"Thou must not be so nasty!"
Chapter 12
They came out of the hut to find rain still falling lightly about them.
"I will gladly choose a wetting, over housen with that monster!" Geoffrey declared.
Cordelia shivered and hugged herself, but said bravely, "I, too."
"Kelly knew it from the first." Magnus looked glum. "We should have hearkened to him; he would not come near."
"Nor would my unicorn," Cordelia said softly. "Alas, poor beauty! Doth she suffer from this wetting?"
"She doth know the ways of the wood." Magnus looked about him, frowning. "Kelly! Wherefore art thou? Hast thou abandoned us quite?"
"Nay, he hath not," said a deep voice by his knee, "nor have I."
"Robin!" Cordelia exclaimed, overjoyed, and Geoffrey said, "I thought thou hadst gone to spy out dangers ahead of us."
"Aye, but I did not know thou wouldst turn from the home-ward path. Yet thou hadst need to; I will own, thou hast done well."
"Well! We were near to being slain in agony!" Cordelia cried.
"Thou wouldst not have been," Puck said, with full certainty, and Kelly stepped up beside him, nodding. "If there had been any true danger, children, yer great black horse would have stove in that sorcerer's door, and elf-shot would have struck him senseless."
"I think he was so already," Geoffrey growled.
"Mayhap," Puck agreed, "yet he did not have so much power as the four of thee."
But Magnus was frowning at Kelly. "How didst thou know what did hap within?"
"Through a brownie, who hid by the hearth. Long have the Wee Folk forsaken that place; yet when they saw thee go in, one crept through a mousehole to watch."
"Fie upon it!" Geoffrey plopped down cross-legged, arms folded tight, head hunkered down. "Will we never truly win a fight by ourselves?"
"Why, so thou didst," Puck answered. "'Twas thou four who didst best that sorcerer, children."
"As thou didst know we would," Magnus accused.
Puck shook his head. "If thou hadst not been able to join all thy four powers together, then might he have hurted thee."
"Then," Geoffrey retorted, "elves would have saved us."
"That they would have," Puck agreed. "I have sworn to thy parents that I would protect thee. Never wilt thou lack for elfin guards. Yet they did naught, in this instance—the victory was thine, and thine alone."
"The day shall come," Geoffrey vowed, "when I shall win broils without even thy warding, Puck."
"So it shall, when thou art grown," the elf allowed. "Yet for now…" He looked from one little face to another. "We must join forces. What thou didst, thou didst well. Now let us return to thy chosen goal."
Geoffrey looked up, frowning. "To free the count?"
Puck nodded. "Yet I bethink me, we must have greater force than a band of elves and four small children, even ones so powerful as thyselves. Kelly!"
"What would ye?" the elf muttered.
"Hie thee to King Tuan, and ask of him some few knights and a hundred foot. 'Tis a castle we must breach, not some mere peasant's hut."
Kelly nodded. "A catapult with it?"
"Aye! See to it thou art there and back within the half of an hour!"
"Were the cause not so vital," the leprecohen growled, "I would never heed so much as one of yer commands!"
"Thou wouldst, or thou wouldst truly hop to it!"
"Yet the cause is vital," Kelly said hastily, "and I am gone." And he was, with the sound of arrow feathers whipping past an archer's ear.
"Come, children!" Puck turned away toward the roadway. 'To Castle Glynn!"
"The half-hour is up," Gregory reported.
Puck spared him a glance of annoyance. "Must all thy folk carry clocks in their heads?"
"Only Gregory." Magnus gave his little brother's shoulder an affectionate squeeze. "Yet where is Kelly, Puck?"
"Here."
The unicorn and robot-horse stopped; Magnus and Gregory dropped down to the road. The leprecohen stepped out of the brush, slapping dust out of his breeches. "Sure and it's a hornet's nest ye did send me into!"
"Nest of hornets?" Puck frowned, arms akimbo. "Explain thyself, elf!"
"There's little enough to explain. The king can spare us no knights, nor no footmen neither."
"What!"
"Surely he would not deny us!"
"How could the King forget his High Warlock's children?"
Kelly shrugged. "What grown folk will credit the words of children, when great affairs of state do loom?"
"Yet how Is't this king would not hearken to the Puck?" the bigger elf demanded. "Say, Kelly!"
"Oh, he's hearkening to ye, well enough—or to Brom O'Berin, his Privy Councillor, which comes to the same thing, when Brom's doin' yer askin' for ye. But he's facing the same task a hundredfold, in the South—and the East and the West too, for that matter. And the North, now that I mention it."
Puck scowled. "Thou dost speak in riddles. Explain."
"Why, 'tis no more nor less than this—that every petty lord has of a sudden risen 'gainst his neighbor. Their dukes do naught to prevent them, for they're far too occupied with fighting one another, themselves."
, The children stared, horrified. "And the King must beat them back into their castles, one by one?" Geoffrey whis-pered.
Kelly nodded. "Do ye wonder he can spare ye no horse nor foot?"
"Nay, not a bit."
"But how comes this?" Magnus asked. "I can comprehend how any one count might rise in war 'gainst his neighbor— but that all might do so, together…!"
" 'Tis conspiracy," Geoffrey stated.
They were all quiet, turning to him. Then Magnus nodded.
"Aye. 'Twas planned, was it not?" He turned back to Puck. "Where did Mama and Papa go?"
"Thou must needs now know," the elf said sheepishly. "We did follow their tracks to a pretty pond in the woodland. There we found marks of a scuffle, and their tracks did cease."
"Even as they did when we were stolen away to Tir Chlis," Magnus whispered.
Gregory looked up, interested.
"Even so," Puck agreed.
" 'Twas no mere mishap, nor the work of a moment's passion." Geoffrey spoke angrily, to hide the creeping fear in his belly.
"Nay." Cordelia shivered, and the fear was plainly written on her face. "It must have been well plotted. Yet how could they know where Mama and Papa would go?"
"They must needs have lured them in some fashion," Geoffrey returned, "and set up their engines of enchantment along the path to that pond."
"Set them up days in advance, and waited and waited," Gregory agreed. "Such weighty spells do require much apparatus that I wot not of."
The children were quiet. It wasn't all that rarely that Gregory admitted that he didn't know how something worked— but it was unusual for him not to know.
"And," Geoffrey summarized, "whosoe'er did plot to kidnap Mama and Papa, did plot also to have all the barons rise up at one time."
"Yet how could they do so?" Cordelia asked, puzzled.
Geoffrey shrugged impatiently. "There are a hundred ways, some of which I know."
"This set of events falls into a pattern characteristic of SPITE, your father's anarchistic enemies," Fess interjected.
"Groghat must be hand in glove with them," Geoffrey cried. Then, suddenly, he looked thoughtful. "Aye, there is truth in that, is there not?"
"Sure and there is," Kelly agreed. "From what we saw of him, I'd be well surprised, if he had wit enough to plan such as this."
"More a dupe than a partner." Puck nodded.
"Yet what of their enemies?" Magnus asked, frowning. "Papa hath said SPITE is opposed by VETO, which is composed of those who seek to rule all, with an iron fist."
"Yes—the totalitarians," Fess agreed.
They were all quiet, thinking. Then Gregory said, "Mayhap the Shire-Reeve?"