Mouvar's Magic

by Piers Anthony

  Something, Kelvin decided with an uncontrollable shiver, definitely wasn't shaping up well in his universe.

  Kiddy Time

  Jon, Kelvin's little sister, crossed her arms over her properly mature bosom and glared a mother's disapproval at her youngest son. Joey was muddy and slimed with green pond scum. More clothes washing, and she had just finished a batch!

  "Well?" she demanded.

  The boy pointed back along the rail fence to the froog pond. "Kathy. She splashed me."

  Jon groaned. Not "he" but "she"! Never a brother, always the older sister. What kind of an incorrigible was she raising? Girls were supposed to help their mothers. Kathy Jon should be here helping with the wash. Instead she was down at the froog pond slinging stones.

  "I'll warm her bottom!" Jon promised, grabbing her favorite whipwillow stick and heading for the pond.

  "Can I watch, Mom? Can I?"

  "No! You stay here and get those muddy clothes off!"

  Mentally Jon delivered a thorough thrashing to her firstborn every step to the pond. It wasn't going to work and she knew it. Kathy Jon was too much the way she had been and not enough as girls were supposed to be. Her gestures with the whipwillow hadn't worked when Kathy was five. They certainly didn't now that she was the age Jon was when she and Kelvin had gone adventuring. The only time she actually had used the whipwillow the only result had been that Kathy looked at her accusingly and made her cry.

  SPLASH!

  Muddy water with algae greening it geysered up at her, splashing on her face and sprinkling her heavily from head to foot. At the same time a boat with a sail made of a girl's unmentionable bounced on a stone-created wave. Kathy Jon, it seemed, was bombarding a pretend warship.

  Jon wiped mud and slime from her face with her apron. What a brat! Where was she?

  There she was! Hanging upside down from the big oaple tree. All that saved her from exposing herself were the newfangled jeans she wore; not that that would have stopped her for long. Kathy's idea was that boys who looked where they shouldn't should get a knot on the head. Worse, once her mother had had the same attitude.

  "Kathy Jon, you get yourself right side up! Kathy Jon, you get your butt over here!"

  "Right, Mom."

  The girl swung up, grabbed the tree limb without letting loose of her sling, and dropped. She spoiled her athletic performance by slipping where she landed, falling in a rain puddle. She got up, appropriately filthy, laughing.

  Jon said things to herself that she wouldn't have wanted her three sons to hear. By the time she had finished Kathy Jon was standing in front of her, all muddied but sweet innocence.

  "What is it, Mom? You want something?"

  The brat! The incredible brat!

  "Kathy Jon, Alvin and Teddy are helping their father cut wood. What are you doing to help your family?"

  "Keeping out of the way while you wash?"

  "How about helping with the wash?"

  "Aw, Mom! Do I have to?"

  "Yes! Starting with that mud plaster you've got on!"

  Halfway back to the house she remembered that she still held the whipwillow and hadn't raised it to Kathy once. But how could she? As Kelvin and her husband Lester were both always saying, the girl was exactly the way Jon used to be!

  Dragon Time

  Horace was as moody as he had ever been. A handsome young dragon with beautifully polished copper scales, he was feeling the natural dragon urge. Bothersome business, this. Not the least of it was this long journey.

  He took a small opal-hop to the nearest clear spot. Immediately he was there where he decided he should be; that was the nature of opaling, a process he had grown quite accustomed to. Instinctively, and also because he had been given the information by Merlain, he knew that having passed the end of the worn road he was now in dragon territory.

  He paused, looking at a nearby stream, sniffing the air for scent, not really thinking. His innards rumbled hungry. Was that the scent of a meer? If he saw a meer he would opal onto it, dine, then sleep for the rest of the day. Tomorrow could be a new start.

  "GGGGRRRROOOOTHMHHH! HISSSSSSSSS!"

  Success so soon? He hadn't expected it. Good! He'd get the mating done and then he'd be free to do something interesting—like eating.

  Tree limbs snapped. A very large dragon's head emerged from two splintering trunks and gave a loud snort from a giant golden snout. No female this!

  "GWOOTHHH!" he said, showing his teeth. Actually he felt silly doing it, but Merlain had assured him that this was the way male dragons expected other males to act.

  "GGGRRRHISSSS!" said his soon-to-be opponent. Most dragons were not part human and hadn't doubts. This one's teeth were bigger than Horace's.

  Thinking as he thought Merlain would have him think, Horace wanted across the river. Immediately the opal put him there. Here he was safe from the bigger dragon, unless—

  Rising up from a patch of weeds was the prettiest, golden-scaled girl dragon he had ever dreamed! He was all set to stroll over to her, pay his respects, and request that they mate. But then he saw the other. The second dragon, rising up behind the first, was if anything bigger and meaner looking than the bully across the river.

  This newcomer did a mad tail lash. He started a dragon charge, wriggling from side to side as his short legs carried him over rocks at the speed of a fast horse.

  Horace decided he wasn't going to chicuck out this time. Instead he braced himself on his four clawed feet and waited the other's charge.

  CHAPTER 1

  Heroic Preparations

  "Uh, uh, uh," Kelvin puffed, his middle-aged feet now encased in ordinary boots pounding the turf. His breath was wheezing between his fortunately still-good teeth. His feet were smarting, his leg muscles aching, and his stomach hurting from the pressure of an unmagical belt.

  "Me too, Son," his father gasped beside him. "It's just too much!"

  Three times around the horse track, she'd said. Three times to induce a little magically assisted hardening of the muscles and reduction of the forms. Three times, puff, puff, puff, and it would be as though they had trained and exercised and starved for weeks or months. Three times today, and then tomorrow, and then the next day. Three days in a row and they'd be finished, if not dead of exhaustion first.

  "We have to keep going, Dad." Kelvin couldn't afford the breaths, but wasted them anyhow. "Otherwise she'll start us over again."

  "I know." Puff, puff, gasp.

  They really could die doing this, Kelvin thought. What would Helbah do then? Enchant their hearts into resuming beating, their chests into heaving again? Probably. Helbah was a very demanding trainer who would consider their dying of overload to be but a bothersome delay.

  Ahead, perched comfortably on the railing, were three young boys who to all appearances had more of the makings of heroes than these two aging men. Blond of hair, ruddy of cheeks, they were actually enjoying this.

  "Faster! Faster!" Joey, the youngest, insisted.

  "Get ahead of him, Gramps!" Teddy, the next oldest, now positioned between his brothers, called as John managed to wave. For reasons that Kelvin had never penetrated Teddy was Grandfather Knight's favorite of the Crumb boys.

  Kelvin thought some not very nice things about children with nothing better to do than watch their elders. He forced his feet forward and down, step after step, aware that athletics were not his true calling. He glanced at his father's red face, and knew that he too was running full out. If only he had the damned Mouvar boots! One step with them and he'd be to the finish. Three steps and he'd be three times around the track. Why couldn't Helbah work her magic that way and save them embarrassment?

  The Crumb boys vanished behind, waiting for them to do their next lap. If they were capable of it. It would serve Helbah right when she had to revive them.

  Puff, puff, puff. Hurt, hurt, hurt. Ahead, standing just back of the railing, were Jon and Lester Crumb. Jon held a picnic basket that was probably overflowing with fried chicuck,
greasy goober chips, cooakes, pies, and magically cold, tangy oranglemime aid. Trust his sister to bring along everything he and his father were strictly forbidden to eat!

  Jon waved and Kelvin hadn't strength to wave back. Where was the girl of the brood? Oh, there she was, a little way ahead. Kathy Jon, pretty as Jon herself had been, and just as much of a boy. Why was she twirling that sling as they ran by? No!

  Kelvin leaped ahead of his father as the track exploded in a puff of dust right at his heel. The girl's aim had been faultless; the stone wouldn't have struck him though it had seemed that it would. A pretty girl, but she lacked discipline. In every way that he could see she was just as her mother had been at that age.

  "Move them big feet, Unc!" the pretty girl called. "Put some oomph into it!"

  They were rounding the curve like two aging racehorses. Just ahead were the bleachers, now occupied by a few onlookers. Two figures in the front row caught his eye. As they grew nearer he saw that they were Helbah and his mother. His mother was making gestures while Helbah watched. He hoped that she was having a mother's fit, telling Helbah that it was too much for them and that it was wrong of her to have ordered it.

  As his feet started to slow in anticipation he saw that the two kinglets were there beside Helbah. Properly dressed as they had been the other day, they sat again like statues. Beside the two young redheads sat golden-haired Glow, the girl his boy should soon marry. Beside Glow, the nursemaid to kings, were his own copper-haired son and daughter. And there—off just a bit with his attendants and an attractive and inappropriately young girl—King Rufurt of the waistline and ruddy complexion, officially king of Rud. With the king's group he thought he saw St. Helens and that barmaid. And there, most definitely, were Charlie Lomax and a stranger, and St. Helens' business partner, Phillip Blastmore, onetime king of Aratex.

  Kelvin tried to catch his mother's eye as he drew close. She was doing something with her arms as Helbah watched, and now, between her raised hands, glowing letters that seemed composed of fire stood and blazed for attention. Unmistakably, the letters read: "GO HEROES! RUN!"

  So much for motherly understanding, he thought. It seemed impossible to him that he and his father could make a second lap, let alone a third. As he looked at Helbah's wrinkled face he saw nothing but an expression of disgust. Even Katbah, crouched on her shoulder, looked away as though embarrassed by their performance.

  "You have to try harder!" Helbah advised in a loud, only slightly crackly voice. She now had a small ball of fire between her fingertips. Suddenly the fireball was flying like an arrow and hovering just slightly above the turf. The fireball danced up and down, then rolled in midair ahead of them up the track.

  Kelvin put his eyes on the speck of witch's fire and concentrated on his feet: lifting, moving forward, putting down. He heard his father gasp something, and several footfalls later he guessed that he had said: "It helps." His father was right: watching the spark did help. Better to think of the witch's fire than of dying or failing this preliminary test.

  Thump, thump, thump. Gasp, gasp, gasp. Thinking of nothing now, now that the bleachers were passed. The speck of fire was leading them like a magical squirbet might lead a pack of racing houcats. He could think of nothing else. He dared think of nothing else.

  He was going full out, he knew that he was, while beside him his father worked away, amazingly fast. Was it becoming just a little less certain that they were about to die? Might they make it around a second time, despite all the body-racking and reasonable doubts?

  "Go Grandpa! Go Uncle!" the Crumb boys shouted. On the curve was their sister, readying another stone. This time Kelvin did not mind nearly so much when she hurled it: her aim was ever true and her eyes were on Helbah's magically created spark.

  Jon and Lester, having moved up the track a way, now seated on a blanket, waving hands, calling encouragement as they passed.

  Ahead were the bleachers, somehow appearing darker than they had before. As he pounded near Kelvin saw the seats were rapidly filling as villagers and country dwellers got the word. A free show was a free show, and there was no show to beat a famous person making a complete ass of himself.

  Pant, pant, pant. Stumble, stumble, stumble. The track blurring and then refocusing. His mother's hand raised, the letters formed again: "GO HEROES! RUN!" The letters blinked and re-formed into: "YOU'RE DOING FINE!"

  Kelvin couldn't question it. He was still alive, trying. Helbah's hands produced a second spark as the first vanished. This time she and the cat both looked him in the face as he plodded past. "Keep your eyes on the lure," Helbah said, and he determined to do so, even as he looked past the spark and saw people he recognized.

  "Go Kelvin! Go Kelvin!" St. Helens' barmaid friend called. Nice to have a woman cheering, but where was his wife? Did she expect that he would be humiliated?

  "Kelvin! Kelvin!" There she was, waving madly, not bouncing as much in front as the barmaid. Still somehow beautiful, still his beloved wife.

  Heln, what terrible things I've put you through. In rapid succession he remembered her as his young bride, then being swollen in pregnancy and dying of magic, and of his flight to save her and their magical children. She had endured all, recovered from all—even giving birth to a dragon. That had been something of a shock at the time, but the passage of years had helped them adjust.

  Heln called to him again and somehow he found the strength to wave. Then she was past, along with all their faces, and there was only the track and his body and the dancing, beckoning spark.

  Agony unlooked at is still noticed. Yet the mind has its powers, it own near-magical ability to hold back and keep in place. By thinking only of doing and plodding step by pain-racked step, chest heave by chest heave, leg thrust by leg thrust, Kelvin was able to make the impossibility become less and less obvious. I will take this breath. I will take this step. On and on, thinking not of certain failure or depressing consequences. Somehow on, and then on again, and again, stumbling, sweating, paining ever and ever on.

  His nephews, his niece, his sister, and her husband. They seemed scarcely to exist as his ears, his round ears, heard their calls of encouragement. His father was still with him, still panting, now wheezing a little, still nearly dying as he, like his son, plodded on and on and on.

  The bend. The wide, long, never ending curve. The bleachers ahead, far ahead. The spark dancing, urging, pleading them on.

  Now his mother with her arms raised and fiery letters embraced by them. Helbah, her familiar on her shoulder, its shiny blackness visible in a way that the greenness of the grass, the bright and dark colors of the clothing, the multicolored hairs on the heads of pointed-eared folk were not. Leg swing, foot fall, breath in, breath out. One step, one step, one.

  Cheering and gasping and trembling, and then they were stopped, amazingly stopped, light snapped off in front of them, well-filled bleachers at their right. His mother's bright sign: "YOU DID IT!" Then his mother embracing his father, his Heln embracing him, Helbah making passes with her hands, doing magic so that he and his father would not die from the effect of the punishment.

  As light faded around him he heard her aged voice. "Today was easy. You slackers can't even imagine what tomorrow will be like. Tomorrow it's going to be hard!"

  Kelvin awoke with light in his eyes. He blinked, saw that it was indeed the sun shining through his own bedroom window, assaulting him. Heln stood there holding the pull string of the shade.

  "Ohhhh," he said, feeling that he was near death, "pull it down."

  "You have to get up, Kelvin. You are going to run again."

  He stretched under the covers and every muscle and joint screamed a protest. Run! He'd be lucky if he could walk. If he could even get out of bed!

  "I'm not going to run today, Heln. I'm going to rest."

  "You are not! Helbah said—"

  "Helbah's an old woman," he argued logically. "She doesn't know more than Mother. Mother reads cards; Helbah just guesses because she can't really
see the future any more than Mother. Zady isn't going to return to life with her head cut off, and if she ever does I'll sic Horace on her. Huh, I'd like to see even a two-headed witch escape a dragon!"

  "You might do that. Get up!"

  "No, I said."

  "Your sister and brother-in-law are here."

  "They are not."

  "They are. I told them to come."

  "Let them in, then." He knew a bluff when he heard it. Wives were always doing that to their husbands.

  Heln left the bedroom. Kelvin closed his eyes with a sigh. He could sleep for a week, if not an eternity.

  "Morning, hero!"

  "Don't call me that!" He spoke before realizing that it wasn't Heln's voice. He sat up, hurting his back. There she was in the doorway, just whom he didn't want to see.

  "That's what you are, Kelvin, like it or not."

  "Sister Wart—"

  "You promised eleven million times ago not to call me that!"

  "Uh, yes, sorry, I'm reverting to childhood. Your beloved brother is an old man and about to die. Have some respect for the soon-to-be-dead. Close the door when you leave."

  "See, I told you, Heln," Jon said to his wife. "I've known him longer than you have."

  "Oh, I know him too, Jon, but I was hoping he wouldn't be quite this balky. Do you think the two of us can handle him, or will we need Lester?"

  "By the looks of him we may need Lester and the boys."

  "What are you two talking about?" Kelvin demanded, annoyed.

  "We're talking about you getting up," his wife said. "Helbah gave me an oil to rub on your muscles. After we massage you you'll feel great."

  "I will not," Kelvin predicted. "Out, you two. I want to get dressed."

  "I'll stay," Heln said. "You start the coftea, Jon, and make it strong."

  His sister disappeared from the doorway. Kelvin thought he heard Jon and Lester talking in the kitchen. He might as well give it up. He put his feet out of bed. Pain lanced from his hips all the way up to his shoulders. "Ohhhh," he said, unable even to work up a decent groan.