Incarnadine was silent a moment, then said, “I really must compliment you on having mastered the local vernacular so quickly.”
The face couldn’t help being pleased. “That? It’s nothing. This is one world we’re going to insist on keeping. We work right into the mythology so well, it’s as though it had been created with us in mind.”
“If you look back far enough into your historical records, you might find that you did have a hand in working up the indigenous mythology, or at least inspiring it.”
“Really? That’s very interesting. But back to business. Isn’t it clear that you will have to share power at some point? You people can’t keep us back forever.”
“I don’t see why not,” Incarnadine said. “In any event, I certainly won’t be the one to give away the family business.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t be giving away all of it, now would you?”
“You would never be content with partial control, were I willing to grant it.”
“Come now. I think it’s about time you realized that your attitude toward us is really the result of years of propaganda. We get the worst press imaginable. Your family always had it in for us. It’s not fair! We’ve done nothing, absolutely nothing to justify being treated so shabbily all these years. Discrimination! That’s what it is, pure and simple.”
“You have my sympathies. My advice to you is this — pull back your forces now. If you fail to do so, you will be destroyed.”
The head shook sadly. “Really, Inky. I thought better of you.”
Incarnadine raised both hands and began to trace a pattern in the air. “Foul spirit, destroyer of worlds, blasphemer and ancient enemy! I bid you begone, in the name of all the gods of all the universes — get thee hence! Flee the wrath of the righteous, and trouble the innocent no more! Depart, I say!”
The face contorted with pain. The mouth opened, and a wailing cry pierced the night.
“Bastard human!” it screamed. “Filthy pile of excrement! You had your chance! Now you’ll suffer everlasting torment! You’ll all suffer horribly and die! You, your family, and all the get of the Haplodie! Die, you’ll all die, die, die —”
Abruptly the apparition disappeared.
Trent said, “They really do fear you.”
“Of course,” Incarnadine said as he finished up the spell. “Their only hope was to take me out — here, in this world, where I was handicapped.”
“Will it be necessary to push the castle through another magical transformation in order to get rid of them?”
“No, not with all the modifications I made when I recast the transmogrification spell. I can now draw all the power I want without the risk of blowing the spell by overloading it. Which was always a limitation, as you know. I installed a circuit breaker, so to speak.”
“Nice touch,” Trent said. “But we have to get you back inside the castle before you can tap any of that power.”
“Not necessarily. Not if what I’ve been working on for the last few days proves fruitful.”
“What’s that? I thought you were trying to summon the portal.”
“I gave up on that fairly quick. It was obvious someone had it nailed down. No, I came up with a gimmick that might allow me to tap castle power by means of an inductance effect through interuniversal space. I say might, because it hasn’t worked so far. But now the portal is close at hand, and that might make a difference. I’m going to try it, anyway. I’ll disconnect from your system first. Cover me.”
“Go ahead,” Trent said. “And good luck.”
As Incarnadine made movements with his hands, things sprang into existence in the hayfield and in the general vicinity of the manor house. Swirling pillars of fire blazed up. Hordes of sword-wielding monsters charged. Various airborne improbabilities commenced their unlikely maneuvers. The sky opened up and began to rain fire and brimstone, and fingers of lightning jabbed at the earth.
“They’re really slinging the crap now,” Trent said edgily. “Everything they have, it looks like. This isn’t going to be easy, Inky, castle power or no.”
“Piece of cake, Trent old fellow,” the King of West Thurlangia said as multicolored pyrotechnics spewed from his fingertips.
Hand in hand with Deena, Barnaby stumbled up the stairs. Darkness above. He reached a landing, turned, and kept climbing. He didn’t like this option, but the demon had come from the basement, and he didn’t relish going down there. He and Deena had to hide out somewhere, and the ground floor was out, having erupted into a melee soon after the lights had gone out.
They reached the top of the stairs and a long hallway, along which a few doors were set. Barnaby tried the first and found it locked, as was the second, but the third, which lay at the end of an L, opened onto a dark, sparsely furnished bedroom. They went in and closed the door.
“I’m hidin’ in here,” Deena said, sliding back the closet door. It was a walk-in closet, quite spacious enough to be considered a small room. Barnaby rolled the door shut, and they stood in darkness with their arms around each other.
“I don’t know if I like this,” Deena said.
Horrible noises came from the first floor: shouts, exclamations, the sounds of furniture smashing, and the odd demoniacal howl.
Barnaby eased the closet door open and looked out. The rectangle of the bedroom window flashed incessantly as the battle raged outside.
“Still shootin’ out there?” Deena whispered.
“I don’t think it’s shooting, exactly,” Barnaby said. “I don’t really know what the hell it is. We couldn’t be on Earth, because nothing like this goes on there.”
“How do you know?”
Another voice in the closet said, “Can’t you people see I’m busy in here? Damn inconsiderate!”
Deena tried to climb Barnaby like a ladder. Barnaby toppled backward into a tangle of clothes and coat hangers.
A match was lit and put to a candle. The form of a squatting demon became visible in the far end of the closet. Beneath its haunches the carpet had been rolled back, and a pentagram, executed in precise chalk lines, was inscribed on the oak flooring underneath.
It was a different sort of demon from the one they had seen before. Smaller, and having a somewhat rounder head, its coloring was a ghastly, cadaverous gray. Purple wormlike growths festooned the right side of its face, and festering sores afflicted its hide at various locations.
Its humanlike face registered extreme pique. “You think this is easy with all these distractions?” it demanded to know. “You try to cast an effective spell with all this commotion going on. And then if something screws up, it’syour ass is on the grill. Try working under those conditions! And you just come waltzing in here without so much as knocking! Unbelievable!”
“Sorry!” Barnaby said after spitting out one end of a feather boa. He tried to get to his feet.
“Barnaby!” Deena screamed, pounding on his back. “Let’s get outta here!”
“Capital idea!” the demon agreed.
It took some doing. The sliding door was stuck, caught on some debris. Finally Barnaby succeeded in rolling it back, and he and Deena crashed through into the bedroom along with a shower of hangers, peignoirs, shoe boxes, and other paraphernalia.
“I’m complaining to my union about this,” came a muttering from the closet. “Just you wait and see!”
Downstairs, Sheila huddled behind a sofa, calmly shifting lines of force with the power of her will. There were lines that ran crosswise — north-south (magnetic fields?) — and lines that ran perpendicular, east-west, and she had no idea what those were. All she knew, in this early stage of her understanding of Earth’s magical forces, was that allocating power was a matter of shifting those lines around. Of course, what she really didn’t understand was the power source that seemed very near. She couldn’t fathom why there would be such a strong one so close by. She knew now that certain points of the Earth’s surface, certain features of the landscape, contained great power, and she sensed quite a few of those out there, somewhere, but this nearby power source was different. Anyway, she was tapping it, too. Probably badly, very inefficiently, but she was getting power from it.