CHAPTER 3

Snoops

"You're doing it again!" Merlain said accusingly.

"Doing what?" Charles was all innocence, but his hypocrisy showed. Sitting there on the creek bank, idly fishing with hooks and lines, he might have been just another peasant lad out to stock the larder. Yet the two of them were not ordinary. Having a dragon brother was part of it, and the other was being telepaths.

"I know perfectly well you've been reaching out for him!" Merlain flipped her line to another spot, angered despite herself. It was bad enough that Horace had to have these urges, but worse for Charles to spy on him!

"You mean I was trying to mind-call a bigger fish?"

"No!" He did that constantly, and that too annoyed her. In compensation Merlain used her own mind to direct the fish away from her brother's hook. They always caught enough fish to eat and sometimes to give to Horace. Mind-calling fish, Merlain felt, was cheating.

"You mean Horace."

"Yes."

"I'm curious."

"I know you are. But how would you like it if you and Glow were doing it and—"

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"We never have! You know that. We're waiting until we marry."

"Yes, but you think about it a lot. You think so detailed that you might as well be married."

"Now how do you know that?"

Oh. Charles had caught her again. True, she did mind-peek a little now and then, but she didn't snoop.

Ha!

Charles, I didn't invite you!

No, but your shield was down. You left yourself open for it.

I did not! But suppose I did? What's that got to do with your invading Horace's privacy?

Everything. I'm showing that you do it too. Mind-peek, that is. In other words, snoop.

Merlain looked at bubbles near her line and deftly warned the turtle off before it took the bait.

Sometimes that little trick saved a bait-stealer a minor bit of pain.

Merlain!

Oh, all right, I admit there's little difference. We're both tempted to snoop, but we don't have to.

We have a choice.

But you think it's wrong.

It is with Horace. He's not even like us.

He's our brother.

You know what I mean, she thought. He's a dragon, not a human. He might enjoy what we shouldn't.

You told him not to often enough.

I haven't! I told him about love. About commitment.

Which you've learned about from books, he thought smugly.

So?

So he's a dragon. He shouldn't have to do things our way. Dragons don't have to think about it.

Dragons just hump.

You think they shouldn't? There, that'd get him!

Merlain... Her brother's thought trailed away, a procedure that involved peripheral and semiformed thoughts agglutinating. Well, Merlain, I certainly don't try to judge. Dragons are dragons and humans are humans.

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So why, Charles, are you invading Horace's privacy?

I'm not invading his privacy. At least I haven't yet.

But you're trying to!

Charles shut her out. He frowned, staring at their fishing floats resting on the water. He might have been an ordinary fisherman thinking of nothing but the impending catch. In fact she knew he was thinking of their brother.

"All right, Merlain. All right," Charles said aloud. "You've got me. I want to snoop, to find out what Horace experiences. But there's a reason, besides the voyeurism."

"Of course there is." Try to lie to her, would he!

"Right! Horace just might get in trouble! He's never been with wild dragons, never even seen one."

"But he's got the opal in his gizzard, Brother dear. With that he can pop away from trouble fast."

"Right, but can we know? You know what Helbah and our parents and our grandparents are talking about. Maybe old Zady really is alive. Maybe—"

"She'd hardly be in dragon territory!"

"We don't know. Her head was never found, even using magic. Suppose she's there? Suppose Horace wanders on to her?"

"He'd destroy her and let us know."

"Well, maybe, but—"

"Charles, go ahead and peek." They had had this conversation for days now, with her first trying to convince Charles and then him trying to convince her. They had switched sides in the argument at least twice.

"Huh?"

"See what he's up to, then butt out."

"Well, if you think I should."

"Go, Charles."

Charles' face wrinkled up as he concentrated. She waited.

"Got him, Merlain. He's enjoying a sensation. He's..."

"What, Charles? What?" Merlain tried but couldn't suppress her enthusiasm.

"Eating something long dead with maggots on it. He's enjoying it. Ulp!"

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Merlain watched her brother heaving, again suffering one of the consequences of mind-peeking a dragon. She felt a little sorry that she had urged him into this. A little, but only a little.

After his own dinner was gone, Charles wiped his mouth and looked at her with a miserable, sick expression.

"Merlain, if you want to snoop, go ahead. I'm fishing." With those words he snapped up his pole and a good-sized trass flew green and silver through the air. The fish came off the hook in midflight and fell flopping high on the bank where Charles humanely extinguished its simple pain. The fish would taste very good, suitably grilled, once he had control of his stomach.

Merlain smiled and flipped out a nearly identical fish but a size half again as large. Her stomach, she knew, could easily handle it.

Except for Horace being missing, this was turning out to be a beautiful spring day.

"What do you think, Kildom?"

"I don't know, Kildee." Kildom, titular head of Klingland, spoke earnestly to his look-alike twin. Though both appeared to be age twelve, both had lived a total of forty-eight years. Both imagined they had achieved maturity.

Below their hiding place in the rocks on the hill, the pretty girl stood disrobed and golden in the sun.

Smooth young arms raised high, she swelled out her torso with its pink-tipped breasts. Her hands came together like mating birds, her blond head lowered, and she dived. She slipped cleanly through the water.

She disappeared among a widening ring of silvery ripples, then surfaced. She raised her head high on her slender neck and sucked in more air. Her head went back, all the way back, and she backstroked the length of the pool.

"I think if I were Charles I'd be here," Kildee persisted. "Why should he not be since he intends to marry her?"

"I think Helbah would turn him into a froog," Kildom remarked. "Besides, he's done better than seen her naked."

"You think?" Kildee could play at dumb idleness sometimes. Both knew perfectly well that the two were in love and had more than an inkling of what that meant.

"Of course. We know they swam together naked. We heard them laugh. We saw them go into the tall grass and the old abandoned house."

"But we don't know they did anything."

"No, but only because we're not telepaths. If I were Charles I know I would have."

"Even if she said no?"

"Uh, she wouldn't have, I think. Anyway, why aren't they married? They're old enough."

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"Yeah, and grown-up enough too. Kildom, you think she knows we watch her?"

"If she does she hasn't told Helbah. If Helbah knew we watched she'd probably strike us blind."

"Really?"

"Naw. But you know Helbah. Just because she's a witch and our guardian she thinks she has to keep us from learning things."

"But she always says we should learn."

"Book learnin', yeah. Ruler wisdom and court protocol and all that junk. But lookin' at naked babes and actually doing it—"

"Yeah, I 'spect you're right. But someday we'll be grown enough."

"Yeah."

Helbah contemplated the healthy, lust-filled faces of the boy kings a moment longer and then blanked the crystal. As darkness closed out the pleasant outdoor scene in the smoothly faceted viewing rock, she reached absently across the table to stroke the head of her familiar.

She rubbed the smooth back, so very black that it shone with a sheen of its own making.

"Katbah, the boys are aging. But for all of that they still want to see what they shouldn't. In that way they're just as they were twenty years back at the witch's convention."

"Meow," Katbah agreed, arching his back to her hand. In many ways they were extensions of each other, the familiar and herself. When Katbah needed a scratch Helbah found the place without direct telepathy. Likewise when the feline creature sensed something out of the old woman's sight there was no need for further warning. Until Helbah had restocked her supply of crystals her familiar had been her royalty sitter. Watching the young scamps with sharp eyes, Katbah had informed on them as necessary.

"You know I suggested Glow take a nice swim this morning and I knew where they'd go. They thought they were smart shutting you in the pantry. We have to let them think that. Kinglets they may be, but someday they will rule without our help."

Katbah yawned and scratched a flea off his ear. An ordinary cat would have bitten it, but Katbah was almost too gentle at times. Of course an enemy such as they were to face again was a different matter.

Tooth to tooth, claw to claw, the fearless feline had battled Witch Zady that time in their hotel room. In human terms that had been a long time back—twenty years back—but to their kind, hardly a few finger snaps.

Thinking of the past, of young Kelvin going off that high cliff without his levitation belt, of Zady's horrid head sailing off after him, only to be snatched by a passing eagawk, Helbah had to sigh. Work, work, work. Mortals might work fifty years or so and then rest, but a true witch, witch-born and not apprenticed talent, might easily work century after century. To Kelvin and his father and his talented mother, the twenty years was as long an interval as they could possibly imagine. To Helbah, and to Zady, Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

her enemy of centuries, it was a coftea break in the middle of a workday.

Katbah walked silently across the table and stopped with his front paws on the big, open book. The book had scintillating letters on its pages that sparked at her, getting her attention.

"Yes, Katbah," Helbah sighed, "it is indeed time that I proceed with the magic. Kelvin, his father, his mother, his wife, all the children, and you and I—all need the protection of benign magic."

Katbah curled up by the book, waiting confidently for her to cast her spells. In her witch's heart Helbah tried to draw strength from her familiar, knowing that in their last meeting Zady had come close to triumphing. This time she would not underestimate the enemy. This time she would do everything she could to prepare.

The scintillating letters swam into her mind, telling her of tried and true ways to battle malignants. She would do what she could but she was not certain that this would be sufficient to save them.

Krassnose, resident wizard of Ophal, worked his neck-gills in increased agitation as a fish swam past his orc face. Phenoblee, wife of Brudalous, their king, was frowning at the great yellow crystal in front of them. In the crystal the human witch-creature known as Helbah was perusing a book of magic with her familiar, one black-as-black-can-be feline.

"I don't know, Your Ladyship," Krassnose remarked. "She seems not to be doing magic that you and I have not long ago learned."

"True enough," Phenoblee said, splashing an air bubble on the fish, swerving it and causing it to dart away. "She is but a human witch, though longer lived than mortal humans. You and I, Krassnose, being orcs, have the superior art."

"Quite true." He raised his head crest and lowered it, mindful of the bit of current the fish had raised as it swam past. To not meet the king's wife, on the occasion of her concern, would have been dangerous, even for a resident wizard. Phenoblee knew her art, though she softened it with an egg-layer's gentleness; thus she had seen fit to not destroy the enemy humans. Because of Phenoblee and her soft ways orcs did not totally own this frame and all within it. Because of her femininity and her power over Brudalous, that copper-scaled dragon was acknowledged by them as well as humans as overking. True, orcs did govern orcs, totally and solely, and humans governed humans; both orcs and humans pretended that the holder of the phrasing opal had the final say. To Krassnose it was stupid, knowing that they could have had full control at the cost of the young dragon's life.

"I see that she is concerned, Resident Wizard, and that she perhaps has cause."

"How can you say that, Phenoblee? We both have searched for the witch Zady and found her not in existence."

"Not in our existence, Krassnose. Perhaps in another."

"If we still possessed the opal we could search."

"True. We may have to. But we do have the opal, though lodged in the overking's gizzard."

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"You would want the human child known as Merlain to search with the dragon?"

"She's no longer a child," Phenoblee explained. "Yes, Wizard Krassnose, I think that King Brudalous should now, on our combined advice, issue to her that request."

"It will be honored, Phenoblee?"

"It will be. Even if they believe the danger long past, the humans dare not break the alliance."

"Lest we destroy them?"

"That, Resident Wizard, is but Ophal's possibility of last resort."

"Yet we were allies of this Zady creature."

"Not really, Krassnose. She used us, orcs and humans. She would have had us destroy each other."

"The humans would not have lasted."

"With the hero they have, perhaps they would have. At least long enough to have ruined Ophal."

Krassnose rubbed at the scales on his forehead where he had lately discovered a colony of waterlice.

He knew she was right, as royalty always had to be. He knew also that if the opportunity came he would back the witch Zady over the humans. Twenty years it might have been, but Krassnose still smarted from the insult the Roundear's tads had done Ophal. Single-handed, using only magic, they had snatched the priceless opal from its resting place, pulled down an ancient landmark, wrecked an undersea prison, and in effect flirted their impudent tails. Deep down in his predatory heart Krassnose resented what those human tads had done and vowed that someday, should the opportunity arise, he'd demonstrate to them the power of orc magic.

Phenoblee, fortunately, did not know what was in the resident wizard's revenge-hungry mind.

Kathy Jon Crumb smiled to what she considered to be her own sweet self as she carefully changed position behind the big oaple tree in front of her uncle's cottage. Her dumb old brothers hadn't stopped her going, and Mama, though she'd be having a fit about now, hadn't known her intent. Midmorning and just the right time of day to get a look at what magic had wrought.

In great good time the front door opened and her uncle staggered outside, thinner and trimmer than she remembered him ever in her life, but definitely Kelvin. A hero born, she'd always heard, and never once believed it. Now, watching him make his trip to the outhouse, she was less certain. He did look younger, thanks to Helbah's magic and her own little help with a few stones, but he still was old. There were a few white hairs on that golden head, and she doubted that the bristles on his face could make a young beard.

How in the world could someone pushing fifty be heroic? With all Helbah's magic and her help it just wasn't possible. Do everything though they might, there was just no way to make an old man young.

Kathy sighed. She had this yearning that was almost akin to sex. What she wanted was to be heroic.

Why not? Her mom had often claimed she herself had been. Was Jon Hackleberry twirling her sling at age fourteen really any different from Kathy? She knew that she was as good with her sling as her mom had been, and her uncle and father had told her. She was qualified by age and temperament to be heroic.

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If anyone around here was.

Kelvin stepped back out of the outhouse, letting the door swing shut. He stood there, adjusting the new, trim slacks—not the old worn pantaloons he had worn for so many years—and looked about. His eyes, never very strong, she had always heard, could not spot her behind the tree bole, but then he wasn't looking for her. A smile was on his face, an almost boyish smile. He raised his arms above his head, clenched his fists, and gave a yell such as she had never heard him give before:

"YAHHHHHOOOOOO!"

"Kelvin!" Aunt Heln was in the doorway, glaring disapproval at him, apron around waist, mixing bowl in hand. "Kelvin, did you have to do that? What will the neighbors think? People must have heard that in the next kingdom!" Then her eyes darted to the oaple. "Oh, hello, Kathy Jon. What brings you out this morning?"

Kathy stepped around the tree, caught easily by her aunt's better eyes. Did all women in this family have sharper eyesight? Her daddy's eyesight was better than Kelvin's, but Mama's had to be the best.

"Good morning, Aunt Heln, Uncle Kelvin. I was just, ah, out to sling a few stones."

"Nice day for it!" her uncle said enthusiastically. "I may get a little breakfast and join you. Maybe we'll go squirbet hunting."

"Kelvin, you know you don't hunt in the spring! You don't even hunt in the fall!" his wife reproved him.

"Besides, you can't sling a stone accurately enough to hit the broadest side of the broadest barn."

"Says who? Today I'm a new man." He made a rush at Heln, then switched directions and snatched up Kathy instead. He twirled her around, then raised her high, showing off his new strength. A week ago fat old Kelvin had grunted when he lifted a small bag of horse feed.

"Come on in the house, Kathy Jon. Heln's making wafflecakes. We'll eat and I'll tell you about my adventures. Did your mom ever tell you—"

Kathy was glad enough for the invitation, though she had eaten fast and early. She didn't mind hearing oft-told family tales again, but it was the new Kelvin and the new adventure she thought might be coming that interested her.

This time, she told herself, it would not be her gray-haired old mother who would do the stone-slinging the better to get bumbling Kel out of trouble. This time it would be darling little Kathy's turn.

She smiled to herself, vowing to hang around her uncle night and day and keep the sling and stones always ready to help him.