"I can't understand it myself, Mother. Why Kelvin's away or why Lester's fighting. In many ways it doesn't make sense."

"Start from the beginning." Charlain took Jon's hand in hers, in much the way she had when she had wanted her to tell about some school fight.

"All right, Mother. We were all of us summoned to the palace and briefed by... by the king."

"King Rufurt?"

"Y-yes."

A lie. The tremble in Jon's hands said it clearly. Jon was not a trembler by nature except when she lied. For some reason Jon wished to conceal something about their king. Could it be that their king was not who he seemed? If this was true it explained the uncertainty card. Charlain felt a p.r.i.c.kle on the back of her neck.

Later, when she was alone, Charlain laid out the cards again, checking on the things that had disturbed her most about her daughter's narration. Rather than ease her concern, this made the p.r.i.c.kling much worse. Heln was in terrible trouble, about which Charlain could do nothing. But Lester, Jon's husband, was also in dire straits, and about this she could do something.

In the morning Charlain surprised Jon if not Heln by saying goodbye. "I have to get back to the farm. Hal's a dear, taking care of the livestock, and I know Easter will keep the garden weeded, but I don't want to impose on them."

"Mother," Jon said, taking her arm and leading her aside, "how can you-?"

"Because I'm not angry with them. Either of them."

"But-"

"I always knew I'd lose Hal, but the cards didn't explain. When the romance card came up, I knew. It was a relief! Better that he live a happy life than that he die. He was a good father to you and Kelvin and he worked hard. He never intended to do what he did; it was fated."

"But Mother, if Lester ever did such a thing, I'd-"

"Yes, of course you would, dear. But your foster father isn't Lester. It was in the cards. He really couldn't help it."

"But to start a child with that woman! That wasn't right!"

"No, of course it wasn't. But then your natural father succ.u.mbed to the queen of Rud and had a son named Kian. The marriage wasn't dissolved when he met me."

"But Mother, Zoanna betrayed her vows! You-"

"It's not the same, Jon. Easter is a good woman. Simple, young, but good. Hal loves her and she him. I declared us divorced for their sakes. My marriage to Hal is now over. His marriage to her is valid. They have a difficult enough course, setting up a homestead, without my making it worse."

"So you let them use your homestead!" Jon said bitterly. "How nice for them!" Her tone said that she would never have been that generous. "You're helping them get set up, by giving them free board, and even paying them for taking care of your farm!"

"Hush, hush. You mustn't sound that way. He was a good husband to me, and a good father to you, when we thought your real father dead."

Jon's eyes lighted with a sudden fathoming. "So you think you and my real father might-"

"I don't know, dear. We'll see. The cards don't show me quite enough."

"It seems to me they never did. Until afterward."

"Your father would say that. Well-" She hugged Jon one final time. "Take good care of Heln and the babe. We'll have a much longer visit another time."

"I'll take care of her," Jon said. "But I'm scared for her! Mother, can't you stay?"

"No. I told you why. Now don't pester." With that small lie she was off to the stable and her horse. She did not look back to Jon, who was not following. Jon pretended not to have sentiment, but her mother knew that her outrageous daughter would be secretly wiping at her eyes. Reunions had a way of bringing pain, and this one did especially. Since Jon had turned fourteen and gone off adventuring with Kelvin, they had seen one another only on brief visits.

She rode away from the palace to the crossroads. There she turned resolutely toward Kance. Her son-in-law was in grave peril. The cards had revealed as much, though she had not revealed this to Jon. Had she told her daughter, she knew Jon would be with her, carrying her sling. Charlain couldn't have that. Jon had to stay with Heln. Because it was obvious that something was seriously amiss with Heln, and she suspected hostile magic. Until she could get the cards to be more specific, she had to pretend ignorance, so as not to tip her hand. She could not help Heln directly, the cards said, but might be able to help indirectly, if she found out exactly what was wrong, and if she could find Kelvin and tell him privately. Since she had no idea where Kelvin was, she had to follow up on another course in the interim.

If she could save Lester, maybe then she could find the good witch Helbah, or let the witch find her. It would take a witch to save Heln and the baby, she felt certain. She just hoped that she could do something to benefit both Jon and Heln, and that she would be able to do it in time.

"Cursed cards!" Charlain muttered. "Why is it you can never really tell me anything?" But she knew she was blaming them falsely. The cards could do only what they could do, no more.

She rode on, past the road marker, and into the forbidden territory of Kance.

St. Helens rolled over on the p.r.i.c.kly straw and looked up through the bars of his dungeon cell. He rubbed dust from his eyes. The two boyish faces were still there. Two child heads, each wearing a crown of gold.

"Stupid-looking, ain't he, Kildee?"

"Yah. What you think we should do with him, Kildom?"

"Torture. Bend back his thumbs. Tweak his big nose. Put cream on his feet and get Katbah to lick it off. Shove a washcloth in his ears the way Helbah does to us!"

"That's good! That's very good! Let's!"

"Boys," St. Helens managed to say, "the witch, is she-"

"Wouldn't you like to know, blowtop!" Kildee said, and both kings chortled at his cleverness. He dropped a pebble down that bounced off St. Helens' face, and they chortled again.

St. Helens permitted himself a glare. d.a.m.n Katzenjammer kids! Those two need a good hiding! Best thing for bad behavior ever invented. Royal brats or not!

"Look, he's maaaad!"

"Yah, let's get some more stones!"

"Stones? How about darts?"

The boys rushed away, giggling. St. Helens lay on the dank straw, antic.i.p.ating more mischief.

Then there was a dark, furry face where the boys' faces had been. Dark yellow eyes and a tail forming a question mark. The witch's familiar! He had thought it dead. According to lore, a witch's familiar was a part of her in a real sense, so that when one died the other died soon after. This probably meant that Helbah was alive.

But why was the houcat here? It did not look healthy. Why should it waste its energy spying on him?

The day wore on. The boys did not return. St. Helens, turning the matter over and over in his mind, saw no reason to regret their absence.

Lomax drew back his sword from yet another unfortunate Kance soldier and watched him topple from the saddle. They were winning the battle, mainly because they had come upon a small force. Then he saw the real reason. Coming down the hill behind the Kance forces were other fighters dressed in the Kelvinian uniform. He strained his eyes to see through the dust. It was Lester's troops, it had to be! But where was Lester?

A scream took his attention. Turning round in the saddle he saw one of his men finishing off a Kance swordsman as young Phillip's horse shied and the boy pulled the reins.

The Kance soldiery retreated, pursued by the Kelvinian troops. Lomax rode over to check on Aratex's one-time king.

Phillip had an ugly open sword wound on his left arm. Blood stained the boy's clothing and dripped onto the shield he had dropped. Phillip stared wild-eyed at him, as if he couldn't have imagined that he might get wounded.

"It-it hurts!" Phillip said.

"That is the nature of a battle wound," Lomax said. He felt some sympathy, but dared not show it. After all, he thought, hardening his heart, he's responsible for what happened to St. Helens.

"I'm not ready to die!" Phillip wailed. "I'm not ready!"

With that the boy who had been a king and more recently had shed blood and even more recently bled his own, shuddered as if he had plunged into snow. His face turned white as flour and then, like a sack of that substance, he swayed and toppled from the saddle.

Lomax drew in a sharp breath. Phillip had said he wanted to be hanged, but hadn't meant it. Now he might have died after all.

Mor was worried. The fighting was going just too well lately. What had happened to the phantoms that had plagued them? What about the magical slowing of time? Was the witch running out of magic? Was she dead?

Ahead, a great shout. "General! General! General Crumb!"

"Yes?" He waited for the excited scout to reach him and get his breath.

"General! General, sir! Ahead-"

"Yes, yes, out with it!"

"The caps, General! The caps are just over that rise! We've arrived, General! Arrived at last at the seat of our enemies!"

Mor, though he felt he should do otherwise, heaved a great sigh.

Zoanna looked into her crystal and smiled. The war was going so much better than she had antic.i.p.ated. Here the Mor forces were already at the caps and the Hermans and the Lester forces less than half a day from joining them. It would soon be all up for the witch and the brats. The brats would look nice in a cage, while Helbah might even teach her a few things before Rowforth stopped torturing her. It had been a stroke of lucky genius to prod that foolish boy into breaking the truce and wounding the witch! The St. Helens commander had seemed about to back away from battle, but that had precipitated immediate combat.

She frowned. Would it be wise to keep the witch alive at all? Witches, while they lived, could always be dangerous. How well she knew, from her own experience! The traditional fate of the defeated witch was burning, because that usually killed her thoroughly enough to make her stay dead.

She studied Helbah through the crystal. The old woman didn't look as though she had power. Lying in bed, turning, tossing, covered in sweat. Her gaunt familiar sitting by her on a chair, staring at her from wild yellow eyes. Only the intercession of that familiar had saved her life on the battlefield; the houcat had lent her enough of its life force to sustain her until she was brought back to the palace doctor.

"I could destroy you right now, Helbah! I know enough now, and if need be I can always return to college." She smiled reminiscently at the thought of her horned instructor. She had but one coin with which to pay that h.o.r.n.y one, but he was always ready for more of that. "But I don't think I have to, now. I don't think you're a menace."

Contentedly Zoanna blanked the crystal with a directed thought. The tiny bubbles swirled like a confined section of the creamy way in the night sky.

"Helbah, I'll keep you alive until I defeat you. And maybe for a short time after. I need to learn, and Rowforth needs his amus.e.m.e.nts. Maybe I can make you seem young and pretty, so that he'll enjoy your screams even more. Sadism is always better with an attractive and innocent-seeming subject."

Seldom had Zoanna felt so thoroughly content and so superbly confident.

Lester gasped as he stood holding on to the slim tree trunk and watched his men ride over the rise. A scout rode back accompanied by his second in command, Lieutenant Klump.e.c.k.e.r.

"We've driven them off, Commander," Lieutenant Klump.e.c.k.e.r said. "And St. Helens' Hermans are meeting our own men."

"The caps?"

"Less than a day's march away."

"St. Helens?"

"I haven't seen him. But the boy who is his friend-the former king of Aratex-is wounded."

"Bad?"

"I can't say. I wasn't that near."

Probably bad. Lester couldn't imagine St. Helens deserting his troops, so probably he too was dead. That left his father Mor and himself in charge of Kelvinia's forces. He wondered how far away his father was. Had he come all the way through Klingland? Was he still alive?

"We can take the caps in two days?"

"Probably, Commander."

"Good." There was a chance, just a chance, he thought, that he might live to see it accomplished.

Holding that thought he gradually loosened his grip on the sapling and let his knees buckle with him all the way down to the sweet, green gra.s.s.

"Commander! Commander Crumb!" he heard, but the voice was uninteresting and far, far away.

CHAPTER 17.

New Old Enemies

John found himself in a lighted chamber surrounded by men in uniforms. The uniforms were familiar because they had the same cut if not the color of the uniforms worn by the soldiers of Hud. But was this really the same world? Or was it an almost-the-same world? Would he face gigantic silver serpents again? Was there an evil King Rowforth here, or a duplicate king almost the same?

He looked at Kian, held by two of the soldiers, disarmed. His own arms were similarly taken. With regret he watched the soldiers go through his pack.

"King Hoofourth will be interested," said the craggy-faced Lieutenant.

"King Hoofourth of what country?" John asked.

"Silence, prisoner!" The slap stung his face, as he knew the lieutenant intended. "You will speak when spoken to!"

Exactly as it had been in Hud! Only of course this could not be the frame where there was a kingdom named Hud or a kingdom named Rud. It would have a name that would be similar and much else would be similar, but not identical. Obviously the bad guys were in control here; there had been no hero of prophecy to set things right. It was almost like a movie that kept subtly changing every time it was watched. Only this was no movie, and like it or not he was a partic.i.p.ant.

Movie-now there was one of the few things he missed in his home world. How nice it would be to go into a theater and have a vicarious experience! There was a lot to be said for vicarious experience; it didn't lock a person in a cell for months or years, it didn't threaten the person with death. He could break it off at any point and go home to the familiar. That would be nice, right now! If he got out of this, maybe he would see about finding his way to his true home. It wasn't as if there were a lot to hold him in the magic worlds, now that his children were grown, and he had lost the one woman he really cared for. The last thing he intended to do was interfere with Charlain's second marriage, and his mere presence in her frame would do that. So it behooved him to go elsewhere and find his own woman, and try to forget.

"We'll take them to the capital. King Hoofourth will put them in a dungeon, torture them a little, and get answers from them before throwing them away."

"Answers?" the fellow officer asked.

"Like why are they here? What are they doing at the secret cave? Are they planning on invading us?"

"Oh, you mean routine stuff." The officer pulled his right earlobe. It was a round ear, similar to the others here. Once it had seemed that round ears were a sign of special qualities, but now it was apparent that their shape was all that distinguished them. There were truly special pointeared folk-he thought of Charlain again-and ign.o.ble roundeared folk, such as evil King Rowforth of Hud. Unfortunately, King Hoofourth sounded similar.

"Now, out!" Pushing Kian and himself ahead of them the soldiers emerged from the wall of rock. John had to shake himself mentally. That chamber they'd been in was identical to the other except that it had no transporter. Did the bad guys in this frame know about the network of transporters? If they did, why didn't they use theirs? If they didn't, why did they stay here, watching?