Mouvar's Magic

by Piers Anthony

  The serpent was a bird, flying from Horace. Horace's tongue shot out, lassoed the bird by the neck, and yanked it back. His throat worked; he made a sound like water flushing down a nearly clogged drain. "Gur, gur, glug."

  End of Zady. Or was it? Kelvin had always heard that a witch had to be burned. What happened if one was eaten?

  Horace settled back on his tail and burped. His stomach rumbled. He rolled his eyes wildly, then started gagging uncontrollably. His neck extended and ejected from the depths of his throat a wet and smeared bird. Horace couldn't have helped it; had he been able to stomach her, he would have. The bird flew off.

  Horace looked after her, a puzzled and annoyed dragon. He communicated his feeling to his father.

  "Never mind, Horace. Keep after her and maybe Helbah can burn her."

  Then he had a horrible thought. Could Zady have gotten the opal that was inside the dragon? Could she have allowed herself to be swallowed, for that?

  Horace spat out bird feathers and snake scales. They were now not on the flat-topped mountain with its sky-forest. They were down on a plain where a battle had been fought, amidst dead and dying men. The battered bird was flying ahead of them.

  That was a relief! Horace was still opaling, which meant he still had the opal. If the witch had tried to get it, she had failed. Maybe she had discovered that she would be digested before she found it in there.

  Wizards and witches and warlocks and magicians of the malignant kind were changing to birds, flying, flocking. All just ahead of them and the ugly bird that was Zady. They all flew ahead, and Horace opal-hopped across the battlefield, keeping Zady's wings beating.

  Now they were in farming country that had to be Rud. Ahead flopped the birds, now pursued by wild beastmen and soldiers in green uniforms, and orcs and enraged citizenry. They hopped over and through fleeing herds, pausing only long enough for Horace to slap down a few dung-clads who had not yet changed or who were in fact mercenaries. Still the birds flew on.

  They couldn't use magic in bird form, Kelvin thought, seeing a fireball. The birds scattered, but not quickly enough. Some were caught and burned; some fell smoking and squawking even as they turned black and incinerated. Pursuing soldiers and citizens screamed approval.

  Now the terrain was even more familiar. They were past Rud's present-day royal palace and rapidly approaching the ruins of the former palace. Kelvin began to feel a hope that they were actually driving the malignants home.

  They were in the ruins, broken masonry and what remained of statuary all around. Ahead of them a diminished flock flew with rapid wingbeats.

  They were at the head of the ancient stairs leading down to the underground river. Now we must stop, Kelvin thought deliberately to Horace.

  "Whoof!" Horace said, hardly sounding as if he agreed with his dad.

  They were in the water and Horace was paddling with all four feet and switching his tail. He seemed not to be thinking of his riders. The birds were flying just ahead of them, many squawking in terror, almost within reach of Horace's avenging snout.

  They rounded the bend, Horace not pausing. Here, lighted by the glowing walls, the dimple in the water marked the installation. Birds dived, their wings and webbed feet flying them underwater.

  "WOOF!" Horace said. His back muscles tautened for the long dive.

  No, Horace! No! You'll drown us! Jon is weak from all that was done to her! She'll never survive going underwater! Horace, take us back!

  They were back on the landing. Ahead of them lay the underground river with its glowing rock walls. Above the water flopped birds that were not birds, fleeing for their home.

  "Why'd we stop?" Jon asked.

  "Shut up, Sister Wart," Kelvin told her affectionately. He raised a finger to his lips and indicated Horace.

  A white dovgen lit on the newly rebuilt dock and became Helbah. The good witch raised her hands and between them materialized a ball of witch's fire. The fireball went hissing up the river and around the bend in pursuit of the last dark straggler.

  Kelvin slid down Horace's back and helped Jon down after him. Glint slid down as well and the three of them walked out on the dock to join Helbah. The water lapped almost angrily beneath the dock. The two excursion boats, left here under royal sanction for use by the Yokes Tourist Guides, rose and fell on their mooring ropes. Had this been a weekend the boats would have been on the water and filled with tourists and guides. How fortunate for the employees of that agency and the young and old people who would have been touring that Zady had warred on a weekday. Sometimes by chance alone a thing did work out right.

  Helbah shook her head. "We almost had her—almost," she sighed. Around the bend light flashed and the fireball's implosion signaled its expiration. Kelvin wondered if the fireball had caught a malignant and crisped it, or at least singed its feathers. He glanced around. There were no birds in the sky now; they were alone.

  "Jon, give me your hand," Helbah said. "I will give you strength to throw off the effects of Zady's magic."

  "There are no effects," Jon said. "What she did to me was all in my head."

  "That's real too," her witch mentor said. "Here."

  Old hands took younger hands and held. Watching Jon's face Kelvin could see her brighten. She was so brave, was his sister, that she pretended her hurt had all vanished. She had been that way as a child, refusing to cry where an ordinary girl would have been hysterical. Even when the evil dwarf and the wizard Zatanas had been draining her blood she had done little more than ask him to save her life. In all the years since, she had hardly changed.

  So intent had Kelvin become on Helbah's healing of his sister that he had all but forgotten his son. He owed Horace so much more than he had ever expected he would. He must find a way to make it up to him. Too many years he had dismissed the dragon as a beautiful, worthless novelty who was little more than a dutiful pet.

  Behind him he heard a wet smacking sound that did not sound menacing. He turned to see what it was.

  Horace had his head down. The dragon was devouring something in great haste. Considering all the energy the dragon had used today he must have been ravenous, and if dragons had nothing else they did have enormous appetites.

  As he looked back at his son Kelvin was only mildly curious. A dead animal or a slain mercenary was all the same to Horace. But as he watched the copper-sheathed snout come up stained with red, he was aware of a rumbling.

  Horace was looking back at him with eyes narrowed in a way he had seen them narrow on the battlefield. Unbelievably, the dragon gave every surface indication that he was about to charge.

  CHAPTER 21

  Friend or Foe?

  Horace saw the enemy soldiers confronting him and prepared to destroy them. Two males, two females. The females must be witches come to use destructive magic. He should bite them first, then gut the males with a couple hard kicks. As a final gesture of his contempt and anger he would turn his back and pound all of them with his tail. When he got done there would be no enemy, only a hearty lunch.

  He reached out his head to the old woman, and her eyes stared into his and reflected him.

  Where was his father? Where his aunt? Where was his new brother-in-law? Where was Helbah, the witch he knew had protected them?

  Questions, questions, questions! Dragons should never ask. He opened his mouth over the woman's head, the better to engulf her. If she was going to turn into a bird she'd better be quick!

  Horace! Don't!

  Glint's thoughts? Where was he? Here were three enemies.

  Horace, that's Helbah!

  This wasn't Helbah. Couldn't be. But there was something different about this malignant. He sniffed. This didn't smell like a malignant; it smelled like Helbah.

  Horace, you're under an enchantment! I'm standing with Kelvin—watch and I'll wave my hand. That's Helbah you're about to bite. Jon is beside Kelvin.

  Another trick! He wouldn't believe what his eyes knew were false. Yet the enemy was waving his hand.


  Think to me, Horace! Think to me! I'm Glint.

  Hard to think, Glint. Why you look like enemy soldier?

  I don't. It's magic. You see me as Zady wants.

  Magic, yes. As when he had thought the enemy to be his grandfather and Uncle Lester. He sniffed again. It still smelled like Helbah.

  The enemy soldier who claimed to be Glint turned to the witch he claimed was Helbah. The witch's eyes did not flicker, merely reflected his great teeth and the scales on his chest.

  "Tell him, Helbah. Tell Horace he's bewitched! I know that you can help him."

  The witch's mouth opened and without other movement she said, "It's an identity spell, similar to what Zady once used on Jon. She must have had an invisibility cape. She may be here now, watching, hoping you will destroy us."

  Horace remembered that he had briefly lost sight of Zady and gotten her mixed in his mind with the other flying birds. There had been too many birds, though he had tried never to take his eyes off her. But every time he opaled she had a chance to drop back or move ahead of the others. Not enough chance to do magic, but to change position slightly, and all those birds looked alike. Besides, he'd had to look to where he was opaling, or he might have killed a friend.

  Can she rid me of the spell, Glint?

  "The spell is hard to undo," the good witch or bad witch pretending to be good said. "I haven't a key ingredient. There's a certain herb, but the plant is unknown in most frames and rare in others. I may have to travel to other frames searching for a cure. Kelvin will have to care for you while I'm gone. He'll have to bring you food and you'll have to stay away from people."

  I can kill my own food, Horace thought, annoyed.

  No you can't, Horace. You listen to her! The meer you kill and eat could be me or Merlain.

  Horace thought of eating a meer that was actually his sister. Not good for either.

  Horace, remember that cave midway up Flattop Mountain? That was our first stop. Go there. It is a big cave and people won't be stopping by. Kelvin and I can bring you food, letting you know we're us. Anyone else who comes could be Zady.

  Horace knew he didn't want to go to that cave. What he wanted to do was return to Ember. Thinking of their pond, he was there.

  He splashed into the water right where he had thought, to the side of a great tree trunk. He ducked his head, sucked water up, and spewed it out through his teeth. He still had a foul taste from that bird! Now where was Ember?

  Horace, you're back!!!

  Hiding, playing their game. He searched the shore from where he floated. In a moment he'd surprise her. There—a flash of gold behind the appleberry bush!

  Horace opaled to the spot and onto a smaller dragon's back. The dragon under him turned its head and hissed loudly in his face. This wasn't Ember! This was a dragon of his own sex!

  Horace bit angrily for the intruder's throat, wanting to kill it. The sanctity of the mated state demanded extreme measures. What this intruder had been up to he didn't care to think.

  His teeth pushed hard through overlapping golden scales, searching for the softer hide and pulsing vein that held life. He could taste the gold on his forked tongue; soon he'd taste blood. He opened his jaws a little to take an even harder and renewed bite.

  HORACE! You're too rough! That hurts! Get off me, big copper lump!

  Ember! He could hardly believe it was she. He sniffed hard and detected her fragrance.

  He opaled back into the water where he had been. He had to explain to her somehow. But how could she be expected to understand? Ember was the delight of his life, but she was a dragon and a female. Dragons and females, his human brother had once explained to him, are quicker to anger than to accept excuses. Sometime maybe he would think to her and she'd understand, but for now he'd better do what a human would under similar circumstances—run.

  Unhappily he opaled to Flattop Mountain's cave.

  "Do you think he went where you told him?" Kelvin asked Glint. The dragon had disappeared so fast that there had been what Kelvin's father called a sonic boom—air rushing in to fill the space Horace had occupied. He hadn't been aware of the phenomenon while riding, but it occurred to him that both friends and enemies must have been startled by the noise of Horace's sudden exits.

  Glint shook his head. "I don't know, honestly. He was a pretty confused dragon. If I hadn't thought to him and Helbah fixed him with her stare... I hate to think."

  "Why don't you step over to the cave and find out?" Helbah demanded of him. As usual she made him feel it was obvious and he should have thought of it himself.

  "Yes," Kelvin managed to say. "I'll step back there and see. Wait."

  He stepped, concentrating as well as he could on the cave entrance where he and Horace and Glint had recently been.

  He came down on the ball of his right foot, directly in front of the cave, just as visualized. He looked up at the overhang, then inside. The dust was undisturbed except for the pad marks of a large bearver and the partially eaten carcass of a mountain goeep. He looked at the golden-colored fleece the bearver had left, thinking how its shade matched that of the typical dragon. There would be batbirds and piles of dried batbird excrement further back. In the front there was an ancient painting of sticklike hunters pointing to a flattened dish with circles around its rim. The pictured disk had flames coming from its rearmost edge, and definitely it was supposed to be above the hunters' heads in the sky.

  What an imagination those ancients had! Kelvin thought, and stepped back to the entrance.

  Almost into open jaws. The dragon breath almost knocked him off his feet, and in an instant he knew why popular superstition had dragons breathing fire.

  "Oops. Sorry, Son. Just your old man this time. It's right that you keep alert. I'll be back with food, and maybe I'll bring along Merlain."

  He wasn't certain how much Horace understood under the enchantment, but now was definitely the time to make his exit.

  He waved almost in Horace's face and stepped back to Helbah and Glint on the waiting dock.

  Lester stared. There was Jon, preternaturally beautiful. "I thought—" he said.

  "Oh, Lester, I escaped, of course," she said. "You should have known I couldn't be kept anywhere against my will."

  "But Helbah said—"

  Jon said some bad words—very bad words. Lester had heard her say some pretty rough things before, but never like this. It must have been the influence of the malignants, he thought, and resolved to make things right for her.

  He squeezed her tight against him and placed his unshaven cheek up against her hair. She was just so attractive. She had lost some weight and gained a good deal of sex appeal. Maybe that was just his fond perception; still, it was exciting.

  "Where is the old... benign?" she asked.

  Lester held his wife back at arm's length, looking her hard in the face, unable to believe the way she had asked that. Something about her just didn't seem right. But of course she had been held captive; he had to make allowances.

  "Helbah may be in another frame," he explained. "She's going to have to get a cure for Horace."

  "A scaling would cure the lizard best."

  Truly, this wasn't like Jon at all! Could there be magic at work on her yet? Hadn't Helbah or one of her helpers checked on the possibility? Or—he hated to think of this, but had to—the way Jon had so suddenly gotten free—that just might be suspicious. Kelvin had mentioned things that—no, impossible!

  Jon smiled in an unusual manner, and drew up her shirt to show an amazingly well-formed young breast. "Well, dearie, I suspect that now you want a little sex. Maybe a little more than a little, hmm?" She showed the other breast, as breathtaking as the first. "Maybe you'd like to have me tie you up and whip you a little first?"

  This wasn't Jon! There was no way that it could be, and not just because of the physical improvement—uh, correction, physical change. This was Zady or one of her minions! "You are not my wife," he said grimly.

  Lester forced his h
ands to close on her throat. Immediately he found he was holding a squirming serpent. The snake hissed in his face, spitting drops of spittle that he moved his face to avoid. In avoiding the spittle he let his grip slip on the snake.

  Wingbeats. Lester made an anguished grab.

  "I'll be back! I'll be back!" Zady called down to him. She hovered a moment, and something smelly plopped on the ground.

  Amid a flurry of faster and faster wingbeats, pursued by a fireball released by Zally, who had been guarding the Crumb farm on Helbah's orders, the nasty witch flew on her evil way.

  But Lester remained chagrined. How could he have been fooled by that creature, even for a moment? Not only fooled, but tempted. He felt unclean.

  A carriage pulled up and Jon stepped out. She was covered with blood spatters and dust, and had large purplish bruises on her wrists and arms. Lester thought that she had never looked more lovely.

  But was it really Jon, this time? It was supposed to be, but after the witch's ruse, he had a nagging doubt. Suppose...?

  But Lester couldn't contain himself. He ran to his wife and threw his arms around her. "Oh Jon, Jon! I thought we had lost you for sure!"

  "Kelvin broke me out as quick as he was able." She hugged him as she hadn't hugged for years. "Where are the children?"

  "At the twin palaces where they're supposed to be."

  "Let's go get them right away! I don't know why Kelvin dropped me here since he knew they are there."

  The first thing she was concerned about was the children. That was Jon, all right! Lester's doubt faded. "I do," he said, sniffing her hair. "It's what I'd have done for him and Heln given reversed circumstances."

  "Oh, Lester!" But she wasn't displeased, only concerned as a mother. "I'm certain they're safe, but I want so badly to hold them."

  "Me, too, I hope. We can start for the palaces, but I know that soon they'll be here. Now that the war's over, Helbah will want our children to be home."

  "Lester, is the war really over?"

  "I hope. Only there is what happened to Horace."