King Kobold revived-Warlock-2.5 (32 page)

Puck chuckled, tossed aside the stick he’d jabbed between the monk’s feet, and scurried to his side, moving his hands in arcane, symbolic gestures, and chanting under his breath,

“Chronicler, whose zeal doth blind thee To the truth’t‘which sight should bind thee, Be thou bound in falsehood’s prison! For an hour, lose thy vision!”

“What… what doth hap?” Brother Chillde cried, pushing himself up out of the sand. He glanced about him, then squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head, and opened them again. “What! Is the night become so dark? Is there no light at all?” Then his face twisted into a mask of terror as the truth hit him. “I am blinded! Heaven forgive me—my sight is lost!”

“Here, now, fellow,” Puck growled in a deep and throaty voice as he strode up to Brother Chillde,

“what ails thee? Eh, thou’rt o’ the cloth!”

“Oh, kind sir!” Brother Chillde flailed about him, caught Puck’s shoulder, and grasped it. “Have pity on me, for I’m struck blind!”

“What sins are these,” Puck rumbled, “that must needs meet such desperate punishment?”

“I cannot say.” Brother Chillde bowed his head. “Pride, mayhap—that I should dare to scribble down
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all that did hap within this war…” His head snapped up, sightless eyes staring. “The battle! Oh, stranger, take pity! I have la-bored all these months to record in writing each separate event of this war! I cannot miss the knowledge of the final battle! Pray, have mercy! Stay, and speak what thou dost see! Tell me the course of the day!”

“I should be gone,” Puck growled, “to aid in tending other wounded.”

“Hast thou hurt, then?” Brother Chillde was suddenly all solicitousness, groping about him. “Nay, let me find it! I shall bandage…”

“Spare thy trouble,” Puck said quickly, “for the flow already hath been stanched. Yet I’ll own I have no occupation now…”

“Then, stay,” Brother Chillde implored, “and speak to me of all that thou mayst see.”

“Well, I will, then,” Puck sighed. “Attend thou, then, and hear, for thus it doth occur.”

“May Heaven bless thee!” Brother Chillde cried.

Puck took a deep breath, recalling the main thrust of Rod’s prompting. “The beastmen and our brave soldiers are drawn up in lines that do oppose. They grapple, they struggle; battle axes flail; pikes hover and descend. The clank of arms doth fill the air, and soldiers’ groans and horses’ neighs—eh, but that thou canst hear of thine own.”

“Aye, but now I ken the meaning of the sounds!” Brother Chillde clutched Puck’s shoulder again. “But the High Warlock! What of the High Warlock?”

“Why, there he rides,” Puck cried, pointing at empty air. “He doth rise up on’s huge black horse, a figure strong and manly, with a face that doth shine like unto the sun!” He grinned, delighted with his own cleverness. “Nay, his arms are corded cables, his shoulders a bulwark! He fairly gleams within the starlight, and his piercing eye doth daunt all who do behold him! Now rides he against the center of the line; now doth it bend and break! Now do his soldiers rush to widen the breach that he hath made!”

In the scrub brush, Rod eyed the heaving lump of jelly apprehensively. He’d watched smaller lumps of fungus ooze over to merge with it; the whole mass had grown amazingly. Now it was bulging very strangely, stretching upward, higher and higher, coalescing into a giant double lump. It thrust out a pseudopod that began to take on the shape of a horsehead, and the top narrowed from front to back and broadened from side to side. A piece split off on each side to assume the shapes of arms; a lump on top modeled itself into a head.

“I can scarcely believe it,” Rod hissed.

“Nor I.” Fess’s voice wavered. “I know of the fungus locally termed witch moss, and its link to projective telepaths—but I never suspected anything on this scale.”

Neither had Rod—for he was staring at himself. Himself the way he’d always wanted to be, too—seven feet tall, powerful as Hercules, handsome as Apollo! It was his face; but with all the crags and roughness gone, it was a face that could have dazzled a thousand Helens.

“Terre et ciel!” the figure roared, hauling out a sword the size of a small girder, and charged off into the battle on a ten-foot war-horse.

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“Brother Chillde,” Rod sighed, “is one hell of a projective!”

“He is indeed,” Fess agreed. “Do you truly believe he does not know it?”

“Thoroughly.” Rod nodded. “Can you really see the Abbot letting him out into the world if he knew what Brother Chillde was?” He turned Fess’s head away. “Enough of the sideshow. He’ll keep the beastmen busy—and anybody who’s looking for me will see me.”

“Such as Yorick?” Fess murmured.

“Or the Eagle. Or our own soldiers, come to that—‘my’ presence there will sure lend them courage—especially when I look like that!” He sort of hoped Gwen didn’t get a close look at his doppelganger; she might never be satisfied with reality again. “Now we can get on with the real work of the night—and be completely unsuspected, too. To the cliff-face, Fess—let’s go.”

The robot-horse trotted through the starlight, probing the brush with infrared to see the path. “Is this truly necessary, Rod? Surely Yorick has an adequate force.”

“Maybe,” Rod said with a harsh smile, “but I’d like to give him a little backup, just in case.”

“You do not truly trust him, do you?”

Rod shrugged. “How can you really trust anybody who’s always so cheer-ful?”

On the beach, Brother Chillde cried, “Why dost thou pause? Tell me!”

But Puck stared, stupefied, at the giant shining Rod Gallowglass who gal-loped into the fray.

“The High Warlock!” Brother Chillde chattered, “The High Warlock! Tell me, what doth he?”

“Why… he doth well,” Puck said. “He doth very well indeed.”

“Then he doth lead the soldiers on to victory?”

“Nay… now, hold!” Puck frowned. “The soldiers do begin to slow!”

“ ‘Tis the Evil Eye!” Brother Chillde groaned, “and that fell power that doth bolster it!”

It did seem to be. The soldiers ground to a virtual halt. The beastmen stared a moment in disbelief, then shouted (more with relief than with bloodlust) and started chopping. In the witches’ cabin, the young folk grimaced in pain, shoulders hunching under the strain as a huge, black amoeba strove to fold itself over their minds.

Rod and Fess galloped up the series of rock ledges that led to the High Cave, and found Brom waiting.
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Rod reined in, frowning up at the dwarf where he stood on a projection of rock a little above Rod’s head.

“Didn’t expect to find you here, Brom. I’m glad of it, though.”

“Someone must see thou dost not play the fool in statecraft in the hot blood of this hour,” the dwarf growled. “I fail to see why thou wilt not trust these beast-men allies by themselves; but, if thou must needs fight alongside of them ‘gainst the Kobold and, mayhap, against them, when the Kobold is beaten, I will fight by thy side.”

“I’m grateful,” Rod said, frowning. “But what’s this business about beating the Kobold? It’s only a wooden idol, isn’t it?”

“So I had thought, till I came here,” Brom growled. “But great and fell magic doth lurk on this hillside, magic more than mortal. Mughorck is too slight a man for the depths of this foul power, or I mistake him quite. I feel it deep within me, and…”

There was a yell up ahead of them within the cave, then the clash of steel and a chaos of howling.

“It’s started,” Rod snapped. “Let’s go.”

Fess leaped into a gallop as Brom hurtled through the air to land on the horse’s rump. Rod whipped out his sword.

They rode into a mammoth cave more than a hundred feet deep and perhaps seventy wide, coated with glinting limestone, columned with joined stalactites and stalagmites, and filled with a dim eldritch light. Three Neanderthals lay on the floor, their throats pumping blood. All about the cave, locked pairs of Neanderthals struggled. But Rod saw none of this. His eyes, and Brom’s, went straight to the dais at the far end of the cave. There, on a sort of rock throne, sat a huge-headed, pot-bellied thing with an ape’s face, concave forehead, and bulging cranium. Its limbs were shriveled; its belly was swollen, as though with famine. It was hairless and naked except for a fringe of whiskers around its jowls. Its eyes were fevered, bright, manic; it drooled.

Two slender cables ran from its bald pate to a black box on the floor beside it. The spittle dribbled from its chinless mouth into its scanty beard. Behind it towered three metal panels, keys and switches, flashes of jeweled light, and a black gaping doorway.

At its feet, Yorick and a short skinny Neanderthal strained, locked in combat. Its eyes flicked to Rod’s.

Icicles stabbed into Rod’s brain.

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The monstrosity’s eyes flicked to Brom’s, then back to Rod’s. Brom moved slowly, like a rusted machine, and the Kobold’s eyes flicked back to him. Brom moved again, even more slowly.

The Kobold’s jaw tightened; a wrinkle appeared between its eyes. Brom froze.

In the witches’ cabin, the air seemed to thicken next to Agatha, like a heat haze. It began to glow. A young witch slumped unconscious to the ground. A fourteen-year-old war-lock followed her into a blackout, then a fifteen-year-old. A few moments later, a seventeen-year-old witch joined them, then a young warlock in his twenties.

One by one, the young psis dropped, to sprawl unconscious. Agatha and Gwen caught each other’s free hands, bowing their heads, every muscle in their bodies rigid, hands clasped so tightly that the knuckles whitened.

Then Gwen began to sway, only a centimeter or so at first, then wider and wider till suddenly her whole body went limp and she fell.

Agatha dropped Gwen’s hands, clenched her fists; her face tightened into a granite mask and a trickle of blood ran down from the corner of her mouth.

Above her, the heat haze brightened from red to yellow. Then the yellow grew brighter and brighter. A blast shook the tent, a hollow booming, and Galen knelt there before Agatha. He clutched her fists, and his shoulders heaved up, hunching under some huge, unseen weight. He bowed his head, eyes squeezing shut, his whole face screwing up in agony.

The heat haze’s yellow dimmed, became orange.

On the beach, the soldiers began to move again, slowly at first, then faster and faster, stepping aside from ax-blows, returning pike-stabs.

The beastmen howled in fear and fought in panic.

But the High Cave lay silent, like some fantastic Hall of Horrors in a wax mu-seum. An occasional whine or grunt escaped the Neanderthals frozen body-to-body in combat, straining each against the other—Kobold’s men to Eagle’s parti-sans, Mughorck locked with Yorick. Rod and Brom stood frozen, the Kobold’s glittering, malevolent eyes fixed on them, holding its frozen prey in a living death.

There was agony in Rod’s eyes. A drop of sweat ran down from his hairline.
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Silence stretched out in the glimmering, ghostly elf-light.

On the beach, the soldiers slowly ground to stasis again, their muscles locking to stone. The Neanderthals roared and swung their axes like scythes, mowing through the Gramarye ranks, their victory song soaring high.

In the cabin, Galen bent low, the black weight pressing down, squeezing, kneading at his brain. The other soul was still there with him, fighting valiantly, heaving with him against the dark cloud.

And the High Cave lay silent.

A crowing laugh split the air, and a wriggling infant appeared on Rod’s shoulders, straddling his neck, chubby hands clenched in his hair, drumming his collarbone with small heels. “Horsey! Gi’y‘up! Da’y, gi’y’up!”

The Kobold’s gaze focused on the baby boy.

Magnus looked up, startled, and stared at the creature for a moment, then darted a glance at his frozen father. Terror started to show around the edges of the boy’s expression; but hot, indignant anger darkened his face faster. He clutched his father’s temples and glared back at the monster. Rod shuddered, his neck whiplashing as the dark mantle wrenched free of his mind. He tore his eyes from the Kobold’s, saw Mughorck and Yorick locked strain-ing in the embrace of hatred.

Rod leaped forward, ducking and dodging through the paired immobile Ne-anderthals, and sprang. His stiffened hand lashed out in a chop at the back of Mughorck’s neck. The skinny tyrant stiffened, mouth gaping open, and slumped in Yorick’s arms.

Yorick dropped the contorted body and lunged at the black box, slapping a switch. Slowly, the Kobold’s eyes dulled.

Galen’s body snapped upward and back.

His hands still held Agatha’s.

For a moment, minds blended completely, point for point, id, ego, and con-science, both souls thrown wide open as the burden they had strained against disappeared—open and vulnerable to the core. For one lasting, soul-searing moment, they knelt, staring deeply into each other’s eyes. Then the moment passed. Galen scrambled to his feet, still staring at Agatha, but his eyes mirrored panic.
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She gazed up at him, lips slowly curving, gently parting, eyelids drooping. He stared, appalled. Then thunder cracked, and he was gone. She gazed at the space he’d filled with a lazy, confident smile. Then a shout of joy and triumph exploded through her mind. Her gaze darted upward to behold the heat haze one last time before it vanished.

On the beach, the Gramarye soldiers jerked convulsively and came com-pletely to life, saw the carnage around them, the mangled remains of friends, brothers, and leaders, and screamed bloody slaughter. But a howl pierced the air, freezing even the soldiers. They stared as a beast-man in the front line threw down his ax and shield and sank to his knees, wailing and gibbering to his mates. They began to moan, rocking from side to side. Then, with a crash like an armory falling, axes and shields cascaded down, piling up in waist-high windrows.