Monsters and Magicians Page 6

  "When enough mature hybrids were available to make it fairly certain that there would be plenty of teachers for the young they would naturally produce, the Elder Ones—having meantime discovered some large islands which contained fewer deposits of the natural elements which had proven so inimical to their kind—departed the enclaves, taking with them

  a few of the most promising of the newer generations, added a few more promising pure-strain humans that they gathered from here and there, then began all over again in the newfound, more-salubrious lands."

  "Is this place, this Tiro-whatchamacallit, one of those islands, Puss?" asked Fitz. "What ocean is it in, anyway?"

  "It is . . . and it isn't," replied the feline. "Once, long and long and very long ago, as humans measure time, there existed an island exactly like to this one in the world from which you came, but shortly after most of the great ice-sheets melted away, it ceased to be, as did the entire archipelago save one island. No, Tiro-na-N'Og, wherein we now lie, long ago ceased to exist in the world from which you came, old friend. Fish swim over its bones and sea creatures of the great depths crawl upon them, in that world."

  "How did the inundations affect the breeding experiments of the ones you call the Elder Race?"

  "The subsidences were mostly gradual, so no lives were lost among the hybrids. Some of them and most of the ever-fewer Elder Ones went to the one remaining island, which had been most northerly of the archipelago. Of the others, small groups roamed here and there for a while among the savage, predatory races of pure-strain humans. Here and there, a few settled amongst their near-kin and, with their powers and relatively advanced technological abilities, became leaders of one kind or another to the primitives they and their get came to rule. But each succeeding generation became shorter and shorter lived and possessed less and less of the powers until,

  in time, their descendants were only rarely different at all from their fellow pure-strain humans, so dilute had their precious heritage become.

  "Other small groups, wishing to keep their heritage intact and pure in their children, sought out and settled in out-of-the-way places—mountaintops, oases deep in vast deserts, in the depths of swamps or the frigid wastes of the ice-lands, all of these places made comfortable to them by their great powers and that capable of being wrought by such powers. But these hybrids owned also great compassion for their near-kin, pure-strain humans, and despite the dangers— for more than just once, that great compassion for suffering beasts and humans has been the eventual ruination if not physical death of them and their

  g get—they moved among their powerless kindred to teach them ways to live better-fed, more comfortably, threatened by fewer natural dangers. They did much to better the lot of the pure humans . . . and sooner or later all were repaid, but always in a hard, bitter coin—suffering and even death being the lot of some/' "Are there any of them still around in my . . . in

  f the world I came from, Puss?" asked Fitz. "Any of the Elder Race or these hybrids?"

  The response, though silent like all telepathy, bore

  ! a tinge of sadness. "Of the Elder Ones, old friend, no, there are none left in that world of humans and other beasts. But, yes, a few of the descendants of those who survived the subsidence of that archipelago still dwell here and there, though wishing to continue to survive, they have all used their powers

  to conceal their true nature from their still-savage near-kin, the relatively pure humans/'

  "These Elder Ones all finally died out, then?" asked Fitz.

  "Five remain extant, in this world," stated the cat, "though even the youngest of them is old beyond the calculations of any pure-strain human. But not even the Dagda has knowingly seen or enjoyed converse with one in the space of centuries of human-reckoned time . . . or so I have been told."

  "Then just how does anyone know that they are still alive in this world, or just how many they are, if they're not seen or talked to for hundreds of years, Puss?" demanded Fitz.

  "They have ways of communicating, old friend," was the cat's reply. "Mostly they enter into the sleeping minds of the Dagda and other Sheedey, to explain and advise and teach, as they taught the hybrids of old."

  "Why only in their sleep?" asked Fitz, puzzledly.

  "Because," he was answered, "the Elder Race discovered, scores of millennia ago in the first generation of hybrids, that the minds of the Sheedey are most receptive, most porous, most retentive when generally unconscious to outside stimuli or influences. Also," the feline added, dryly, "in such a state, the pupil only hears, sees, smells and sometimes feels and tastes. He totally lacks the ability to ask endless questions, so the time of the teacher is not wasted in framing responses to trivia."

  "Oh, really?" beamed Fitz. "Then if the pupil cannot ask any questions, how does the teacher know

  that the lesson has been properly and understandably conveyed?"

  The tail lashed really hard, hard enough to cause a degree of pain in Fitz's legs even through the thickness of the insulated bag. "The Elder Ones know, as do all the Sheedey who are in full possession of their mature powers ... as you will know too, if you will but hurry on to find the Dagda and be fully invested by him. He alone, of all the Sheedey in this world or the other, can render you fully awakened, can invest you with your full powers and thus see you become that to which you were born. Moreover, he needs you, he needs you soon; there are still many tests you must survive and precious little time remains.

  "As soon as it is light, you must set out. Go east, go west or go north, but go."

  "Not north, Puss," replied Fitz. "I tried that, only to end up at what looked like a bastard cross between a rain forest and the great-granddaddy of all swamps. The look of the place would've been daunting enough, but after checking with Cool Blue who said he'd been into it once, I decided there was just no way the three of us, a single Norman knight, a baby-blue lion and myself could handle the monsters Cool Blue says live and hunt in that place."

  Once more the tail lashed. "There will be dangers, deadly dangers to threaten you in any direction you go. They are mostly tests and unavoidable, and they are assuredly deadly, but if you are to win to the Dagda's side and reclaim your heritage, you must meet and overcome them. Perhaps I erred in selecting the ensorcelled Hon as your guide, but it is done

  now and soon, in any case, if you survive a few more tests, I will be able to place a second guide with you, as well as direct you to a place wherein you will be able to take possession of certain objects which will serve to increase those powers of which you are already aware and alert you to others you do not know you own."

  "Fine," said Fitz, "but I can't start out in the morning, not unless Sir Gautier de Montjoie is back by then. He's gone off looking for his retainers. Besides, Cool Blue hasn't had good hunting and I more or less promised him I'd go down into the glen south of here and shoot him an antelope or four, in The morning. Oww! Damn it, Puss, take it easy with that tail of yours, will you? You break one of my leg-bones with it, and I'll be here a hell of a lot longer than just a few days."

  "That man-became-lion," beamed the panther-sized feline, "thinks entirely too much about keeping its belly overfilled. He should know, as long as he's lived here in Tiro-na-N'Og, that no creature—from the greatest to the least—ever truly hungers for long here. Food abounds and all are provided their needs. Think, have you seen any emaciated creatures here?"

  "No." Fitz unconsciously and unnecessarily shook his head. "Every beast I've seen or killed or butchered or eaten was sleek and well-fleshed."

  "Just so," said the grey cat. "The lion needs only to apply himself to his hunting . . . unless he can delude another into doing his hunting for him, of course."

  "All right," agreed Fitz, feeling like a taken mark, "I'll shove off in the morning: east, I guess. I'll send

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  Cool Blue to track down Sir Gautier and bring him back here, then leave signs they can follow to catch up to me. Til head along that glen just north of here; as
I recall, it runs roughly east-west."

  "Be you cautious," admonished the cat, "for many and great dangers lie ahead along your path to the Dagda. I am forbidden to myself accompany you, as I have previously told you, else I would, old friend. It were better that you go not alone, but travel with at least one other; even the blue lion were better than none at all. So hurry slowly, take no unnecessary risks, leave clear and unmistakable signs for those to follow and allow them time to catch up to you. You mean more to this world than you presently could comprehend.

  "Now, sleep."

  .

  return beaming of "his" body. "But if you do, become a deer, there are more than enough shrubs over there to feed another."

  "I am rather going to become a cat and eat a deer," "said" the other. "What about you?"

  "Sister-mine," beamed Fitz's body, "do as you wish, indulge yourself, for we two must return soon enough from this lovely place. I think 111 become a young bull and trot over to visit with the heifers of yonder herd."

  "You would!" came the response. "Just for that, I should become a lioness and make my meal of young bull flesh, this day . . . but I won't. But before you change, watch me make my kill. . . please?"

  "Of course I will, sister-mine. Then I will be able to use some of that kill in forming my young bull."

  A few rods away, a slender but well-formed body rose up into the air, moved forward at some speed and then sank, as lightly as a falling feather, into the depths of the thicket around which the cervines browsed. To the mind of Fitz, the sun-browned body appeared to be that of a girl in her mid-teens, as totally devoid of clothing as the masculine body he just now inhabited. Like "his" body, the female's was possessed of reddish-blonde hair, almond-shaped blue-green eyes separated by the bridge of a straight, slender nose. Her face of course lacked the curly, feir beard that his bore, but both owned lull lips that smiled often to show the white teeth. Fitz guessed her height at between five feet and five feet four, her weight at a hundred pounds, tops. Her nipples were the same red-pink as her lips and the breasts, though smallish, stood up proudly. Though her hands and

  feet were on the small side, they were proportionate to her body which, at the distance from which "his" body's eyes had viewed it, had seemed almost hairless, apparently hirsute adornments appearing only at armpits and crotch. The fine bones had all looked to be properly sheathed in flat muscles.

  While the cervines browsed on, unsuspectingly, the eyes of the body within which Fitz was visiting continued to watch the base of the thicket, knowing what to expect to see.

  Then, with the suddenness of a lightning-bolt, a yellow-and-black, hook-clawed streak launched itself from out the dense dimness of the thicket, landing squarely on the back of a plump doe. One taloned paw hooked under the chin of the frantically plunging deer and drew the head up and back so far and at such angle that the spine was compelled to snap . . . as it quickly did. As the dying doe sank beneath her deadly rider, the rest of the deer scattered at flank speed, making no single offer to fight, as was their natural way unless defending fawns or cornered by predators of any kind.

  The cat speeded the death of the kicking, twitching cervine by using strong jaws and sharp fangs to tear out the throat, the torrents of deer blood from the veins and arteries drenching her yellow-gold, black-spotted hide, dripping from her stiff whiskers.

  To his own big-boned, hundred-sixty-pound body mass, Seos began to gather and add a vast assortment of natural materials—animal (from the new-slain doe), vegetable (from the plants and trees and grasses all about) and mineral (from the rock-studded soil and that soil itself). Adapting, restructuring and shaping

  the constituents of all these in the manner first taught by the Elder Ones hundreds of generations before to the first hybrids, the blond young man slowly became transformed into a large wild ox—a bovine that later, much later, generations of humans would call aurochs or bos taurus primigenius.

  The final creation was, to Fitz, impressive in the extreme. In this dream as in previous ones of similar nature, he was not only participant but observer, and so he could view the formed beast as from a close distance even while he realized that he along with his host-body were actually a part of the beast.

  Its color was so dark a brown as to look almost black, which caused the two-inch-wide white stripe down the length of its spine to stand out in startling contrast. The long, thick horns were a yellowish-white, save at the sharp-pointed tips where they were shiny black. Under the glossy hide, the creature was a mass of thick bones, steely sinew and rolling muscles, a good six feet in height at the withers, with the big head carried even higher, the cud-chewing mouth and wide nostrils edged with off-white.

  Within that huge, weighty, very powerful and vital body, Fitz noted how much concentration was required on the part of his host, Seos, to maintain his creation in its present shape and to prevent his own mind from becoming submerged in the simpler mind of the beast. Fitz, from his vantage point, could understand how such a thing was done but discovered that his own, human mind owned no words or even speakable concepts to explain it.

  Then the young aurochs bull set out across the

  rolling plain at a slow trot, leaving the "leopard" to her bloody feast just inside the confines of the thicket, admonishing him telepathically, "Have your fun with those heifers and cows, brother-mine, but be careful, too; big as you now are, you're still not as big as some of the king-bulls I've seen here and there. There still are but few enough of us and I fear that our sire would be most wroth were I to arrive back upon our island with only your well-horned body."

  In great good spirits, Seos replied, "You be careful too, my sister-mate. That form you now inhabit is such as to set any male leopard to full arousal, and I think our sire might be equally wroth were you to throw before him a litter of furry, fanged and clawed grand-get. Hahahaha."

  Despite the flippancies of the exchanges, Fitz knew that there was real and abiding love between the sister and brother, who also were sexual mates, in the ages-old tradition of their hybrid race, and both love and awesome respect for their sire, Keronnos, ruler of their small group of Elder Ones-human hybrids, resident on the rocky but verdant island in the midst of the sea.

  The mind of Seos was as an open book to Fitz, and the man-bull was completely oblivious to the presence or delvings of the "visitor" within him. In the memories of Seos, Fitz could see that island—soaring peaks flung high above broad, long plains, little deep-green glens between hills, large and smaller streams of crystal-clear water flowing from the montane springs to cascade down rocks and race down hillsides and flow upon the plains and feed the lakes and ponds before finding ways to the purple sea—was able to

  know that, before Keronnos and his kin had come upon and settled it, there had never been humans or even primates thereon. Even now, after the passage of hundred of winters, there were few on the large island—though only a bit over twenty miles in average width, the island's length was more than eight times that distance—for, though the hybrids lived very long as compared to pure-strain humans, their birthrates were very low.

  In hopes of partially rectifying these problems, Keronnos and all of the others had taken to seeking out among the smaller clans and tribes of humans in the lands and islands scattered around and about the sea, using their inborn mental talents to try to scry out supposedly-pure humans and find those who might own within them enough of hybrid descent and undeveloped but developable talents to make decent breeding-stock. Those chosen had been taken up and borne back to the island, set down upon it and given all that was needful for them to lead happy, healthy and comfortable lives—hunting, fishing, gathering wild plants, breeding kine and sowing crops in the rich, volcanic soil of the island—while the hybrids got children upon them or from them, guided them into breeding among themselves in ways that would concentrate and enhance their own heritage of talents, and undertook the awakenings and training and discipline of the ever-more-talented young.

  Even so,
people of any strain still numbered few upon the island and the hybrids still flew out over the surrounding lands and islands in search of promising humans for the carefully controlled breedings they had undertaken.

  But this day, this trip to this land, Fitz realized, was not such a search-mission; it was rather in the nature of a romp for the sibling mates, Seos and Ehra, a vacation from the tight strictures of their sire and the other teachers of the young. For, although mature enough for most purely human pursuits, even for breeding, as hybrids their mental and emotional maturity lagged so far behind their bodies' that, in effect, they were only over-grown children. Not only did they naturally embody all the faults and failings of human children of similar mental and emotional development, they could add to them superhuman abilities—and, as their sire and other mentors knew only too well, this combination could, without discipline, sometimes produce devastating if not deadly results. Such unsupervised jaunts into distant lands were thus rare and precious to the hybrid young.

  Seos made a good, believable bull, for it was far from his first inhabitance of a bovine body. Where not sown with grain and other crops, the plains of the island gave graze to herds of cattle which, although somewhat smaller, less rangy and much less ferocious, were still obviously the near kindred of the huge, fierce wild oxen that still roamed many of the lands surrounding the sea. Therefore Seos had been able to observe, move among and model the cattle almost since his birth.

  Fitz could see in the mind and memories of Seos that there were other beasts and birds he enjoyed— sometimes he became a huge eagle or a monstrous, white swan, sometimes a fierce mountain ram, once a wolf, again, a bear or a boar or a desert lion. On occasion, he and one of his brothers had become

  long, sleek, black-and-white porpoises and swum through the sea off the island, chasing schools of plump fishes into the waiting nets of human fishers from one of the island communities.