King Kobold Revived

She lifted the paddle; the mess flowed slowly down from it into the pot. “Not quite thick enow,” the old witch muttered, and went back to stirring. “Put the jars back on the shelves, child; a tidy kitchen makes a good brew.”

Gwen picked up a few jars, but as she did she glanced toward the cave-mouth. The clamor was much louder. “Old Agatha, they come!”

The first of the villagers stormed into the cave, brandishing a scythe.

“Their clamor shall but help the brew’s flavor,” said the old witch with a delightedly wicked grin. She bent over the pot, and crooned.

The peasant slammed into the invisible haze barrier, and rebounded, knocking over the next two behind him. The fourth and fifth stumbled over their fallen comrades, adding nicely to the pile. The stack heaved as the ones on the bottom tried to struggle to their feet. The top layers shrieked, leaped up, and fled smack-dab into the arms of their lately-come reinforcements. The resulting frantic struggle was somewhat energetic, and the ledge was only wide enough for one man at a time; the peasants seesawed back and forth, teetering perilously close to the edge, flailing their arms for balance and squalling in terror.

“ ‘Tis a blessing the ledge is so narrow, they ca

She hobbled into the entryway. Gwen caught up the tripod and ran after her.

As she set down the tripod and Agatha hooked the pot on it again, two sticks of wood thudded against the ledge, sticking two feet up above the stone.

“Scaling ladders!” gasped Agatha. “This was well-pla

Gwen ran for the bellows, wishing she knew what old Agatha was pla

As she returned—handing the bellows to Agatha where she crouched over the pot in the middle of the entryway—a tall, bearded figure appeared at the top of the ladder, clambering onto the ledge. The man leveled his dark, polished staff at the cave-mouth. The staff gave a muted clank as he set its butt against the stone.

“An iron core!” Agatha pointed the bellows over the pot at the preacher and began pumping them furiously. “That staff must not touch my son!”

But the forward end of the staff had already touched the heat haze. A spark exploded at the top of the staff. Skolax howled victory and swung his staff to beckon his forces. The peasants shouted and surged into the cave.

“Bastard!” Agatha screamed. “Vile Hell-fiends! Murrain upon thee! Thou hast slain my son!”

She glared furiously, pumping the bellows like a maniac. The steam from the pot shot forward toward the mob.

They stopped dead. A deathly pallor came over their faces. Little red dots began appearing on their skins. They screamed, whirling about and flailing at their comrades, swatting at something unseen that darted and stung them.

For a moment, the crowd milled and boiled in two conflicting streams at the cave-mouth; then the back ranks screamed and gave way as the phantom stings struck them too, and the mob fled back along the ledge, away from the cave.

Only the preacher remained, struggling against the flock of phantom bees, his face swelling red with ghost-stings.

The old witch threw back her head and cackled shrill and long, still pumping the bellows. “We have them, child! We have them now!” Then she bent grimly over the pot, pumping harder, and spat, “Now shall they pay for his death! Now shall my Eumenides hie them home!”

With a titanic effort, Skolax threw himself forward, his staff whirling up over the witch’s head. Gwen leaped forward to shield her; but the staff jumped backward, jerking the preacher off his feet and throwing him hard on the stone floor. Agatha’s triumphant cry cut through his agonized bellow: “He lives! My son Harold lives!”

But the preacher lifted his staff as though it were a huge and heavy weight, his face swelling with ghost-stings and rage. “Hearken to me! Hearken to Skolax! Tear them! Rend them! They ca

Rod leaped forward, grabbing the staff, yanking it out of the preacher’s hands with a violent heave. But the whole crowd surged in after him, screaming and shouting. Fingers clawed at the witches; scythes swung…

Then light, blinding light, a sunburst, a nova—silent light, everywhere.

And silence, deep and sudden, and falling, falling, through blackness, total and unrelieved, all about them, and cold that drilled to their bones…

Chapter 2

And something struck his heels, throwing him back. Something hard, heels, hips, and shoulders, and he tucked his chin in from reflex.

And fire burned in the blackness.

A campfire, only it burned in a small iron cage, black bars slanting up to a point.

Rod’s eyes fastened on that cage for the simple reassurance of solid geometry in a world suddenly crazy. It was a tetrahedron, a fire burning inside a tetrahedron.

But what the hell was it doing here?

And for that matter, where was “here”?

Rephrase the question; because, obviously, the fire and cage belonged here. So…

What was Rod doing here?

Back to Question Number Two: Where was “here”?

Rod started noticing details. The floor was stone, square black basalt blocks, and the fire burned in a shallow circular well, surrounded by the basalt. The walls were distant, hard to see in the dim light from the fire; they seemed to be hung with velvet, some dark deep color, not black. Rod squinted—it looked to be a rich maroon.

The hell with the curtains. Gwen…

A sudden, numbing fear pervaded Rod. He was scarcely able to turn his head, was afraid to look, for fear she might not be there. Slowly, he forced his gaze around the darkened chamber, slowly…

A great black form lay about ten feet from him: Fess.

Rod knelt and felt for broken bones, taking things in easy stages. Satisfied that he didn’t have to be measured in fractions, he clambered carefully to his feet and went over to the horse.

Fess was lying very still, which wasn’t like him; but he was also very stiff, each joint locked, which was like him when he had had a seizure. Rod didn’t blame him; being confronted with that journey, he could do with a seizure himself—or at least a mild jolt; bourbon, for instance…

He groped under the saddlehorn and found the reset switch.

The black horse relaxed, then slowly stirred, and the great head lifted. The eyes opened, large, brown, and bleary. Not for the first time, Rod wondered if they could really be, as the eye-specs claimed, plastic.

Fess turned his head slowly, looking as puzzled as a horsehair-over-metal face can, then turned slowly back to Rod.

“Di-dye… chhhab a… zeizure, RRRRRodd?”

“A seizure? Of course not! You just decided you needed a lube job, so you dropped into the nearest grease station.” Rod tactfully refrained from mentioning just how Fess had “dropped in.”

“I… fffai-led you i

Rod winced at the touch of self-contempt that coated the vodered words and interrupted. “You did all you could; and since you’ve saved my life five or six times before, I’m not going to gripe over the few times you’ve failed.” He patted Fess between the ears.

The robot hung his head for a moment, then surged to his feet, hooves clashing on the stone. His nostrils spread; and Rod had a strange notion his radar was operating, too.