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, 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."
"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. 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 ho
use, 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.
CHAPTER 4
Hot Water
Glint strove to reach out his thoughts to the copper-scaled dragon. So soon after the dragonberry trip it was difficult. Through Ember's dragon eyes he had watched the copper-scaled young male on his ramblings. Now the stranger was almost to his cave, and now he would keep his word to Ember and try to think to him.
Ember, I'll mind-talk to the stranger if he'll let me. Watch over me.
Brother, you know I will always watch over you. Didn't we hatch from the same egg clutch?
Yes, she did think that. It had only been that he had been a shiny object found buried in the dirt. To a dragon mother a sword was a perfect object for the newly hatched to fix their eyes upon. Mother had stuck him point down at the edge of the nest, never dreaming that the sword too would hatch. When Golden Mom looked in the nest and saw two instead of one, she did not question it, never having learned to count. Originally there had been five eggs, but as was usually the case with nests, four had been spirited away by hungry beasts. He had become a young boy-child only after the four had been taken.
Glint ached, having been uncomfortable propped against the cave wall. He blinked his eyes, rubbed his arm muscles, and walked out of the entrance. He patted his sister on the neck.
I want up on your back, Ember. There was nothing unusual about his request. Just so had he asked her many times.
Why? Her thought had a snappishness to it. Her forelegs quivered. She stretched, much as he had stretched.
To carry me to the stranger. I want him to see me before I mind-talk to him. See me on your back.
Ember made a grumbling sound, but crouched. Glint knew it was strange behavior on her part, but for all his centuries, most spent in a dream state as a sword, he hadn't learned to understand females. Golden Mom had moods that he had witnessed during the time of his growing up, so why shouldn't his sister?
He climbed up on her, held her small, otherwise unused wings in his hands, and put the seat of his inadequately padded posterior on the hard, interlaced golden scales. Kings had never had a throne to equal it.
She stood up, lifting him as easily as though he were a bird. She had a formidable strength that he knew he would never have, which was why he utilized it. There was nothing he knew of that could stand up to the strength of a dragon—except another dragon.
"GWOORTH!" Ember said. It didn't sound friendly and it didn't sound ladylike. Glint almost lost his hold and went head over her side. What was the matter?
Sister, that's no way to act! The stranger will think you unfriendly.
Beat copper! Beat copper! she thought back.
Now that didn't seem friendly and it wasn't what he'd thought she'd have in mind. Had the dragonberry caused her mood swing? Quite possibly it had. Dragons lived on the edge of emotions anyway, mostly covered by hunger. They didn't ponder and wonder and sift their thoughts.
Rage! Rage!
No mating thought this! If anything, the opposite. Yet he had been certain she wanted a mate. Before she took the berry it had seemed all that she could think about. Dragons, especially the females, were a total mystery!
The strange dragon had not seen them. Like most dragons its eyesight probably was not of the best. Glint readily reached into its mind.
Claw hurts! Rock bruise. What got into big female? She wanted to mate. Then she whacked me with her tail. Then she drove me off. Then she mated with my rival! Strange beings are females!
I'm with you, friend! Glint mind-talked before he could stop himself. That wasn't what he had planned to say.
Who that? You Charles?
Not Charles. Charles human?
Charles brother. Merlain sister. Both human.
A dragon with human siblings? Possibly no stranger than having been a sword, Glint had to think but not mind-communicate. Now he had to mind-communicate.
I am Glint. I am human. I have dragon sister.
Sister have mate?
No.
I will mate with her.
Possibly, whoever you are. Why are you copper?
Chimaera's hatching help. Three of us. Charles, Merlain, me. Should have been one body, three heads. Should have been chimaera. Mother would die: father not want. Chimaera help.
That's very interesting. And it was, though Glint didn't understand it. Dimly he knew that once he had had a sister, so possibly once he had had a dragon sibling as well.
Charles, Merlain name me Horace. Dragon Horace, as in once-upon-a-time, child-time picture book.
Glad to meet you, Horace. What could it mean by "picture book"? He had been far too young when enchanted to have learned much of what children learn. Besides, that had been long ago, probably before there were picture books.
Horace, be gentle with my sister. I named her Ember because she's warm. She's young and inexperienced with males. She knows me, her brother, better than any dragon other than our mother.
Horace began running. Wriggling from side to side in typical dragon or lizard fashion, he forgot his hurt claw and recent rejection. He wanted to meet Ember, but strangely his thoughts were of gazing on her and daintily touching his forked tongue to hers, rather than actual mating. Glint felt that this was right, but it hardly fitted what he knew about dragons.
"GRWRRRRROUTH!" Ember said, and leaped forward. She trembled for her full length on both sides. Glint almost lost his hold.
Easy, Ember! He just wants to talk. To get to know you. He's like me. He can mind-talk.
Ember halted, warily eying the approaching stranger. The male dragon really did have copper scales; it hadn't just been an illusion of light. Glint marveled—dragons with copper scales seemed an absurdity.
Ember, I am Horace. I have traveled far to mate with you and fertilize your eggs. Toss off your brother and assume the position for me.
Male chauvinist man! Ember's gratuitous insult coincided with a vicious tail slap. Glint hung to her wing stubs, more frightened than he had been at any time before riding her back. Always before he had mind-guided her, as he had when they were hatchlings. Today he had elected to let her follow her own will without imposing his; to him it seemed the decent process for mating.
"OOOOMPH!" Horace clutched his bloodied snout with his foreclaws. Big tears rolled from his eyes and splashed down on the ground. That hurt!
Of course it did, you big pile of copper! What kind of an upbringing have you had? No biting, no battle, just squat down and you'll climb aboard!
But that's what dragons do, isn't it?
Not this dragon!
Glint felt Horace's injured feelings so intensely that he wilted under them. He tried to transfer what he sensed to Ember, wanting her to know the copper-scaled dragon as a sensitive mate-seeker rather than a crude, rude aggressor.
Easy, Ember! He's a pretty nice guy and you're discouraging him.
Mind your own business, Glint!
But— He had never sensed her so insensitive. All he was trying to do was help.
Out!
She was giving him no choice. She seemed as angry as a jaybin fluffing its feathers and preparing to defend its nest. Why had he gotten into this?
With great difficulty Glint resolved to keep his mind shut. She knew what was right because he had taught her. To grab her mind like the mind of a squirbet or other prey would be ungentlemanly and inappropriate.
> Ember, my sweet little tail!
I'm not your sweet little anything! We're strangers, Horace!
But Goldie, I thought we could be friends!
We will be if I want us to be! Ember fumed. After we get to know each other.
Right! After we share some good rancid flesh, lap some blood, touch our tongues, rub our tails, then—
Only if I want to!
Of course.
Glint heaved a sigh of relief. The romance was getting off to a shaky start. He had been afraid it was finished with Ember's tail slap. Now all he wanted was to get out of their way and let them proceed or not as was their inclination. He could wish that things could go as well for him.
Ember, can you let me off at the cave?
Why, of course I can. Her manner so sweet that he knew it for unnatural.
Glint rode his sister the few steps back with Horace following. He eyed the copper dragon, decided that it wasn't going to surprise Ember and him by eating him, and slid off. He somersaulted, as he had done since childhood, came up on his feet, and without looking back entered the cave. He thought he'd call up a plump squirbet, cook it over a fire, and eat it wrapped in spintuce leaves. Then he'd drink some cool spring water, eat a few appleberries or perhaps chericotts if those luscious reddish-yellow fruits were ripe. Working at it, he could put in his day. But what, he wondered, would he do when Ember had hatchlings? Would he become just a nursemaid to the young coals, or would life offer some surprise?
Sighing, he picked up his gourd dipper from its shelf and checked the edge of his skinning knife. It was time for him to start minding his own business again: his business of survival.
Horace was not at all certain that he liked this babe. She had at least one very peculiar friend. Not a brother, he felt certain, though the mind-talk had suggested it. Most likely this was an intruder, which was what most humans were in the existence of dragons.
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