“Jump straight ahead and fly to the ground,” he told her. “You know the distance.”
She could have done so before, of course, but the heat and fire always induced panic in these creatures.
She landed shakily and sat, trembling, for several minutes. Finally she regained her composure and peered up at him with those old and evil semihuman eyes, squinting. She was not totally blind in the light, but her vision was quite poor.
“You’re the deer!” she gasped in amazement. “How did you break the spell? How do you talk at all?”
“Your spells cannot hold me for long,” he told her. “That which inhabits this simple vessel is your superior. But it does bind my companions, and it is for their sake that I charge you.”
“You have three charges only!” she spat, looking at the still smoking, blackened tree. “Consider them carefully, lest I kill you for what you have done to my home and my honor!”
“Honor be damned,” Brazil replied disgustedly. “If you had any, there would have been no need to invoke a reversal. Remember that well. Should you default on the charges, it is I who will be Swarm Queen and you who will be a deer!”
“State the charges, alien,” she responded in a bitter tone. “They will be honored.”
Brazil thought carefully.
“One,” he said. “My three companions and I shall cross the border into Ghlmon, traversing the distance from here to there without spell or any form of interference that would cause danger or delay.”
The Swarm Queen’s eyebrows rose, and she said, “Done.”
“Two: the spells shall be removed from my three companions, and they shall regain all mental faculties, all memory, and shall be restored to their original forms.”
“Done,” the Swarm Queen agreed. “And the third?”
“You shall cast a spell to be effective when we cross the Ghlmon border that will erase all memories, effects, and signs of us four having been here, including those from your own mind.”
“A pleasure,” she said. “So shall it be when darkness falls.”
“Until midnight at the Well of Souls,” he responded.
And she was stuck. Should any of the conditions cease to function or be unfulfilled, the original spell would bounce back at her.
Nightfall came in about two hours. There were still some wisps of smoke from the tree, but little else to show the struggle. When the swarm emerged from its thousands of holes in the surrounding trees, it found the queen disturbed, but they sensed that a battle had been fought and that she had lost. Since their power could only be focused through her, they had to go along.
The three does had scattered during the fire, but all had timidly returned by dusk and were herded into the toadstool circle without much difficulty.
The Swarm Queen’s eyes burned with hatred, but she followed orders. As the swarm gathered in the circle and hummed its strange music, she pronounced the first charge, for their safe conduct, then turned to the second.
“The three within the circle shall be restored in mind and body to their original selves!” she pronounced, and as she said it, it was so.
Brazil gasped, cursing himself for a fool in remembering the literalness of charges.
In the circle stood Vardia, not as a Czillian, but as she had looked those first days on his ship—human, about twelve years old, thirty or so kilos, with shaven head.
Next to her, looking even more confused, was not the Dillian Wuju but Wu Julee, obviously a healthy and unaddicted one, but about forty-five kilos, long black hair, and decent-sized but saggy breasts.
And there was a stranger there. He was a boy, about Vardia’s apparent physical age, with short hair and prepubescent genitals, about 150 centimeters tall, muscled, and fairly well proportioned.
“Well, Master Varnett,” Brazil said, bemused. “Out of the woodwork early, I guess.”
EKH’L
The Diviner and The Rel and the Slelcronian in Vardia’s body surveyed the towering, snow-capped mountains ahead of them.
The mountains, majestic and all-encompassing, ran right to the sea. A small beach was visible, composed of blackish sand. Out into the water they could see sea stacks, the remnants of long-extinct volcanic activity. The sky was a leaden gray, and the air was terribly cold off the ocean.
“Clouds will be moving in soon,” Hain remarked behind them. “Rain or snow likely all along the beach. We’d better get started.”
“Can we make it without going into the mountains?” the Slelcronian asked apprehensively. “What if we run out of beach?”
“Friend Hain, here, can cling to the sheer walls if necessary,” The Rel replied confidently, “and she can ferry us around that way. No, this looks like rough, slow going but it’s one of the easiest steps. The border with Yrankhs is just a few meters beyond the waterline, so we’re not likely to meet the denizens of Ekh’l—a kind of flying ape, I believe. The Yrankhs are not ones we’d like to meet—flesh-eaters all—but they are water-breathers and not likely to bother us unless we decide to swim.”
“The fog’s coming in,” Skander noted. “We’d better get going.”
“Agreed,” responded The Rel, and they started down to the beach.
It was easy going, relatively speaking. The beach did disappear for several miles at one point or another, but although it ate up a lot of time, there was no problem in Hain ferrying them across one by one.
After almost three days, including delays from both terrain and a cold, bitter rain that stopped them for several hours, they were about three-quarters of the way to the Ghlmon border. The only living things they had encountered were seabirds in the millions, crying out in rage at the intruders. Once or twice they thought they caught sight of something huge flying about the mountaintops on great white wings, but the creatures never came close and no one was sure.
At a particularly long break in the beach, which took Hain over an hour to negotiate each way, the only incident of the slow passage occurred.
Hain set off first with the Slelcronian and the supplies, leaving The Diviner and The Rel alone with Skander on the beach.
Skander sat munching some dried fish, apparently unconcerned about the pace or the rough portage ahead. Then, satisfied that Hain was out of sight and hearing along the rocky cliff, the Umiau looked up at The Rel. It was hard to tell the front from the back of the creature even if she knew the Northerner had a front or back.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, she started edging down toward the nearby ocean breakers.
Less than five meters from the water, The Rel noticed, and started coming toward Skander at a surprisingly fast speed. “Stop!” the creature called. “Or we shall stop you!”
Skander hesitated a fateful moment, then made a break for the beckoning waves.
The Diviner’s glowing, winking lights became extremely intense, and something shot out from the globe, striking with a loud crash just in front of the mermaid. Skander rolled but did not stop.
Another bolt shot out, striking Skander in the back, and she gave a cry then went limp, the water actually touching her outstretched arm. The body was motionless, eyes staring, but the sharp rise and fall of the chest showed that she lived.
The Rel glided up to the creature and halted next to the body.
“I wondered just how long that mind of yours would be controlled by that silly hypnotism,” it said in its even, toneless voice. “But you forgot the Slelcronian lesson. Don’t worry—you will be able to move soon. A fraction more voltage and your heart would have stopped, though. The only reason that you live is that we need you. The same for the others—Hain for transportation, the Slelcronian because its powers might be useful in a pinch. Now, you’ll be coming around shortly. But remember this! If you escape you are of no use to me. If we must choose between losing you and killing you, you are most surely dead. Now, you may move—the correct way. And shall we say nothing of this to our companions, eh?”