The Warlock Enraged-Warlock 4 (12 page)

Gregory gulped, and nodded.

"What was it about?"

"Nasty man," Gregory sniffled.

"Nasty?" For some reason. Rod was suddenly on his guard. "What was he doing?"

"He did creep upon us." Gregory looked up at his father, eyes wide. "Creeping up, to hurl things at us." Rod stared into his eyes for a second, then began to pat his back gently. "Don't worry about it. Even if the nasty man did sneak up on us, your brothers and sister would gang up on him before he could do much damage." He smiled, and saw a tentative, quivering lift at the comers of Gregory's mouth. He tousled the boy's hair and turned to look at his wife. He saw a large pair of eyes staring back at him. "Kind of thought you'd wake up, if one of the kids had a problem."

"I did hear him," Gwen said softly. "I did see his dream. And, my lord..."

Rod couldn't help feeling that being on his guard was just the thing for the occasion. "What's wrong?"

"Gregory's mind would not conjure up so mild a phantasm, nor one so threatening." The tension was building inside Rod. Anger began to boil up under it. Rod tried to hold it down, reminding himself that he and Gwen could probably handle any attempt to hurt them. But the mere thought that anyone would dare to attack his children, to plant nightmares in their sleeping minds...!

Magnus, Cordelia, and Geoffrey suddenly sat bolt-upright.

"Papa," Cordelia gasped, "what dost thou?"

"Is it that bad already? I'm trying to hold my temper."

"Thou dost amazingly." Magnus blinked the sleep out of his eyes and leaned closer, on hands and knees, to peer at his father. "In truth, thou dost amazingly. I would never guess thy rage, to look at thee. Papa, what..." The night seemed to thicken a few feet away from the children. Something hazy appeared, coalesced, hardened, and shot to earth, slamming into the ground a few feet from Magnus's hand. His head snapped around; he stared at a six-inch rock. Cordelia's gaze was rivetted to it, too, in horror; but Geoffrey leaped to his feet. "Ambush!" The night thickened again, just over Magnus's head. Something hazy appeared...

... and began to coalesce...

"Heads up!" Rod dove for his son. His shoulder knocked Magnus sprawling, and a foot-thick rock crashed down, grazing Rod's hip. He bellowed with pain—and anger at the monster who dared attack his children. His full rage cut loose.

"Ware!" Magnus cried. The children were already looking up, as their father had bade them, so they saw the rocks materializing—two, three, all plummeting to earth as they became real.

"Dodge ball!" Magnus shouted. Instantly, he and his brothers and sister were bounding and bobbing back and forth, Cordelia weaving an aerial dance that would've given a computer tracker a blown fuse, the boys appearing and 84 Christopher Stasheff

disappearing here, there, yonder, like signal lights in a storm. Through their flickering pavane, Magnus called in suppressed rage, "Art thou hurted. Papa?"

"Nothing that a little murder won't cure," Rod yelled back. "Children—seek! Discover and destroy!" The children seemed to focus more sharply, and stayed visible for longer intervals.

Gwen was on her feet, still, her eyes warily probing the night above them.

Then Geoffrey hopped to his left, just as a small boulder materialized right where his chest had been.

Rod stood rigid with horror. If the boy hadn't happened to jump aside, just at that instant... "Somebody's trying to teleport rocks into the kids' bodies!"

"'Twould be instant death." Gwen's face was pale, but taut with promised mayhem.

Rod stood tree-still, his eyes wide open; but the night blurred around him into a formless void as his mind opened, seeking....

Cordelia seized her broomstick and shot up into the sky. For a moment, all three boys disappeared. Then Magnus reappeared, far across the meadow, dimly seen in the moonlight. He disappeared again just as Geoffrey reappeared ten feet away, twenty feet in the air. Air shot outward with a pistol-crack, inward with firecracker-pop. The meadow resounded with reports, like miniature machine gun fire. Geoffrey disappeared with a dull boom, and a treetop nearby swayed with a bullwhip-crack as Gregory appeared in the topmost limbs.

And stones kept falling, all over the meadow.

"Husband!" Gwen's voice was taut. "This enemy will mark us, too, ere long."

That jolted Rod. "I suppose so—if he doesn't just pick on little kids. Better split up."

Gwen seized her broomstick and disappeared into the dark sky.

That left Rod feeling like a sitting duck. He supposed he would be able to float up into the sky himself, if he just thought about it—but he'd never done it, and didn't want to have to pay attention to trying to keep himself up while he was trying to find and annihilate an enemy. Capture, he

reminded himself—capture, if you can.

But he hoped he'd find he couldn't.

Magnus appeared ten feet away, shaking his head. "He doth cloak his thoughts well. Papa. I cannot..." Suddenly, his eyes lost focus. Geoffrey's laugh carolled over the meadow, clear and filled with glee. Magnus disappeared with a pistol-crack. Rod leaped for Fess's back and shot across the meadow, a living missile with a double warhead. He was just in time to see Geoffrey and Magnus shoot up out of the trees, carrying a young man stretched like a tug-of-war rope between them. He struggled and cursed, kicking and whiplashing about with his legs and torso, but the boys stretched his arms tight, laughing with delight, and pulling with far more strength than their little bodies could account for.

The young man shut his mouth, and glared at Magnus. Foreboding struck, and Rod sprang from Fess's back in a flying tackle.

He smacked into the young man's legs so hard they bruised his shoulder. Above him, the warlock yowled in pain.

Then it was daytime, suddenly full noon. The glare stung Rod's eyes, and he squinted against it. He could make out fern leaves closely packed above, and a huge lizardlike monstrosity staring at them from five feet away. Then its mouth lolled open in a needle-fanged grin, and it waddled toward them with amazing speed. Panic clawed its way up Rod's throat, and he almost let go to snatch out his knife—

but the enemy warlock panicked first.

It was night again, total night. No, that was moonlight, wasn't it? And it showed Rod water, endless waves heaving below him. One reached up to slap at his heels, and its impact travelled on up to hit his stomach with chilling dread. He could just picture himself falling, sinking beneath those undulating fluid hills, rising to thrash about in panic, clawing for land, for wood, for something that floated.... Instinctively, he tightened his hug on the ankles. Then sunlight seared his eyes, the sunlight of dawn, and bitter cold stabbed his lungs. Beyond the legs he clung to, the world spread out below him like a map, an immensity of green. Jagged rocks stabbed up, only a few yards below 86 Christopher Stasheff

his heels. It had to be a mountain peak, somewhere on the mainland.

Darkness again, blackness—but not quite total, for moonlight filtered through a high, grated window, showing him blocks of granite that dripped with moisture, and niter webbing the high comers of the cramped chamber. Huge rusty staples held iron chains to the walls. A skeleton lounged in the fetters at the end of a pair of those chains. Another held a thick-bodied man with a bushy black beard. His brocade doublet was torn and crusted with dried blood, and a grimy bandage wrapped his head. He stared at them in total amazement. Then relief flooded his face, and his mouth opened....

Limbo. Nothingness. Total void.

There wasn't any light, but there wasn't any darkness, either—just a gray, formless nothingness. Rod felt an instant conviction that he wasn't seeing with his eyes—especially when colors began to twist through the void in writhing streaks, and a hiss of white noise murmured in the distance. They floated, adrift, and the body in Rod's arms suddenly began to writhe and heave again. A nasal voice cursed, "Thou vile recreants! I will rend thee, I will tear thee! Monstrous, perverse beasts, who..."

Geoffrey cried out, "Abandon!"

Suddenly Rod was hugging nothing; the legs were gone. He stared blankly at the space where they'd been. Then panic surged up within him, and he flailed about, trying to grasp something solid, anything, the old primate fear of falling skewering his innards.

Then a small hand caught his, and Geoffrey's voice cried,

"Gregory! Art there, lad? Hold thou, and pull!" Gentle breeze kissed Rod's cheek, and the scents of pine and meadow grass filled his head with a sweetness he didn't remember them ever having, before. Moonlight showed him the meadow where they'd camped, and Gwen darting forward, to throw her arms about him—and the two boys who clung to him. "Oh, my lord! My bairns! Oh, thou naughty lads, to throw thyselves into such danger! Praise Heaven thou'rt home!"

Cordelia was hugging Rod's neck hard enough to gag

him, head pressed against his and sobbing, "Papa! I feared we had lost thee!"

Rod wrapped his arms around her, grateful to have something solid to hold on to. He looked up to see Geoffrey peeking at him over Gwen's shoulder. Rod nodded. "I don't know how you did it, son—but you did."

6

"'Twas not so hard as that."

The blankets were around their shoulders now, and a small campfire danced in the center of the family circle. Cordelia turned a spit over the fire from time to time, roasting a slow rabbit for breakfast.

'"Not so hard?'" Rod frowned at Geoffrey. "How could it have been anything but hard? That young villain had to be one of the best teleporters in the land! I mean, aside from you boys, the only warlock we've got who can teleport anything but himself, is old Galen—and nobody ever sees him!"

"Save old Agatha," Gwen murmured.

"Nobody ever sees her either," Rod retorted.

"Save old Galen," Cordelia reminded him.

"He's going to need it," Rod agreed. He turned back to the boys. "Toby's the best of our young warlocks, and he's just beginning to leam how to teleport other objects. He's almost thirty, too. So Alfar's sidekick has to be better than Toby."

"Nay, not so excellent as that." Magnus shook his head.

"And he was a very poor marksman."

"For which, praise Heaven." Rod shuddered. "But he was too good at teleporting himself—even over his weight 88

allowance! I didn't begin to recognize most of the places he took us to!"

"Any child could do the same," Magnus answered, annoyed.

"I keep telling you, son—don't judge others by yourself. Why didn't he just disappear, though?"

"He could not," Geoffrey grinned. "We could tell where he would flee to, and fled there but a fraction of a second behind him."

"How could you tell where he was going?"

"They held his hands," Gwen reminded. "Thoughts travel more readily, by touch."

Magnus nodded. "We could feel, through his skin, where he meant to go next."

Rod stared at him for a moment, then sat back, shaking his head. "Beyond my comprehension. Thoughts can't travel any FESSter just by touching—can they?"

"No," Fess's voice murmured through the earphone implanted in the bone behind Rod's right ear. "But there would be less signal-loss than with a radiated waveform." Cordelia sighed, striving for patience with her dullard father. "'Tis not that one doth hear faster, Papa—only that one doth hear more. With touch, even tinges of thought speak clearly."

"I bow to the guest expert." Rod managed to keep the fond amusement out of his tone, giving the words a sour twist.

Fess plowed on. "The neurons in the warlock's hand did, in all probability, induce the signal directly into the neurons in the boys' hands."

"He couldn't hide his thought-traces from you." Rod turned back to Geoffrey. "So you always had just enough clues to follow him. But how did you manage to bring me along?"

Gregory shook his head, eyes round. "That, Papa, we cannot say."

"We thought thou couldst," Magnus added. Rod scowled. "No... can't say that I did. Except that I was bound and determined that I wasn't going to let go of him...."

90 Christopher Stasheff

The children stared at one another, then at their mother.

"What's the matter?" Rod demanded. "What am I—a monster?"

"Nay, Papa," Cordelia said softly, "thou'rt only a warlock—yet a most puissant one."

"You mean it was just my determination that took me wherever he went?"

Magnus nodded. "Thy magic followed all else that was needful."

Rod was still, gazing at the fire for a few minutes while he tried to absorb that. It was unnerving to think that he was beginning to be able to work magic the way his wife and children did—just by thinking of it. Now he was going to have to watch his step, to make sure he didn't do it accidentally. He could just hear a casual passerby asking,

"How do you think the weather's going to be today, Mr. Warlock?" "Well, to tell you the truth, I think it's going to rain...." and, sploosh! They'd be drenched.... He shook off the mood, and looked up to find the children's gazes glued to him. They looked worried; he wondered what they'd been up to. "So. Finally, he took us into a dungeon."

"'Twas the sorcerer Alfar's dungeon," Geoffrey explained, and Cordelia gasped. Rod nodded. "Convenient. If he could just have figured out some way to get rid of us, we'd be right there to hand for the jailers. But how did he figure he was going to be able to keep you there? How could he prevent you from teleporting out?"

"I do not think he had thought that far," Magnus said slowly.

Rod was still nodding. "Makes sense. I wouldn't be too good at the details, if I was trying to run from the enemy, but he was coming right along."

"He was not attempting that," Geoffrey said, with conviction. "He meant only to take us to a place in which we would be unwilling to stay."

Rod smiled slowly. "Clever kid. Chose a nice one, didn't he?"

"Aye." Magnus shivered. "I was well relieved, to be quit of that place."