Quicksilver and Cordelia stared at her, suddenly seeing not the gentle and reticent companion of their journey, but once again the Chief Agent who had commanded a small army of spies and assassins. Then Quicksilver grinned. “I rejoice that you are on our side now, lady! Aye, let us seek the mists that hide this portal and bind it with stout bars of Cold Iron that shall never be opened again!”
They set off down the woodland path with renewed determination—but Quicksilver pulled up her horse with a look of alarm and held up a hand to halt her companions.
“What worries you?” Cordelia asked, then realized the answer. “The birds are silent!”
“Someone lies in ambush nearby,” Quicksilver hissed.
“It is there!” Allouette pointed, eyes wide. “See how that bush shakes ever so slightly?”
“Aye, and not a breath of wind stirring.” Quicksilver drew her sword. “Whoever seeks to surprise us shall have a most unpleasant shock of his own.”
But Cordelia was gazing off into space wide-eyed, with the vacant look that meant a telepathic reconnaissance. She held up a hand. “No, warrior! It is—”
But she was too late. With a banshee howl, Quicksilver charged the underbrush, slashing with her sword and crying, “Who bears arms against me shall lose them!”
CHAPTER 15
Another blade shot up from the trees to parry her blow as its owner called, “Alas, lady, for then could I not embrace you!”
Quicksilver froze, sword high against his, staring into the grinning face of her beloved. But the grin softened into a wondering smile as Geoffrey moved his horse close enough to turn the sword bind into a corps a corps, left arm encircling Quicksilver’s waist, lips claiming hers.
Cordelia stared in surprise, then looked a little miffed. “Shall she have such bounty, and I none?”
“Never!” said another voice.
Turning wide-eyed, she saw Alain riding out of the grove to catch her up in his arms.
Gregory, however, was more circumspect. He rode up to bring his horse next to the cart where Allouette reclined. He asked gravely, “Beloved, how fare you?”
“Nearly starved,” Allouette answered in a suddenly throaty voice, “starved for the feel of your arm about me!”
“And I near to die of a thirst that only your lips can assuage,” Gregory whispered, and leaned down to drink deeply.
Finally each couple broke apart and, with glances of longing, nonetheless turned to the others. “Dearly though I would love to seek a bower with my beloved,” Geoffrey said, “I fear there may not be time for us to indulge in the joy of meeting.”
“And great it is,” Quicksilver said, squeezing his hand. “I would never have thought I could be so delighted by your touch when we have only been parted three days!”
“Ah, but it was three days filled with danger,” Allouette pointed out.
“It was indeed.” Geoffrey turned to her, all concern. “But what dangers have you suffered, my flower?”
Quicksilver smiled, amused. “Nothing that the three of us together could not deal with, kind sir. Cordelia and I were somewhat affronted by your gadding off to adventure without us, so we took horse and followed your trail.”
“It gave out in the swamp, I doubt not,” Geoffrey said, already looking worried.
“It did, so we cast about for a trail of thought and read Allouette’s awakening with a splitting headache. As her memories returned, I discovered she had been kidnapped, so we rode toward her thoughts and soon found the mountaineers’ trail . . .”
“My deepest thanks, sister and warrior,” Gregory said with heartfelt emotion.
Allouette squeezed his hand and said, “They burst out of the forest like avenging Furies and freed me in minutes. We rode away, but discovered a barguest hard upon our trail . . .”
“A barguest!” Alain paled.
“It was no true predictor, but a sham that was easily chased,” Cordelia assured him, then went on to give details.
So for the next half hour, each trio told of the monsters they had encountered. The men were outraged by the ganconer’s imitation of them, and Gregory said nothing when hearing of the selkie’s advances but seemed to swell with the intensity of his anger. Allouette, fairly glowing, only touched his hand, turning the sunshine of her smile upon him, and most of the anger seemed to drain away.
The women were horrified in their turn by the men’s adventures; Quicksilver held tightly to Geoffrey’s hand, as though to remind herself that he was there, alive, and well, as he told of their encounter with the afanc. When they had each brought their account up to that current hour, they sat staring at one another—somewhere during the narration they had all dismounted and sat on the ground in a circle. Then Alain took a breath and said, “None of us thinks that such a plague of monsters can be coincidence.”
“Never, surely!” Cordelia answered. “And both parties have heard of the monsters’ masters, and of Zonploka.”
“But who—or what—is Zonploka?” Gregory asked. “A group of evil sorcerers? One evil sorcerer? A place? An army?”
“Not an army,” Quicksilver replied, “for one told you that it commanded armies.”
“A person, then, and Zonploka is a name.” Alain nodded. “But are these monsters of his making, or his minions’?”
“That matters not,” Cordelia told him, “any more than it would matter whether you could say, if you commanded a general to march against a rebel lord, that the battle that ensued would be his doing more than yours.”
Alain shuddered. “I hope I shall never have to do such a thing! But each of my ancestors has in his turn, even my mother! Thank Heaven she had my father’s support, and that of your parents!”
“As you shall have ours,” Geoffrey assured him, “beginning with this current matter.”
“I thank you, my friends.” Alain beamed around at them, then frowned. “Yet should I send for that army now?”
“What could they do?’ Allouette shrugged. “There is not even a squadron of monsters for them to fight, let alone an army.”
“But the peasants have dreamed of a foul and fell army about to march through the mists!”
“Definitely a portal to another world,” Gregory said, scowling, and turned to Allouette. “But you say they cannot come unless they are invited?”
“Aye,” she answered, “and this Zonploka, or his minions, are sending dreams and cobbling nightmares of witch-moss, to affright the peasants into rituals of just such invitation.”
“Or to turning upon one another with cruelty that is as good as an invitation.” Gregory nodded heavily. “You had the right of it in that, chieftain.”
Quicksilver nodded thanks, unsure whether her old bandit title was a compliment or not.
“Then how can we stop the plague of monsters?” Cordelia asked.
“The answer is plain, though we do not wish it,” Allouette said reluctantly. “We must stop the crafters who make them.”
“But Zonploka will only recruit more crafters,” Cordelia objected.
“Thus we come to it,” Geoffrey said grimly, “as we all really knew we must, sooner or later.”
“Aye,” Alain agreed. “The only cure is to stop Zonploka.”
Cordelia looked up at him, surprised that he had thought the matter through for himself.
“He has been a man of surprises on this quest, our prince,” Geoffrey told her with a wry smile. “He has the right of it, too. If we wait for Zonploka to bring the war to us, it will be too late—certainly too late to prevent great loss of life.”
“If his army is anything like the nightmares he sends, it will also be too late to defend ourselves,” Gregory said grimly.
“Well enough, then,” said Alain. “Where shall we find this Zonploka? And how shall we fight him?”