"But is it really necessary that you have the eggs?"
Deyv and Vana looked at each other. They read in each other's face the same thought. Somehow, they had managed to get along without the stones. And for a long time they hadn't even missed them. Yes, strange though it was, they didn't need them any more.
"What you say is true, Sloosh," Deyv said. "It's a very strange feeling to know that. Both uneasy and exhilarating. But we can't return to our tribes until we have our eggs. There is no getting out of that."
The Archkerri's huge hand, partly sheathed in leaves, made a circular gesture.
"We are your tribe!"
The Yawtl laughed, and he danced a jig while grinning maliciously. "Some tribe!"
"Well, what I mean," the plant-man said, "is that you have a temporary tribe. However unhomogeneous this group, its members do get along with each other. And we've been most efficient. When we get out of here, you can look for a human tribe that doesn't require eggs. If you can't find any, then you can become witches and raise your own tribe. You'll have plenty of ancient devices to give you great power."
"No," Deyv said. "We'd die if we thought we had no chance of returning to our people."
"Do you really think you two could retrace that journey all the way? You'd get lost. You'd get killed. I'm sorry to say that, but facts are facts."
"Facts can be reshaped," Deyv said.
"Yes, in a manner of speaking. But ..."
He paused. From down the vast hall had come a strange and loud noise. A hissing, like a chorus of a thousand snakes.
Feersh put her hand upon her heart.
"The Shemibob!"
35
FEERSH's descriptions had prepared Deyv for the real being. Also, he had encountered so many monsters that he had become, though not blase, hardened to shock at the sight of them. Nevertheless, he was awed when the owner of the castle appeared in the enormous doorway.
She seemed at first view to be half-snake, half-human. Her body was that of a python's and at least forty feet long. Her skin, however, was scaleless, smooth as Deyv's. It had a silvery quality, as if impregnated with metal, with dark spindle-shaped markings on the back and sides. The body was raised from the floor in a most unsnakelike manner by twenty pairs of short thick humanoid legs. These were black up to the thighs and silvery to the body. The feet were also human, though they were very broad and threetoed.
The catlike nails were painted crimson.
Her forepart curved upward where the legs ceased, giving her the effect of a snake-centaur. She had shoulders and quite womanlike arms and hands, but these were four-fingered. The two large coneshaped breasts showed that she was, despite the ophidian body, a mammal. Or perhaps she wasn't, in the strictest sense of the term. Feersh had said that she gave, instead of milk, blood. She did bear live young; she was no egg-layer. The hairless reddish delta of her sex was located just below the point at which her body became vertical.
Her head was twice the size of Deyv's, similar to a human's but more triangular than the face of any member of Homo sapiens could be. The cheekbones were very prominent. The chin was very pointed but had a deep cleft. Her lips were very everted and very red. The open mouth showed pointed teeth, a fox's. The tongue increased the snakish look, being slightly bifurcated. The nose was short but hawkish.
Her eyes were very large in relation to the head and completely leaf-green. The forehead was broad and high, so large that it seemed that the relatively tiny face had been attached to it as an afterthought.
She lacked head-hair, having instead very long and thick silvery quills banded in the middle with black.
Feersh had said that the young were born bald and a good thing, too. Otherwise, the quills would have made birth even more painful for the mother.
The Shemibob looked angry, and though she spoke in the witch's language, which Feersh had not yet allowed her fellow travelers to learn, her intonations were obviously furious. Deyv's fear of her was somewhat tempered by his amazement that The Shemibob could recognize the witch after all this time.
Feersh replied, at the same, time pointing to her companions. She seemed to be telling The Shemibob that they didn't understand the speech.
The snake-centaur at once opened a huge hand and revealed a mouth-buzzer. Obviously, she had been prepared to talk to the Archkerri, too, which meant that she had been observing them for some time. No doubt this was through the devices, disguised as objets d'art, which, Feersh had said, were in every room.
The Shemibob put the buzzer in her mouth.
"I was roused from my sleep by an alarm," she said in the language of Sloosh. "I decided to let you roam about while I studied you. But I couldn't abide any longer that monster's destruction of my carpets and its chipping off pieces of my floors and stairs. What is that strange thing?"
Feersh explained about Phemropit. The Shemibob lost her anger at once. She said, "I had thought there was nothing new in this world. It is pleasant to be wrong, in this case, anyway. Now Feersh, tell me what happened to you after I allowed you to escape. And tell me also why you and these beings were foolish enough to enter my palace."
That took a long time. For a while, the intruders stood up, since they were afraid to sit down in The
Shemibob's presence without permission. In the middle of the witch's tale, the snake-centaur said that they could rest if they wished. All except Sloosh and The Shemibob pulled up chairs, which had been furnished for the slaves, and seated themselves. The Shemibob walked back and forth in front of them and twice took a paper tube enclosing some sweet-smelling drug from a table and smoked it. Now and then she would interrupt the witch to question one of the others. Deyv began to feel more at ease. She wasn't, at least, going to destroy them, nor had she intimated that they would become her slaves.
When she'd heard the story out, she paused to light up another tube.
"So, each of you has made this incredible journey for different reasons. As for the poor devils you sent here to steal my treasures, Feersh, none got here. Well, Deyv of the Red Egg of the Upside-Down House and Vana of the Green Eyes of the Yellow-Haired Tribe and Hoozisst of the ever-thieving Yawtl, I can make you new eggs. And I can teach you how to use them in ways none of your kind has ever thought of. Or, if thought of, dared to realize. But what good would they be?
"As for you, Sloosh of the Vegetable Tribe, I could answer many of your questions. And I could make you a new prism. And I could allow you to work in my laboratory. But what good would that do?
"You, Yawtl, could have so many treasures that you would never have to steal again. Not that that would keep you from your thievery. But what good would they do you?
"You, witch, could have new eyes and new devices and could see the effects of your new powers. But what benefit would they be to you?
"And you, Jowanarr, you wouldn't have to wait for your mother to die to become an exceedingly powerful witch and start your own family. But what use would that be?"
She puffed out a cloud of sweet-smelling purple smoke, and she laughed. It was a disturbing sound, a peculiar flapping with an overtone of arrogance. It also sounded sinister.
But all that may be my imagination, Deyv thought.
"I could just make you slaves to me. I need someone to wait upon me, but by Thrinkelshum! I need someone to talk to more! I won't enslave you, though. I don't have to. I will accept you as guests who are, however, not my equals. Not that that will last long."
"I detect an ominous note," Sloosh said.
"Well you may," she said. "The fact is that you're prisoners here. But so am I."