giggly scream of the wench. Yet she wasn't really offended by what she had heard.

Once, she knew, she would have been.

Heh, heh, heh, like old times! Doing a maid while the queen naps. This one's a bit fat, but I'll bet Chimaera's Copper

she's got bounce!

Oh gods, I wanted to be a good girl! But he's the king! Who can deny the king? Besides, his wife's gone, poor man, and she was bad and threw him in the dungeon. Will he know I've done this before?

Ah gods, he's biting me! What is he doing down there? OH! OH! OH! OH!

Heln knew what her thoughts should be, and these weren't her own. She screamed.

Jon woke up with a start.

"Jon! Jon! I'm hearing voices! And I'm thinking other people's thoughts! I know what other people are thinking!"

Poor girl, she's demented! "It's all right. It's all right, Heln. You've just had another bad dream."

"You hypocrite!" Heln exclaimed with sudden helpless fury. "You think I'm crazy!"

"Just a bad dream." I'm going to have to talk to Dr. Sterk. She's not right! She's all mixed up, and paranoid! But can he help her? Can anyone help? Gods, I wish Kelvin were here!

Knowing that all was really hopeless now, Heln permitted herself a scream that threatened to collapse the walls of the palace.

CHAPTER 23

Scarebird

They stood at the edge of the swamp watching the froogears come laden with copper stings. The Crumb look-alikes and their brethren watched with disbelief as the pile grew higher and higher before the transporter. Finally, late in the day, it was all there and the second stage of the operation was about to begin.

"Will this be enough?" Kelvin asked the big Loaf. "Is this enough copper to buy an army sufficient to overthrow your tyrant?"

"Son," Marvin said, very red in the face, "if we lose with this much copper, we deserve it! I didn't know there was so much anywhere. At home I know there's not. Can we start sending now?"

Kelvin nodded. The Loafers began working in a way that belied their name. Bundle by bundle they reduced the pile, tossing each into the transporter. There was a purple flash as the stings traveled alone to their destination. At the other end the men who had gone back were presumably unloading as fast as the stings arrived.

Chimaera's Copper

Suddenly Kelvin had an uncomfortable thought: Could they be certain that the people who were to get the copper were in fact getting it? The guardsmen might have come in force and overwhelmed those they had sent back. Consequently the tyrant king could have the copper, and would remain entrenched in a land that was identical to Kelvin's homeland but with a broader river and higher cliff.

Kelvin, you're worrying again!

I am, Mervania. I can't help myself.

Suppose you go back and I stay with you as I did before?

If the guardsmen are there they will kill me or capture me. You wouldn't be able to stop that.

Yes. Mervania managed to make the thought disinterested.

Or can you come to the rescue? If there was something he had overlooked...

No, I'm confined.

I mean, mind-stunning anyone who attacked me, as you did with my father when he—

Not at such distant range, Kelvin. I'm only in contact with you, there. It would be like you trying to score on an enemy soldier out of your sight beyond the horizon.

Kelvin thought that over. He didn't like it. The squarears will help?

They would not interfere with another world's affairs. That might annoy Mouvar.

But the copper's an interference!

Not to them. Copper's a mineral. Besides, there's no way they can use this transporter.

"No use— ? Oh, I forgot! Wrong ears, right?

Your mental deficiencies never cease to amaze me.

Yes, really stupid, ain't he? the chimaera's other human head broke in.

Then I'm really on my own? Kelvin asked despairingly.

You're the hero, Kelvin.

Kelvin looked at his father and brother and his newfound friends. Was he just scaring himself needlessly? No, the chimaera had as much as assured him that his worries were justified.

"I'm going back," he said abruptly. He drew his sword and flexed his left gauntlet. "If all is not going as it should, I'll return." I hope.

Chimaera's Copper

"And if it is, you'll stay?" his father asked, catching on.

"Until you join me. The chimaera will warn you if I get there and the king's guardsmen are in control and I get caught and can't return." For Mervania could touch other minds more freely, here in her own frame.

"Why can't we all go?" Marvin asked. "One after the other?"

"Because one after the other we could all be killed or captured. The squarears can't help and neither can the chimaera. So I have to find out."

They were still discussing it as Kelvin forced his feet to carry him into the transporter. His heart skipped—

It seemed to be all right. The four Loafers he had seen into the transporter were there with a big pile of sting bundles behind them. All four of the men were covered with sweat from the work of lifting bundles the froogears had carried with ease. The labor of getting copper to this frame was more than any of them had anticipated.

Kelvin heaved a sigh of relief and exchanged greetings. Redleaf, Bilger, Hester, and of course Jillip.

The boy, unlike the three grown men, was sweatless and resting. Why did they let him get away with such laziness?

"King's guardsmen been around?" Considering the mountain of sting bundles, the question seemed unnecessary.

"Uh-uh," Redleaf said. "Just us and the copper. Jillip's supposed to be watching. He's too weak for anything else."

"Says you!" Jillip said.

Redleaf grinned and bent to pick up the just-arrived bundle. It was almost like a farm operation John had once told Kelvin about. A machine transporting bundles of grain or grass that had then to be carried by hand. He doubted that the grain bundles had ever weighed as much as copper.

"When the royalists learn what we've got, they'll want it," Hester said. "We may need an army just to get this to where we can buy one."

"Blrood, you said." Not Throod, as at home, or Shrood as in the silver-serpent place.

"Yah." Hester grunted as he helped Redleaf swing the latest bundle onto the stack.

"I guess I'll check outside." Jillip isn't doing it. He must think he's royalty. The kid's a slacker, all right.

He stepped outside and discovered that it was now an overcast day. Dark clouds in the sky rather than the white pillows that had been there when he left. A day like this seemed made for worry.

Chimaera's Copper

To dispel worry he activated his belt. He lifted slowly, slowly by the rock face. Another ledge, narrower than the one he had left, was between him and the top of the bluff. He settled there.

The gauntlets began to tingle their warning.

Now hypersensitive to their messages, he looked quickly down at the great tree and the broad slash of river. He saw nothing unusual. Why then the warning?

Suddenly it was dark. Not the shadow of a thickening vapor, but a deep darkness that covered the cliffside and the ledge while leaving the more distant landscape unscathed.

He looked up, expecting to see a dense cloud or wind-tossed mass of dust. What he actually saw astonished and terrified him. It was a great dark something hung there on outstretched wings, supported by the cliff's updraft. It blinked great yellow eyes and snapped an improbably large beak.

It swooped overhead, darkening the landscape.

What by a god's god was that? It was the size of what his father had described as an airplane. But this was nothing to carry passengers! This—this dragon-sized thing was alive!

He stood there trying to shut his mouth. He shivered from head to toe. Birds he knew about, bats he had heard about, but he had never seen or heard of that!

The gauntlets had quit tingling as soon as the shadow had passed. They knew the monster hadn't seen him. What if it had? He shivered again, thinking about it. He searched the skies anxiously for some time, actually fearing to move from the cliff face. He looked down at where he had exited from the transporter chamber.

Jillip stood alone on the ledge. He was fumbling with his clothing, intent on relieving himself into the treetop. Fool kid! Didn't he realize that they'd be climbing down that? He could just as well have stood over against the cliff.

The gauntlets resumed tingling, and grew warm. In a heartbeat it got dark again. The great something slid silently down, swooping like an eagawk.

Jillip seemed to sense it. He turned. He screamed. He tried to jump back. But he was too late, too slow. Huge talons plucked him from the ledge.

Men appeared from the rock face. "Scarebird!" Hester exclaimed. "Everybody back!"

They quickly crowded back into the chamber. Everyone except Kelvin and—

"HELLLPPP MEEEEEE!"

Gods, he was still alive! Because the scarebird had gone after Jillip instead of Kelvin. He had to help the boy! He had at least to try.

Chimaera's Copper

The gauntlets were ahead of him, activating the belt. He shot up at an angle like a stone from his sister's sling. Before he could draw breath he was up against a leathery neck the size of a tree trunk, breathing the stench of reptile and more terrified than he could remember ever being before.

But the gauntlets, his best friends, knew what to do. They put the belt in neutral. He looked at the unmoving wings carrying him and the creature, at the great beak and strangely shaped, gigantic head. Was this a bird? Even apart from the sheer size of it, it seemed alien. He was here to help Jillip, but maybe it was he, Kelvin, who needed help.

"SCCCRRRREEEEEE!" The creature let out a great scream or cry. It turned its beak, blinked its eyes, stretched its neck out farther, and—

Suddenly there was a slipping sideways. Kelvin saw the cliffs and the rockspears thrusting up. He hadn't time to think of Jillip or anything else.

He was tumbling, over and over and over. Quickly he slapped the control. The rocks loomed closer, and he hastily adjusted his course. Now he was flying just above the treetops.

SNAP! SNAP! SNAP!

Kelvin winced in pain and accelerated with a push of the lever. He leaped ahead and was immediately out of the thing's reach. Looking back he saw a great head with a pointed top, dark yellow eyes the size of ponds, and a pointed, saw-toothed bill with something flapping from its hooked tip.

His back smarted. That was where the tip of the bill had scraped. The brown material in the beak was the exact center section of his best brownberry shirt. Kelvin considered that he now wore two arm coverings and that the fastenings in front had popped off as the flying thing's beak ripped away the back.

"SCCCRRRREEEE!"

"HELLLLLPPPP!"

Oh shut up! he wanted to say, but didn't. There was no help for Jillip. Unless, unless—

Kelvin climbed to a higher altitude, leaving the monster's air current. He circled above it, keeping the distance. Even when I fought dragons and serpents I had at least a spear! No spear now, and no way of getting one. Besides, if he could somehow kill this—this scarebird—Jillip would surely be killed in the fall. That might be inevitable anyway, but Kelvin didn't want to hasten it.

He shrugged out of the remains of his shirt and let the wind take away the ragged strips. Poor Heln, she sewed on that for a week. With normal use such a garment would last for years. There was a brownberry farm not far from the Hackleberry residence; he remembered that a little girl lived there.

What was her name? Easter. Not that that related to him in any way, other than as a source for the material for another shirt. He hated to think of how upset gentle Heln would be with him when she Chimaera's Copper

learned about the shirt. Her life must be pretty quiet now, while she waited on the arrival of the baby.

Now shirtless, he must resemble those bigger-than-life cinema heroes his father had once described.

Except that his chest was skinny and not bronzed and muscled the way a fictional hero's would have been. Had it been his place to pick a hero, Kelvin would have been at the bottom of the list!

He eased the speed of his flying and fell back, keeping the scarebird in sight. Oh, if it would only land! Then he might be able to swoop in and rescue Jillip. But it showed no sign of doing so.

Below, the terrain looked less and less like that of home. It was rougher and becoming more so. It was hilly, irregular, and forested, a lot like the way the fabled kingdoms of Ophal and Rotternik were said to be. Faint hope for any rescue here!

A tang filled his nose, erasing the memory of the reptile smell. Salt. The ocean was nearby, just as it would be at home in this region. Maybe that was good news, and maybe not.

He flew on, marveling at how fast they were traveling. The wind, that was what was making the scarebird soar and sail so effortlessly and so fast. The ocean updrafts, the air currents like sea currents, carrying this great, great winged ship. Sky ship—his father had used that term once in telling a story. That was what the scarebird was, only living. A living sky ship.

Now he saw the ocean, and still the great black kite sailed on. An estuary with great mountains of foam and towering rocks. Up the estuary, following the wild, great river that broadened until it was almost as wide as a sea itself. Then trees, gigantic trees! Trees such as Kelvin at his most imaginative had never dreamed of. The tree they had climbed was big, but compared to these it was scarcely a sapling. These were growing up from the water, reaching to the sky, and into the sky, each huger than its neighbors.

And circling, dipping in and out of enormous branches, were dozens of scarebirds! There was a whole colony of them here!

Poor Jillip! The kid's done! There's no rescue from this. I can't—

But somehow he couldn't leave. He circled in the air, like the scarebirds themselves, waiting, watching for the monster carrying Jillip to land. He saw that there were many of the monsters hanging upside down in the trees. Like bats, but big. Bigger than any bats or birds imaginable.

The scarebird flew to the top of a great tree. There, deep in the branches and foliage was a monstrous nest. Beaks the length of swords reached up from the nest, opening wide, waiting. Mama's coming.

Mama's coming with your dinner.

"KEL... VIN! SAVE ME!"

So Jillip was still conscious, and in good voice. That suggested that he had not been seriously hurt, yet. He was looking back, and had spied Kelvin, urging him to do the impossible. Poor kid!

Chimaera's Copper

Kelvin accelerated, flew past the nest, curved, and came in low above the tree and just below some clouds. That gave him some cover. He saw ruddy throats, open. Those young were hungry!

The chimaera was telepathic. Could this other monster also communicate mentally? It seemed unlikely, but maybe worth a try. It wasn't as if he had a wide range of promising options. BIRD! Put down that man! Put him down unharmed!

"SCRRRREEEEE!

There was no indication that the scarebird knew his thoughts, or cared if it did. In its talons Jillip was now limp, having fainted or been killed. Those talons could have squeezed him lifeless at any time, unless the monster wanted to feed its nestlings live and squirming food. Kelvin hoped it was death, because to be alive when those ravenous chicks fed—he couldn't bear that thought!

"SCCCRRRREEEE!"

SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! The little rascals were impatient. Would one skinny boy divide enough?

"Bird! Bird!" he called, feeling stupid. "I want to talk! As one rational creature to another!"

Did the monster hesitate? It was probably just deciding how to portion out the morsel. He doubted that the thing could talk. His father had told him of a talking bird in his frame of Earth called a polly, so maybe some did talk, however. What else did he have to try?

Jillip's head lifted. His arms and legs straightened. So he had only been unconscious, not injured.

Now the very worst was incipient, and Kelvin saw no good way out.

"SCRRRREEEE! SCRRRREEEE!"

"You already said that," Kelvin muttered with gallows humor. He nudged the acceleration lever and got far closer than he wanted. It wouldn't help Jillip if Kelvin also became a meal for the chicks!

The bird spied him. The saw-toothed beak was more formidable than any sword. It darted at him now, the bird intent on grabbing him. It seemed to be well aware of the value of doubling its investment.

The gauntlets jerked him down. He ducked his head, snapped his feet together, and dived under the incoming head. Below the bird, Jillip's drained face looked at him in startled comprehension as he grabbed a leg the size of a normal tree trunk.

"Kelvin! KELVIN!"

"Shut up!" he said. It was a terrible thing to say to a desperate boy on the edge of losing his life, but necessary. He needed a moment to think, if the confounded bird gave him a chance.

As he might have expected, the bird turned, swooped, slipped, and dived. They were still well up in the air. Kelvin's position changed as quickly and bewilderingly as it might in a whirlwind.

Chimaera's Copper

Sometimes he was right side up, sometimes upside down. The belt kept him flattened hard against the scaly surface with more than human strength.

He knew the bird would soon tire of this, and soar up and then in to the nest. He saw water below, and Jillip almost skimming it. Then they were rising again, rising with the air current. Now it would be climb, climb, circle, circle, circle, and in for a landing. What had he gained? He remained as clumsy a hero as ever.

As the bird straightened in flight he let go of its leg, and made a grab for the talons. He got hold, nearly upside down, and tried to will his gauntlets to pull up the great, powerful toes. The gauntlets tried; he felt his shoulders and arms take up the strain. But it was not enough. He tried kicking himself back from the foot with all his strength, but still the talon would not budge from the boy.

"Save yourself, Kelvin!" Jillip gasped. "My life is finished. My life's not worth your life!"

Sensible talk, but unfortunately late. Suddenly they were bouncing. Up and down, up and down.

Branches the girth of a man's legs were slapping on either side of his face. They had come to a landing at last, on the rim of the scarebird's nest.

"CREEEE! EEEEEE! EEEE!" SNAP, SNAP, SNAP!

The chicks were eager for dinner. Their hungry cries were deafening. In a moment they would have their desire.

Kelvin slapped a branch out of his face and drew his sword.

A great beaked head with huge yellow eyes was looking at him under the gray belly. It was mama's beak and mama's eyes. She would snatch him from her foot like a scared rodent, and some lucky chick would be the recipient. As for Jillip, who was costing Kelvin his life—

"NO!" Kelvin shouted, and jabbed his sword into the fleshy part of her left foot.

The bird's head shot back out of sight, her talons opened suddenly, and she let out a screech which made the prior ones seem faint. Kelvin wasn't waiting, nor were his gauntlets. With one clumsy lunge he grabbed Jillip and tumbled with him into space.

Wind whistled by their ears and brush slapped by their faces. Bits of bone and rotting animal carcasses were strewn on branches they passed. Somehow the gauntlets managed to hold the boy, yet also activate the belt. Upside down scarebirds hung from branches bigger than normal tree trunks.

He glimpsed these briefly, peripherally, hoping they got even lesser glimpses of him, and then he was flying.

Below them were hard rocks in deep water. Past them, so close she almost touched, passed the angrily screaming big mama.

Kelvin adjusted their acceleration as the bird caught the air again, ending her dive. They were soon Chimaera's Copper

speeding up the river, back the way they had come. When he knew the bird was far outdistanced, he took a more comfortable grip on Jillip, who was now returning again to consciousness. He had fainted somewhere during that mind-numbing scream, which was perhaps just as well.