Julian May - The Many-Coloured Land

“That’s a good job you’ve done,” Claude said.

“The whole business may turn out to be academic if we end up dead or brain-burned… You think this scheme of Felice’s might really work?”

“Think about this, son. Felice would be able to escape by herself fairly easily. But she’s worked out this plan to give the rest of us a chance, too. You may hate the little lady’s entrails, but she just might bring this thing off. I’m going to do my damnedest for her, even though I’m just an old poop one step this side of fossilization. But you’re still a young man, Richard. You look like you could handle yourself in a fight. We’re counting on you.”

“I’m scared outa my motherin’ mind,” the pirate told him. “That little bitty gold knife of hers! It’s nothing but a toy. How the hell am I going to do it?”

The old man said, “Try Amerie’s prescription. Pray a lot.”

In the forward part of the caravan, Basil the Alpinist was saluting the sinking crescent moon by playing “Au clair de la lune” on his recorder. The little butterfly dancer from Paris who rode beside him sang along. And amazingly enough, Epone herself joined in in a soprano voice of melting richness. The exotic woman continued to sing as Basil played several more songs; but when he began “Londonderry Air,” one of the soldiers galloped back on his chaliko and said, “The Exalted Lady forbids the commonalty to sing that song.”

The climber shrugged and put his flute away.

The butterfly dancer said, “The monster sings that song with her own words. I heard her, back at Castle Gateway on the first night that we were imprisoned. Isn’t it odd that a monster should be musical? It’s like a fairytale, and Epone is like a beautiful wicked witch.”

“The witch may sing a different song before dawn,” Felice said; but only the nun heard her.

The trail came closer and closer to the western shore of the great lake. The caravan would have to skirt it before heading east into the Belfort Gap between the Vosges highland and the Jura, which led to the valley of the Proto-Rhine. The lake waters were utterly calm, reflecting the brighter stars like an inky mirror. As the curve of the trail took them around a promontory, they saw a distant beacon reflected as well, a streak of orange stabbing toward them across a broad bay. “Look, not one fire but two .” Felice’s voice held a note of anxiety. “Now what the devil do you suppose that means?”

One of the soldiers from the rear of the caravan galloped past them to confer with Captal Waldemar, then returned to his position. The chalikos slowed to a walk and finally halted altogether. Epone and Waldemar rode off the trail to the top of a small rise where they could survey the lake.

Felice gently pounded one fist into the palm of her other hand and whispered, “Shit shit shit.”

“There’s something out there on the water,” said Amerie.

A light mist filmed the reaches of the bay. One part of it seemed to thicken and grow bright as they watched, then break into four separate, dimly shining masses, fuzzy and amorphous. As the will-o’-the-wisps approached, they grew larger and glowed in color, one faintly blue, another pale gold, and two deep red. They bounced up and down as they followed a devious path over the water to a place not far offshore from the halted caravan.

“Les lutins,” said the butterfly dancer, her voice rough with fear.

The central portion of each mass now revealed a form suspended within the glow, rounded bodies with dangling appendages that flexed. They were at least twice as tall as a humanbeing.

“Why, they look just like giant spiders!” whispered Amerie.

“Les lutins araignees,” the dancer repeated. “My old Grandmere told me the ancient tales. They are shape-shifters.”

“It’s an illusion,” Felice decided. “Watch Epone.”

The Tanu woman had risen in her stirrups so that she stood high above the back of her motionless white chaliko. The hood of her cloak dropped so that her hair was luminous in the multihued light radiating from the things out on the lake. She placed both hands at her neck and cried out a single word in the exotic language.

The flame-spiders elevated their abdomens at her. Filaments of purple light rocketed toward Epone and over the heads of the prisoners. The people exclaimed in wonderment, hardly conscious of fear. The episode was so bizarre that it seemed like a light-show performance.

The bright webbing never reached the ground. As it shimmered above them, it began shattering into a myriad of glittering fragments like dying fireworks. The outer edges of the individual spiders’ haloes started to disintegrate in the same coruscating fashion, enveloping the phantoms in a cloud of swirling sparks. The glowing spiders became krakens with writhing tentacles, then monstrous disembodied human heads with Medusa hair and fiery eyes, and finally featureless balls that dwindled, dimmed, and winked out.

Only stars and the beacon fires gleamed on the lake.

Epone and the captal rode back to the trail and resumed their places at the head of the procession. The chalikos snorted and whiffled and set out again at their usual trot. One of the soldiers said something to a prisoner at the head of the column, and the word passed slowly back.

“Firvulag. Those were Firvulag.”

“It was an illusion,” Felice insisted. “But something sure as hell caused it. Something that doesn’t like the Tanu any more than we do. That’s very interesting.”

“Does this mean you’ll have to change your plan?” Amerie-asked.

“Not bloody likely. It may even help. If the guards are on the lookout for ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggety beasties, they’ll pay less attention to us .”

The cavalcade came around the bay to the place of the double beacon, where the prisoners entered another fort for the midnight rest. Felice dismounted quickly and came to assist all three of her friends, and several other riders as well. And later, when it was time to climb back into the saddle, she was there again to help the tired people fit their feet into the stirrups just before the soldiers came around to lock on the bronze ankle chains with their enveloping leather sleeves.

“Sister Amerie isn’t feeling well,” the little athlete told the guard who locked her onto her own beast. “Those strange creatures out on the lake gave her a bad turn.”

“Don’t you worry about the Firvulag, Sister,” the man told the veiled, drooping rider. “There’s no way they can get you as long as the Exalted Lady is with us. She’s tops as a coercer. You just ride easy.”

“Bless you,” came a whisper.

When the soldier moved away to tend to Basil and the dancer, Felice said, “You just try to go to sleep, Sister. That’s the best thing for nerves.” In a lower tone she added, “And keep your cunnilingin’ trap shut like I told you!”

The poor sick nun invited Felice to take an unlikely anatomical excursion.

They went on, following the shore but still trending northward. After an hour had passed, Claude said, “I’m free. How about you, Amerie?”

The rider beside him was incongruously garbed in a star-ship captain’s coverall and a wide-brimmed black hat with dark plumes. “My chains are broken. What an incredible child Felice is! But I can understand why she was ostracized by the other ring-hockey players. It’s too freakish, all that strength in such a doll-like body.”

“Her physical strength is something the others could live with,” Claude said, leaving it at that.

Presently, Amerie asked, “How many people did she set free?”

“The two Japanese riding behind her. Basil, the fellow in the Tyrolean hat. And that poor medievalist knight, Dougal, just ahead of Basil. Dougal doesn’t know that his chains have been weakened enough to be broken. Felice didn’t think he was stable enough to let in on the scheme. But when the thing starts we might get him to break loose and help. Lord knows he’s big and strong looking, and maybe he hates Epone enough to snap out of his funk when he sees others in action.”