Here be Monsters

CHAPTER 8

As Quicksilver’s head turned, though, the magpie came once again within her sight—but this time, its beak wasn’t open in laughter; it was holding two large pellets. It hopped onto her wrist and dropped them in her palm. “Wool, damsel! Knots of wool pecked from the backs of the finest sheep! Stop your ears with it, for when you can no longer hear the love-talker, he will lose power over you and you will be free to escape him!”

With dragging hands, Quicksilver pushed the earplugs in—and the ganconer’s voice dropped to a wobbling drone, scarcely audible at all through the pounding of her pulse.

The magpie grinned again, then was off in a burst of wings. In seconds it was back, hovering before Cordelia. Quicksilver turned to call, “Take the pellets and use them, for they will free us!”

The ganconer turned to Cordelia, beseeching, pleading, but she pushed the plugs into her ears and relief flooded her face. By that time the magpie was fluttering in front of Allouette, who took the plugs, applied them, and almost sagged as the pull on her lessened to a fraction of what it had been. She still burned for Gregory’s touch, but the buzzing beneath the thudding of her pulse was certainly not his voice, and she was able to lean forward to cover her horse’s ears so that it could follow Cordelia’s uphill, plodding after Quicksilver and her mount, ears similarly muffled.

Behind them, a voice rose in an inhuman wail of loss and regret—and anger. The women and their mares ignored it, though, and rode on up the side of the bowl. They didn’t even stop when they came to the valley’s rim but rode on, out of the little valley so pretty and so sterile, and on into a high forest of pines and hemlocks.

Finally Quicksilver reined in and took the plugs from her ears. She looked about her but saw no wings. Nonetheless, she called out, “Many thanks, O Magpie! We shall owe you dearly for this!”

Cordelia was staring at the two little lumps in her hand and saying in desolate tones, “I feel as though I shall never see Alain again.”

“Nor I Gregory.” Tears ran down Allouette’s cheeks.

“And I feel as though Geoffrey is lost to me forever,” Quicksilver said, “but I know it is only the aftermath of the boiling emotions that monster stirred in us. Let us ride on, ladies, for our true loves still await us, and now more than ever must we catch them up!”

“Oh, for Alain to catch me up in his arms,” Cordelia groaned.

“Then you must find those arms first! Ladies, let us ride!”

“Wait! Before we do. . .” Allouette rode up, her horse nose to nose with Quicksilver’s. Her face was stiff, but she forced the words out. “I owe you a great apology. No matter the provocation, it was most despicable of me to steal your sword.”

Quicksilver’s face softened. “And most wrong of me to insult you for your past deeds, when you have proved so very loyal to your love—and to us.” She reached out to catch Allouette’s hand briefly. “Ride with me, damsel, for I daresay we shall learn to trust one another yet!”

“We had best do so,” Cordelia said with a smile, “for we shall all be sisters-in-law, shall we not?”

“We shall most certainly,” Quicksilver agreed, “so we had best learn to be also sisters in arms. Come, ladies, away, for our grooms await—though they know it not.”

“We ride!” Allouette gave her a smile that, for a few brief moments, had nothing of suspicion or guilt in it.

So, side by side, they rode on through the woods, no longer in the broad walled lane but following a deer trail that they trusted much more.

Geoffrey, Alain, and Gregory rode through level ground that seemed flat as a board all the way to the horizon, where a few twisted trees stretched skeleton branches. On every side, dried bracken spread over the earth as far as they could see.

“What manner of place is this, dead as late autumn?” Alain asked, shivering. “ ’Tis nearly summer!”

“Ask, rather, what power could have blasted it so,” Geoffrey answered somberly. He turned to his younger brother. “What say you, O Scholar?”

“It reeks of sorcery,” Gregory said, wrinkling his nose, “or of psi power misused, if you prefer to call it that.”

“How would a warlock dry out a whole plain?” Alain asked. “How could he drain the water from it?”

“Or withhold it from coming in,” Geoffrey offered. “Stop up the fountains with rockfalls and dam the streams.”

They were all quiet for a few minutes, thinking of the afanc. The horses plodded on and crested a rise that was so gradual it hadn’t shown—but Gregory looked up in surprise and said, “Houses!”

“Cottages, at least.” Geoffrey frowned. “How could such level ground hide them so?”

They found out as they came to the crest. Below them, the land fell away into a small depression. Down its center ran a dry creek bed. A dozen yards from its banks stood a circle of thatch-roofed cottages.

Alain frowned. “This is wrong. I see not a cat nor a dog, certainly none of the sheep who should be grazing on this common—and not a living soul!”

“Can this land have been dry long enough to drive the people away?” Geoffrey asked, frowning.

“Surely not,” said Gregory, “when the land beyond this plain is green with spring.”

“Spring . . .” Geoffrey lifted his head with a faraway gaze. “Could it have lain thus throughout the winter?”

“Perhaps, brother,” said Gregory, “but the people would have melted snow for drink. They have not trooped away because of drought, not yet!”

“What else could have chased them?” Alain asked, perplexed.

A warbling howl answered him, predators hooting with bloodlust and delight.

The three companions spun about and saw dozens of pale-skinned, barelegged little monsters in hooded tunics spilling over the roofs of the cottages toward them, brandishing stone-bladed knives and spears. Under the cowls of their tunics their faces looked more like those of lizards than of humans. They were surely no more than two feet high, but their eyes glittered with the pleasure of the chase when the hunter knows that he is far stronger than the quarry.

“Hobyahs!” Gregory cried, paling.

“Alain, look behind us!” Geoffrey lugged out his sword.

Alain drew, too, wheeling his horse about. “More of them!”

“And to left and to right!” Gregory whisked his own blade out of the scabbard. “We are surrounded!”

With a gloating massed shriek, the hobyahs shot toward the companions on short little legs that moved so fast they were a blur.

“Back to back!” Geoffrey cried, and the three men swung their horses to form a triangle, heads facing outward. The howling horde descended upon them, and the men began slashing with their swords.

“Cold Iron!” the front row of hobyahs shrieked, and leaped back. Those behind them slammed into them, and in moments, they mounded up into a squirming ring surrounding the three warriors.

Alain took advantage of the lull to cry, “We have done you no harm! Why do you attack us?”

“Why, because you are meat!” cried half a dozen voices, and the others took it up in a chant: “Meat! Meat! Meat! Meat!” One or two plucked up their courage enough to leap forward.

Geoffrey sent them shying away with a slash of his blade. “We are meat with Cold Iron in our hands! Do you wish to warm it with your blood?”

“No, with yours!” a hobyah called back, and his comrades hooted approval.

“Take them apart!” Alain hissed at the warlock and the wizard, then raised his voice to call out again: “Surely you are not so vicious! Would you slay innocent people only from your hunger?”

“Why not?” called a dozen voices, and a single one answered their own question: “We ate all the villagers, didn’t we?”

“Dissolve them!” Alain hissed.

“We do our best.” Geoffrey’s face was as strain-taut as Gregory’s. “Some other mind holds them in form!”

Alain went back to distractions. “Assuredly you did not eat so many good and innocent folk!”

“Good indeed!’ cried a hobyah. “Delicious, too!”

“Meat! Meat! Meat! Meat!” the whole horde chanted again, and began to move in on the companions.

Alain sliced at the nearest; it squealed and pulled back. Gregory and Geoffrey did the same on their own sides. The prince called, “There is no need to spill your blood on our swords!”

“No, but there is need to spill yours for our drink!” yet another hobyah cried, and to its fellows, “Seize them! Carry them off! They are meaty fellows and should last us two days!”

“Fasting is good for the soul,” Geoffrey told them, whirling his sword for punctuation. “Hunger is better than death.”

“Why do we linger?” one more hobyah called to its mates. “We can bury them beneath our mass! No matter how they slice and slash, some of us will tear their flesh!”

“But many of you will die, too!” Alain called. “Who will it be?” With lightning speed, he snatched up a hobyah and held it squirming and squealing before its mates. “Do you wish to be the first to die, little one?”

“You could not be so cruel!” the minimonster protested.

“Would you be any less so?” Alain tossed it back into the mob. “Which shall be next? Who shall be first to spit himself on my sword?”

“I have never seen your like in this land before!” cried Geoffrey. “From where did you come?”

“Where did your kind?” a hobyah retorted. “We know only that we awoke to life in hunger, and awaken so each morning!”

“Know you no word of magic that brought you to be?” Gregory asked.

“No, and if we did, we would certainly not tell our quarry!” yet one more hobyah answered. “But we do know a word to make you freeze with fear. Scream it, fellows!”

The whole mob answered with a massed shout: “Zonploka! Zonploka! Zonploka!”

“Somehow that wakes no terror in my breast,” Alain called back.

But the shouting drowned out his voice as the knee-high horde began to tumble off roofs and advance on them again, much more slowly but also inexorably, chanting louder and louder, “Zonploka! Zonploka! Zonploka!” as though the word itself gave them power.

“What is a zonploka?” Gregory asked.

“What matter?” Geoffrey braced himself for the onslaught.

“It matters greatly,” Gregory answered, “for if they can gain power through it, they can lose it, too.” He raised his voice and, in the pauses between the hobyahs’ shouts, gave a bellow of his own: “Akolpnoz! Akolpnoz! Akolpnoz!”

The throng of miniatures fell silent, frowning in puzzlement. “What is an akolpnoz?” one demanded.

“It is the opposite of a zonploka,” Gregory called back, “and will cancel its power! With me, companions! Akolpnoz!”

“Akolpnoz! Akolpnoz! Akolpnoz!” Alain and Geoffrey chanted with him.

“Now, stop that!” one hobyah said peevishly, and the others stopped chanting to listen. “It won’t work anyway!”

“If not, then why have you stopped your song?” Gregory countered. “Akolpnoz!”

“Akolpnoz! Akolpnoz! Akolpnoz!” his companions chanted with him.

“Don’t listen!” A hobyah clapped his hands over his ears. “It might work as they say!”

All its mates covered their ears too—and the chanting fell into disarray, becoming a jumble of noise. The three companions raised their unified voice against it: “Akolpnoz! Akolpnoz! Akolpnoz!”

The hobyahs could no longer hear one another to decide what they should do. They began to mill about uncertainly, still shouting out their nonsense word.

“Now!” Alain cried, and advanced slashing about him, still chanting, “Akolpnoz! Akolpnoz! Akolpnoz!”

The hobyahs joined together again—in a massed shriek. Several of them leaped to scramble up over a rooftop and away. Several more saw them and turned to run—and in a minute, the whole horde had turned to flee, scrambling and howling away.

Alain let his sword fall to his side, beginning to shake. “By my troth, that was a near thing!”

“And you a most excellent commander!” Geoffrey said, eyes wide. “Whatever possessed you, Alain? I have never known you to act so decisively!”

The prince managed a smile. “No one else knew what to do, Geoffrey, so I did what came to me—any action was better than none. As it developed, the situation required only good judgment, for both strong arms and keen intelligence did little good.”

Geoffrey nodded. “And that is what makes for a king, though intelligence and strength of arms help greatly—and your justice must be tempered by mercy.”

“But I shall have Cordelia for compassion, insight, and intelligence, and my brother Diarmid for genius with Gregory to aid him—and yourself and Quicksilver for generals.” Alain gave him a shaky grin. “If I can evoke your support, that is.”

“You shall most surely have it,” Geoffrey avowed, “for I begin to see that you shall become a most excellent monarch!”

“Aye, and one worthy of our loyalty,” Gregory said. “It was fortunate these hobyahs had no great brains among them, though.”

“Nor any one true leader,” Geoffrey seconded.

But Alain turned to Gregory, wide-eyed. “You mean saying their magic word backwards really had no effect?”

“Not of itself,” Gregory told him, “no more than did theirs—for both gained their strength from the hobyahs’ belief in them, nothing more.”

“So you saw that you could counter their nonsense word with one of your own, and shake their belief in its power.” Alain nodded slowly. “Most ingenious, Gregory.”

“Most desperate,” Gregory corrected, his voice shaking at last. “It was a ploy of desperation, a wild guess, nothing more.”

“Sheer bluff,” Geoffrey interpreted, “but Alain and I did not know that.”

“Aye, so we carried it through with the authority that made it work!” The prince grinned. “Well done, O Brain!”

“Good luck only,” Gregory said darkly, “and I mistrust luck deeply.”

“As I mistrust these little monsters.” Alain turned to scowl at the houses around them. “They are fled, but how shall we make sure they stay gone—and ensure they harm no other folk?”

“The answer lies in this ‘zonploka’ they chanted,” Gregory told him, “but for the nonce, I shall craft a countermonster from witch-moss, a ravening creature who has appetite only for hobyahs.”

“Well and good,” Geoffrey said slowly, “but what will it do when it has eaten every one of them?”

Gregory frowned in thought, but Alain said, “You shall make it hibernate until more hobyahs come, of course.”

“A good thought.” Gregory’s tone was that of surprise; he wasn’t used to Alain having ideas. “How if none ever come again, though?”

“Well, if it sleeps, you should have no trouble making it melt back into its original substance,” Alain said, very practically. “Craft their Nemesis, Gregory. Then let us seek and be sure they spoke truly when they said they had eaten all the villagers.”

Gregory looked up, astounded. “You mean they might have lied?”

“Why not?” Alain shrugged. “If we bluffed, might they not have too?”

Geoffrey gazed at the lip of the ravine in which the village sat. “All the more reason to be vigilant. Craft your hobyaheater, brother.” Then he stiffened. “Who comes?”

Alain and Gregory looked up in alarm, then relaxed as they saw that the silhouettes against the sky were quite human and dressed in peasant kirtles and dresses or tunics and hose. “ ’Tis the villagers coming to see if their houses are safe,” Alain said.

Gregory smiled. “It would seem you were right, Alain—the little monsters did lie, praise Heaven!”

“The hobyahs must have fled far and fast, for the villagers to be so bold as to even think of returning.” Geoffrey’s gaze lost focus for a minute; then he nodded. “The creatures are still running, still in a panic.”

“How did they come to be, do you think?” Geoffrey asked.

Gregory shrugged. “I see no reason to think it is anything but the usual, brother.”

“The usual” meant that someone in the village was a projective telepath but did not know it. He had imagined the little monsters, probably in the course of telling children a story, or dreamed of them. If he had told his fellows about the dream, other unwitting projectives might have reinforced his images—but the dream itself could have been enough. If, in the country nearby, there were any substantial amount of witch-moss, it would have shaped itself to those images and taken on as much life as the dream-images would have had. In the case of the hobyahs, that was entirely too much.

The villagers came down the slope and in among the houses slowly, warily, ready to run at the slightest sign of danger. One older woman came a little faster than the others, but with frequent glances back to make sure she wasn’t too far ahead. She came up to the companions, or at least ten feet away, and asked in a hesitant voice, “If it please you, sirs, can you tell us—have the hobyahs gone away?”

“They have, good woman—gone far and fast,” Alain assured her.

“How . . . how far?” asked one of the men.

Alain turned to Geoffrey. “How far would you say, Sir Geoffrey?”

The villagers’ eyes widened at the “sir.”

“Into the next county, at least,” Geoffrey answered, “perhaps even the next duchy.” He turned to the villagers. “Have they given you cause to fear them?”

“Great cause, Sir Knight!” the woman exclaimed.

One of the men added. “They ate Albin Plowman!”

“We must find his bones, that we may bury them.” The woman’s eyes filled with tears.

Alain’s voice dropped to a gentle tone. “Did you know him well?”

“We all did,” she sighed. “He was a good neighbor. Alas for his babes, for his wife and mother!”

“Alas indeed,” Alain commiserated. “Who else did they harm?”

“None, for they crowded around his body and fought over it,” another man said, hard-faced. “We fled while they quarreled.”

“Wisely done,” Alain said. “So he gave his life for you all, then.”

“Well, not quite,” the woman admitted. “ ‘We must make friends with them,’ quoth he, ‘so that they will be loath to hurt us.’ ”

“We called to him to come back to the safety of the house,” a third man said miserably, “but he went on forward, calling to them that we were their friends and would aid them in gaining whatever they wished.”

“ ‘We want meat,’ they cried, ‘red meat!’” said the old woman, voice thick with tears. “Then they all leaped upon him. One scream did he make, then was silent, and all we saw was the churning, thrashing heap of monsters, screaming and clawing at one another for pride of place at their grisly feast.”

“Then we fled.” The first man looked surly. “Could any blame us?”

“Not I,” Alain assured them.

“Nor I.” Geoffrey’s face was grim. “I could blame them, though, and wish them just as vile an end as they gave your friend Albin.”

“Alas! What could give them that?” the woman lamented.

“Will—will the hobyahs come back, think you?” a second woman asked.

“We cannot be sure,” Alain told her, “but our wizard here. . .” He glanced at Gregory and found him gone. “Where is Gregory?”

“Yon.” Geoffrey jerked his head toward a nearby woodlot.

Alain turned and saw the blue-robed young man standing with his hands lifted high, outspread toward the trees. The prince couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw several small gray mounds slithering out between the trunks and moving toward one another as they came.

Alain turned back to the villagers. “Our wizard has already set about making a guardian for you, a fierce-looking creature with a huge appetite for hobyahs.”

“A wizard!” The woman shied away, stepping backward toward her friends—who looked ready to turn and run themselves. “A wizard making a monster?”

“He is a witch-moss crafter,” Alain explained, “and will make sure the creature is quite gentle to people, but will turn into a ravening appetite on legs when it sees a hobyah.”

“I . . . I can only thank you, gentlemen and knights,” the woman said hesitantly, “but we dare not come back to our homes with such a thing prowling the parish.”

“The guardian will not hurt you.” Alain glanced over his shoulder and saw that the mound of witch-moss had grown larger than Gregory, and was beginning to take on the form of something with at least four legs and a head—a very wide head. “Mind you, it will look like a thing out of nightmare, but to you and your children it will be mild as a lamb.”

“But . . . but what will it do when it can find no hobyahs to eat?” the woman asked, staring at Gregory and the living sculpture whose shape was rapidly becoming more and more definite, and more and more horrible.

“It will fall asleep,” Alain answered, “like a squirrel in winter.”

“What . . . what will wake it?” asked one of the men, staring fearfully as the creature began to make a grating noise that gradually turned into a basso purring.

“Only the scent of more hobyahs,” Alain assured it. He turned to look himself, and smiled. “See! Yonder it comes, and its crafter with it.”

The tailor-made monster had the body of a giant leopard, but its head was twice as wide as its shoulders, shaped like two soup bowls set rim to rim—and where the rims met was a mouth that stretched all the way across. Its ears were each half the size of its head, round and cupped—but if they were the cups, its eyes were the saucers, with vertical pupils that could probably see very clearly by nothing more than starlight. Its nose was an egg half as wide as its mouth with huge nostrils.

The creature grinned, displaying a mouthful of sawteeth.

The villagers huddled away from it in terror—until Gregory reached up to scratch. The creature tilted its head upward so that his fingers could rub under its chin, and the purring became as loud as a cement mixer in love.

The people froze, staring in surprise.

Then the creature lay down and laid its chin on its paws, so that Gregory could scratch behind its ears. It closed its eyes in sheer pleasure.

“Perhaps it is nothing to fear after all,” said the woman.

“Kitty!” cried three treble voices, and small feet pounded past the villagers in a tattoo as rapid as a drumroll. The villagers cried out in alarm and made a frantic dive for the children, but they reached Gregory and his creature first, where one proceeded to clamber up astride its back, another began to stroke its furry sides, and the third began to scratch at the corner of its jaw.

“Behind its ears,” Gregory told the boy on its back. “It likes that almost as much as beneath its jaw.”

The creature tilted its head up so that the child on the ground could rub its chin, or what passed for one. The boy on its back began to rub behind its ears as though it were a washboard, and he doing the laundry.

Gregory stepped away, smiling at his handiwork, then turned to the villagers. “Here is your guardian—your very own hobyah-hunter.”

The adults stared, then crept forward step by step and, hesitantly, began to join the children in stroking their new pet.

“Are you sure it is safe for them?” Alain asked, frowning.

“Safer than a wall and a moat,” Gregory assured him, “but it will take them a while to believe that.”

They went on their way, the brothers eyeing the prince warily. Gregory’s thought sounded in Geoffrey’s mind: When did Alain become intelligent?

It must have been in him all along, Geoffrey answered,but never had occasion to show itself until now.

He has ever been a modest man—for a prince, Gregory admitted.

Self-effacing, almost, Geoffrey agreed. Now, though, when circumstances are desperate, he does not hesitate to offer his ideas.

Perhaps it is only that—knowing that his notions cannot make things worse, and may save us all. Gregory didn’t seem convinced, though.

Kill or cure, Geoffrey agreed, save or die—and he has always been a man of good judgment.

Now, it seems, judging when to speak and when to be silent. Gregory’s eyes widened in surprise. Why, it must have always been so! And the wisest course before, has been silence.

His judgment only errs in his opinion of himself. Geoffrey sighed. How shall we mend that, brother?

That, Gregory thought judiciously, I think we may leave to our sister.

Let us hope he does not surprise her as he does us. Geoffrey’s thought had a sardonic tinge. Then his eyes widened.You do not suppose she already knows, do you?

“What in good candor is that obscene thing?” Quicksilver stared at the roadblock ahead of them.

The women drew up their horses side by side, staring at a vast pulsating white mound that filled the whole lane.

“It would seem to be a mass of witch-moss,” Cordelia said, “but what immense creature was it?”

“And who made it disintegrate into a mound of jelly?” Allouette asked.

There was no answer to either question, of course. The three women fought to hold their horses still—all three mounts were trying to shy away from the pulsating thing—and stared at the obstruction while they tried to work out what could have happened there.

“Dare we go closer?” Cordelia wondered.

“I fail to see any reason why we should not,” Quicksilver returned. “If it is unformed, after all, it has no claws or teeth with which to do us harm.” She touched her horse’s flanks with her heels—but the mare dug in her hooves obstinately. Quicksilver frowned at her. “Nay, sweet horse! Go ahead!”

“Wait.” Allouette raised a hand to touch her elbow.

Quicksilver whirled, a hot denunciation on her tongue, but Allouette was pointing ahead. “Another will test it for us.”

Quicksilver turned back in time to see a squirrel dash across the road two feet in front of the mound.