The day was bright, the air was crisp and Judith Conally was off in a world full of dragons, elves and heroes.
So Prince Leopold slays the dragon Ferocious before he meets the wood elves, she thought as the trolley car jolted to a stop in front of the San Jose Public Library. But then where does he meet Bronwyn Halfelven? It can't be in the troll's cave. That's too trite. And if he kills the dragon before he confronts Gorbash F1eshripper, why does Bronwyn agree to accompany him on the quest?
She sighed and shifted on the hard fiberglass seat. Her fellow passengers ignored her. Their thoughts might not be as colorful as Judith's, but they were just as lost in them.
Externally, Judith was no different from the other passengers. Her clothing was more comfortable than stylish and while no one would have called her ugly, they wouldn't have called her beautiful either. Her long dark hair was lustrous, but it was caught back in a severe bun. Her figure was substantial rather than eye-catching, her jaw was square and her nose on the large side. She looked, well, ordinary.
Judith sighed again and rose with the rest of the passengers. Working out the details of a novel wasn't nearly as easy as she had thought. Maybe she could find a solution in the book on Celtic magic the library had gotten her through interlibrary loan. If not she would have to invent something that would be magically consistent with the universe she had created.
Problems, problems. She never knew being a successful fantasy author could be this difficult.
Well, almost a successful fantasy author, she admitted as she stepped down onto the trolley platform. The outline of her trilogy had caught the eye of an editor at Nemesis Books. The sample chapters had passed muster and now the editor wanted to see the completed manuscript of the first novel.
The other passengers had stepped off the platform to cross the street in either direction, but Judith still stood there, trying to decide.
For a moment she concentrated on dragons. Not dragons as they were—quarrelsome, nasty-tempered beasts that stank of sulfur and snake—but dragons as she had first seen them. Mighty, ethereal creatures printed against the pale pink glow of clouds at earliest morning as they swooped around the tower of the Wizard's Keep.
She was bound by oath not to reveal what she had seen in that other world. As part of the small team of programmers who had taken Wiz Zumwalt's crude magic compiler and turned it into a piece of production software she had really experienced magic and dragons and the rest of it. She couldn't directly refer to her time in a world where magic worked and dragon riders were as common as 747s are here. But she could draw on what she had seen and done to make her novel come alive. And most of all she had the memories to sustain her as she struggled to write.
As always thinking about her time in another world refreshed her. Judith started to cross to the library, head high and still lost in thought.
Can I do it in two trilogies? she wondered as she stepped off the curb. Or will I need to stretch it to three?
If Judith was lost in thought, the truck driver was just plain lost. He had driven the semi all the way from Minneapolis to deliver a load of exhibits to the San Jose convention center next to the library. But he had gotten his directions mixed up and instead of arriving at the back of the center and the loading docks, he ended up in front of the building, on a street that wasn't supposed to have truck traffic. He certainly didn't know the neighborhood well enough to realize that people on the trolley platform in the center of the street were given to crossing no matter what the traffic light said.
The blare of the horn and the screech of air brakes brought Judith half out of her reverie. Instinctively she jumped back as the driver yanked the wheel desperately in an effort to avoid her.
Together it was almost enough. Instead of receiving an obliterating blow from the truck's front bumper, Judith Conally was only kissed by the left fender. But the kiss was near as deadly as a blow. Her purse flew out of her hands in a high arc, opening in mid-air and spilling wallet, tissues, keys and coins along the curbside. Limbs flailing, Judith spun away and slammed headfirst into the curb.
She did not move again.
A woman and a dragon waited for them when they entered the programmers' quarters in the Wizard's Keep.
Of the two the woman was slightly the larger and by far the more formidable. Shauna was broadbeamed with brown hair and an easy gap-toothed smile. She had an infant daughter of her own and she was more than happy to nurse Ian—and mother June and Danny as well.
"My Lords, Lady," she curtsied. "I have a cold supper waiting."
"Thanks," Wiz said, "but I'll just have something to drink." He drew a mug of ale from the small cask at the end of the table and plopped down on a bench along the wall. It was something past midnight, but all of them were too keyed up to sleep. A light meal and light conversation had become a ritual after meeting with the non-humans by the light of the full moon.
Shauna surveyed Wiz's thin frame disapprovingly. "You'll never put on any meat that way." Then she turned to June. "Here child, let me hold the baby and you get yourself something to eat."
Shauna, Moira and Danny were the only three people June would allow to hold Ian. Without protest June handed the baby to Shauna and went to heap her plate. Jerry, Danny and Bal-Simba joined her while Moira stayed with Shauna and Ian.
"It's a wonder you don't catch the ague, all of you. Out all night in the cold and damp consorting with uncanny beings. And taking the child to such doings, well . . ." Shauna peered under the blanket at the sleeping infant.
Ian awoke briefly, saw he was being made much of, accepted it as his due and drifted back to sleep.
Wiz took a pull on his mug and nearly lost it when the dragon rammed his head into his ribs.
"Well, what's your problem, Scales-For-Brains?" he said, reaching out to scratch the dragon behind its ears.
Shauna looked up from Ian. "Naming such a beast `Lord,' " she said with a shake of her head.
"Not Lord," Wiz corrected as he dug his fingers into the scaly hide. "LRD." The dragon stretched his neck out luxuriously to expose a spot behind his right ear.
"LRD?"
"It's a TLA for Little Red Dragon," Jerry put in from where he was building a triple-decker sandwich.
"What is a TLA?"
"Three-letter acronym."
Shauna looked puzzled and Moira chuckled. "Never ask them for an explanation. You will only end up worse confused."
Shauna sniffed and turned her attention back to June and Ian. LRD reminded Wiz to keep scratching with a butt to the side that nearly knocked him off the bench.
As a two-foot hatchling, LRD had been as cute as a kitten when he wandered into the programmers' makeshift workshop and decided he liked the company. Now, a little over a year later, LRD was something more than six feet from snout to tail-tip and massive in proportion. Compared to the 80- to 100-foot cavalry mounts in the aeries below the castle, LRD was still tiny. Compared to the scale of the rooms and passages in the castle, LRD was definitely on the large side and getting bigger every day.
He had given up trying to sleep on tables after a couple of them collapsed under his weight, but he still liked to nudge people to have his head scratched. Of course what had once been just a firm, insistent push was now enough to knock a grown man off his feet. He was also beginning to show flashes of typically dragonish temper—which is to say he could turn nasty in an instant—and occasionally he would burp a little tongue of flame. Almost everyone steered clear of him and the only place he was really welcome was the programmers' workrooms and their living quarters.
The dragon decided he had had enough head scratching and ambled over to see how Ian was doing. Shauna eyed him disapprovingly but he extended his neck and sniffed the sleeping infant, giving nurse and baby a good snort of dragon breath in the process. Ian opened his eyes and cooed at the scaly monster looking down at him.
For some inexplicable reason LRD had decided he liked Ian. He would curl up next to the baby's crib for hours, dozing or watching the infant with an unwinking golden stare. If Ian was distressed or uncomfortable, LRD became frantic. When he wasn't with Ian, the dragon divided his time between chasing the castle's cats and sunning himself on any convenient surface.
He seemed mildly approving of June, and he and Shauna had arrived at an armed truce. Everyone else he ignored—unless he wanted his head scratched.
Wiz finished his ale and debated making himself a sandwich. He decided he wasn't hungry and putting food in his stomach would only dilute the soporific effect of the ale. He needed something to help him sleep after the hours spent under the magic hill.
Moira left June and Shauna and came over to sit by him.
"You're not eating?"
Wiz took a moment just to admire her. Moira was broad-hipped, deep-bosomed and had a pair of wonderful green eyes set in a wide freckled face under a mane of red hair. The hedge witch was the first person he had seen when he had been kidnapped into this world and he had thought she was breathtakingly beautiful then. They had been married nearly two years and she still took his breath away.
"I want to make sure I can sleep tonight," he said, slipping his arm around her waist. Then he leaned close and nuzzled her hair. "What's the matter, do you want your ears scratched too?"
Moira turned and gave him one of her patented 10,000-volt looks. "Perhaps we should discuss that back in our chambers, my Lord."
Wiz rose and pulled her up with him. "Maybe weshould at that."
Looks like the ale was wasted, he thought as they made their goodbyes to the others and headed off to bed.
Once again torches lit a meeting of dwarves in an underground chamber. But this was a much smaller gathering in much less impressive surroundings than King Tosig's audience hall.
It was, in fact, a storeroom for hides. The torches were leftovers plundered from wall sconces elsewhere in the hold and the twelve dwarves sitting on the smelly bales or lounging against the rough-hewn walls had no more right to be there than the torches did.
A minor detail, Glandurg thought as the last of his followers slipped into the room and closed the storeroom door. Anyway, now that he was acting under his uncle's orders, not even old Samlig, the keeper of the storehouses, would dare to question them.
Still Glandurg couldn't help looking over his shoulder. Samlig was a crusty one and he'd just as soon not put his new legitimacy to the test.
Taking a deep breath, he drew himself up to his full three-foot-eight and faced his men.
"Comrades," he proclaimed, but softly. "At last we have a mission worthy of us."
"Not another sewage tunnel, is it?" asked a dwarf named Ragnar.
Glandurg dismissed the question with a lofty gesture. "This is a mission to the Outside World. Beyond the tunnels of the Hold."
A couple of the dwarves exchanged suspicious glances, wondering what kind of unpleasant and menial chore had been arranged for them now.
"I have just come from a secret audience with my uncle, the King," Glandurg told them. "He has entrusted us with an important mission."
"I thought the King said he'd cut your ears off if you came next nor nigh him," put in a dwarf named Gimli who was so young his beard barely touched his chest.
Glandurg glared at him and planted his hands on his hips. "Do you want to hear this or don't you?"
Gimli wilted under his leader's stare and Glandurg adopted his heroic pose again.
"As I was saying, a secret audience with the King. He has commanded us upon a vital mission for all of dwarfdom."
He paused for effect and the other dwarves leaned forward expectantly.
"We are to penetrate the world of mortals to its very heart and there find and slay a wizard from beyond our World! It is a dangerous, desperate quest and inhis hour of need my uncle the King has turned to us as the staunchest, bravest among all his subjects." He surveyed his wide-eyed followers and saw they were satisfactorily impressed.
"This isn't another one of your stories?" one of the dwarves asked at last.
"Why don't you go to my uncle the King and put that question to him?"
That settled it. None of them would go anywhere near King Tosig, but the assurance with which Glandurg issued the challenge told them that for once their leader was not exaggerating. At least not much.
"How are we supposed to get there?" asked Thorfin,always the practical one. "That's two hundred leagues at least."
"We will ride," Glandurg said loftily. "It has been arranged."
"I don't know about horses," a dwarf named Snorri said dubiously. "I'm not much for them."
"We will not ride horses. We will fly."
"I thought you said we'd ride," said Ragnar. "Which will it be then?"
"You'll see soon enough," Glandurg told him with a superior smile. He was pleased that he had thought of the transportation problem and he was even more pleased with the solution he had worked out in the few hours since meeting with the king. But he didn't want to tip his hand. His companions might not be as happy with his cleverness as Glandurg was.
"What about supplies?" Ragnar asked.
"Our every need will be supplied from the hold's storehouses," Glandurg said. He smiled at the thought of old Samlig's face when he issued out the carefully hoarded goods. "We shall have the weapons, the armor and the gold we need from my uncle the King's personal treasury."
He looked them over again. "This will not be easy. The alien wizard has mighty magic and his legions of mortal warriors are numberless and not to be despised. It will be a long, difficult adventure and danger awaits us at every turn."
The dwarves all nodded. Danger and adventure were fine with them.
"This will be to the death," he proclaimed. "Some of us—nay, all of us!—may not return."
He swept his gaze over his followers impressively.
"Now swear with me in blood!" Glandurg drew his knife and nicked himself on the wrist. He cut deeper than he meant to and winced slightly at the sudden pain. There was a lot more blood than he intended, but his sleeve reddened satisfactorily and the blood dripping off his wrist made a most impressive touch.
One by one the other dwarves cut themselves and mingled their blood with their leader's for the oath.
"To the wizard's death—or our own."