Here be Monsters Read online

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  HERE BE MONSTERS

  An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2001 by Christopher Stasheff

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  For information address:

  The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is http://www.penguinputnam.com

  ISBN: 978-1-1012-0795-6

  An ACE BOOK®

  Ace Books first published by The IMPRINT Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ACE and the “A” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  First edition (electronic): September 2001

  PROLOGUE

  Allouette gazed out the window as Gregory lit the incense in their meditation room. “How curious!” she murmured.

  “What is curious, my love?” Gregory came up behind her to follow her gaze. His hand seemed to rise of its own accord toward the satin-draped curve of her hip, but he forced it back by sheer willpower; his fiancée did not need any distractions if she intended to meditate.

  He exerted more willpower to turn his gaze to the meadow below their tower, rather than toward the beauty of her profile, the more beautiful because it was radiant with happiness—at last, after a decade of exploitation.

  “That is the fifth couple come to build in our meadow.” Allouette pointed to the ground around their ivory tower that had so recently sprouted four sturdy thatched cottages. The young folk who lived in them were helping the new arrivals build a cottage of their own. They had already set up the posts and were weaving the wattle branches among them.

  “I had cherished our solitude,” Allouette told Gregory. “Why must they come here? Can they not study as well in their own villages?”

  “They cannot,” Gregory said regretfully, “for few peasants understand their hunger for learning, and their lords are quite impatient with their ways of passing the winter days.”

  “I must strive to understand that,” Allouette said thoughtfully. “I was fortunate in that, at least—that my foster parents did provide me a school, and encourage my desire to learn—nay, nearly force me to it.” Her mood darkened at the memory of a happy childhood turned harsh in her teens. She shrugged it off with an effort and made a face (Gregory thought it was charming). “I may view them with sympathy, but I have no wish to be lady of the manor. I have had my fill of ruling others.”

  She had indeed, young though she was. She had been trained to be a secret agent for an interstellar organization of anarchists—trained also to be an assassin and to do whatever was necessary to gain access to her assigned targets, including seduction. When she had realized she was being used—not only as a tool, but also as a toy for her superiors—she determined to become the one who did the using instead, and seduced and murdered her way into becoming the chief of her spy ring.

  Her assigned targets had been the Gallowglass heirs—Gregory, his older brothers, and his sister. If she couldn’t kill them—for, powerful though she may have been as a projective telepath, she found that the Gallowglasses were stronger—she was to keep them from reproducing.

  She had accomplished this most effectively with the eldest, Magnus, maiming him emotionally and imprinting him with a horror of intimacy. She had tried to steal Cordelia’s beau, Prince Alain, which would have had the advantage of bringing her to the throne, an excellent position from which to sabotage the government—but Cordelia proved too strong for her, as did Alain’s love. She might have managed to ensnare the middle son, Geoffrey, but he had captured a fiery young female bandit, Quicksilver, who had captured his heart in return.

  Still, one out of three wasn’t bad—but she had tried to make it two out of four, doing her best to seduce Gregory away from his beloved books and enslave him with chains of love. In this she had succeeded—all too well, for his probing intellect had seen through her disguises to the woman underneath, knowing her for what she was but loving her anyway. Logic dictated that he execute her, in love with her or not, but his sister Cordelia had pled the cause of mercy and reformed her with the aid of their mother. Gwendylon had used telepathy to probe deep into the woman’s mind and found that the causes of her homicidal tendencies had been carefully ingrained by the anarchist agents who had reared her. Gwendylon enabled her to confront her fears and convictions of worthlessness, and helped her cure herself. In the process, she had discovered how completely the anarchists had victimized her, realized how thoroughly the political convictions with which they had reared her had been based on lies, and had rejected their philosophy in disgust.

  Remorseful and lost, she had turned to the man who loved her, had traveled with him and fallen in love with him, and helped him build the ivory tower where the two of them studied the operation of the extrasensory powers that made up the “magic” of Gramarye’s “witches.” They threw themselves headlong into research—and one another. She was not quite willing to marry but was even less willing to leave the ivory tower and her scholarly swain, for she had to admit to herself that she was already addicted to Gregory.

  Now, though, it was time for study, not lovemaking. She turned away from the window and went with Gregory back to the center of the room, mind already turning to the cluster of neurons she had identified as a possible source of telekinesis, the power to move inanimate objects by thought.

  Gregory, not yet so pragmatic, was still enmeshed in trying to discover whether ESP was actually a characteristic of the brain or was simply a mode of thought. In their discussions, he had already conceded that if it could be inherited, that mode of thought certainly had its source in the brain itself—but he was content to leave neurons and synapses to Allouette while he tried to trace the convolutions of thought, the brainwave forms, that actually made the witches and warlocks of Gramarye able to fly (by telekinesis), to disappear in one place and reappear in another (by teleportation), to read one another’s minds and project thoughts and images into others’ minds, and to sculpt and animate the strange Gramarye fungus called “witch-moss.” Each had already read every book written on the subject, which were few, and had interviewed the few people who knew anything. That, however, gave them plenty of information to organize and analyze—food for many hours of thought.

  So they settled down, sitting cross-legged at right angles to one another—Gregory had found that, if Allouette were in his line of sight, he could concentrate on nothing else. On the other hand, if she weren’t with him, he couldn’t concentrate for worrying about her welfare—so they meditated together, backs straight and hands on their knees, closing their eyes, envisioni
ng the images that represented the problems they were studying. Their minds drifted into the rapturous haze of association and correlation, searching for patterns and testing them for soundness, sorting and rejecting, hoping for the inspiration that would make sudden simple sense of a complex knot of facts.

  Then Allouette drew a long, shuddering gasp, her eyes opening, seeing not the room around her but the horrors that had invaded her mind.

  CHAPTER

  1

  Allouette’s groan penetrated Gregory’s trance in an instant, and the images of his mental constructs fell to shards. He didn’t even give them a thought—he was already at her side, chafing her hands to restore contact with the real world, speaking in a low but intense voice. “My love! My love, come back! From wherever you roam, return to safety!”

  Allouette’s gaze shot up to his face, terror twisting her features. Then she recognized her fiancé and the sight of his face waked her from the trance. She leaned against him but was still stiff as timber.

  “There now, it was all a dream, only your own imaginings, only nightmares of the past twisted into new and horrible forms,” he soothed. “No matter how horrible, it is not real.”

  She stayed stiff a moment longer, then went limp, collapsing into his arms and sobbing bitterly. Gregory held her and stroked her back and shoulders, marveling at his impossibly good fortune in having so wonderful a creature in his arms. He glowed with a feeling of power and purpose because he was able to comfort her.

  At last the sobbing slackened and he tilted her chin up enough so that he could wipe at her tears with the hem of his sleeve. “Poor love, you must have seen horrors indeed! Was it a glimpse of genes gone awry, twisted into an angry knot? Or of a tumorous brain yielding distorted—”

  “It was an invasion!” Her fingers bit into his arm. “Tribes of monsters, horrid and scaly, revolting and tentacled, brandishing weapons of strange design but sharp enough to hew our people in half! Behind them rode armies of humans on mounts obscene and savage, warriors driving the monsters onward to conquer our land! Nay, not simply to conquer, or even to rape and loot and pillage, but to slay and slaughter each and every one of our people!” She broke into sobs again.

  Even as she spoke it, her mind leaked fragments of the nightmare—giant slug-like creatures with vaguely human faces twisted with obscene glee as they slashed with swords held in four arms, creatures that looked like bears become human riding on great horned lizards and slashing about them with battle axes, giant insects with human faces and razor-edged wings. . . Gregory knelt, frozen in shock, his hand stroking her back automatically as his brain reeled with the vision. At last he said gently, “It was a nightmare, nothing more, some deeply buried—”

  “It was not! It was a sending!” Allouette glared up at him. “Ask me not how I know, but I do! They have blazoned this vision before them to weaken us with horror, to render us unable to resist them!”

  Gregory knelt frozen a moment longer, then spoke with iron resolve. “If it is indeed a sending, then I too must perceive it.”

  “No!” Allouette stiffened in panic, then clasped his face between her hands. “Not you, my good and gentle love! ’Tis bad enough that I have had to see this nightmare—I, who have been accustomed to bloodshed from childhood and to murder since I was grown! If it has wracked me so, what will it do to you?”

  “I am somewhat more durable than I seem,” Gregory assured her, “but if there is truly a threat to the land, one sentry alone will not suffice to raise the alarm. I shall have to see what you have seen. Accompany me if you will, ward me and strengthen me, but I must witness it.” With no further ado, he gazed off into space, eyes losing focus as he concentrated on the terrible vision he had glimpsed, followed it back into her mind, and opened himself to it, hearing her voice from a distance crying, “Gregory, no!” but following the thought back along a line that reached from her to . . .

  To a foggy landscape, a blasted heath with skeletons of trees barely seen through the mist, which gathered into a gray whorl that churned and roiled and opened like a whirlpool, a funnel that spewed distorted nightmare forms hooting and howling with glee as they charged out, waving blades of unearthly design, bloodthirsty and ravenous, seeking human prey.

  The vision rippled, and Gregory saw the monsters charging down upon a human village too quickly for anyone to lift even a scythe in defense, saw what those whirling unearthly blades did to the peasants, saw what the warriors who followed the monsters did to the few villagers who remained alive, hooting and calling in mocking tones, “Gregory! Come and join! Come back for slaughter! Come back. . . come back . . .”

  Then the vision thinned, separating from his mind, becoming only an obscene picture of turmoil and bloodshed apart from him, away from him as though in a frame, and it was Allouette’s voice that called, “Gregory, come back!”

  He followed her voice, followed the pattern of her thoughts, feeling as though he were swimming up through dank and fetid water, away from skeleton-haunted wrecks of ships wrapped in dying weeds, toward light and air and freedom. Then he was clear, back in their sun-filled meditation room, and drew a long shivering gasp, clutching something, anything, so long as it was real and part of the living world.

  Looking down, he saw it was Allouette’s hand.

  “Speak, love,” she said, her words caressing, soothing. “Was it so bad as to shake even a wizard of your renown?”

  Gregory nodded, took another gulp of air, and said, “Worse than anything I’ve ever seen—and I have witnessed some horrors, when my family and I have needed to save the common folk from oppressors.”

  “Worse even than you saw in my mind,” she whispered.

  Again, he nodded. “Tribes of monsters and armies of ruthless humans advancing not only to conquer Gramarye, but also to slay all who live here. They came spewing out of . . . of a sort of whirlpool, only it whirled in fog, not in water—and what they did to the villagers they found . . .” He shuddered. “Pray Heaven no such thing ever really comes upon us!”

  “But it is real, and you and I both know it.”

  Startled, Gregory turned to meet Allouette’s eyes and found them sympathetic, but also grave—and very determined. “We must hunt them down, Gregory,” she said softly. “We must track them and send every single one back into their whirlpool, or forever despise ourselves for not saving people whom we could have spared this agony.”

  Gregory sat still for a moment, bowing his head and letting her words sink in. At last he gave a single nod and said, “You have it—we must. But let us rest a day first, to rid ourselves of this frightful vision and fortify our souls against worse to come.”

  “It shall not take us so harshly again.” Still holding his hand, Allouette pressed it more firmly. “It was the surprise as much as the brutality that shocked us.”

  “We shall be inured,” Gregory agreed. “Come, now—let us consider what sorts of phenomena we are likely to meet, and how to encounter them.”

  They spent the rest of the day in research and planning, and the night in lovemaking, as much for reassurance as for pleasure. Gregory had promised Allouette that they would have a grand wedding when they both felt ready. She had retorted that he was promising it to himself, for she had no need of it—but secretly in her heart, she didn’t really consider herself good enough to become his wife. It never occurred to her that Gregory was certain he wasn’t good enough for her, and was planning their wedding for the future—at a time when, in his own mind, he had proved himself worthy of her love.

  Nonetheless, neither had any doubt about their commitment to the other.

  Waking the next morning, Gregory looked up over a steaming cup of tea and said, “Yesterday we held a council of war, did we not?”

  “If two people can be said to be an army,” said the former Chief Agent of Gramarye’s anarchists, “we did, yes.”

  “I had thought as much,” Gregory said with a grim nod. “Ere we leave, then, I shall tell a warrior where we go, and w
hy.”

  Allouette stiffened, for the warrior in question could only be Gregory’s older brother Geoffrey, whom she had tried to seduce away from his fiancée Quicksilver—and the fact that they had not yet been engaged, or that Allouette had failed, did not lessen her feelings of remorse one jot.

  Gregory’s gaze had lost focus, and though he sent his thoughts to his brother in the family encryption mode, Allouette had long ago learned to decipher it and heard them as easily as though he spoke directly to her.

  Gregory, old son! Geoffrey cried with delight. What moves?

  Monsters, brother, Gregory returned. We go to hunt them.

  Monsters? Again? Geoffrey said with overtones of boredom. What manner, and where are they?

  Not in this world, Gregory answered, and as to the manner, look and see—but brace yourself to hold down your gorge.

  So bad as that? Geoffrey’s tone was much more interested. Well, show me, then.

  Gregory did.

  Exasperated, Geoffrey Gallowglass strode down the hall of the royal castle. The guards at the door of the heir’s suite eyed him askance and didn’t bother challenging him—one simply said, “If you will wait a moment, my lord, we will announce you,” even as the other was knocking, waiting for the response, then entering to announce, “Lord Geoffrey to see Your Highness.”

  Prince Alain looked up with a smile, laying down his quill. “Well, bid him enter, of course!” As Geoffrey came in, Alain rose from his desk, saying, “What moves today, my friend? A wolfhunt, or . . .” Then Geoffrey’s expression registered and he said, “What moves indeed!”

  “My addlepated little brother,” Geoffrey answered, “and his devious betrothed . . . well, all right, wife. They have seen nightmares in their trances and are off to scour the land to make certain their dreams will not come true.”

  Alain tensed; anything affecting the welfare of the land and the people affected him. “What manner of nightmare was this?”