It was too much for Shiza. She panicked, dropping the crossbow, then turned, kicked off the ice blocks on her own boots, and began running.
The display of color under them suddenly shifted and started chasing her. Puffs of electriclike energy bolts in a variety of colors seemed to come out of the snow, and the whole mess seemed to take on a life of its own. Joe, and even Quasa, stood frozen, watching what was going to happen.
The intensity of spells under the fleeing woman and following her was now blindingly bright and throbbing with energy. Even Marge watched with growing fascination. “I was right!” she muttered. “They’re fighting themselves below to get out to that body.”
Suddenly the place where the woman was now about thirty yards back erupted in the most complex pattern of magical strings any of them had ever seen, completely enveloping the woman. There was a crackling and suddenly the full volume sounds of fierce battle cries.
Where the woman had been caught by the forces below, there was now a mass of writhing, seething flesh in rapid motion under the furs, as the desperate fairy souls beneath struggled to get some sort of container, both to live and to prevent dissipation.
She was not one thing, or two, or five, but a hundred things, all competing inside her flesh for some sort of home. First an equine head, then one of some great lizard; a face, fleshy and fattened, had broadened lips, fangs, two broad noses and three eyes as well as a curly horn in the center.
The huge mouth opened, and it sounded as if she had the voice of hundreds, all speaking at once, and all speaking something different. But as none of them would yield, the flesh split, and from it came a horde of terrible, insane apparitions, all screaming in death agonies, then… gone.
“That,” said Joe, “is why it doesn’t really pay in the end to be one of the bad guys.”
Quasa turned and faced him and put down her crossbow. She tried a nervous chuckle. “All right. You win. I won’t bother you anymore. Honest I won’t. I’ll just walk home now, very slowly…”
The wound in his chest still smarted and would for some time, but there was no more blood, and it was becoming a persistent ache, like a bruise that went right through him. He smiled back at the security officer. “I don’t think so,” he told her.
“I’ll come with you, then, as your prisoner,” she suggested.
“I’ve been to the palace. It’s a neat place but really complicated. You need somebody to show you around.”
“I’m afraid we just couldn’t trust you,” he responded. “Sorry, but our laws and procedures require that we deal rather harshly with soldiers of an enemy nation who try and turn us into slaves instead of treating us as soldiers. I’m afraid you broke the Convention with me, my dear. I truly wish I had the means of punishment—of making you like Mia, or, better, having you trade places with Mia, whose feet you aren’t fit to lick. Unfortunately, I lack my magician, who’s away doing things and won’t be back until much too late.”
The crossbow, which had been lowered to her side, had none the less remained cocked. It began to come up now.
“No, Mia!” he shouted. “Just get clear of her! This one is Irving’s.”
The crossbow stopped, not quite fully up to shoot him. “Irving?” Quasa said, disbelieving. “You named a sword like that Irving?”
The sword arm moved rapidly in a single motion, the edge of the shining blade swishing across her.
For a moment she just stood there, a stupid half-grin on her face. Then, in astonishingly slow motion, Quasa sunk to her knees, and, only at that time, did her head fall off.
Joe stepped back as quickly as he could without running or disturbing the magical elements below, many of which were now rushing up to engulf the headless body and even the head itself.
“Coffee brown strings?” Marge said in a puzzled tone. “I don’t think I ever saw any that color before.”
The head went through a terrible series of transformations and gyrations including growing tiny hooves before it exploded like the previous body, but Quasa’s body, on the other hand, remained kneeling in the snow, frozen, as that massive coffee brown surge of strings rushed into it, easily forcing away strings of complex reds and violets.
The body twitched, then moved slightly. Joe continued backing away, and saw that Mia was safely back as well. They could do nothing now but watch.
The hands flexed, then went to the head and found only a bloody, spongy mass there, already cooling.
And then, to all of their complete astonishment, the headless body stood up.
“Don’t worry! At least we can outthink it!” Macore said optimistically.
“Don’t be so sure,” Joe responded. “We don’t know what shape or form it’s taken under those clothes.”
And then, slowly, something started to rise, almost ooze, out of the severed neck.
The head was somewhat bovine in appearance, but the eyes were huge, humanlike, and blazing with energy; when it opened its wide mouth, it showed, not a cow’s flat cud-chewing teeth, but a nearly sharklike view of pointed ones.
“I’ll lay ten-to-one odds to anybody that it doesn’t say ‘Moo’,” Macore said.
“I, Saruwok, live again!” it cried in a deep, booming voice that seemed to echo from within. The words were Husaquahrian, but spoken with a thick accent and many differences in inflection.
“A minotaur!” Marge breathed. “Or whatever inspired the minotaur. A bit smaller than the legends, though. It had less to work with, I suppose.”
“Particularly with its need to get a head,” Macore added, almost inviting an unprecedented aggressive strike by a Kauri for the remark.
Joe faced the creature, sword still drawn, confident that iron would do the trick with one like this. The traditional eight foot tall minotaur might have been a challenge, but at four feet or so, it was hard to take this one quite so seriously.
The minotaur spotted Marge. “You! Nymph! How long?”
”Damn it, I’m not a nymph!” she responded, really irritated. “I’m a Kauri!”
“Who the hell cares?” it roared. “How long?”
“A few thousand years, give or take. You’ve been out a long time.”
“A few… thousand…” The news seemed to shock Saruwok. Finally he asked, “How have my people fared since they were deprived of me?”
“Not well,” Marge told him. “You’re the first I’ve ever seen.”
The minotaur gave a hollow, booming sigh. “I feared as much. But now that I have regained life, I may liberate some of my fellow zlutas. We shall rise again!”
“Uh—you can raise them?” Joe asked, not really decided upon his course of action yet.
“With three bodies like your own, I think I can.”
“Yeah, you and who else?” Macore taunted.
“I am Saruwok, greatest warrior of my time!” he intoned. “I need no aid!”
Joe decided and approached the minotaur. “That may have been true a few thousand years ago, in your old husk,” he told the creature. “Unfortunately for you, I’m afraid you came up a little short.”
Dwarf steel came down with sudden swiftness, splitting the new head almost in two.
There was that crackling, electrical sound again, and this time it engulfed the body and was soon gone. The coat, pants, and boots stood there a moment, then collapsed into a heap.
“Score one for extinction,” Joe said, sheathing the blade.
CHAPTER 12
THE MALICE FROM THE PALACE
No quest shall be fulfilled until all the logical possibilities have been exhausted.