Barbara Hambly - 04 Mother Of Winter

Our strength was not enough, she had said. All this will pass away. He remembered her face, old and weary beyond words. Remembered the tears on her face and the fact that though she wept, she still bore herself like a queen. And her secret was still there, whatever it was. Locked within the heart of the Keep. He looked up, the night vision melting back to daylight, and saw Scala, the Bald Lady's prospective successor, toiling sweatily up the knoll with the martyred air of one bearing an almost impossible burden for the good of all. He noticed again the unhealthy plumpness of her cheeks and neck, and the way her too-expensive crimson gown strained across the breasts and hips. Food theft? Or was Hogshearer holding something out for himself and his family?

A horrible vision flashed across his mind of Hogshearer having somehow found and broached the old food caches; of Scala disenchanting them; of everyone digging in and eating them instead of saving them for seed...

Don't be ridiculous. If you can't get the things to quit being rocks, she sure as hell won't be able to...

When she was ten feet away from him, Scala pulled back her arm and flung at him the thing she had in her hand. Rudy saw what it was the instant she released it and

grabbed in a panic, barely saving it from breaking. "For Chrissake, Scala! We've only got a few of these things, and-"

"It doesn't work!" she screamed at him. "It's a stupid, crummy, worthless piece of trash and I don't care if it breaks! I'm doing it right! I know I'm doing it right!" Yeah, and you're talented and beautiful like your daddy says. He stifled his anger, bit back his words, the little porcelain spell-bowl cradled protectively in his hands.

"Yeah, but how smart is it to get mad at the bowl?" he asked gently, looking into the bloated, red, furious face. "Let me try." He hold it cupped in his hands and spoke the Name of Water in his mind. "You been practicing your-" "Of course I've been doing my stupid meditation!" she yelled. "Daddy makes me, hours longer than you said. And that doesn't work, either! It's stupid! You lied to me! Everybody lies to me!"

"It takes time, kid." Despite his knowledge that she was bring used against him, he felt genuine pity for her, knowing what she had to be going through even without the Hollywood Father from Hell on her back. His high school math class was in his mind, his own voice asking the fascist numbskull at the blackboard to explain a proof: Well, Senor Solis... The mocking turn of inflection still stung. You're using the same book everybody else is and nobody else seems to be having a problem? Now why do you think that is?

If he'd known why that was, Rudy wanted to say, he'd have known why he wasn't getting it. But he didn't understand even enough to know what he didn't understand. The glassy porcelain of the bowl's interior was already running with droplets, pooling at the bottom. He emptied the water from the bowl, wiped it on a corner of his vest, fumbling for words. "Look, if you keep doing what you're doing, I swear to you, it'll come."

"That's easy for you to say!" She had turned her face from him, no longer shouting, but he could see the swollen cheeks mottled beetroot, horrible next to that bright gown.

"Magic isn't something that comes fast." He tucked the bowl carefully into the pocket of his vest, the Cylinder into another, and got to his feet. "God knows I don't know a whole lot about magic, about why somebody's born with the ability to change things in the physical world without touching them-about why it takes some people longer than others to get strong in it. When Ingold gets back-"

"Oh, him." She swung around to face him, her dark eyes ugly. "All he ever did was kill half the..."

And she froze, staring past his shoulder with shock and horror on her face. Rudy ducked, zigzagged, grabbed her by the arms and thrust her ahead of him down the hill, knowing already what she had to see behind him and not waiting to look. Scala stumbled, trod on her train, and when he paused to catch her arm again, Rudy looked.

He'd known it had to be gaboogoos. He hadn't expected these. The same ones mutated? New and Improved Mark 1/I model? He didn't know. Most resemblance to the original biped shape had disappeared, except for the long arms with their enormous, reaching hands, the long legs that started from the shoulder. The fishlike bodies were still covered with bobbles and pendules.

And they were big. Almost too big to be dealt with by a sword. The long legs covered twelve feet at a stride.

Rudy yelled, "Run!!" and shoved Scala ahead of him toward the Keep, turned back, raising his staff, and cried out the Word of Lightning, spotting for the place the

creature would be because he did not know the creature's true name. Ozone crackled, white light blinded, and Rudy turned and fled the bounding things that raced for him with such horrible speed. Something came scuttling like a flying bug from the woods and seized on his leg just as he turned and fired off another blast of levin-fire at the closest gaboogoo, hitting it this time, then slashing down with the razor crescent on his stuff to carve off the thing that had fastened to his boot. It died, whatever it was-he plunged down the hill and heard Scala scream as she fell. Turning back, he saw them on her...

... and springing over her without breaking stride as they came at him. Scala screamed again rolled into a fetal ball and clutched at her dirty hair. Rudy yelled the Word of Lightning again as the two remaining gaboogoos reached out toward him, and this time his aim was better, purple-white brilliance lancing the nearer gaboogoo like a javelin, hot tendrils splintering in all directions. The gaboogoo exploded, charred pieces flying; the other one didn't even stop. Rudy didn't stop, either, pelting toward the doors of the Keep as if the legions of Hell were at his heels-a fairly accurate description.

Yelling and curses came from the woods, and someone fired an arrow at the gaboogoo-an exercise in futility, though it mucked into the thing as if it had been a hay bale-and from the tail of his eye Rudy saw Lank Yar and his hunters racing to his aid.

He stumbled on the steps of the Keep and the Guards emerged from the doors at a run, swords like the hunger of doom in their hands.

"Inside!" Gnift grabbed him by the shoulders and hurled him through the doors as Rudy would have turned to fight. From the gate passage he saw the gaboogoo spring up the steps like a huge, deadly running bird. Guards, farmers, hunters closed upon it from three directions, hacking at the fungoid limbs.

In its train ran other things, things from the woods, things that had once been animals and had the halfway, melted appearance of wolverines and rats. These things kicked and snapped at the Guards who tried to stop them, tried to slip past and come at Rudy, until the steps and the gate passage were runneled with blood and scattered with chalky, twitching limbs and gobbets.

A gaboogoo's long-fingered hand crawled along the passageway toward Rudy like a determined spider no matter how many times Seya stomped and crushed the thing with her heel; the Guard finally bent and cut off all seven or eight fingers, which lay flexing like dying worms round the curling and uncurling palm. Rudy clung to the doorpost of the inner set of gates. Lack of food made him lightheaded, and the Word of Lightning had taken more out of him than he'd thought. His vision tunneled to gray, and he found himself staring fixedly at the remains of the mutant animal nearest him on the tunnel floor, something that might have started out as an eagle or a bull-owl, though mouth-armed tentacles dangled from its chest. The mouths were still champing as Melantrys kicked it away.

Shadow in the outer door. He forced the grayness aside, raised his head. Scala was sobbing, her face covered with grass stains and snot and tears of terror, holding in her arms the ostentatious masses of claret skirt that had tripped her and would have cost her her life if she hadn't... Hadn't what?