“I have never seen your like in this land before!” cried Geoffrey. “From where did you come?”
“Where did your kind?” a hobyah retorted. “We know only that we awoke to life in hunger, and awaken so each morning!”
“Know you no word of magic that brought you to be?” Gregory asked.
“No, and if we did, we would certainly not tell our quarry!” yet one more hobyah answered. “But we do know a word to make you freeze with fear. Scream it, fellows!”
The whole mob answered with a massed shout: “Zonploka! Zonploka! Zonploka!”
“Somehow that wakes no terror in my breast,” Alain called back.
But the shouting drowned out his voice as the knee-high horde began to tumble off roofs and advance on them again, much more slowly but also inexorably, chanting louder and louder, “Zonploka! Zonploka! Zonploka!” as though the word itself gave them power.
“What is a zonploka?” Gregory asked.
“What matter?” Geoffrey braced himself for the onslaught.
“It matters greatly,” Gregory answered, “for if they can gain power through it, they can lose it, too.” He raised his voice and, in the pauses between the hobyahs’ shouts, gave a bellow of his own: “Akolpnoz! Akolpnoz! Akolpnoz!”
The throng of miniatures fell silent, frowning in puzzlement. “What is an akolpnoz?” one demanded.
“It is the opposite of a zonploka,” Gregory called back, “and will cancel its power! With me, companions! Akolpnoz!”
“Akolpnoz! Akolpnoz! Akolpnoz!” Alain and Geoffrey chanted with him.
“Now, stop that!” one hobyah said peevishly, and the others stopped chanting to listen. “It won’t work anyway!”
“If not, then why have you stopped your song?” Gregory countered. “Akolpnoz!”
“Akolpnoz! Akolpnoz! Akolpnoz!” his companions chanted with him.
“Don’t listen!” A hobyah clapped his hands over his ears. “It might work as they say!”
All its mates covered their ears too—and the chanting fell into disarray, becoming a jumble of noise. The three companions raised their unified voice against it: “Akolpnoz! Akolpnoz! Akolpnoz!”
The hobyahs could no longer hear one another to decide what they should do. They began to mill about uncertainly, still shouting out their nonsense word.
“Now!” Alain cried, and advanced slashing about him, still chanting, “Akolpnoz! Akolpnoz! Akolpnoz!”
The hobyahs joined together again—in a massed shriek. Several of them leaped to scramble up over a rooftop and away. Several more saw them and turned to run—and in a minute, the whole horde had turned to flee, scrambling and howling away.
Alain let his sword fall to his side, beginning to shake. “By my troth, that was a near thing!”
“And you a most excellent commander!” Geoffrey said, eyes wide. “Whatever possessed you, Alain? I have never known you to act so decisively!”
The prince managed a smile. “No one else knew what to do, Geoffrey, so I did what came to me—any action was better than none. As it developed, the situation required only good judgment, for both strong arms and keen intelligence did little good.”
Geoffrey nodded. “And that is what makes for a king, though intelligence and strength of arms help greatly—and your justice must be tempered by mercy.”
“But I shall have Cordelia for compassion, insight, and intelligence, and my brother Diarmid for genius with Gregory to aid him—and yourself and Quicksilver for generals.” Alain gave him a shaky grin. “If I can evoke your support, that is.”
“You shall most surely have it,” Geoffrey avowed, “for I begin to see that you shall become a most excellent monarch!”
“Aye, and one worthy of our loyalty,” Gregory said. “It was fortunate these hobyahs had no great brains among them, though.”
“Nor any one true leader,” Geoffrey seconded.
But Alain turned to Gregory, wide-eyed. “You mean saying their magic word backwards really had no effect?”
“Not of itself,” Gregory told him, “no more than did theirs—for both gained their strength from the hobyahs’ belief in them, nothing more.”
“So you saw that you could counter their nonsense word with one of your own, and shake their belief in its power.” Alain nodded slowly. “Most ingenious, Gregory.”
“Most desperate,” Gregory corrected, his voice shaking at last. “It was a ploy of desperation, a wild guess, nothing more.”
“Sheer bluff,” Geoffrey interpreted, “but Alain and I did not know that.”
“Aye, so we carried it through with the authority that made it work!” The prince grinned. “Well done, O Brain!”
“Good luck only,” Gregory said darkly, “and I mistrust luck deeply.”
“As I mistrust these little monsters.” Alain turned to scowl at the houses around them. “They are fled, but how shall we make sure they stay gone—and ensure they harm no other folk?”
“The answer lies in this ‘zonploka’ they chanted,” Gregory told him, “but for the nonce, I shall craft a countermonster from witch-moss, a ravening creature who has appetite only for hobyahs.”
“Well and good,” Geoffrey said slowly, “but what will it do when it has eaten every one of them?”
Gregory frowned in thought, but Alain said, “You shall make it hibernate until more hobyahs come, of course.”
“A good thought.” Gregory’s tone was that of surprise; he wasn’t used to Alain having ideas. “How if none ever come again, though?”
“Well, if it sleeps, you should have no trouble making it melt back into its original substance,” Alain said, very practically. “Craft their Nemesis, Gregory. Then let us seek and be sure they spoke truly when they said they had eaten all the villagers.”
Gregory looked up, astounded. “You mean they might have lied?”
“Why not?” Alain shrugged. “If we bluffed, might they not have too?”
Geoffrey gazed at the lip of the ravine in which the village sat. “All the more reason to be vigilant. Craft your hobyaheater, brother.” Then he stiffened. “Who comes?”
Alain and Gregory looked up in alarm, then relaxed as they saw that the silhouettes against the sky were quite human and dressed in peasant kirtles and dresses or tunics and hose. “ ’Tis the villagers coming to see if their houses are safe,” Alain said.
Gregory smiled. “It would seem you were right, Alain—the little monsters did lie, praise Heaven!”
“The hobyahs must have fled far and fast, for the villagers to be so bold as to even think of returning.” Geoffrey’s gaze lost focus for a minute; then he nodded. “The creatures are still running, still in a panic.”
“How did they come to be, do you think?” Geoffrey asked.
Gregory shrugged. “I see no reason to think it is anything but the usual, brother.”
“The usual” meant that someone in the village was a projective telepath but did not know it. He had imagined the little monsters, probably in the course of telling children a story, or dreamed of them. If he had told his fellows about the dream, other unwitting projectives might have reinforced his images—but the dream itself could have been enough. If, in the country nearby, there were any substantial amount of witch-moss, it would have shaped itself to those images and taken on as much life as the dream-images would have had. In the case of the hobyahs, that was entirely too much.
The villagers came down the slope and in among the houses slowly, warily, ready to run at the slightest sign of danger. One older woman came a little faster than the others, but with frequent glances back to make sure she wasn’t too far ahead. She came up to the companions, or at least ten feet away, and asked in a hesitant voice, “If it please you, sirs, can you tell us—have the hobyahs gone away?”