The Warlock Insane Read online

  Rod shook his head. "Not tonight. But I will say that I never saw more than a face in it, myself."

  "Then is it in our minds that the Man in the Moon doth dwell, Papa, and not truly in his silver sphere?"

  Rod nodded, looking up at the satellite again. "Could be, Gregory. Of course, I suppose it depends on the viewer, too. For myself, trying to see what's really there and not what I've been told about, I'd have to say the Gramarye Moon looks like…"

  "A pie!" Geoffrey cried.

  "A shilling!" Cordelia caroled.

  "A cheese!"

  "A mirror!"

  "I was going to say, an eye." Rod grinned. "See? It winked at me."

  "Where!"

  "Let me see!"

  "Will it wink for me, too, Papa?"

  "It would certainly be a very odd atmospheric effect." Fess looked up at the moon.

  "/ see not so much as an eyelash," Gwen informed them.

  But the shape of the pupil and iris was becoming clearer, so clear that Rod couldn't doubt the resemblance. "It did. It winked again." Then he realized there was another eye beside it—and he froze. "There's two of them, and… they're narrowing!"

  The branch above him moved downward, the twigs flexing, looking more and more like woody fingers on the end of a bark-covered arm, coming right down toward the family.

  "Look out!" Rod grabbed Gwen in his right arm, Cordelia and Gregory in his left, and dove for the roadside, bowling down Geoffrey and Magnus on the way, as the enormous hand groped toward them.

  The children howled with alarm, and Gwen cried, "Husband! What dost thou!"

  "Battle stations!" Rod shouted. "It's coming for us!"

  "What doth come for us?" Magnus scrambled to his feet, looking about wildly.

  "Where? What?" Geoffrey sprang up, landing in a crouch, sword out, darting glances to left and to right.

  Fess leaped out into the road, blocking them with his huge body. "Where is the enemy, Rod? I cannot see it!"

  "There! It's a troll! That wasn't the moon, it was its eye—and that branch was its arm and hand!"

  "Husband, calm thyself!" Gwen said. " 'Tis not a troll's eye, but truly the moon! And the branch is only a branch!"

  "Can't you see it?" Rod dodged aside as the huge hand swept down past the horse, turning into a fist.

  "Nay!" Cordelia wailed. "Oh, Papa, there's naught there!"

  "Don't tell me what I don't see!" Rod leaped back, sword whisking out as the gigantic fist slammed into the snowbank in front of him and swung up again. "Quick, fly away! It's after us!"

  ' 'But there is naught…"

  "Do you trust me or don't you?" Rod bellowed. "Run! I can't escape until you do!"

  "Papa," Cordelia insisted through her tears, "there is no troll! 'Tis but a dream!"

  "Then it's a dream that can hurt you! Fly!"

  "Quickly, children!" Gwen cried. "Whatsoe'er he doth see, he cannot be calm while we're here! Up, aloft! Everyone!" Her broomstick appeared from beneath her cloak.

  In a whisk, Cordelia was airborne, her brothers shooting up like skyrockets. Gwen spiraled up after them.

  Fess came to Rod's side. "If there is a troll, Rod, it is invisible, and that is contrary to the laws of physics."

  "Invisible? It's right there, for crying out loud! Fess, jump out of the way!"

  But the horse stood still, so Rod leaped to the side, and the troll seemed to pause, unsure which target to aim at.

  Gwen decided the issue by calling, "We are safe, husband!"

  "No, you're not!" Rod shouted as the troll turned with a gibbering laugh, its huge hand reaching up toward Rod's daughter. " 'Delia, up to a hundred feet! He's after you!

  You obscenity of a monster—get away from my child!" And he leaped at the troll, slashing out with his sword.

  The blade cracked against a leg hard as oak, but it scored a long line, and ichor welled out. With a howl of rage, the troll turned, huge fist smashing down at Rod.

  He leaped again, and snow fountained where the fist struck, while Fess's voice rang inside his head. "Rod! Put up your blade! There are none here but yourself and your family! There is no troll!"

  "Then how come he's trying to tear my head off?" Rod leaped again, but the troll's other hand caught him in a crushing squeeze, driving the air from his lungs. He managed a sort of whinnying cry of alarm as the ground swung away beneath his feet, and the troll's huge maw gaped wide before him. Vision reddened as the viselike grip pushed blood into his head, but a single thought swam through the haze: even a troll had to have parts that were soft—relatively, at least. He saw the huge lips soaring closer and lunged out as hard as he could. His blade jabbed into flesh that had the texture of balsa.

  The troll let out a hoot that would have attracted a female locomotive and threw Rod down, hard—he managed to think Up! barely in time to cushion the force of the fall. He landed on his side and rolled up to his feet as the troll roared and stalked toward him, its eyes crimson in the night, huge foot slamming down at him.

  Rod danced aside, and dodged the huge fist that followed—then leaped as high as he could, rocketing upward with the full power of his levitation, sword spearing toward the troll's belly.

  It hit, with a shock that jolted Rod's whole arm—but the troll howled in agony and doubled over. Rod managed to shoot out of the way, then lunged in to skewer the monster's ear. The sword pierced the lobe, and the troll clapped a hand over it with a roar that shook the hillside. It snapped back upright—until the pain in its abdomen stopped it. Rod dove in at the inside of the elbow, feeling like a mosquito—but no insect ever brought out a bellow like that. The troll stumbled back, away, then away again, hands up to fend off the tiny demon that shot around and about it, darting in and stabbing. It turned away, burbling in alarm, and stumbled off into the forest.

  The crashing of its passage faded, and Rod let himself sink back to the earth, panting and pressing a hand against the ache in his side, wondering if the monster's grip had cracked a bone. "Must have been—witch-moss," he gasped, "but a hell of a lot of it! What have we got—a whole village full of grannies telling ogre tales?" He turned to his family. "Okay, you can come down now."

  They were down, all right—but Cordelia was huddled against her mother sobbing, and Gregory was clutching tight to her skirts, staring up at his father with huge, frightened eyes. Behind, Magnus and Geoffrey stood manfully, trying to hide their apprehension.

  Rod frowned. "What's the matter with you? The troll was the monster—not me!"

  Tears brimmed Gwen's eyes. "Husband, we saw naught! Thou didst dodge from no blows!"

  "Come on! It plowed up a dozen snowdrifts!"

  "The surface was completely undisturbed, Rod," Fess answered, "except by your own tumbles."

  ' 'Then thou didst rise up though naught did hold thee— yet thou didst struggle as though against a giant hand."

  "Believe me, I felt it!"

  "But we did not see it!"

  "Not see it?" Rod stilled suddenly, feeling a chill of ice that had nothing to do with the winter. "You're all against me again, aren't you? Teaming up!"

  "Husband, no!"—as though it were torn from her.

  "Then look, will you?" Rod whirled, pointing at the snow. "There're the footprints! Fess could stand in one! In fact, he is standing in one!"

  The horse looked down. "I see only snow, Rod, disturbed by no more than my own hooves."

  "Mayhap only thou couldst see it," Gregory offered. "Could it have been shielded by a spell that denied it to our eyes?"

  That gave Rod pause, but Fess answered, "We would then have been able to see its effects, Gregory, and…"

  "Save your breath, Fess." Rod's eyes narrowed as he looked down at the boy. "He's humoring me."

  Gregory shrank back against Gwen's skirts, and for a moment, the whole family stood frozen, appalled at the memory of their father's rages, and bracing themselves for another.

  "Hell's skulls," Rod moaned, "am I near lashing out at you all?"
>
  No one answered him.

  "I am," Rod breathed, "I really am! And there is no way I'm going to let that happen again!"

  On the word, he turned and strode away into the forest.

  "No, Papa!"

  "Papa, come back!"

  "Husband, thou hast not readied thyself for being long out of doors!"

  "Sacred Blue!" Rod muttered to himself. "As though I hadn't slogged through sixteen-hour winter days before I ever met her!"

  "On the planet Pohyola, as I remember, Rod," Fess said at his shoulder, "when you were helping the rebels to organize."

  "Are you there, then?" Rod scowled up at the great black horse. "Go away. I'm of questionable mental equilibrium, remember?"

  "No one but yourself has said so, Rod."

  "No one but myself has had to live in my mind." Rod stopped stock-still, staring off into the night. "That's it!"

  "What is what, Rod?"

  "Why I could see a troll, and none of the rest of you could. Because it wasn't there."

  You could almost hear the relief in Fess's voice. "That is, certainly, a logical conclusion, Rod."

  "Yeah, but then isn't it equally logical that I'm hallucinating?"

  "That is simply a matter of definition."

  "No, it's a matter of scrambled brains. Face it, Fess—I'm insane." Rod stopped in the snow, a beatific smile spreading across his face. "Yeah, insane. Well! If that's all it is, then I can relax again."

  "Would you… explain the basis for that attitude, Rod?"

  "What's to explain? As long as I know what it is, I know what to do about it.''

  "Which is?" Fess asked, with foreboding.

  "Stay far away from Gwen and the kids, for openers, so I can't hurt them. Stay away from everybody, for that matter, until I manage to get myself straightened out." Rod started walking again. "That forest looks inviting. I'm overdue for a vacation, anyway."

  "Now, Rod." Fess hurried to catch up with him. "Surely you are exaggerating."

  "No, I'm hallucinating. And if I'm hallucinating, I'm either starving, drugged, suffering from heatstroke, or insane."

  "That is not a warranted inference…"

  "Oh, yeah? Do you know any other causes of hallucination?"

  Fess was silent a moment, then said, "An excess of religious zeal, perhaps, usually coinciding with deep meditation."

  "Yeah, well, I sure haven't been praying this afternoon— and after that banquet Their Majesties fed us, I'm certainly not starving! If any of that food had been drugged, there'd be a hundred other people hallucinating, too!"

  "Have we any proof that they are not?"

  "Judging by the ruckus I've been making, we'd have heard them by now—or at least heard about them; Their Royalties always summon us when something unexplain-able happens to somebody."

  "That does seem valid," Fess said with reluctance.

  "You bet it does! As to heatstroke, it's the middle of winter—and that leaves insanity!"

  ' 'The term is perhaps a bit extreme…"

  "Sure—I'm just seeing things that aren't really there. Seeing them attack me, too—and will you really try to tell me that I haven't always been a little bit paranoid?"

  "Your grandfather did perhaps exert too strong an influence on you, with his medieval fantasies…"

  "Yes—my darling, beloved, but dotty grandfather. Is that an adjective you'd accept, Fess? Or how about 'mad as a hatter'?"

  "I think I might prefer the last," Fess said slowly, "considering its association with the works of Lewis Carroll."

  "Then it's heigh-ho! Off to Wonderland! Are you coming along, Fess?" But Rod didn't wait for an answer.

  Chapter Two

  The trees closed behind him. Rod glanced back, and saw only a maze of bare branches, outlined by the snow clinging to them. At once, he slowed his pace with a sigh of relief. "They did it. They stayed."

  "They do recognize your need for occasional solitude, Rod."

  "Still there, Steel Steed?" Rod looked up at his old companion, and was surprised to see that the great black horse was facing front, not watching him. For some reason, this made the pressure roll off. "Well. So I'm on sick leave."

  "It would seem advisable," the robot agreed.

  "Great!" Rod stretched, then relaxed with a happy sigh. "No more emergency calls from Tuan and Catharine! At least, not for a while."

  "Yet Gwen will have to manage the children alone," Fess murmured.

  "She does, anyway, Fess, you know that. I'm just a security symbol for them all, a sort of animated teddy bear."

  "Oh, no, Rod! You do them an injustice. You are far more, to all of them…" He stopped, seeing that his owner wasn't listening.

  "Fess—what's that great big brown blob over there?"

  "Where, Rod?" Fess followed Rod's gaze, but saw nothing.

  Rod, however, saw a large, fat animal stand up on its hind legs and wave, a cheerful smile on its face. "It's a bear, Fess—six feet tall, if it's an inch. Very friendly-looking, too," he said, puzzled. "I thought bears were supposed to be hibernating."

  "They are, Rod." There was a cautious note to the robot's voice. "Are its legs much thicker than is normal for its kind?"

  "Yeah, and it has pink pads instead of paws… Hey!" Rod whirled, staring up at Fess. "You don't mean it's a teddy!"

  "Yes, Rod—an animated teddy bear, such as you were just discussing."

  "Odd coincidence." Rod waved back to the teddy, then watched it stroll away into the wood. It looked rather familiar. "You don't mean it showed up because I talked about it?"

  "That is a distinct possibility, Rod. If you are hallucinating, anything that comes to your mind might appear."

  "And anything that's there, waiting to surface, but hasn't come to the fore yet?" Rod frowned. "Don't know if I like the sound of that last part.''

  "It may turn out to be fallacious—but perhaps the visual images stored in your subconscious will not arise unless some random association triggers them."

  "Like that thought about my role in the family." Rod glanced about him, suddenly apprehensive. "Right now, Fess, it looks to me as though I'm walking through a moonlit deciduous forest, with snow outlining the limbs of the trees."

  "You are, Rod."

  "So the forest is real, anyway." Rod rubbed a glove across his chin.

  A long, mournful cry echoed through the forest, and a shadow with eyes of fire detached itself from a nearby branch. "Fess! It's a vampire!"

  "No, Rod—it is only an owl."

  The huge bat dove at them, its jaws lolling open to show glistening fangs. Rod ducked, grabbed up a branch with a sharpened tip, and stabbed at the monster's breast. With a howl of dread, it sheered off and hurtled away into the forest. "Owl or not," Rod muttered, "I had to deal with it in terms of the fantasy it came from." Then a sudden thought struck him. "What am I holding, Fess?"

  "A broken twig, Rod. "

  "It grew amazingly." Rod threw the sharpened stake away. "This is going to take some getting used to. Well, at least I have light." He looked up at the planetoid overhead. "Hey! It stayed a moon!"

  "It would seem that the spell has passed," Fess murmured.

  "Only temporarily." Rod shook his head. "Be nice if it would stay gone—but I think I'd better wait a while, to make sure."

  The moon reddened.

  "Uh—strike that."

  "What is happening, Rod?"

  "The moon has turned crimson. A big, fat drop is collecting on its bottom… it's dripping…" Rod squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. "No, I don't think I'm ready to go home."

  "It is surely a chemical imbalance," the robot protested. "A blood analysis…"

  Rod looked up, horrified. Fess had grown batwings; two long, sharp fangs protruded from his mouth. "Get away from me!"

  "But, Rod… I only meant…"

  "Meant to stop by for a quick sip! What the hell is this, a vampire horse?"

  "Exactly," chuckled a rich baritone voice.

  Rod whir
led, and saw a tall, debonair devil lounging against a tree trunk, twirling its tail. "Go to blazes!"

  "Oh, all right," the devil grumped. "But I'll find you later." He exploded into flame and was gone, leaving Rod trembling.

  "Rod, surely the correct antidote…"

  "There is no antidote!" Rod leaped back. "Because there's no poison! You're in this with them! You're all out to get me—even you, my old tutor and guardian! Get away! Get out of here! Go!"

  The vampire horse stood, glaring at him with eyes of fire.

  Rod whipped out his dagger. "Turn into a sword!" The blade sprouted, grew three feet. "Silver!" Rod cried, and the sheen of steel turned to a mirror finish.

  "I will go," the vampire said slowly. "But I am grieved to find that your imbalance is so severe as to make you doubt me, Rod."

  "Doubt? I'm sure of it! Now get out of here, before I run you through."

  "I will go." The horse turned away—and as it went, the glow in its eyes died, the fangs shrank and were gone, the wings dwindled and flowed back into the form of a saddle—and only familiar old Fess plodded away through the snow, head hanging.

  Rod felt a stab of remorse. "No! I mean…"

  Fess paused and lifted his head, turning to face Rod. "Yes?"

  "It's ebbing again," Rod explained. "It seems to come and go—and it makes me paranoid when it happens."

  "I have heard of such phenomena," Fess answered.

  Rod frowned. "Just reinforcing my natural tendencies, you mean?" Then before Fess could answer, "Never mind—it doesn't really matter. Whatever it is, I'll have to figure it out and learn to cope with it. You'll have to leave me alone to work it out, Fess. I know that's hard for you, but you'll have to."

  "I have always endeavored not to be overly protective, Rod, in spite of my programming."

  "Yeah—and I know how hard that is." Rod grimaced, remembering how he had to school himself to leave Gregory and Cordelia to fend for themselves—not always successfully. And Magnus and Geoffrey, when they were little. "No need to override that tendency completely, though. Don't be too far away, okay?"

  The great black horse stared at him for a moment, while its eyes seemed to quicken again. Then it said, "I will come at your call, Rod."

  "Thanks, old friend." Rod grinned with relief. "But you'd better not stay too close."