Kickaha said, "I don't know what you're getting at, Orc, but Anana could not possibly be my mother. Anyway, I know who my parents are. They were Indiana farmers who come from old American stock, including the oldest, and also from Scotch, Norwegian, German, and Irish immigrants. I was born in the very small rural village of North Terre Haute, and there is no mystery... ."
He stopped, because there had been a mystery. His parents had moved from Kentucky to Indiana before he was born, and, suddenly, he remembered the mysterious Uncle Robert who had visited their farm from time to time when he was very young. And then there was the trouble with his birth certificate when he had volunteered for the Army cavalry. And when he had returned to Indiana after the war, he had been left ten thousand dollars from an unknown benefactor. It was to put him through college and there had been a vague promise of more to come.
"There is no mystery?" Red Orc said. "I know far more about you than you would dream possible. When I found out that your natal name was Paul Janus Finnegan, I remembered something, and I checked it out. And so..."
Kickaha began coughing again. Orc quit talking. A second later, a shape appeared through the smoke above him, coming from the other side of the tree where he had thought nothing could be living. It dived through the cloud and sprawled on top of Red Orc, knocking him on his back and tearing the beamer from his hands.
Orc yelled with the surprise and shock and tried to roll after the beamer, but the attacker, in a muffled voice, said, "Hold it! Or I cut you in half!"
Kickaha bent his head as far to one side and as far back as he could. The voice he knew, of course, but he still could not believe it. Then he realized that Anana had piled dirt on his legs or covered them up with something.
But what had kept her from coughing and giving herself away?
She turned toward him then, though still keeping the beamer turned on Red Orc. A cloth was tied around her nose and mouth. It was wet with some liquid which he suspected was urine. Anana had always been adaptable, making do with whatever was handy.
She gestured at Orc to move away from his beamer. He scooted away backward on his hands and buttocks, eyeing her malevolently.
Anana stepped forward, tossed her beamer away with one hand as she picked up Orc's with the other. Then, aiming the weapon at him with one hand, she slipped the cloth from her face to around her neck. She smiled slightly and said, "Thanks for your beamer, Uncle. Mine was discharged." Orc looked shocked. Anana crouched down and said, "All right, Uncle. Get that tree off him. And quick!"
Orc said, "I can't lift that! Even if I broke my back doing it, I couldn't lift it!"
"Try," she said.
His face set stubbornly. "Why should I bother? You'll kill me, anyway. Do it now."
"I'll burn your legs and scorch your eyes out," she said, "and leave you here legless and blind if you don't get him from under that tree."
"Come on, Anana," Kickaha said. "I know you want to make him suffer, but not at my expense. Cut the branches off me with the beamer so he won't have so much weight to lift. Don't play around! There are two others out there, you know."
Anana moved away from the smoke and said, "Stand to one side, Uncle!" She made three passes with the ray from the beamer. The huge branch on his chest was cut in two places; he could not see what she had done to the branch on his legs. Orc had no difficulty removing the trunk and dragging him out of the smoke. He lifted him in his arms and carried him into the woods, where the grass was sparser and shorter.
He let Kickaha down very gently and then put his hands behind his neck at her orders.
"The stranger is out on the boulder," she said. "He got up and staggered away just after I got his beamer. He ran there to get away from me and the fire. I didn't kill him; maybe I should have. But I was curious about him and thought I could question him later."
That curiosity had made more than one Lord lose the upper hand, Kickaha thought. But he did not comment, since the deed was done and, besides, he understood the curiosity. He had enough of it to sympathize.
"Do you know where Urthona is?" he said, wheezing and feeling a pain in his chest as if a cancer had grown there within the last few seconds. His legs were numb but life was returning in them. And with the life, pain.
"I'm not going to be much good, Anana," he said. "I'm hurting pretty badly inside. I'll do what I can to help, but the rest is up to you."
Anana said, "I don't know where Urthona is. Except he's out there.
I'm sure he was the one who set the wolf on fire. And set this up for us. Even the great Red Orc, Lord of the Two Earths, was lured into this."
"I knew it was a trap," Orc said. "I came into it, anyway. I thought that surely I... I..."
"Yes, Uncle, if I were you I wouldn't brag," she said. "The only question, the big question, anyway, is how we get away from him."
"The Horn," Kickaha said. He sat up with great effort, despite the clenching of a dragon's claw inside his chest. Smoke drifted under the trees and made him cough again. The pain intensified.
Anana said, "Oh!" She looked distressed. "I forgot about it."
"We'll have to get it. It must be under the tree back there," he said. "And we'll open the gate in the boulder. If worse comes to worse, we'll go through it."
"But the second room past it is trapped!" she said. "I told you I'll need a deactivator to get through it."
"We can come out later," he said. "Urthona can't follow us, and he won't hang around, because he'll think we definitely escaped into another universe."
He stopped talking because the effort pained him so much.
Red Orc, at Anana's orders, helped him up. He did it so roughly that a low cry was forced from Kickaha. Anana, glaring, said, "Uncle, you be gentle, or I'll kill you right now!"
"If you do," Orc said, "you'll have to carry him yourself. And what kind of position will that put you into?"
Anana looked as if she were going to shoot him anyway. Before Kickaha could say anything, he saw the muzzle end of the beamer fall onto the ground. Anana was left with half a weapon in her hand.
A voice called out from the trees behind them. "You will do as I tell you now! Walk to that boulder and wait there for further orders!"
Why should he want us to do that? Kickaha thought. Does he know about the trap inside the gate, know that we'll be stuck there if he doesn't go away as I'd planned? Is he hoping we'll decide to run the trap and so get ourselves killed? He will wait outside the boulder while we agonize inside, and he'll get his sadistic amusement thinking about our dilemma.
Clearly, Urthona thought he had them in his power, and clearly he did. But he was not going to expose himself or get closer.
That's the way to manage it, Kickaha thought. Be cagy, be foxy, never take anything for granted. That was how he had survived through so much. Survive? It looked as if his days were about ended.
"Walk to the boulder!" Urthona shouted. "At once! Or I burn you a little!"
Anana went to Kickaha's other side and helped Orc move him. Every step flicked pain through Kickaha, but he shut his mouth and turned his groans into silence. The smoke still spread over the air and made him cough again and caused even deeper pain.