"Yes, yes." She seemed delighted with his dialogue.

"I plan on torturing her. Before his eyes."

"Yes, yes, yes." Her eyes were bright, her lips parted and wet. Her queenly robe was falling open, showing more of her intriguing figure. One would hardly have guessed her true age, looking at her body. Magic was wonderful stuff!

"And perhaps a bit of magic. Make pointed ears on them both."

"That would take time. It's not like something you do to extract a confession. Yours was a very special case. They don't have convenient doubles to borrow from."

"You could start now. Get Sterk to ointment her ears. Maybe give her something to affect the cub in her. If she could give birth to something misshapen and revolting before they all are allowed to die..."

"Oh yes, yes, yes! Brilliant! You are the greatest, most magnificent consort ever!" She put her hands to his head and turned his face to hers with a ferocity and eagerness that almost scared him. Zanaan had never been like this! She kissed his lips, pressing them hard with hers. Her pa.s.sions were aroused by what he accidentally said. It seemed that the same sort of thinking aroused them both. He took her in his arms and then to the bed. She looked just like his consort in the other frame, but she was a world different! That malice and savagery lent her phenomenal s.e.x appeal, while Zanaan's disgusting niceness made her appealing only when she was screaming with pain and humiliation.

"It's so early in the day!" she exclaimed. There were golden lights in her greenish eyes. Zanaan had had those too, but they hadn't ever lit up for him.

He enjoyed kingly privileges all morning in a manner he had seldom if ever done before. Thanks, he felt certain, to some magic substance added to his wine that gave him a seemingly indefatigable potency. The queen had done it, surely, but he didn't mind at all. What a lithe and joyfully vicious creature she was! Her rapture was almost like that of pain, which really turned him on.

During and after his exertions he thought not so much of Zoanna, or even of Zanaan. What he most thought about were delightful new means of extending torment in helpless folk, especially in attractive women. How similar the reactions of s.e.x-making seemed to those of agony. Once he got into the real thing...

CHAPTER 7.

Squarears

It happened so suddenly that Kelvin hadn't time to think. One moment he was trying fruitlessly to sleep on the straw bed the chimaera provided, and the next it was broad daylight and he was looking up at an orange sky with whippy yellow clouds. His back felt as though a stick was poking in it. He felt around with his hands and recognized the p.r.i.c.kle of gra.s.s. He was on the ground, outside. But how?

"Greetings, visitors."

Kelvin sat up. The person who had spoken stood beside him: blocky of build, with straw-colored hair and ears that stuck out and were square. There were several similar folk beyond.

Kian and John were sitting beside him. Stapular was nowhere in sight.

"You-you-what?" Kelvin inquired intelligently. He wasn't yet sure whether this or the chimaera's den was reality.

"The squarears," his father supplied. "Remember Stapular telling us?"

Kian was looking past all of them. "We're back at the cave!"

"Very true," the squared individual said. He held a huge copper needle that seemed a duplicate of the chimaera's sting. "You are now free to leave here and continue your journey."

"But-" Kelvin said. Could it all have been a dream? But no, dreams never remained this clear. Besides, he could still taste the mash he had eaten from the chimaera's trough.

"I am Bloorg," said their apparent rescuer. "Official Greeter and Sender, Keeper of the Transporter to Other Worlds, Keeper of the Last Known Existing Chimaera. I'm sorry that we did not check on you in time. We were preoccupied with more deliberate visitors."

"Stapular's people?" Kelvin asked.

"Yes."

"He's still there? In the chimaera's cellar?"

"Yes. He deserves to be, though I doubt the chimaera will find him tasty eating."

Kelvin shivered. Poor Stapular! But why had they been rescued, and that man not?

"That magic Stapular spoke about," John said, almost answering Kelvin's thoughts. "Timelock?"

"Yes," Bloorg said. "We simply took you away without the chimaera's awareness, or yours, or the other captive's."

"But why?" Kelvin demanded. It surprised him that he demanded anything, but the hero's role was gradually growing on him, "Why were we rescued, and not him?"

"Stapular's people were here deliberately. They came to do harm. You, in contrast, arrived by chance."

"You-you know?" Telepathic?

"Limited telepathy," Bloorg agreed. "Enough to know your thoughts, though unable to communicate that way."

"And the chimaera is telepathic," Kelvin said. "I know, because-"

"Because it exchanged thoughts with you. Yes, it is a complete telepath, able to receive and send, which is part of what makes it unique. But we have kept it confined for some time. We know how to keep it from our thoughts."

"You're like zookeepers!" John said. "You're a chimaerakeeper!"

"Correct."

"But why?" Now John looked as bewildered as Kelvin felt.

"Uniqueness. In all the frames we know of, this is the last of the chimaera's kind. Should it be destroyed, the victim of genocide, to satisfy an alien's greed?"

"No. No it shouldn't, but-"

"You think of your fellow prisoner and his claim to be from a Major world. Major and Minor are in the eyes of the beholder, as your people say. It was no love of knowledge that brought them here."

"But you did let them be slaughtered, eaten by the chimaera?"

"Of course."

Kelvin looked at his father and brother, and wondered. Were they as appalled by this as he was?

"Your property was also rescued," Bloorg said. He gestured with squared-off fingers. Other squarears stepped forward carrying the levitation belt, the Mouvar weapon, the gauntlets, and the swords.

"So we really are free, then?" Kian asked, seeming hardly to believe it.

"Yes. Go now to your wedding."

Something was not right. Kelvin almost knew, but could not quite pin it down. He buckled on his sword, the Mouvar weapon, and drew on the gauntlets.

"Well I for one am ready to go!" Kian said. "I've had enough of chimaera and poacher. I'm ready to go any time."

Kelvin looked at his father. John was frowning, maybe disturbed about the same thing that was bothering Kelvin. They had after all been confined in the same place. Driven by hunger, they had eaten from the trough Stapular must have eaten from. Kelvin had felt like a piog, gulping slops, but the stuff had been amazingly tasty.

"Do not waste your sympathies on the hunter," Bloorg said. "He is not quite as he seems, and he knew what he risked."

But dipped in lye? Cooked alive? Pickled? Eaten? It seemed all too much. Even the sorcerer Zatanas and the witch Melbah had received kinder fates, and they, more than gruff Stapular, had seemed to be of a different species.

"I repeat, your sympathies are wasted," Bloorg said. "Once you have considered the enormity of what they planned, you will agree that their fate was deserved."

Sympathy then for the chimaera? A creature that mocked them from a feminine face? A monster that munched human limbs with enjoyment? Was that where his sympathy should lie?

"No," Bloorg answered patiently. "You should not feel sympathy for either. They are what they are, and nothing you or we could do would make any difference."

Evil beings deserving nothing more? But Stapular had seemed human. Not likable, certainly, but human. And advanced.

"Advanced by what cosmic standard?"

Yes. Yes, that made sense. A person might think himself advanced, but that was as likely to be vanity as fact. Greed was after all greed, and cruelty was cruelty. But could a monster be said to be cruel? Wasn't its taunting ways simply part of its nature?

"You are remarkably philosophical for one so recently rescued." The squarear was looking at him from blocky pupils in blocky eyes set in a blocky head. Looking, seemingly, into the roundeared, roundeyed, roundheaded depths of him.

"It's my nature," Kelvin said. "I have to question."

"Of course you do."

Kian looked toward the cave. "Any time you're ready, Kelvin, Father."

"All right." John Knight stood. He held out his hand to Bloorg. "In my frame it is the custom to clasp the hand of someone who has saved your life, and say thanks."

"You are most welcome," Bloorg said. They shook, John wincing as he felt the other's hand.

Kian was already on his feet, extending his hand similarly. Kelvin, uneasy for no reason he could quite define, followed their example. When he took Bloorg's six-fingered hand he knew why his father and his brother had acted surprised. It was chilly, like a froogear extremity, but dry rather than clammy. The fingers wrapped around his wrist, showing that they were many-jointed, like little tails. The alien feel of the appendage drove all other thoughts away.

"Come," John said, and Kelvin followed with Kian. It was farther than it had appeared to be, and it seemed to get no closer as they walked. Then suddenly it was much closer, and each step was taking them rapidly forward.

Kelvin looked back. The squarears were gone, vanished.

"Magic!" Kian said, also looking back. "I knew there was something funny about it. We weren't where we seemed to be."

Kelvin had to agree, though he was not elated. Somehow magic and the evident extent of the squarears' powers was depressing. True, the magic of the gauntlets had saved him many times, but it had always seemed to him that having magic was an unfair advantage. What chance did a master swordsman have, for instance, against a bungle-foot like himself, when his sword was clasped by a hand in a magic gauntlet? Kelvin knew himself to be no hero, merely a person whose ordinary abilities were amplified by magic. Now he had encountered creatures who seemed to be far beyond that magic. It was disconcerting.

"Hey, Son, you look glum!" his father said lightly. It was almost a doggerel rhyme, the kind he had done to cheer Kelvin as a child.

"I can't get it out of my head, Father."

"What, that you were rescued? That none of us will be eaten?"

Finally the thing that had been bothering him focused. "No, Father. That Stapular will be eaten." He let that sink, then plunged ahead. "Is that right, Father? Is it?"

"I wondered how long it would take for your conscience to catch up," John said. "You can't let anything be. You always have to work it out to the last degree, so that it makes sense on every level. You are unusual in that, perhaps unique."

"I'm sorry," Kelvin said.

"Sorry! Son, that's what makes you a hero!" His father's friendly hand came around his shoulders. "But look, Son, it's not right by our standards, but this isn't our frame. We shouldn't be here. We're here only by chance. It isn't our business."

"I'm going ahead!" Kian said, and ran on to the cave. He looked inside, looked back, and called, "This is it, all right! Hurry up!"

"He doesn't care," Kelvin said.

"It's his upbringing. It was different from yours. Remember who his mother was."

Kelvin remembered. Evil Queen Zoanna, who had used magic to fascinate John Knight and seduce him and bear his child. Zoanna had evidently liked to play with men in much the way Mervania did, only Zoanna, being human, had been able to take it farther. "Yes, he's seen more cruelty casually applied."

"In the palace he did. His grandfather and his mother were not noticeably kind. Give him credit for turning out as well as he did, given that environment. He did not have Charlain as his mother."

That certainly accounted for the difference! Kelvin's mother was the finest woman he knew, though perhaps Heln approached her.

"Hurry it up, won't you!" Kian called.

"And you can't blame him for wanting to get on with his wedding," John said.

Kelvin abruptly stopped. "Father, I'm going back."

"Of course you are, Son. We all are. First to Kian's wedding, as we planned before getting diverted here, and then-"

"No, Father. I mean back to the island in the lake. Back to rescue Stapular."

"Son, you can't!" But something in John's expression suggested that he wasn't surprised.

"I can. I have the gauntlets now, and the levitation belt, and the Mouvar weapon. I can do it."

"No, wait! The chimaera can stun your mind! Think-"

Kelvin knew better than to think. A man of action he must be, though his nature was far more sedentary. Magic and a prophecy made him heroic despite himself.

He touched the control for "up" on the belt, and suddenly he was floating above his father's head, looking back at Kian's astonished form waving at the cave. It was exactly as it was when he practiced with the belt.

"Goodbye, Father. Wait for me if you will. If not, I'll follow you."

"No, wait, you idiot! What kind of a fool are you!"

"I'm a hero, remember?" And he knew his father understood, despite trying to restrain him. Heroes would be heroes, just as kings would be kings, to the wonder and dismay of others.

Sadly yet determinedly he nudged the control and floated smoothly swampward. A bit of acceleration and the swamp breezed by. Now and then he caught a froogear's surprised face in the greenness below, or sight of one of the swamp monsters. He had no doubt of the proper direction, partly because there was a treeless area that was almost like a road, but mostly because the gauntlets tingled ever so slightly when he started going wrong. Soon the lake and island with its imposing wall were in sight.