Alan Foster - Kingdoms of Light

Standing between and slightly in front of them was a stocky, long-jawed man with red-brown hair spotted with white. His eyes were large, luminous, and penetrating. He, too, was smiling, showing teeth that were sharper than they should have been. Every move he made, every motion of his body, oozed barely restrained power and strength. Standing before the three Mundurucu, he was a coiled spring of ferocious, inimical energy. Not surprising, Kobkale knew, since he had been transformed from one of the nastiest, most foul-tempered creatures in nature.

"These two have names." Kieraklav proceeded to identify the closely related male and female. "The one with the balls is Ruut, and his companion is called Ratha." With a gnarled finger she indicated the third member of the quietly defiant trio. "That one doesn't have a name."

"Then we will call it by what it is." Kobkale approached. "Tell me, Quoll, how do you like your new circumstances?"

"I like them fine," the quoll replied, whereupon it exhibited blinding speed in leaping straight at Kobkale, both hands outstretched as they reached for the Mundurucu's exposed throat.

Something thin, scabrous, and unholy whipped out from within Hairy Kwodd's mantle of kink to wrap several times around the quoll's wrists. Snarling, the new-made man found himself yanked around. Eyes ablaze, he prepared to strike at his captor even with his arms bound and helpless. Something in the aspect of Hairy Kwodd told him that would be a bad idea. So he stood still and held his peace, simmering and boiling like a pot kept too long on an overheated stove.

"Temper, temper." Though a little rattled by the suddenness of the attack, Kobkale knew it boded well for the trio's mission. "Why did you jump at me like that? Are you so displeased with your metamorphosis?"

"Not at all," Quoll replied, his arms still secured. When Hairy Kwodd released him, he stood naked where he was, rubbing his wrists lightly. "I just wanted to kill something, and you were the first liveness I settled on."

"You will have your opportunities to kill, I promise you. That and more, if you and your new friends conclude one simple task to the Mundurucu's satisfaction. You may even keep your human bodies, which are more conducive to murder than your former animalistic forms."

Behind Quoll, Ratha grinned contentedly. "Very sweet that would be." She licked lovely, but very dark, lips. "Speaking of sweet, my throat is quite dry."

"Transmogrification is a thirsty business." Kobkale nodded at Kieraklav, who was eyeing the naked Ruut ardently. "Find blood for these two, and flesh for the other. Then suitable attire." He pursed thick lips, causing the upper one to submerge half his nose. "Come to think of it, take them on a stroll through town, and you may find everything you need in any one suitably populated house." Approaching Quoll, he looked up at the new man, whose countenance seemed fixed in a perpetual glare.

"I know you would like to rip out my throat and wallow in my guts, but you're going to have to be able to restrain yourself, or you'll never succeed in carrying out the relatively simple task I have in mind for you."

"Don't worry about me. I can control my urges when I have to." Even in the repressed gray light of the chamber, the goblin could see that the man's eyes were as much blood red as they were blue. "When I have to."

Kobkale was pleased. He was confident that when they sent this trio on its way, he and the rest of the Mundurucu could forget about this business of catand dog-smelling humans who venerated a dead enemy.

In fact, he would have pitied them—had he or any of the Mundurucu been capable of expressing so alien an emotion.

As was usual with examples of active hydrology, they heard the falls before they saw them. All morning, the road to Zelevin had been narrowing. Formerly negotiable slopes on their right grew more and more perpendicular, until they were striding along with a sheer wall of black basalt on their right hand and steep drop-offs immediately to their left. Moisture-loving trees and bushes, ferns, and mosses clung to the mountainside and overflowed the gorge below. Water dripped in sparkling streams from leaves with pointed tips, as if the ferns were fountains whose spigots had been left ever so slightly open. Dominating everything else was the sheer-sided plug of weathered volcanic rock known as Temmerefe's Sky-Reef, usually emerald-crowned, now reduced to a gloomy gray mass no different from the less spectacular peaks that surrounded it.

Normally, hummingbirds and sunbirds gathered in profusion to feed on the flowers that clung to the sides of the Eusebian Gorge, their shimmering metallic throat feathers glistening like enameled porcelain, while translucent flequins soared high on the rising currents of moist air and cried for carrion. Now only a few desultory cheeps and squeaks reached the travelers, so benumbed were the arboreal denizens of the gorge by the absence of color. Espying one lonely sunbird flitting moodily from vovix blossom to perapa flower, Oskar wondered how in the absence of gender-specific tints males and females could tell one another apart. Cezer wondered if the lack of color would change the taste of the high-soaring fliers' flesh. Taj gazed longingly at his distant relations, while Samm wondered…

Did Samm wonder, Oskar mused? And if so, what did the giant wonder about? He made an effort to imagine snake thoughts, failed, and returned his attention to the ground. Traveling on only half the usual number of legs, it would be easy to slip on the damp, sometimes muddy road. It was getting easier, but was a long way from being second nature. This upright human posture still found him unsteady. The urge to drop to all fours when traversing the most difficult spots had not left him. The cat folk were not troubled by the steep slope or precipitous drop. Whether on two legs or four, they remained completely at ease in high places.

"I don't see any rainbow." For the past hour, Taj had been whistling (and whistling wonderfully) to keep their spirits up.

"It's here. We're not at the falls yet." Mamakitty strode along smoothly, seemingly untroubled by her newly enjoined verticality. But then, Oskar reflected without jealousy, she and Cezer and Cocoa had cat senses. He was only a dog, with all the fears and worries dogs were heir to.

The travelers did not hear the roaring until they turned a sharp corner on the mountainside, and did not see the falls for another two hours, during which time the road angled sharply downward as it descended into the gray-green depths of the canyon. Then the tall trees that sprouted from the edge of the gorge gave way to smaller bushes and thickets of color-drained flowers, and the clamor that had been growing in their ears all morning suddenly doubled in intensity.

"Oh—how beautiful!" Cocoa stopped by the side of the road, which was now barely wide enough to allow a coach to pass, to admire the thundering cataract.

"Magnificent." Taj shook droplets of water from his hair. He would have lifted his arms to embrace the spray, but clad as he was in clothing instead of feathers, the gesture seemed certain to give rise to more difficulty than pleasure. "As is your rainbow, Mamakitty."

"If I didn't see it, I wouldn't believe it." Oskar gazed in fascination at the band of multihued brilliance that stretched from one side of the gorge to the other, fronting the white-foamed waterfall like a belt across the belly of a pallid stranger. It was like nothing he had ever seen before. Viewing it in passing on his previous visit in the company of Master Evyndd, he had been able to see it only through the color-limited eyes of a dog. Even so, his astonishment at the multihued revelation was as nothing compared to Samm's.

The giant threw back his broad chest and inhaled deeply, his tongue flicking out from between his parted lips. "So that is what real color looks like! Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined such a thing. It tastes—hot."