griffin seem to appear-but that would not unlock the cells. More thinking needed to be done.
They lay on the slope, in the concealment of one of the huge ancestral oaks, and the world was deceptively peaceful. “Do you really think it will work?” Irene asked worriedly. “The closer I get, the more I fear something dreadful win happen.”
Dor decided he couldn’t afford to agree with her. “We have fought our way here,” he said. “It can’t go for nothing.”
“We have had no omens of success-?” She paused. “Or have we? Omen-King Omen-can he have anything to do with it?”
“Anything is possible with magic. And we have brought magic to this Kingdom.”
She shook her head. “I swing back and forth, full of hope and doubt. You just keep going on, never suffering the pangs of uncertainty, and you do generally get there. We’ll make a good match.”
No uncertainty? He was made of uncertainty! But again, he didn’t want to undermine what little confidence Irene was grasping for.
“We have to succeed. Otherwise I would be King. You wouldn’t want that.”
She rolled over, fetching up next to him, shedding leaves and grass. She grabbed him by the ears and kissed him. “I’d settle for that, Dor.”
He looked at her, startled. She was disheveled and lovely. She had always been the aggressor in their relationship, first in quarreling, more recently in romance. Did he really want it that way?
He grabbed her and pulled her back down to him, kissing her savagely. At first she was rigid with surprise; then she melted. She returned his kiss and his embrace, becoming something very special and exciting.
It would have been easy to go on from there. But a note of caution sounded in Dor’s mind. In the course of assorted adventures he had come to appreciate the value of timing, and this was not the proper time for what offered. “First we rescue your father,” he murmured in her ear.
That brought her up short. “Yes, of course. So nice of you to remind me.”
Dor suspected he had misplayed it, but as usual, all he could do was bull on. “Now we can sleep, so as to be ready for tonight.”
“Whatever you say,” she agreed. But she did not release him. “Dear.
Dor considered, and realized he was comfortable as he was. A strand of Irene’s green-tinted hair fell across his face, smelling pleasantly of girl. Her breathing was soft against him. He felt that he could not ask for a better mode of relaxation.
But she was waiting for something. Finally he decided what it was.
“Dear,” he said.
She nodded, and closed her eyes. Yes, he was learning! He lay still, and soon he slept.
“Now aren’t we cozy!” Grundy remarked.
Dor and Irene woke with a joint start. “We were just sleeping together,” she said.
“And you admit it!” the golem exclaimed.
“Well, we are engaged, you know. We can do what we like together.”
Dor realized that she was teasing the golem, so he stayed out of it.
What did it matter what other people thought? What passed between himself and the girl he loved was their own business.
“I’ll have to tell your father,” Grundy said, nettled.
Suddenly Dor had pause to reconsider. This was the daughter of the King!
“I’ll tell him myself, you wad of string and clay!” Irene snapped. “Did you find him?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t tell a bad girl like you.”
“Maybe I should grow a large flytrap plant and feed you to it,” Irene replied.
That fazed the golem. “I found them all. In three cells, the way the three of you were, one in each cell. Queen Iris, King Trent, and King Omen.”
Irene sat up abruptly, disengaging from Dor. “Are they all right?”
Grundy frowned. “The men are. They have been through privation before. The Queen is not pleased with her situation.”
“She wouldn’t be,” Irene agreed. “But are they all right physically? They haven’t been starved, or anything?”
“Well, they were a bit close-mouthed about that,” the golem said. “But the Queen seems to have lost weight. She was getting fat any way, so that’s all right, but I guess she hasn’t been fed much. And I saw a crust of bread she left. It was moldy. The flies are pretty thick in there, too; must be a lot of maggots around.”
Irene got angry. “They have no right to treat royalty like that!”
“Something else I picked up,” Grundy said. “The guard who feeds them-it seems he eats what he wants first, and gives them the leavings. Sometimes he spits on it, or rubs dirt in it, just to aggravate them.
“They have to cat the stuff anyway or starve. Once he even urinated in their water, right where they could see him, to be sure they knew what they were drinking. He doesn’t speak, he just shows his contempt by his actions.”
“I have heard of this technique,” Amolde said. “It is the process of degradation. If you can destroy a person’s pride, you can do with him what you will. Pride is the backbone of the spirit. Probably King Oary is trying to get King Omen to sign a document of abdication, just in case there is ever any challenge to King Oary’s legitimacy.”
“Why is he keeping the others alive, then?” Dor asked, appalled by both the method and the rationale. Mundanes played politics in an ugly fashion.
“Well, we have seen how he operates. If he lets the three spend time together and become friends, then he can use the others as leverage against King Omen. Remember how you told me he was going to torture Irene to make you talk?”
“He’s going to torture my parents?” Irene demanded, aghast.
“I dislike formulating this notion, but it is a prospect.”
Irene was silent, smoldering. Dor decided, regretfully, to tackle the problem of freeing the prisoners. “I hoped King Trent could use his power to break out, but I’m not sure how transformation of people can unlock doors. If we can figure out a way-“
“Elementary,” Amolde said. “The King can transform the Queen to a mouse. She runs out through a crevice. Then he transforms her back, and she opens the cells from the outside. If there are guards, he can transform her to a deadly monster to dispatch them.”
So simple! Why hadn’t he, Dor, thought of that?
Irene shifted gears, in the manner of her sex, becoming instantly practical. “Who is in the cell closest to the wall?”
“The Queen.” The golem frowned. “You know, I think she’s the only one the magic aisle can reach. The wall’s pretty thick in that region.”
“So my father probably can’t transform anyone,” Irene said.
Trouble! Dor considered, trying to come up with an alternate suggestion. “The Queen does have powerful magic. It should be possible for her to free them by means of illusion. She can make them see the cells as empty, or containing dead prisoners, so that the guards open the gates. Then she can generate a monster to scare them away.”
“There are problems,” Amolde said. “The aisle, as you know, is narrow. The illusion will not operate outside it. Since two cells are beyond-“
“The Queen’s illusion will have very limited play,” Dor concluded.
“We had better warn her about that. She should be able to manage, if she has time to prepare.”
“I’m on my way,” Grundy said. “I don’t know how this expedition would function without me!”
“There isn’t one of us we can do without,” Dor said. “We’ve already seen that. When we get separated, we’re all in trouble.”
As the night closed, they moved to the castle, trying to reach the spot nearest the Queen’s cell as described by the golem. Again there was no moat, just a glacis, so that they had to mount a kind of stone hill leading up to the wall. Dor could appreciate how thick that wall might be, set on a base this massive.
Castle Ocna was alert, fearing the invasion of the Khazars; torches flickered in the turrets and along the walls. But Dor’s party was not using the established paths and remained unobserved. People who lived in castles
