“You shall most surely have it,” Geoffrey avowed, “for I begin to see that you shall become a most excellent monarch!”
“Aye, and one worthy of our loyalty,” Gregory said. “It was fortunate these hobyahs had no great brains among them, though.”
“Nor any one true leader,” Geoffrey seconded.
But Alain turned to Gregory, wide-eyed. “You mean saying their magic word backwards really had no effect?”
“Not of itself,” Gregory told him, “no more than did theirs—for both gained their strength from the hobyahs’ belief in them, nothing more.”
“So you saw that you could counter their nonsense word with one of your own, and shake their belief in its power.” Alain nodded slowly. “Most ingenious, Gregory.”
“Most desperate,” Gregory corrected, his voice shaking at last. “It was a ploy of desperation, a wild guess, nothing more.”
“Sheer bluff,” Geoffrey interpreted, “but Alain and I did not know that.”
“Aye, so we carried it through with the authority that made it work!” The prince grinned. “Well done, O Brain!”
“Good luck only,” Gregory said darkly, “and I mistrust luck deeply.”
“As I mistrust these little monsters.” Alain turned to scowl at the houses around them. “They are fled, but how shall we make sure they stay gone—and ensure they harm no other folk?”
“The answer lies in this ‘zonploka’ they chanted,” Gregory told him, “but for the nonce, I shall craft a countermonster from witch-moss, a ravening creature who has appetite only for hobyahs.”
“Well and good,” Geoffrey said slowly, “but what will it do when it has eaten every one of them?”
Gregory frowned in thought, but Alain said, “You shall make it hibernate until more hobyahs come, of course.”
“A good thought.” Gregory’s tone was that of surprise; he wasn’t used to Alain having ideas. “How if none ever come again, though?”
“Well, if it sleeps, you should have no trouble making it melt back into its original substance,” Alain said, very practically. “Craft their Nemesis, Gregory. Then let us seek and be sure they spoke truly when they said they had eaten all the villagers.”
Gregory looked up, astounded. “You mean they might have lied?”
“Why not?” Alain shrugged. “If we bluffed, might they not have too?”
Geoffrey gazed at the lip of the ravine in which the village sat. “All the more reason to be vigilant. Craft your hobyaheater, brother.” Then he stiffened. “Who comes?”
Alain and Gregory looked up in alarm, then relaxed as they saw that the silhouettes against the sky were quite human and dressed in peasant kirtles and dresses or tunics and hose. “ ’Tis the villagers coming to see if their houses are safe,” Alain said.
Gregory smiled. “It would seem you were right, Alain—the little monsters did lie, praise Heaven!”
“The hobyahs must have fled far and fast, for the villagers to be so bold as to even think of returning.” Geoffrey’s gaze lost focus for a minute; then he nodded. “The creatures are still running, still in a panic.”
“How did they come to be, do you think?” Geoffrey asked.
Gregory shrugged. “I see no reason to think it is anything but the usual, brother.”
“The usual” meant that someone in the village was a projective telepath but did not know it. He had imagined the little monsters, probably in the course of telling children a story, or dreamed of them. If he had told his fellows about the dream, other unwitting projectives might have reinforced his images—but the dream itself could have been enough. If, in the country nearby, there were any substantial amount of witch-moss, it would have shaped itself to those images and taken on as much life as the dream-images would have had. In the case of the hobyahs, that was entirely too much.
The villagers came down the slope and in among the houses slowly, warily, ready to run at the slightest sign of danger. One older woman came a little faster than the others, but with frequent glances back to make sure she wasn’t too far ahead. She came up to the companions, or at least ten feet away, and asked in a hesitant voice, “If it please you, sirs, can you tell us—have the hobyahs gone away?”
“They have, good woman—gone far and fast,” Alain assured her.
“How . . . how far?” asked one of the men.
Alain turned to Geoffrey. “How far would you say, Sir Geoffrey?”
The villagers’ eyes widened at the “sir.”
“Into the next county, at least,” Geoffrey answered, “perhaps even the next duchy.” He turned to the villagers. “Have they given you cause to fear them?”
“Great cause, Sir Knight!” the woman exclaimed.
One of the men added. “They ate Albin Plowman!”
“We must find his bones, that we may bury them.” The woman’s eyes filled with tears.
Alain’s voice dropped to a gentle tone. “Did you know him well?”
“We all did,” she sighed. “He was a good neighbor. Alas for his babes, for his wife and mother!”
“Alas indeed,” Alain commiserated. “Who else did they harm?”
“None, for they crowded around his body and fought over it,” another man said, hard-faced. “We fled while they quarreled.”
“Wisely done,” Alain said. “So he gave his life for you all, then.”
“Well, not quite,” the woman admitted. “ ‘We must make friends with them,’ quoth he, ‘so that they will be loath to hurt us.’ ”
“We called to him to come back to the safety of the house,” a third man said miserably, “but he went on forward, calling to them that we were their friends and would aid them in gaining whatever they wished.”
“ ‘We want meat,’ they cried, ‘red meat!’” said the old woman, voice thick with tears. “Then they all leaped upon him. One scream did he make, then was silent, and all we saw was the churning, thrashing heap of monsters, screaming and clawing at one another for pride of place at their grisly feast.”
“Then we fled.” The first man looked surly. “Could any blame us?”
“Not I,” Alain assured them.
“Nor I.” Geoffrey’s face was grim. “I could blame them, though, and wish them just as vile an end as they gave your friend Albin.”
“Alas! What could give them that?” the woman lamented.
“Will—will the hobyahs come back, think you?” a second woman asked.
“We cannot be sure,” Alain told her, “but our wizard here. . .” He glanced at Gregory and found him gone. “Where is Gregory?”
“Yon.” Geoffrey jerked his head toward a nearby woodlot.
Alain turned and saw the blue-robed young man standing with his hands lifted high, outspread toward the trees. The prince couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw several small gray mounds slithering out between the trunks and moving toward one another as they came.
Alain turned back to the villagers. “Our wizard has already set about making a guardian for you, a fierce-looking creature with a huge appetite for hobyahs.”
“A wizard!” The woman shied away, stepping backward toward her friends—who looked ready to turn and run themselves. “A wizard making a monster?”
“He is a witch-moss crafter,” Alain explained, “and will make sure the creature is quite gentle to people, but will turn into a ravening appetite on legs when it sees a hobyah.”
“I . . . I can only thank you, gentlemen and knights,” the woman said hesitantly, “but we dare not come back to our homes with such a thing prowling the parish.”
“The guardian will not hurt you.” Alain glanced over his shoulder and saw that the mound of witch-moss had grown larger than Gregory, and was beginning to take on the form of something with at least four legs and a head—a very wide head. “Mind you, it will look like a thing out of nightmare, but to you and your children it will be mild as a lamb.”
“But . . . but what will it do when it can find no hobyahs to eat?” the woman as
ked, staring at Gregory and the living sculpture whose shape was rapidly becoming more and more definite, and more and more horrible.
“It will fall asleep,” Alain answered, “like a squirrel in winter.”
“What . . . what will wake it?” asked one of the men, staring fearfully as the creature began to make a grating noise that gradually turned into a basso purring.
“Only the scent of more hobyahs,” Alain assured it. He turned to look himself, and smiled. “See! Yonder it comes, and its crafter with it.”
The tailor-made monster had the body of a giant leopard, but its head was twice as wide as its shoulders, shaped like two soup bowls set rim to rim—and where the rims met was a mouth that stretched all the way across. Its ears were each half the size of its head, round and cupped—but if they were the cups, its eyes were the saucers, with vertical pupils that could probably see very clearly by nothing more than starlight. Its nose was an egg half as wide as its mouth with huge nostrils.
The creature grinned, displaying a mouthful of sawteeth.
The villagers huddled away from it in terror—until Gregory reached up to scratch. The creature tilted its head upward so that his fingers could rub under its chin, and the purring became as loud as a cement mixer in love.
The people froze, staring in surprise.
Then the creature lay down and laid its chin on its paws, so that Gregory could scratch behind its ears. It closed its eyes in sheer pleasure.
“Perhaps it is nothing to fear after all,” said the woman.
“Kitty!” cried three treble voices, and small feet pounded past the villagers in a tattoo as rapid as a drumroll. The villagers cried out in alarm and made a frantic dive for the children, but they reached Gregory and his creature first, where one proceeded to clamber up astride its back, another began to stroke its furry sides, and the third began to scratch at the corner of its jaw.
“Behind its ears,” Gregory told the boy on its back. “It likes that almost as much as beneath its jaw.”
The creature tilted its head up so that the child on the ground could rub its chin, or what passed for one. The boy on its back began to rub behind its ears as though it were a washboard, and he doing the laundry.
Gregory stepped away, smiling at his handiwork, then turned to the villagers. “Here is your guardian—your very own hobyah-hunter.”
The adults stared, then crept forward step by step and, hesitantly, began to join the children in stroking their new pet.
“Are you sure it is safe for them?” Alain asked, frowning.
“Safer than a wall and a moat,” Gregory assured him, “but it will take them a while to believe that.”
They went on their way, the brothers eyeing the prince warily. Gregory’s thought sounded in Geoffrey’s mind: When did Alain become intelligent?
It must have been in him all along, Geoffrey answered,but never had occasion to show itself until now.
He has ever been a modest man—for a prince, Gregory admitted.
Self-effacing, almost, Geoffrey agreed. Now, though, when circumstances are desperate, he does not hesitate to offer his ideas.
Perhaps it is only that—knowing that his notions cannot make things worse, and may save us all. Gregory didn’t seem convinced, though.
Kill or cure, Geoffrey agreed, save or die—and he has always been a man of good judgment.
Now, it seems, judging when to speak and when to be silent. Gregory’s eyes widened in surprise. Why, it must have always been so! And the wisest course before, has been silence.
His judgment only errs in his opinion of himself. Geoffrey sighed. How shall we mend that, brother?
That, Gregory thought judiciously, I think we may leave to our sister.
Let us hope he does not surprise her as he does us. Geoffrey’s thought had a sardonic tinge. Then his eyes widened.You do not suppose she already knows, do you?
“What in good candor is that obscene thing?” Quicksilver stared at the roadblock ahead of them.
The women drew up their horses side by side, staring at a vast pulsating white mound that filled the whole lane.
“It would seem to be a mass of witch-moss,” Cordelia said, “but what immense creature was it?”
“And who made it disintegrate into a mound of jelly?” Allouette asked.
There was no answer to either question, of course. The three women fought to hold their horses still—all three mounts were trying to shy away from the pulsating thing—and stared at the obstruction while they tried to work out what could have happened there.
“Dare we go closer?” Cordelia wondered.
“I fail to see any reason why we should not,” Quicksilver returned. “If it is unformed, after all, it has no claws or teeth with which to do us harm.” She touched her horse’s flanks with her heels—but the mare dug in her hooves obstinately. Quicksilver frowned at her. “Nay, sweet horse! Go ahead!”
“Wait.” Allouette raised a hand to touch her elbow.
Quicksilver whirled, a hot denunciation on her tongue, but Allouette was pointing ahead. “Another will test it for us.”
Quicksilver turned back in time to see a squirrel dash across the road two feet in front of the mound.
CHAPTER
9
Quicker than the eye could see, a pseudopod shot out of the great jelly to swat the squirrel. There was one shocked squeal; then the little creature was completely enveloped in white protoplasm. The pseudopod drew back into the mound with a horrid sucking smack.
Allouette shuddered. “It is a Boneless!”
“It is quite clearly boneless.” Quicksilver frowned. “What of it?”
“Nay, a Boneless!” Cordelia repeated. “ ’Tis the name of the creature, not merely its state.”
Quicksilver gazed at the mound through slitted eyes. “What is its nature?”
“Ravenous,” Cordelia told her. “It will absorb anything living that comes near it, plant, animal, or human!”
“Then let us give it a wide berth.” Quicksilver turned her horse, then hesitated. “But it will not stay where it is, will it?”
“Nay,” Allouette confirmed. “We, at least, know what it is—but what will happen if a child comes upon it?”
Cordelia thought of the squirrel and shivered. “Dare we even let it stay upon this road?”
Allouette’s eyes widened. “Look behind it!”
Looking, Cordelia and Quicksilver saw a trail shining for ten feet before it began to grow patchy with evaporation, then gradually ceased.
“It comes toward us,” Quicksilver said with disgust.
“Slowly,” Allouette qualified. “Nonetheless, it moves.”
“We cannot have such a thing skating about the countryside,” Cordelia said with decision, then glared at the Boneless. It began to quiver, then spread out at the bottom, wider and wider as it sank into a puddle that spilled over the sides of the road into the grass.
“Well done,” Quicksilver said.
“But not enough,” Allouette amended. “Might it not pull itself back together?”
“Not if we divide it and give it other forms,” Cordelia answered. “Will you join in the game?”
Allouette smiled. “Gladly.”
Pieces began to break off the grayish-white puddle, pull themselves into balls, and go rolling off toward the roots of the roadside trees. There they stretched out thin, widened here and there, took on colors—and violets peeped over barky ridges, daffodils nodded in the shade, tulips opened their cups, roses bloomed, and more exotic flowers than had any business growing among oak and ash trees splashed garish color through the wood.
Quicksilver forced herself to nonchalance while she watched, though the prickling of dread spread up her backbone and across her neck and shoulders. She was a country girl who had been raised with the superstitions of her time and people, and living in constant contact with espers hadn’t really changed that. Her mind knew that there was really nothing supernatural here, that these were only the tric
ks people with strong and rare talents could play—but her stomach knew nothing of the sort, and was trying to climb up into her gorge. She tried to shake off the feeling, telling herself that these “witches” were only young women like herself—very much indeed, if Geoffrey was right about her having a touch of the gift of mind-reading herself—but her apprehensions refused to be banished. Soon the huge pancake had completely disappeared, the woodlot was ablaze with color and fragrant with perfume, and Cordelia nodded with satisfaction. “Well done.”
“But too easily.” Allouette frowned. “Why did not the fellow who crafted this Boneless resist our fragmenting of it?”
“Most likely he fled in fear of it,” Quicksilver said. “After all, he did not know he had made it.”
“There is truth in that,” Cordelia told Allouette, “and it was very crudely fashioned, after all.”
“Perhaps.” Allouette scowled at the place the monstrosity had been, then gave herself a shake. “No, I am seeing enemies where there are none! Most likely I shall soon see specters in the shadows at noontime!”
Cordelia and Quicksilver exchanged a doubt-filled glance. Then the warrior turned back to the former assassin. “What do you suspect?”
“It is a foolish notion, I am sure,” Allouette protested, “only an old habit of seeing enemies behind every bush, so that I should not be surprised if one of them were real.”
“That can spoil your day, when there really are no enemies near,” Cordelia admitted.
“But foes who really are there can spoil your day far worse!” Quicksilver said. “Indulge us, lady—share your fantasies. What manner of antagonist do you suspect?”
Allouette shrugged. “It only seems remarkable that we should come upon one after another of otherworldly creatures who are rare indeed, by all accounts.”
“There is truth in that,” Cordelia admitted.
“It may still be an accident,” Quicksilver said, “but it would behoove us to assume it is not. How do you think these monsters came to be, damsel?”
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