Monsters and Magicians (17 page)

Obligingly, she half-turned in her chair to watch, wide-eyed, as the brass key turned in the brass-framed keyhole, and the two doors swung widely open. A brief glance back at the man behind the desk showed both of his hands resting on the desktop in clear view and unmoving. Back at the cabinet, the decanter of amontillado sherry rose smoothly, lightly from its place, moved from out the cabinet and, accompanied by one of the small, trumpet-shaped

sherry glasses, glided through the empty air of the distance separating desk and cabinet to come to rest without a sound beside her coffee cup.

Unable to speak, to even move, she watched, open-mouthed in shock, while the level of the wine in the still-unstoppered crystal decanter sank, even as the glass was filled.

Staring wildly at the man seated across the desk from her, she saw him smile and, although his mouth did not otherwise move and he uttered no audible sound, he said, "Now, Danna, can you put the decanter back into its place without arising or physically touching it? I think that you can."

and most loving daughter—and that she must have intended it as a gift for him. It was, he had then thought sadly, her very last gift to her sire.

Of her little body, there was not so much as a trace, unless the blood on the rock had been hers. There was flesh and blood aplenty on the streambanks and in its shallows, however, even after a full night of feasting by scavengers and not a few predators, too, to judge by the signs. The bones and hide and flesh and sinew, hooves and horns remaining were those of a wild ox in his prime—most likely the same one that the herders and herd-guards had had to drive from proximity of the herd just the day before.

Without knowing how, precisely, Chief Tur-ghos was convinced that the death of the wild ox bull was somehow connected with the disappearance of the girl, Oo-roh-bah. He and the veteran hunters carefully studied the spoor and droppings scattered about on the banks of the stream, but found no answers there; the very largest animals represented by those could never have slain so huge and fearsome a beast as a wild ox, bull or cow, not at fall growth. A young leopard had partaken of the beef, as well as a pair of small lynxes, a number of highland jackals, eagles, kites, ravens and numerous other, smaller birds and beasts. Of all that sizable aggregation, only the leopard might have been dangerous to the girl, but had she been taken by the cat, they would certainly have found tracks or signs in their wide castings about of which direction the leopard had taken in bearing off her body, and they had not.

So back to the question of what could have killed a prime wild ox, dismembered it, devoured part and

then departed, leaving the bulk of the kill to the scavengers? Aside from human hunters, a full-grown, uninjured wild ox in the prime of life had precious few predators to worry about. Tur-ghos and all the other men knew this well.

Ticking the beasts off on his scarred, horny fingers as he thought, the chief pondered. There were the long-tooth cats, of course; any beast, from the smallest to the largest, was their prey, any the slow-footed killers could catch. But what man now living had ever so much as seen one? Well, there were the lions. Yes, but though they lived higher up the mountains in some numbers, none were left on the lower plain and seldom had one been seen of recent years here on the higher plain—and then only in long or severe winters, not in weather like this. The same held true for the big, shaggy, mountain bears. In each succeeding year, parties of young hunters from the tribes of the lower plain had to venture farther and farther up into the high country and mountains in order to seek out and slay the ursines for their warm, valuable pelts and for the rich, fatty meat, the teeth and the claws.

Each year they had perforce to go farther and stay away longer, and they brought back fewer pelts, too, than had preceding hunts. Tur-ghos thought that the day fast was approaching when bears and lions both would be as uncommon, as rare in these lands as was Old Longtooth even now. Without big, dangerous beasts to fear and to hunt—thus proving before all one's courage, weapon-skills and manhood, one's right to a place among the warriors, one's right to take a woman and get children upon her, to be respected,

honored in life and in memory—life would be fer less exciting, courage and even honor would likely become things of the past. . . but, also, he had thought with a stab of grief, no more young girls and boys, no more foraging womenfolk would be lost to the ravening animals.

At length, they all agreed that Oo-roh-bah must have been taken by a land-dragon—of which there still were known to be a few lurking in the foothills, for all that the nightmare monsters were religiously tracked down and slain whenever and wherever they appeared before men—and either completely devoured on the spot or borne away, upstream.

Bearing back with them all usable parts of the bull the killer and scavengers had left them, the party had returned to their place below the fells and made their sad pronouncement of the fete of Chief s-daughter Oo-roh-bah. According to their rituals and tribal customs, they had mourned the dead girl.

The period of mourning completed, the men of the tribe had mounted a dragon hunt up above the fells of the stream. None of the creatures had been found until they had ascended rather high into the foothills and none of those had been of a size to have committed the killing of a big ox, but they had all been slain just the same, along with a spotted, mountain lionness and a goodly bit of other assorted game— leopards, boar, deer, and the like—that the trip not be wasted effort, for survival was hard and always had been so since the calamitous loss of the Good Land, fer away to the west.

After return from that great dragon hunt, things had returned to normal routine in the setdement

atop the hill beside the falls, that presided over by Chief Tur-ghos of the Two Axes.

Fitz saw the hybrid, Mikos, as simply a slightly older version of Seos—same red-blond hair and beard, same shade of eye color, same fair, freckled, sun-browned skin, same powerful-looking physique. The age-difference was not at all physically apparent, rather was it seen in Mikos's bearing and recognized in his serious, responsible manner.

He had come into sight, hovering in the air close beside a cedar tree, then had led them upslope where a thick copse of high, twisted bushes masked the locations of a tiny spring and a rock shelter, beneath the overhang of which waited a man who might have been the twin of either Seos or Mikos, save that his hair and beard were both a bright, bricky red, and his sparkling eyes of a shade of hazel. Also he was a couple of inches taller and a bit more slender than the two other male hybrids.

When the newcomers had each drunk from the spring, the red-haired Gabrios sank into a squat and all emulated him, then he began to silently speak.

"These men—the folk of the girl's sire, that is— have not been here long, not as we measure time. They arrived perhaps four centuries ago, maybe less. Before that, they dwelt on some island in this sea—a fairly large island, it was, though apparently not so large as is ours and differently shaped—they had dwelt there for a few centuries, too, interbreeding with the humans they had found there."

"From whence did they first arrive upon that island," asked Ehrah, "and have you discovered when, elder brother?"

He frowned. "I have no precise answers to either question, sister-mine; the sleeping minds I and Mikos have entered simply lack the training and discipline to properly chronicle racial memory. Only something less than a third of all the folk we have entered and examined have enough hybrid traits to make it worthwhile to examine them further, train their minds and allow them to breed into purer hybrid stock."

"But what, then, of Oo-roh-bah, oh wisest of brothers?" Seos demanded with something less than respect.

The red-haired man took no umbrage, just answering, "Yes, hers is a truly exceptional mind, but only two of all her siblings are so gifted and even her sire, while well worth bringing to our island, is less gifted with hybrid traits than is she. By far the most worthy we have encountered in all that settlement are a young herdsman and a middle-aged flintknapper. It has been from out their slumbrous minds that we have gleaned the most of the history of the hybrid-humans who founded this settlement and the others on this plain."

"O Mighty One," said Oo-roh-bah, with abashed hesitation, "may this insignificant female speak?"

Smiling, Gabrios beamed, "Not aloud, my child; communicate as you have been taught, with your mind as do we."

She did, beaming: "Gneeos Stone-shaper is known in every tribe and settlement. Even those in places beyond, who are not really people, send things of value with which to obtain specimens of his craftsmanship. He has fashioned cunning tools the like .of which no one had ever before seen or even imagined, and he wastes so little stone in useless chips

that he can make twice again as many useful things from a pebble of good stone as can any other man within memory. But he is a most secretive man, too. He often does his work alone, apart from even his family, hidden away in his work-hut, saying that his secrets are his and his alone. My sire does not like such behavior, but he also appreciates the value of Gneeos Stone-shaper and the things he creates, so says nothing himself and calls down any who do/'

Both Gabrios and Mikos chuckled aloud, and Gabrios beamed, "The man is canny. Seos, he has somehow self-taught his mind to shape stone as we do—with waves of varying intensities of mental force which set up vibrations within the target rock itself. Oh, yes, he is also quite adept, quite artistic in producing blades and flakes in the old-fashioned human way of painful, laborious chipping and pressure-flaking and touching up, and he does only this when under observation, that or grinding. But he uses the quicker, simpler, easier skills in private, being more of mind to be respected as an artist-craftsman than feared as a wizard, another sign of his quick hybrid mind.

"We thank you for contributing information, child," Gabrios addressed Oo-roh-bah, with sincerity, "but Mikos and I already know him better than he knows himself. The man possesses talents that he never has even suspected. Like you, yourself, what meets the eye of him does not look very much like one of us, but his mind is almost pure hybrid."

To Seos and Ehrah, Gabrios beamed, "Now, for all it's seeming size, usable land on our island is definitely finite. A sizable population of fast-breeding

humans would find it untenable for a comfortable standard of living within very few of their generations. Therefore, our father has ordered that only the very purest available hybrid stock be brought there, and Mikos and I have selected those who will be borne back westward.

"In the interests of saving both time and effort, as well as sparing the emotions of the pitiful, primitive, easily frightened humans, we are not going to make the sort of grand entrance among them of which you two are so fond: no sudden descent from the sky or the like, no riding up the river standing atop the back of water-dragon. No, you three will simply walk into the settlement with us, the girl will be reunited with her sire, and then we all will talk with him, eat, drink, demonstrate to him our common kinship with him, our shared heritage. Understood, Seos, Ehrah? It all will be done calmly, rationally, and will include no theatrics, no spurts of flames from the fingertips, no objects miraculously floating on air, no sudden transformations into bestial or half-bestial shapes, hear me and heed me, younger brother and younger sister. You must grow up, must mature, and better you do such the sooner than the later.

"Knowing humans and their ways, on one day soon after their lost child's return to them, they will have' a feast for us and all others in their settlement. In the immediate wake of that feast, when every human is already sated and drowsy, they will fall asleep, all at once. There are enough of us here to do that by mind-power. While they are sleeping, we will float into the settlement enough of the their fishing craft to hold all those we have selected. The

craft then will be lifted and guided by us through the skies to the island/'

"And what of the others, those who will remain asleep in the settlement?" asked Ehrah. "What will they think and do, elder brother?"

Gabrios shrugged. "Oh, belike they'll think up some sort of supernatural tale to cover the incident, explain it to the coming generations. Gods stole them all away, or evil demons or some of the hairy near-humans who still live in mountains and wastes. Humans may lack our minds, but they do own vivid imaginations, some of them; they'll think up something, never you fear."

Mikos now put in his own beaming, saying, "For that very reason, brothers and sisters, we are going to have to exercise caution, practice wiles, when we explore the other settlements situated upon this plain, for can we find even half as many worthwhile minds in each of them, our sire's dream of joining and rebreeding our blessed race to true purity may even come to pass while still we five live. And can we do this, perhaps one of the Elder Ones will then come to five among us, as in times of yore they did in the Good Islands from which came our forebears."

Fitz wakened to light, a narrow shaft of bright light from the risen sun somehow filtering through all of the foliage to lance directly between some of the limbs and branches and fully bathe his face. He had but barely unzipped the bag, sat up and stretched once when he thought to hear, somewhere to the north of his aerie, faint sounds reminiscent of several men shouting; he could discern no words, only the shouts.

"Sir Gautier and his long-lost band of retainers?" he thought, then shook his head. "No, wrong direction. When they come ... if they come . . . it'll be from the southeast, not the north. Hell, it's probably not men at all, some land of monkey or other beast, most likely."

But as he went about the necessary chores—arranging his clothing, putting on his boots, rolling his bag and poncho, rinsing his mouth with night-cooled water from the canteen, drinking some of it, then rummaging into his pack for a can of something with which to start the day—the human-sounding noises continued, not constant, but growing ever closer each time they did sound again. Certain now that they definitely were the shouts of men rather than utterances of animals and that they seemed to be bearing directly toward the tree he occupied, Fitz made haste to finish his packing, forgoing breakfast. He placed die full pack in a spot he thought would be invisible from below, then took a position that, while giving him a good, little-obstructed view of the stream confluence and the mouth of the defile to the north of that confluence, afforded him the best available cover and concealment where he crouched with the drilling-gun.