He moved with the swiftness that only a deer could have in the forest, and the three followed him loyally, almost slavishly. Part of the spell, he guessed. The Swarm Queen had bound Wuju to him, and then duplicated her transformation precisely on the other two, which simplified things a great deal.
He made the ocean before nightfall, but had no way of telling if he were north or south of the Faerie colony he sought. He decided that he had accomplished enough for one day, and that the next day would tell the story.
He awoke later than intended, the sunlight already glaring down on the ocean, causing diamond-like facets to cover the surface.
Which way? he wondered. Am I north or south of our last position?
He finally decided to go north; at worst, this would take him to the Ghlmon border and where he had to go. If he didn’t run into the place he was looking for, he would have to abandon them for a while and return later to straighten the matter out. About an hour up the beach he came upon the packs, still sitting in the sand where they had camped the first night. They were wet and sand-blown, but still intact.
As the does romped in the surf or sniffed at the strange-smelling things in the sand, he worked feverishly, cursing his lack of hands. It took ten minutes to open a pack, and several more to work one of the flame guns that Vardia had carried out of the pack. The next task was somehow to pick it up.
He finally managed a grip of sorts with his mouth. It was awkward, and he dropped it many times as he went back into the forest, but each time he patiently turned it just right and handled it again.
It seemed like hours getting the flame pistol through that forest, but at last he came upon the clearing of ominously familiar character: the toadstool ring and the great tree. It was too well etched in his memory to be simply a similar place of some other swarm, and his deer’s nose confirmed the proper scents.
Carefully he searched for a large, uneven rock, and with great difficulty rolled it to within a meter of the hollow area that was the Swarm Queen’s throne, at the base of the big tree. He managed to prop the flame gun sideways against the rock, so that it was mostly upright and pointed at the hollow.
Satisfied, he went and got sticks from the forest and built a crude pentagram around the pistol and rock. Next he positioned himself so his forelegs were on either side of the pistol, the left one serving as a backstop for the grip area which also contained the gas, the right one just to the right of the trigger.
He nodded to himself in satisfaction, and briefly checked the sun and the location of his three does, all of whom were idly grazing nearby. About two hours to sundown, he thought. Just about right.
He brought his right foreleg to bear on the trigger. The pistol jiggled but remained in the right general direction. There was a hiss of escaping gas, but no flame. He released it, realizing that the flint igniter mechanism would require a hard and quick jerk on the trigger.
He knew that, if he did that, he might lose control of the gun, even have it suddenly jump up and burn him. He sighed and made up his mind. Tensely, he planted his left foreleg against the gun butt and his right just touching the large, unguarded trigger made for Czillian tentacles.
Suddenly, in one sudden motion, he pulled against the trigger hard with his right leg. It jumped a little, but stayed firm.
And remained unignited.
Steeling himself, he tried again. Once more it failed to ignite, because he had flinched and not pushed the trigger straight back. He wondered idly if he could succeed, given his physical limitations. If not, he would just have to abandon his companions.
He tried one more time, using extra force. The pistol ignited, but the thing almost jerked out of his precarious hold. Carefully, without releasing the trigger, he gingerly managed to point the thing back in the general direction of the tree. Just to the left of the tree the area was smoldering, some of it still afire.
Now the jet of flame focused on the tree hollow, and he could see the bark smolder and catch, the fire almost enveloping the tree like something liquid and living. Smoke billowed up, the scent disturbing to his nostrils. Birds screeched, and forest animals ran for cover in panic.
Suddenly he heard what he had been waiting for: a tiny, weak voice coughing.
The Swarm Queen had more than one exit available, and she crawled dizzily out of the top of the tree trunk, near the point where the four main branches went off. She was blind, sick, and groping feebly, starting to make her way up the side of one of the branches.
“Swarm Queen!” he called, not letting up on the flame. “Shall I burn you or will you meet my conditions under pain of reversal?”
“Who are you that dares do this to me?” she managed, coughing and groaning in fear and misery as she maintained her dignity.
“He who was wronged by you, and he who drove your ancestors off distant planets!” he replied boldly, but idly and somewhat fearfully wondering how much more of a charge the pistol had. “Do you yield under pain of reversal?”
The large bug hadn’t made it up the branch, almost overcome by the smoke and feeling the flames. Brazil was suddenly afraid she would fall into the fire before she yielded.
“I—I yield!” she called. “Turn off your cursed fire!”
“Say the whole thing!” he demanded.
“I yield under pain of reversal, dammitall!” she screamed nervously.
At that moment the charge ran out of the gun and it sputtered and died. Brazil let go, and looked at it strangely. A few seconds longer, he thought, and I’d have lost.
“Get me down before I burn!” screamed the Swarm Queen, who was still very much in danger. The flames continued to smolder in the tree and around the trunk, although without the added fire they were slowly turning to glowing red against the charred and blackened side.
“Jump straight ahead and fly to the ground,” he told her. “You know the distance.”
She could have done so before, of course, but the heat and fire always induced panic in these creatures.
She landed shakily and sat, trembling, for several minutes. Finally she regained her composure and peered up at him with those old and evil semihuman eyes, squinting. She was not totally blind in the light, but her vision was quite poor.
“You’re the deer!” she gasped in amazement. “How did you break the spell? How do you talk at all?”
“Your spells cannot hold me for long,” he told her. “That which inhabits this simple vessel is your superior. But it
“You have three charges only!” she spat, looking at the still smoking, blackened tree. “Consider them carefully, lest I kill you for what you have done to my home and my honor!”
“Honor be damned,” Brazil replied disgustedly. “If you had any, there would have been no need to invoke a reversal. Remember
“State the charges, alien,” she responded in a bitter tone. “They will be honored.”
Brazil thought carefully.
“One,” he said. “My three companions and I shall cross the border into Ghlmon, traversing the distance from here to there without spell or any form of interference that would cause danger or delay.”
The Swarm Queen’s eyebrows rose, and she said, “Done.”
“Two: the spells shall be removed from my three companions, and they shall regain all mental faculties, all memory, and shall be restored to their original forms.”
“Done,” the Swarm Queen agreed. “And the third?”
“You shall cast a spell to be effective when we cross the Ghlmon border that will erase all memories, effects, and signs of us four having been here, including those from your own mind.”
“A pleasure,” she said. “So shall it be when darkness falls.”
“Until midnight at the Well of Souls,” he responded.
And she was stuck. Should any of the conditions cease to function or be unfulfilled, the original spell would bounce back at her.
