“Better make it good.”
“I can’t speak a word of her language!”
“Now she says you don’t look like any tribe she’s ever seen.”
“Look, ma’am,” Gene said. “You gotta understand. I was just walking down the yellow brick road, when all of a sudden —”
The woman shouted at him.
“She said shut up again,” Zond told him.
“I gathered.”
The woman stalked around the chamber, her ebony eyes clinically taking his measure. At length she began to speak again. Zond translated.
“Well, she says she doesn’t know what to make of you. You don’t seem to belong anywhere, but you must be yalim — read ‘human,’ there — because you look it, somewhat. She’s a little worried that you might be a demon or something. But of course, if you were, you would have killed her or done something frightening, but you didn’t, and besides, demons don’t get themselves conked on the head, do they? And you couldn’t be an Old God, that’s right out. So — well, there it is.”
“What is she, some kind of barbarian Queen or something?”
“Hey. That’s a good guess.”
The woman had stopped pacing, still fixing Gene in a penetrating stare. After long reflection, she snapped an order at one of her handmaidens.
The girl — she looked no older than fifteen — approached Gene, withdrew a dagger, and gingerly cut the leather straps around his wrists. Before she was finished, her mistress had begun speaking again.
“She says that she’s going to put you to the test. What test, I really don’t — oh, I see. She’s going to find out if you’d make her a good concubine. If you work out, you’ll be groomed for full husbandhood, and be inducted into her personal military cohort. You will then be accorded the privilege of laying down your life for her at the drop of a helmet. I think she likes you.”
Rubbing his wrists, Gene said, “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
The barbarian Queen clapped her hands, and the two girls left the chamber.
Slowly she turned around and let the cape fall from her shoulders. The leather briefs turned out to be really nothing more than a G-string.
Gene reeled, devastated by the exquisite mathematical perfection of her hindquarters. His headache suddenly vanished.
“Zond, I think I’m about to be exploited, abused and generally treated as a sex object.”
“I’m very sorry for you,” Zond said, “but there’s nothing I can do.”
“Right. So piss off and leave us alone, okay?”
Thirteen
Castle (?), Then Island
“Sheila!”
“Trent? Over here!”
They found each other in the dark and hugged. Trent held her close.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes. What happened? Where did he —?”
“It was a trap, and I’m afraid we fell right into it.”
There came a scraping, rumbling sound, then a thud.
“What’s going on?” Sheila said fearfully.
“I don’t kn —”
Suddenly the bottom fell out of everything, and they dropped through space.
Then sunlight exploded around them, and they hit water.
Deep in green underwater silence, Sheila floated through a cloud of bubbles, fire searing her lungs. Disoriented, she didn’t know which way to swim, which way the surface was. Finally she saw the sun and began to flail upward. The surface seemed hundreds of feet above. She knew she couldn’t hold her breath that long. Panic welled up inside her.
A hand grasped her arm and buoyed her upward.
She broke the surface, gasping, choking. Trent treaded water beside her.
“You okay?” he shouted.
She could only nod. She looked around. Sea, endless blue-green sea, its waters sickly warm.
“Where are we?” she yelled.
“Anybody’s guess. Some wild universe. One with no magic, either. Damn.”
“I didn’t even think of using magic. Everything happened so fast.”
“Exactly. Whoever set us up knew what they were doing.”
“But … Trent, you didn’t have to come through the portal. You shouldn’t have!”
“Too late for shouldn’t-haves, my dear.” Trent boosted himself out of the water, sank, then came back up with more velocity, rising waist-high until he sank once again.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to see above the swells. I think there’s land in that direction. It’s a ways off, though. You a strong swimmer?”
“My God, no. I feel like a lead weight.”
“Drop your shoes and strip to your underwear. Quick.”
Sheila did as she was told. Undressed, she felt ten times more buoyant.
“Ready?” he asked.
“As I’ll ever be.”
“Easy now, don’t tire yourself. If you get fagged out, roll over and backstroke.”
They struck out sunward, cautiously dog-paddling. The swells were gentle but high, and at the crest of one particularly elevated wave, Sheila could see a thin strip of green on the horizon. It looked miles away.
“We’ll never make it,” she groaned.
“Yes, we will. Steady now. Even out your strokes.”
They swam on for what seemed like hours. The water got even warmer. It made Sheila feel her fatigue more. They rested periodically, treading water.
“We’d better get going,” Trent said.
Sheila found that she could float on her back and give her legs a rest. “I really need to stop.”
“I know, but there’s something swimming around us and it looks interested.”
Sheila straightened up and searched.
“There,” Trent said, pointing.
She could see it now, a wickedly sharp fin cutting the water. Its path took it in a slow circle about them.
“Trent, I don’t like this.”
“We’ll have to swim faster, Sheila. Can you do it?”
“Yes.”
“The island is just another half mile or so. Or two or three. Come on.”
They swam. The fin altered its trajectory and closed, its manner still more curious than menacing. Then another fin broke water and came abreast of the first. More followed.
“Seems we’re becoming quite an attraction,” Trent said calmly.
“Free lunch,” Sheila said, amazed that she was capable of gallows humor.
“Got any magic yet, Sheila?”
In the last hour or so, she had been testing for magic in what seemed like an unconnected compartment of her mind, insulated from the fear and the panic. The supernatural elements of this world were very strange, and she
