“We came to the river and saw nothing,” Gregory said slowly, “but we did not wait for evening.”
“Or morning!” Allouette cried. “Of course! It is not that the mist hides the portal—it is the portal!”
“Then let us go back to the river, camp there, and wait for dawn,” Alain proposed. “How, though, shall we fight so powerful a sorcerer, aye, and one with lesser magicians at his command?”
“By magic.” Gregory tuned to Allouette. “We must ponder long and hard, my love, to discover some spells that may counteract the worst Zonploka may throw at us.”
“First we should ponder what magics he may work against us,” Allouette said.
“Aye, and what manner of soldiers we shall confront,” Alain said to Geoffrey, “for surely he shall be well guarded.”
“We faced a giant cat that was well nigh a demon,” Cordelia said with a shudder, “and you faced a giant and bloodthirsty beaver.”
“I should not wish to confront a barguest if it sought to wreak death, not merely foretell it,” Quicksilver said with a frown, “and there may be worse there.” She turned to Geoffrey. “How shall we meet them?”
“Back to back,” he answered, grinning, “serving as one another’s shields, as we have done before.”
She gazed into his eyes a minute before she smiled.
“If we need to fight, that is surely the way,” Alain agreed. “Still, it would do no harm to discuss the issue with the sorcerer first.”
“Oh, aye,” Geoffrey scoffed, “give him time to call up a small army to bait us.”
“Yet we might find other places better suited to his interest, and save fighting for all of us,” Alain pointed out, and grinned as Geoffrey subsided muttering. “I know, my friend, that you do not desire to avoid a fight—but I must ask myself how many people would die in it.”
“Surely you do not think Zonploka can be talked into abandoning this conquest,” Geoffrey objected.
“Why not, if we can show him it will cost him gravely in soldiers and gear, and can find him another place that will cost nothing?”
“Would you send him to murder some other folk, then sir?” Cordelia cried. “Fie, fie!”
“Exactly, my lady.” Alain inclined his head toward her. “His monsters would be a plague in any land—but on this world of Gramarye, only this great island has been made fit for human folk to live on.”
The other three stared at him, beginning to understand. “The rest of the planet is desert and swamp,” said Gregory. “Who shall you send his monsters to raven—the dinosaurs, or the giant insects?”
“Are the deserts truly filled with giant insects?” Alain asked, interested.
“Giant insects, small reptiles, and many varieties of snakes,” Gregory answered.
“Not large enough to satisfy his monsters, I would guess,” Alain said regretfully. “No, I suspect he would rather have the swamps, that his bloodthirsty minions may feast upon dinosaurs.”
“He would rather have Gramarye,” Quicksilver pointed out, “for our folk are more likely to be easy meat than a tyrannosaurus.”
“Not for creatures that fear Cold Iron,” Alain reminded her. “Indeed, even if they do not, a score of giant cats such as this Big Ears you speak of will find even a tyrannosaurus less dangerous than fifty determined yeomen with bows and pikes.”
“I am not sure our people would be the tougher meal,” Geoffrey said judiciously, “but they would cost the monsters many lives, I agree.”
“Many lives!” Quicksilver protested. “They will run in panic at first sight of the creatures!”
“Only the first time they see them,” Geoffrey reminded her, “and perhaps not even then, if we warn them well enough ahead of time.”
“And of course,” Allouette said, “any who are made of witch-moss shall melt even as they advance.” She caught Gregory’s hand again. “There are some among us who can see to that.”
“What of those who are flesh and blood?” Cordelia asked. “Shall we run in fright when we see them?”
“There is not a one of us is not well braced for horrors now,” Quicksilver opined. “Terrified we may be, but we shall attack all the harder for that.”
“Are we agreed, then?” Alain looked around at the little group.
They all nodded their heads, saying, “Aye.”
“Take the fight to the enemy.” Quicksilver said.
“Enough, then.” Geoffrey stood up. “We ride!”
They had to camp for the night—in separate tents, and what each of the three couples did or did not do was nobody else’s business, especially if, as Alain had so far insisted, he and Cordelia had agreed to wait for the more intense delights until they were properly wedded—and royal weddings take a long time to plan and execute. But they were up before the first gray light began to filter into the darkness and reached the riverbank when the sky was bright and the sun still only a rosy forethought in the east. Sure enough, mist hovered above the water, filling the banks of the river and spilling over.
“I had not thought there would be so much!” Cordelia looked to left and to right, seeing the fog stretch out to the limit of sight on either hand. “Where within this nebulous kingdom is their portal?”
“Yonder.” Allouette pointed, though her eyes had the faraway look of one who listened more with her mind than with her ears. They had left the cart behind, and she was riding the little mare.
“Yonder it is,” said Alain, and turned his horse upstream. Cordelia hurried to catch up with him and the others fell in behind. She, too, began to look abstracted, as did her brothers, concentrating on the thoughts that seemed to stem from someplace upstream. Quicksilver glanced at them, nettled, for her own telepathy had not yet developed to be able to detect what they did.
Then their faces began to twist with disgust and horror, and she no longer envied them.
Soon after, the thoughts hit her with an impact that made her shudder; she recoiled from the intensity of the malevolence. She tried to assure herself that the bloodlust and longing to drink emotions of fear and agony were only her interpretation of alien concepts, but she didn’t believe it for a minute.
“Yonder.” Allouette halted the mare in the midst of a river meadow and pointed toward a knot of mist that was floating closer and closer to shore.
Geoffrey’s lips stretched back from his teeth in a wolfish grin as he drew his sword and said, “Set on, and let them drink no emotions of ours but anger and ferocity!”
“Not even that!” Gregory cried, alarmed. “Give them any emotion, brother, and they have a hold on you already!”
Geoffrey turned, frowning. “Why, how is that?”
“Fear begets anger,” Gregory counseled. “So does hurt—and ferocity is first cousin to bloodlust. Nay, brother, if we would defeat this crew, we must march against them with tranquil minds and hearts.”
Geoffrey glowered at him, unable to refute the idea.
“There is truth in what he says,” Alain said quietly. “Our master of arms taught us that anger slows the arm of a swordsman.” He looked around at his companions. “Take a few minutes, friends, to let your emotions ebb and peace of heart and calmness of soul replace them.”
With varying degrees of unwillingness, they complied; they all knew the basic techniques of meditation. Slowly, though, even Geoffrey and Quicksilver felt their excitement fade into calm self-assurance, and something more—all six began to be aware of a bond between them, a tie of kinship, for Cordelia, Geoffrey, and Gregory were siblings, and through them Allouette and Quicksilver were quickly becoming sisters, more thoroughly than the mere title of in-law which they would soon gain, and Alain, too, was becoming their brother-in-law in more than name.