[Kelvin 03] - Chimaera's Copper (with Robert E. Margroff) by Piers Anthony Page A

suddenly it was much closer, and each step was taking them rapidly forward.

    Kelvin looked back. The squarears were gone, vanished.

    "Magic!" Kian said, also looking back. "I knew there was something funny about it. We weren't where we seemed to be."

    Kelvin had to agree, though he was not elated. Somehow magic and the evident extent of the squarears' powers was depressing. True, the magic of the gauntlets had saved him many times, but it had always seemed to him that having magic was an unfair advantage. What chance did a master swordsman have, for instance, against a bungle- foot like himself, when his sword was clasped by a hand in a magic gauntlet? Kelvin knew himself to be no hero, merely a person whose ordinary abilities were amplified by magic. Now he had encountered creatures who seemed to be far beyond that magic. It was disconcerting.

    "Hey, Son, you look glum!" his father said lightly. It was almost a doggerel rhyme, the kind he had done to cheer Kelvin as a child.

    "I can't get it out of my head, Father."

    "What, that you were rescued? That none of us will be eaten?"

    Finally the thing that had been bothering him focused. "No, Father. That Stapular will be eaten." He let that sink, then plunged ahead. "Is that right, Father? Is it?"

    "I wondered how long it would take for your conscience to catch up," John said. "You can't let anything be. You always have to work it out to the last degree, so that it makes sense on every level. You are unusual in that, perhaps unique."

    "I'm sorry," Kelvin said.

    "Sorry! Son, that's what makes you a hero!" His father's friendly hand came around his shoulders. "But look, Son, it's not right by our standards, but this isn't our frame. We shouldn't be here. We're here only by chance. It isn't our business."

    "I'm going ahead!" Kian said, and ran on to the cave. He looked inside, looked back, and called, "This is it, all right! Hurry up!"

    "He doesn't care," Kelvin said.

    "It's his upbringing. It was different from yours. Remember who his mother was."

    Kelvin remembered. Evil Queen Zoanna, who had used magic to fascinate John Knight and seduce him and bear his child. Zoanna had evidently liked to play with men in much the way Mervania did, only Zoanna, being human, had been able to take it farther. "Yes, he's seen more cruelty casually applied."

    "In the palace he did. His grandfather and his mother were not noticeably kind. Give him credit for turning out as well as he did, given that environment. He did not have Charlain as his mother."

    That certainly accounted for the difference! Kelvin's mother was the finest woman he knew, though perhaps Heln approached her.

    "Hurry it up, won't you!" Kian called.

    "And you can't blame him for wanting to get on with his wedding," John said.

    Kelvin abruptly stopped. "Father, I'm going back."

    "Of course you are, Son. We all are. First to Kian's wedding, as we planned before getting diverted here, and then--"

    "No, Father. I mean back to the island in the lake. Back to rescue Stapular."

    "Son, you can't!" But something in John's expression suggested that he wasn't surprised.

    "I can. I have the gauntlets now, and the levitation belt, and the Mouvar weapon. I can do it."

    "No, wait! The chimaera can stun your mind! Think--"

    Kelvin knew better than to think. A man of action he must be, though his nature was far more sedentary. Magic and a prophecy made him heroic despite himself.

    He touched the control for "up" on the belt, and suddenly he was floating above his father's head, looking back at Kian's astonished form waving at the cave. It was exactly as it was when he practiced with the belt.

    "Goodbye, Father. Wait for me if you will. If not, I'll follow you."

    "No, wait, you idiot! What kind of a fool are you!"

    "I'm a hero, remember?" And he knew his father understood, despite trying to restrain him. Heroes would be heroes, just as kings would be kings, to the wonder and dismay of others.

    Sadly yet determinedly he