Crewel Lye (8 page)

“The favor!” she cried. “You promised!”

“But--”

“Here, I'll invoke the spell,” she said. She made a gesture with her hands. There was a flash, and then a funny wrenching sensation.

When my equilibrium re-established itself, I discovered that the bower had expanded enormously. It was now twice as big in diameter as it had been and eight times the volume. Length-volume judgments come readily to a person who may have to carry home the mass of the animal he puts an arrow through; he quickly learns that twice the height means a good deal more than twice the weight. The cushion I sat on was now more like a small bed.

“How do you like me now, Jordan?” Bluebell asked.

I turned my head to look at her--and gaped again. She was my size--or as close as a woman need be. She was phenomenal; the attributes that had been cute when she was small were now voluptuous. “I--what happened?”

She laughed yet again. “It's the spell,” she explained. “It accommodated us. You are now an eighth your former mass, and I am eight times mine, so we're the same.”

I looked at the bower again and the cushion. Yes; every dimension had doubled, which meant that my own dimensions had halved. I was half as tall, half as wide, and half as deep, while she had doubled every dimension. It certainly made a difference!

“But the baby,” I protested. “If--”

“When,” she corrected me.

“When the, uh, the stork brings--what size will it be?”

“My size, of course, so I can take proper care of him,” she said. “Until he leaves the tree. Then--who knows? Some halflings can change size.”

“I certainly never expected this!” I said.

“So I gathered,” she said. “Well, let's not waste time. I know you want to get on with your more interesting adventures, where there be ogres and such.”

There is no point in describing in tedious detail what followed. I'll just say that elven maidens are fully as adept in summoning storks as are human maidens, and I was glad to do my part. When I had done it, I got ready to leave the bower, but Bluebell held me back. “Not yet,” she said.

Oh? Well, the Accommodation-Spell hadn't dissipated yet, so there was no point in my leaving the bower then;

I would be too small to do much adventuring.

We ate, for the bower was stocked with giant fruits and nuts and bags of beverage. I suppose they were normal size; I was the one who had changed. Anyway, we feasted. There was a privy region for other natural functions. Then I napped for perhaps an hour and felt much improved when I woke.

It seemed she wanted to signal the stork again, so we did that. When that was done, again I thought it was time to depart, but again she restrained me. So we had another meal, and another sleep, all very nice, and I woke yet further restored. It turned out that she wished to generate a third message to the stork--or maybe she figured that three storks were better than one--and she was so lovely and persistent that I could do no less than cooperate.

“Now it is complete,” she said. “The stork will come.”

“You're sure?” I asked. “Maybe it would be better to send a few more messages.”

She laughed, as she did so readily. “You are truly delightful, Jordan-Man, but I have held you too long already. I have felt the stork's acknowledgment; the baby will be delivered in due course.”

That was the funny thing about the stork: it insisted on a delay before delivery. Maybe this was to give the prospective mother time to change her mind, or learn how to pin diapers. But I knew Bluebell's mind was set; she wanted that halfling.

So she dismissed me, and I had to depart. Such is the life of an adventurer. “It's certainly been fun,” I told her, “and I'll remember it always.”

She kissed me, one last time. “You're sweet.” Then she waved her arms, reversing the spell, and in a moment we were back to our original sizes.

We drank another draught of grog and left the bower, climbing through the foliage and on down the massive trunk of the elm. The other elves of the tribe were awaiting us at the base.

“We have cared for your horse these three days, Barbarian,” King Crown-of-Thorns told me.

“Three days?” I said incredulously.

“Aye, Man! Did you not know?”

“It seemed like three hours!”

“Now we must see to the augur,” the King said. He led us to an old woman elf who sat at a shaped stone and had a sparkling ball before her.

Bluebell stopped before the old woman. “The fate of my baby,” she said.

The woman picked up the ball and flung it at Bluebell. The ball expanded to englobe her for a moment, then contracted and returned to its place on the stone.

The woman peered into its sparkles, which now seemed to have a different pattern. “A son,” she said. “He will leave you when he matures and go seek a wife among the human kind. He will never achieve notoriety, but his descendants may.”

“Thank you,” Bluebell said, sounding disappointed. Evidently she had hoped for more.

Aware of this, the woman peered more closely, tracing down a particular sparkle. “Let me see--there is one, far down the line, centuries hence--yes, she will consort with human Kings of Xanth.”

“Oh!” Bluebell exclaimed, brightening.

Then the old elfess threw the globe at me. Surprised, I stepped back, but it expanded to my size and englobed me. For an instant I was dazzled by the sparkles; then they were gone, and the globe was back on the stone.

The elfess' little face turned grim as she contemplated the sparkles. “Let's pass on this one,” she muttered.

“No, I want to know,” I said. “If I am to be ancestor to the consort of Kings, what it says about me should be known.”

The elfess grimaced. “You will be doomed by a cruel lie,” she told me. “Yet it is not the end. After your flesh has rotted, you will find true love.”

“Uh, thank you,” I said, no more thrilled than Bluebell had been at first. I didn't really believe in fortune-telling, but I didn't really disbelieve, either.

Then the gathering dissipated. The King bade me farewell, ironic as that might seem after the prophecy, and Bluebell climbed up to give me a parting kiss.

I went to Pook, who had been happily grazing for three days on the rich elf-sward and was fit and fat. He had not tried to leave, for that would have implied that he was not my true steed, and the elves might have become awkwardly suspicious. So he had stayed, and when the elven children had begged him for rides “in the name of the Barbarian Man,” he had obliged. I knew he was not yet tame, merely smart enough to play the role he had to. Just as I had been, up in the bower of the elf elm.

I mounted and rode away, pausing at the fringe of the glade to wave to the assembled elves. They waved back. Then, somewhat sadly, I moved on.

I rode through the pleasant elf-kept forest, feeling better as the poignancy of parting passed. I had indeed spent three days with the elves. My body had completed its process of healing, and I was at full strength again. Maybe that had been one reason Bluebell held me so long--to send me out into the jungle fully ready, rather than partly ready. If so, she had done me a favor beyond my realization at the time. Surely the other elves would not have let me stay, once she finished with me; they were businesslike folk at heart. But if I ever encountered another such tribe, I would be sure to pay my respects; I liked their mode of entertaining travelers.

The map showed that I was approaching dragon country. But I couldn't skirt it to the west; the Elements of Earth and Air were there, marked unfit for occupancy. The map was accurate about the northern regions I had already traversed, and I believed it about the southern ones. That left the eastern side, and I decided to go that route. How nice to have forewarning about the dragons! Naturally barbarians boast of slaying dragons, but the closer a barbarian actually gets to a dragon, the less inclined he feels toward combat. I found myself in absolutely no hurry now. So I veered Pook east.

We traveled for a day without event. Things were quiet in the elven region; there weren't even any tangle trees. It occurred to me that in some respects the elven society was superior to the human one; it certainly wasn't this pleasant or safe in the vicinity of Fen Village.

But as we left the elven region, the terrain became rougher, and we came up against the river the map showed as originating in the south and flowing north, parallel to the more distant coast. I considered crossing it, but there were flashes of color in the water's depths, and Pook balked. He remembered the sharks in the bog, and I couldn't blame him. So we turned south, into dragon country after all.

Then Pook sniffed, winding something. He wasn't afraid, just nervous, so I let him go toward it. It turned out to be a patch of blood on the forest floor, a scratchy trail, and a few feathers.

“Some bird came down to drink from the river,” I conjectured. “And some predator attacked it. Bird got away, but injured. Happens all the time in the wilderness.”

But still Pook sniffed, perplexed. “There's more?” I asked. “Want to track down the bird? I warn you, it won't be pretty.” I knew that few horses, ghost or otherwise, had much taste for blood.

Pook sniffed out the trail, and I let him. He had a better nose than I had thought. Why was he so interested in this?

Then we came in sight of the bird. It was a white stork with a broken wing--and it had a bundle.

I double took, astonished. This stork was making a delivery! That bundle contained a baby!

Could Bluebell--? No. As I said, there was always a delay of several months before the baby was delivered. The bureaucratic lapse differed, and tended to be longest for human beings; evidently storks didn't like human people as well as they liked mouse people or gremlin folk or whatever. Certainly the wait was more than a day for elves. Besides, the bundle was way too big to hold an elfling.

The stork looked at me. His eyes were glazed with pain. “Friend or foe?” he asked.

“You talk?” I asked stupidly. It was difficult to believe that such a long, hard beak could form human syllables. But it was also not easy to believe that those backward-bending knees could enable it to walk. If we disbelieved everything that was hard, we wouldn't believe in Xanth at all.

“I talk,” he agreed. “I don't fly, at the moment. I suffered a mishap.” He craned his head about on his marvelously supple neck to eye his torn wing, from which blood still dripped. “Are you planning to help or hinder?”

“Uh, to help, I guess,” I said awkwardly. I hadn't known that storks conversed with people like this. If they spoke our language, why did we have to make such intricate signals when ordering babies? It should be easier just to send a letter. No--immediately I realized that illiterates like me would never be able to order offspring, then; so there had to be a nonverbal or nonwritten signal. Anyway, I had never met a stork before; evidently their line of business required human communication at times, so they were trained for it. “But I don't know exactly what I can do. I'm not apt at healing others.”

“There's a healing spring south of the--I forget what, but that's where it is,” the stork said. I realized that the bird's brain was suffering some fuzziness. “I could fly there quickly--I know right where it is--if I could fly. But that confounded little dragon caught me unawares. I pecked it on the snout and it ran home to its mother, but alas, my wing was already gone. So I'll just have to hoof it, so to speak.”

I studied the bundle. “That looks pretty heavy,” I remarked. “Are you sure you can carry it, in your condition?”

“I must deliver!” the stork said, folding his good wing across his breast and gazing reverently upward.

“Uh, yes. Maybe we can give you a ride.”

The stork looked at Pook. “That would be appreciated. But it's a fair bit, by foot. And it's to ogre country.”

“That's where we're going,” I said. “Let me give you a hand with that.” I reached for the bundle.

There was a growl, and a hairy hand came out and grasped my wrist with appalling strength. Startled, I jerked my hand away--and the thing came right out of the bundle, hanging onto my wrist. It was a hairy mass of glower and growl.

“That's no baby!” I cried, shocked.

“Yes, it is,” the stork said tiredly. “A baby ogre. Technically, an ogret. I told you where I was taking it.”

“So you did,” I agreed. Barbarians are not too bright about some things; I had missed the obvious connection. Of course ogres had babies, too, just as did humans and elves. Hardly as nice as humans and elves, but a similar principle. “Now how do I get this little monster off my wrist?” The matter was getting urgent, because the ogret was chinning himself up, one-handed, and was angling to bite off my hand.

“Knock him on the head until he lets go,” the stork advised.

“But he's a baby'”

“That's how ogres show affection.”

“Oh.” Live and learn. I rapped the baby on his stony skull with my free knuckle, bruising my hand, and he let go and dropped back into the bag.

“We'd better deliver him before he gets hungry,” the stork said.

Excellent notion! I loaded stork and bundle on Pook, then mounted. The ogret grabbed onto a link of chain and started chewing on it. The three of us were crowded, but Pook could handle it. Apparently he had some sympathy with the plight of the stork. Pook was a pretty decent animal, really.

The ghost horse started out at a brisk pace. I knew why; there was an incoming smell of dragon on the wind. How long would it take for the dragonlet to bring its mother back here?

“It's really not far to--to--” the stork remarked, but seemed to forget what he was going to say. It was as if his blood were draining right out of his memory.

There was a sound. I felt a shiver; that was a dragon snort, off to the right. I was in no mood at the moment to take on a dragon! I urged Pook to faster speed, but he needed no urging; he fairly flew across the land. I looked back over my shoulder to check on stork and ogret; the stork had his feet hooked firmly into a chain, so was secure, but the ogret had chewed almost through the link he was working on. “Stop that!” I snapped at him, and he growled and continued chewing. The trouble with juveniles these days is that they have no discipline!

The dragon heard us, of course, and moved to intercept us. Dragons have phenomenal ears that tune in on whatever interests them; what interests them most is prey, and just about any living creature is prey to a dragon. I had heard folk tales about single men fighting and slaying single dragons, but the closer I came to that sort of activity, the less I believed it. The fact is, the smallest grown dragon is generally more than a match for the largest man, unless that man has magic. I did have magic, of course, but I wasn't sure how much good it would do me in the belly of a dragon. I suppose in time my bones would reconstitute from the dragon droppings, and I would recover, but I didn't care to try that out. Certainly there would be some discomfort and awkwardness. Who wants to wake in the middle of a pile of dragon manure?

Pook was making excellent time. We were leaving the dragon behind. But then another popped up ahead, and I knew we were in trouble. In fact, I was coming to resent the myth that barbarian warriors love to fight dragons; it seemed that the dragons were the first to believe it, being eager for the fray. There is a distinction between adventure and folly that even the average barbarian is aware of.

We veered to the left, to the bank of the river. The river was smaller here than it had been downstream, but when we sought to cross it, a water dragon lifted its head and hissed. No escape there!

“Hang on--I've got to fight!” I warned. Supposedly, barbarians fight just for the fun of it; that's a half-truth.

We enjoy combat when we expect to win. With dragons, the odds are inclement.

I guided Pook with my legs. He was very responsive, knowing that once again his half-life was on the line as much as my whole life was. I anchored my left hand on a chain and lifted my good sword with my right. The dragon behind me was a fire-breather, so we stayed clear of it; the one in front was a smoker. That would be no fun, but was a better risk than fire. They say that where there's smoke there's fire, but that's not generally true among dragons. They also say that more people die from smoke inhalation than from direct burns, but--I didn't trust that. So we charged the smoker snout--on.

The dragon opened his mouth, inhaling. Naturally he didn't stay stuffed with smoke all the time, any more than a man holds his breath all the time. The smoke is generated in the belly at need, a bit like gas in the human belly, and it takes a moment to work up the proper pressure and richness. I did not allow the dragon that time; I came up so fast that I arrived just as the first puff of smoke started out. I didn't bother with anything fancy; I simply rammed the point of my sword up his right nostril. Since I was hanging onto Pook, and Pook was charging forward, that thrust packed a lot of wallop.

The sword shoved its full length up the dragon's nose, and my gloved hand followed it, and also my arm up to the elbow. It was an excellent shot; I knew the point had skewered The creature's tiny brain. That wasn't a mortal wound, of course, but it did cause the monster some discomfort. Dragons don't really like having swords rammed up their noses, and they can get quite perturbed about having their brains skewered. For one thing, it causes their coordination to suffer somewhat, and that's inconvenient when one is engaged in mortal combat.

I braced my body against the dragon's warm snoot and hauled out my sword. A gout of blood followed it, dousing me in gore. But the dragon's head of smoke was already under way, and now this shoved the gore clear and blasted out to surround us. I held my breath, of course, and trusted the others were doing the same; it's a natural and sensible reflex. I urged Pook away from there. He obeyed with alacrity, and in a moment we emerged from the smoke ball. The dragon was thrashing and choking, as the blood and smoke mixed in his nostril to form smog. Blood and smoke are relatively harmless separately, but smog can be deadly. The hole in the monster's brain was bothering it, too, so it wasn't handling its pipes as well as otherwise. Thus the smoker was preoccupied for the moment, and we didn't need to worry about him.

But now the fire-breather caught up. “Go for the tail!” I told Pook. I meant the tail of the smoker, which might shield us from some of the blast of the fire-breather's breath. But the ghost horse misunderstood and galloped for the wrong tail.

Naturally the dragon's head whipped about, a jet of fire chasing us in an apparent curve. We hurdled the tail just as the fire caught up--and the dragon toasted its own tail. Now, dragons have insulated pipes for the fire, but their flesh lacks that protection. You should have heard the roar it made!

“South!” I cried.

Pook oriented south and shot forward like an arrow. The two hurting dragons bumped into each other and got tangled in their own coils. By the time they realized we were gone, we were too far gone for them to catch us. I'd like to claim that this was my consummate skill in maneuvering, but it was simple garden-variety luck, and I wouldn't care to try it again.

But we weren't home free yet. A flying dragon had been attracted by the commotion and was cruising overhead. It had not descended while it looked as if the big land-bound dragons would eat us, but now it looped about and zeroed in. I saw its body huffing up fire and knew we had to get out of the way in a hurry. We couldn't outrun that!

“River!” I cried. Pook angled for the river, trusting my judgment, and his hooves struck the water as the first jet of fire slanted down. The fire missed, generating a huge hiss of steam as it hit the water. Water never did much like fire, and the sentiment was mutual.

The water dragon humped up. It elevated its head and roared at the flier, angry at this poaching in its preserve. When the flier didn't sheer off fast enough, the water dragon pursed its lips and squirted a column of water up, scoring on one wing. Now the flier changed course, spinning out of control; the blast of water had dislocated one wing.

“I know how that feels,” the stork remarked as the dragon tumbled into the water.

We got back on land and galloped south again, having escaped all four dragons. No doubt I would boast to my grandchildren of this exploit--but I never wanted to run that particular gantlet again!

Then a second flier appeared and drew a bead on us. This was the land of dragons, all right!

“Trees!” I yelled.

Pook headed for a copse of trees ahead. I hoped their trunks and foliage would help shield us from the flame. But then the horse braked to a halt.

“What are you doing?” I cried. Then I saw why.

The copse perched on the edge of a monstrous fissure in the ground. It was a sheer cliff leading down beyond vision; we couldn't go there! “What's that?” I asked incredulously.