Serpent's Silver (11 page)

“His Majesty is not prejudiced,” Ashcroft said. “Though perhaps those ears would tend to disqualify you for queenly status.”

Heln shut her mouth, as it was just getting her into deeper trouble. A potential queen would be treated better than a potential plaything, and perhaps spared the enchanted drink if she seemed to cooperate. It gagged her to think of it, but she might do best to play up to the stripling king.

“This way, please.” The general indicated the hall beyond the king’s chamber. The king did not protest, though his eyes were doing their best to strip away her tattered clothing. All too soon his boyish reticence would become fumbling boyish eagerness, and she wanted to postpone that as long as possible.

She found her feet moving, though she hardly knew how. Silently she went down the hall and up some stairs with a long polished banister on either side. Then another landing and some more stairs. A third set of stairs, and then a wearying fourth. Finally, near the roof, General Ashcroft opened an isolated door.

She went in. It was a beautiful room with a window giving a view of the grounds. The window was not barred, but the drop to the cobblestones below would surely kill her. Best she think about that.

The general faced her, blocking the exit. “I must ensure that you do nothing foolish.”

She glanced out the window again, and shuddered. “Have no concern, General. I won’t jump.” Because that would certainly end her chance to escape. She had endured rape before, and tried to kill herself. Having survived both, she concluded that another rape would not be as bad as successful suicide. Then she had had no one else; now she had Kelvin. She had to live, whatever the cost.

“Strip,” Ashcroft said.

“Oh, not you, too!” she exclaimed, almost beyond outrage. She had been bracing herself for the king’s gropings; this was too much!

“It is necessary that I verify that you carry no weapons, before I leave you alone with King Blastmore. You will strip, and I will take your clothes; then you may clean yourself and don new clothing.”

Oh. He had a point. It would surely have occurred to her soon enough to try to kill the king and get away while others assumed he was indulging himself romantically. She knew that if she did not cooperate now, the general would force the search.

She gritted her teeth and stripped. Ashcroft watched impassively. When she stood naked before him, the knife she wore strapped to her thigh was revealed. She removed it and its holster and dropped them on her pile of sodden clothing.

Ashcroft gathered up the bundle and walked toward the door. “You will find appropriate clothing in the closet,” he said, nodding toward it. “I will lock you in, but if you ring the bell, a servant will come.” He indicated a pull-cord that evidently operated the bell. “I repeat, it is best if you do not do anything foolish.”

Dully, she nodded. He had more than made his point.

The general stepped back and started to close the door. He moved so silently, even burdened by her clothing, so almost floatingly, that it was eerie.

“Wait! Wait!” she cried. “What about my husband? What about Kelvin, the prophesied hero of Rud?”

Ashcroft’s eyebrows drew down. “He will be remembered there. You may be remembered also. Only you yourself will not remember.”

Because they intended to dose her with a potion to make her forget. How was she to avoid that? “You mean he will be—” She swallowed. “Killed?” She hoped that threat had been empty, or only to force her cooperation.

“Of course. The sooner the better. Unfortunately, His Majesty needs a bit of prodding.”

Sudden realization washed over her. The general’s odd ways, his evident disinterest in her naked body. “You’re not—you’re not—”

“Yes, my pretty?”

“You’re not a man.”

“I’m not? Then what am I?”

“A witch. The witch Melbah.”

“Very astute of you, my dear.” With that the tall figure vanished, and with him his uniform. In his place was a squat, ugly old crone, still with the armful of clothing.

Heln shivered. “You control him. You run the boy king!”

“Obviously, my dear. But I do try to provide him with suitable entertainments.”

Heln refused to be distracted by that implication. “And you want Kelvin destroyed so that he can’t destroy
you.
And you want my father—”

“The king will decide about your father, once he is in chains as he commanded.”

“That’s why I was brought here, so that my father and my husband will come to rescue me.”

“Why, of course. That’s very, very good reasoning. You just may live to make a shrewd queen of Aratex.”

“But you don’t want me as queen. You only want me as a distraction for the king!”

“Perhaps I have changed my mind. You just might become both. Suitably prepared, you could become a genuine asset to our cause.”

“
Your
cause! If the king should—should fall in love with me, you would have an even better lever to control him.”

The witch nodded. “Yes, I believe you will serve very well, my dear. Those round ears will prevent the populace from ever supporting you, so you will have no base for power in your own right. Only I will be able to make the people accept you—so long as the king wishes.”

With that the large door swung shut without being touched by the witch. There was a loud click from a lock, and the sound of a heavy bar falling in place across the door.

She had known she was in trouble. Now she realized how much worse that trouble was than she had imagined.

Heln looked at the bed and the dresser and then back at the window. If only she had some dragonberries. How she would like to fly home and see what the others were doing. Then maybe, just maybe, on into that other frame world to Kelvin and St. Helens. And if she could somehow find a way to communicate with her husband, to warn him—

But then reality returned. She had no chance to do any of that. She flung herself on the bed and sobbed.

Chapter 11

Resolute

THE LASER AND THE levitation belt were concealed beneath his brownberry shirt and the gauntlets hidden in a deep pocket of his greenbriar pantaloons when St. Helens reached the top of the flight of steps. It wouldn’t do to let them see too soon. Time enough when his plans were made.

They were still camped near the ruins of the old palace. Jon and Lester and Mor, all with worried expressions. St. Helens studied their unsmiling faces in the early morning light. Something was definitely wrong. Where was Heln?

“Where’s Kelvin?” Jon asked.

“Why, he, ah, went on alone. We decided it would be best.”

“He went and you stayed?”

Was this sharp-eared girl accusing him of something? St. Helens felt an uncomfortable squirming sensation, though it was not fear. They couldn’t know what had happened.

“Never mind,” Mor said. “The fact is it’s morning and your daughter hasn’t come in yet. She’s been missing all night. We were just about to go in search.”

“Missing?” St. Helens chewed on the thought. “You think she wandered off, got lost?”

“No. More likely kidnapped. And by somebody you may know, St. Helens.”

“I assure you, if Heln is missing, I don’t know what could have happened.” An agent from Aratex, trailing him, not finding him, finding instead his daughter? The thought chilled him. St. Helens did not care a lot about these people personally, but his daughter was something else. He had always known that eventually he would be reunited with his baby girl. Her name derived from his, from the time when she had first tried to say his name and garbled it into a single syllable: Hel’n. It had been so cute they had kept it. She was a big girl now, but still his to protect. For sure, he wouldn’t let the minions of Aratex get her. If that boy king ever laid eyes on her—

“Well, let’s not waste time!” Lester said. “We knew she went along the river. We could see her footprints even in the dark. Kelvin said she liked to wander off by herself sometimes—almost the same as he does. Just to look at the stars, listen to the birds, breathe the clean river air, and think.”

“That would be my daughter,” St. Helens said. He had done that himself when she was a little girl. Her mother hadn’t always been too pleased, either, thinking he would run into one of the queen’s agents. Now, over a dozen years later, Heln was following the practice she had learned from him, just as Kelvin must have learned it from John. To be restless seemed to be a roundear’s nature. No television or radio or bars here, so what else should be done when the night was around and the need was for solitude?

“St. Helens, come!” Mor ordered, and started with the others in the direction of the river.

They weren’t even giving him time to catch his breath. He was resentful of anyone who commanded him, even a man who reminded him of a top sergeant. But he stifled that, and followed; he could not afford to arouse any suspicion.

There was a burned-out fire with bones of a fowl around it, the bones now being chewed by chipoffers and gomunks. The furry little rascals always seemed to be there when food was dropped. He wished he had some of that fowl; it appeared to have been a goouck or an incredibly large ducoose. Good eating birds in this existence, even though he sometimes remembered stuffed turkey and fried chicken. You can take the roundear away from Earth but you can’t take Earth away from the roundear, he thought. John Knight had said that to the men he commanded one stormy night when there had been much grousing about unfamiliar foods and unfamiliar ways. He had been right, the commander had, about that and a lot more. Too bad he hadn’t thought of those words when the bitch-queen had worked her wiles.

“Here’s her footprints,” Jon said. She was pointing at the very clear prints in the mud at the river’s edge. Heln had been barefoot again. She liked taking off the heavy leather boots they all wore and walking in the mud. But that could be dangerous. She could cut her toe, or get stung by something.

St. Helens shook his head. He was starting, he realized with a shock, to feel like a father. Of course he had always been a father, but it had been mostly memory and dream, something removed in either the past or the future. He had told himself how great it had been or would be. Now it was the present, and it wasn’t great, it was nervous. He was really worried about her! If she really had been kidnapped—

“She stubbed her toe on this rock,” Lester commented. “See how the ball of her foot came down here and then here, and then she caught her balance and went on walking.”

“Good tracking eye,” St. Helens observed. That was another thing about the pointed-ear folks—many of them had the sharpshooter’s eye and the tracking ability of legendary frontiersmen. He wished he had thought more about that before returning to Rud.

Lester was wasting no time. Like a hound St. Helens had known in the American South, he was dashing along the bank checking for indents in the mud and signs that were far less obvious. Here she had stopped, half turned, obviously listening to something. Here—oh-oh, here were other signs. Boot signs, and not quite the heel marks of the boots made in Rud. They had come from the woods in the dark, stealthily: two men. They had come up behind, and here they had grabbed her, she had struggled, and they had dragged her into the woods. There the two men had been joined by a third.

Now, frantically as the light got better, Lester moved on ahead, checking the grasses and the bushes for signs of passage. His darting eyes found indications aplenty, and he did not pause to explain—if it was possible to explain—what to his eye was as clear as a map.

Over here, over here, and now over here. One of the men had stopped to relieve himself. Heln had stepped on a thorn with her bare foot, leaving a tiny speck of dried blood. They had gone straight through a thicket, thorns pulling threads from their clothes. A candle-lantern had been set on a bare spot of ground, drops of wax spattering on a rock as the candle had been extinguished. A meer trail had intervened and they had followed it, their own feet beating away more of the soil and crossing the hoofprints of the trailmakers. The trail led to a river and a fording spot, and beyond it, a marker on the other side proclaiming the kingdom of Aratex.

There was no doubt now. Agents of King Blastmore had indeed kidnapped St. Helens’ daughter and spirited her into the adjoining land.

“Whoa, we can’t go crossing borders. This border especially,” Mor said.

“They did! And so can we!” Mor’s son replied.

To that there could be no argument; they could not rescue Heln if they did not follow her trail. But somewhere ahead, St. Helens knew, there would be an ambush. They wanted him, after all, not his daughter. They wanted him to follow—which was why they had not bothered to obliterate her trail.

But what the agents did not know, what Mor and Les and Jon could not realize, was that St. Helens was prepared. The agents were unwittingly playing right into his hands. With the laser and the gauntlets, he could defeat three or a dozen agents and rescue his daughter. Then he’d be the hero he needed to be, to enlist the aid of the Rudians in the battle for Aratex.

Yes, indeed, the campaign ahead would be triumphant. The very first skirmish, the histories would proclaim, in St. Helens’ war of liberation.

Mor rode ahead with Lester at his side and Jon following. St. Helens was bringing up the rear. That was not the place he should occupy, he thought. As the horses splashed across the river, their feet sucking at a mud bottom, he thought hard on how best to deal with the ambush he knew would be ahead. The first thing would be to get the Crumbs out of danger, once that was accomplished, he could deal on his own.

Mor brought his horse to a stop on the opposite bank. “Here’s her knee and palm prints,” he said. “She must have stumbled, probably deliberately.”

“Nice going, Heln!” Jon said.

Lester looked along the shore and the edge of the Aratex forest. “They may have an ambush.”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” St. Helens said. Now was the time for him to move, if ever. “I think it best if the three of you wait back in Rud, and I’ll go on alone. I know this country, and I don’t think the rest of you do. If I’m not back with her in a reasonable length of time, say by nightfall, bring help.”

“You think you can rescue her all by yourself?” Mor asked.

“I think I should try. If I can’t, then I’ll call on the rest of you.”

“You think you can just sneak in and fetch her out?” The man’s incredulity was evident.

“I know people who can help. I know ways to avoid detection and get to the palace. But I’ll need to leave the horses and go it on foot.”

Lester jockeyed closer. “St. Helens, you really think you can avoid an army patrol?”

“I was a good soldier,” St. Helens said.

Jon hefted her sling. “St. Helens, maybe—”

“No! Trust me, all of you. I think I can get Heln back. She’s my daughter, I’m the one who should try first. If I can’t do it, then I may need you to act.”

The Crumbs looked at each other. St. Helens dismounted and handed his reins to Lester. “I’ll be back,” he promised. Then, before anyone could say another word, he turned his back and walked up the old horse path into a clearing where horses and Heln’s captors had recently been. He avoided looking back, and started down a meer path that should take him out of the forest and away from the road. A few steps in, and he left the path for the thicket and let the thorns tear at his clothing until he had gone some way. He paused, looked back, and saw nothing but solid green. Time to prepare for action.

Removing the gauntlets from his pantaloons pockets, he drew them on. Now let a soldier attack him! Let three or a dozen try! He knew a trick or two with the sword, but mainly, he knew the laser. He drew it out and checked its setting. Better set it on wide sweep, just in case he did find an ambush. He set the laser, and aimed it, making a quick test. The beam touched nearby foliage, slicing it away as if by an invisible sword. Yes, it worked.

Next he drew out the levitation belt. Now this might be more difficult, but it was certain to enhance his power enormously. He carefully fastened it around his waist and looked at the controls. They seemed simple enough: a vertical and a horizontal motion lever that should control his flight, and a button that should activate the lift. He moved to a place where there were no tree limbs overhead. Really slow, now, so as not to get out of control and injure himself; unfamiliar equipment was dangerous. This was not only unfamiliar, it was alien. But time was passing, and he needed to test it.

Carefully he placed his thumbs on the large red button in the center of the buckle. He pressed. There was no hum, no flashing light, but he believed it had worked. All right, now slowly vertical up and then horizontal a few yards, and then vertical down on the ground. If it worked as it should, he would consider it to have been an adequate test. He didn’t want to waste its power, because he didn’t know how much remained.

He placed a forefinger on the lever that had to be for vertical and nudged it in the direction he judged would take him up. Immediately he found himself pulled down by the belt so hard that his pantaloons slipped, baring part of his rear. Oops! Evidently the up position of the lever did not mean that he went up, but that the ground went up relative to him. Alien logic, surely. He made a hasty grab at the control and nudged it in the other direction—too hard. He shot up above the treetops, his pantaloons raised back not only to their proper position but beyond it; he was hanging painfully on the crotch of them.

He nudged the lever to the neutral place. He now hovered above the forest. He worked his body around so that his crotch was more comfortable and looked around. He could see the Crumbs behind, moving across the river with their horses.

If they looked this way they would see him. That was no good. He lowered himself with an exceedingly careful nudge to the lever. He started down slow, then edged the lever back into neutral. He hovered near treetop level, out of sight of the party on the ground.

Now horizontal: another exceedingly delicate testing. Forward, and he moved smoothly forward; at least the alien logic had not reversed this. Backward, and he moved back, not liking the height or the sensation, but loving the feeling of power.

The lever would also move to the sides. He tried that, too, and it worked properly. Left, right, forward, back, up, down. He had it. He was master of the device.

He lowered himself to the ground, landing with barely a bump. He had completed his test, and the power was so sure and strong that there had to be plenty of reserve. Whoever had made this device was some craftsman. After decades or maybe even centuries, it still worked flawlessly. He could use this thing right now, and strike much faster than the enemy would believe possible.

He prepared to travel to his destination as rapidly and effortlessly as possible. He tightened the belt so that it would act on him rather than on his pantaloons—after all, he hoped to have some wenching yet to do in his life.—and turned it on again. Moving the controls with a featherlight touch, he rose to a comfortable height above the ground and maneuvered himself back to just above the meer path, staying clear of the thorns. Then he decided to take a chance and rise up so that he could get better visibility.

He floated just above the forest. Deadman’s Pass was back that way, and over there was Conjurer’s Rock. He knew his way around. If he could bring himself around to the west side of the palace and escape discovery, his old guest room would be right above him. Heln, he felt reasonably certain, would be there. He should be able to rescue her without great difficulty, providing he went undetected. Travel was so swift and easy with this belt that he could cover in minutes what would have required hours on foot.

He did the necessary maneuvering and was soon concealed in the woods, looking up at the west tower. He waited for someone to show, but no one did. Until, just about the time he was ready to give up hope, Heln’s face appeared at the window. Confirmation!

Now was the time to act. But an instinct that had served him well in the past made him wait. The cunning witch Melbah could have set her trap right here.