When his vision finally returned, all that could be seen where the imp-monster had once stood was a ten-foot-high nonradiant mushroom cloud. It dissipated rapidly. The rocks and pathway were covered with bits of thin red flesh, as though a giant balloon had blown up in front of him.
“Cute.” Dormas was eyeing the remnants of the cloud. “What do you call it?”
“Pure nastiness.” He led them around the site of the explosion, giving the cloud a wide berth. It was impossible. There was no such thing as a thermonuclear explosion scaled down to midget size. Or was there such a thing as “no such thing” in this crazy world?
“There’s the entrance!” Mudge pointed upward with his sword. “Nothin* to stop us now, mate.”
Jon-Tom tried to keep up with the otter by lengthening his stride. “Don’t be too sure, Mudge. Remember the rest of Colin’s prophecy.”
The otter forced himself to slow down so that the others could catch up. “Cor, I ain’t worried no more, mate. Wotever ‘tis, you can ‘andle it. You just proved that, you did.”
“Do not let confidence give way to cockiness, water rat.” Clothahump was panting hard as he struggled up the steep path. “Though clumsy and not particularly skilled, there is much raw power at work here. I should not care to face it if its manipulator was better disciplined. I cannot believe we have penetrated his defenses so easily here, any more than I believed how quickly we made it through the pass.” He cast an appraising eye at Jon-Tom. “Our spellsinger has yet to confront and deal with his heart’s desire.”
“I think I may already have done that, sir, but I’m ready in any case.”
“Good,” said Dormas sharply, “because here they come.”
Pouring from the fortress gate was a ragtag army of heavily armed soldiers. Well, perhaps not an army, Jon-Tom told himself. Twenty to thirty troops, none of them demonic in shape or appearance. They were waving swords over their heads and screaming like banshees.
Colin steeled himself. “They think they’ve got us out-numbered, but I’ve handled nearly that many by myself. And we have the magic of both wizard and spellsinger to protect us. They haven’t got a chance.” He sounded more curious than uncertain. “One thing I don’t understand, though. Why would an evil sorcerer send only females against us, and only human ones at that?”
Jon-Tom might have ventured a guess, but he couldn’t speak. He could only cling limply to the duar and stare up the slope as the thirty redheads came charging toward him. They had blood in their eyes and murder on their minds.
Mudge and Clothahump were also paralyzed by the sight, but only momentarily. They were not as intimately affected by the manifestation as the man in their midst, though they had been afflicted with the same shock of recognition. Meanwhile Jon-Tom made no move to defend himself from the onrushing attack, not with his duar or with his ramwood staff. He just stood and stared, a man struck dumb by the sudden realization of what it meant to confront his heart’s desire.
An arrow whizzed past his head. He blinked but could not bring himself to move, to dodge. He couldn’t do anything because each of the onrushing Valkyries looked exactly like its sister, and that meant all of them looked like his beloved Talea.
Talea of the bright spirit and long red hair. Talea of the questionable occupation and brave heart. The same Talea he’d proposed to and who had spumed him because she wasn’t ready to be tied to one man or one place but whom he’d never ceased to love. A score and more of his heart’s desire running, racing toward him with something other than love in their hearts. He hadn’t seen her in over a year. He was totally unprepared to see her now, here, in this place, far less in multiple guises.
“What’s wrong with the spellsinger?” Colin wanted to know. He held his saber ready to greet the first of the new arrivals.
“I’ll tell you wot’s wrong, fuzzball,” said Mudge. “This whoever ‘e is don’t fight fair. Every one o’ them long-legged beauties is the splittin’ image o’ our friend’s lady-luv.”
Colin absorbed this revelation, nodded tersely. “We’re dealing with a vile bastard for sure. What do you recommend?”
The mob of maddened Taleas solved the problem for them. All feelings of empathy aside, there are few options available when someone tries to split your skull with a battle-ax. Colin parried neatly and stepped aside as the first woman’s rush carried her past him.
Mudge defended himself against a sword stroke, skittering backward and drawing his longbow. A spear splintered stone at his feet, and one fragment cut through his fur, almost reaching the skin. He looked toward Jon-Tom, and something in his voice made the tall man turn to face him. Something Jon-Tom had never heard there before.
Anguish.
“I ‘ave to, mate,” the otter wailed helplessly, “I ‘ave to! We all ‘ave to.”
The otter’s words and actions combined to make Jon-Tom move. He lurched toward his furry friend. “Mudge—no!” His feet didn’t seem to be working. He felt as if he were trying to sprint through freshly laid asphalt. “Don’t!”
But the otter let the arrow fly as the woman in front of him raised her sword for a killing blow. It struck her square in the left breast, directly over the heart.
Mortally wounded, the figure did not react as it should have. There was no gasp of pain, no collapsing body. Instead the female form began to writhe and contort. A whistling sound came from it as it shrank in upon itself, compacting and shrinking down into the shape of a fist-sized red-orange mass floating in the air before them. Then it exploded, sending tiny orange-and-red bits flying in all directions. There was a sweet, cloying, and yet somehow nauseating smell in the air. It was as though someone had just blown up a watermelon stuffed with freckles.
“Bugger me for a tart’s tailor,” Mudge muttered aloud, “the bloomin’ broads ain’t real.” He glanced excitedly at his companion. “You see that, Jonny-Tom? They ain’t real!” He notched a second arrow into his bow and fired. Another Talea metamorphosed into an exploding puffball.
Colin parried another ax swing and cut sideways. His blade passed completely through the body of his attacker, which promptly went the decorporalizing route of Mudge’s two assailants. Displaying an agility that belied her age, Dormas pivoted and struck out with both powerful hind legs. Their supplies went flying. So did the Talea whose neck she’d broken. Change, compaction, poof—out of existence. The pattern repeated itself again and again.
And still Jon-Tom was unable to bring himself to raise his staff and fight.
Though the cluster of Taleas was fashioned of something other than flesh, there was nothing ephemeral about their weapons. One ax cut deeply into the flank of Clothahump’s shell.
“C’mon, mate,” Mudge urged him, even as he was defending himself against an assault by three redheads, “fight back. You ‘ave to, and it ain’t the loverly Talea you’ll be fighting with.” He struck with his sword. Shrink, whistle, pah-boom. He worked his way back to his friend, yelling at Colin as he did so. “Over this way, fuzzball! We ‘ave to defend this twit. He ain’t ready to defend ‘imself.”
The koala nodded, dispatched another opponent as he retreated to help protect the useless Jon-Tom. He was enjoying himself. For the first time since he’d begun his long journey, he had a chance to fight back against their unseen nemesis. It was a pleasure to be able to resort to good, solid swordplay for a change. He’d about had his fill of magic and mysticism.
Together he and Mudge, and to a lesser extent Dormas, greatly reduced the-number of Talea-doppelgangers.
Sorbl was busy as well, swooping and diving while clutching a honeycomb dagger in each foot, the red hair making individual targets easy to hit. Mudge and Colin kept reminding the dazed Jon-Tom that their opponents were no more human man they were Talea and for him to fight back.