The Vacant Throne - Ed Greenwood [58]
"Oh, belt up," Sarasper growled. "Three preserve me, it's like traveling with two minstrels who can never stop yammering. Two bad minstrels."
Craer put his hands on his hips in mock outrage. "Well!" he protested in scandalized tones. "Across half a kingdom we come to give thee succor, deliver thee from the lonely darkness that is Silvertree House, show thee the thrills of several lifetimes as we battle sorcerers, monster-beasts, and evil barons from one end of-"
"Craer," Embra said crisply, poking a statuette of Forefather Oak hard into the thief's leather-clad crotch, "be silent. Now, and for a reasonable time thereafter. You wouldn't want my spell to go wrong and you end up as a toad with uncontrollable flatulence, now would you?"
"Nay, Lady, you know him not," Hawkril said hastily. "He'd enjoy being a toa-"
"You'd almost have to kick an endlessly farting toad, wouldn't you?" Sarasper interrupted, rubbing his hands. "Do it, Lady."
"Silence, all of you," Embra said, turning her head to include all of them in her glare. Her eyes stopped, and lingered most fiercely, on Craer-who gave her a quick, impish little smile and said nothing. Very loudly.
Embra held up the statuette warningly, and without further ceremony began to whisper an incantation over it. A white, sparkling mist seemed to well up from nowhere to coil around her hands as she chanted, touching each of her companions with the figurine as it started to dwindle within her cradling fingers.
As the spell spun on, Hawkril turned his head slowly to survey the fields and trees all around them, seeking anyone-or any beast, however small-that might be watching. Embra had chosen her spot well. They were standing under the sheltering leaves of a huge old oak, in a spot where the dirt track they'd been walking along turned a gentle corner, around the bulk of a hill planted with barley, that rose steeply on one side of them. On the other, a dry brook had carved a little gulley that was almost completely cloaked in thornvines and broad-leafed woodmallow bushes-a small scar of broken ground out of which soared the oak flanked by a few strangled, sickly trees of other sorts. They were standing in a little hollow, walled away from prying eyes. Anyone spying on them would have to be standing very close.
Or using magic.
That thought sent a little chill through the hulking armaragor, a coldness that lasted through their slow, silent transformation into Faithful of the Oak. Embra became a fat, shuffling matron of cheerfully buxom manner, missing teeth, and copious warts; Sarasper became her even fatter counter-part, his face almost hidden in folds of drooping flesh; Craer became a thin, pouting-faced lass of boylike bonyness, and Hawk himself became a-a-
"Gods," he muttered, looking down. "You've made me a woman!"
"Quite fetching, too," Craer said, "if you like thighs like cows and bosoms like carters' potato sacks. Come to me, ravishing beauty of my drea-"
Sarasper calmly took the shapeless leather hat that had materialized on his head and thrust it smoothly over Craer's, pulling it down to well below the sallow girl's chin. Tangled locks of hair curled up here and there around its edges, but nothing else of the transformed lastalan's face could be seen. Hawkril snorted and Embra sputtered with mirth as Craer struck a pose and declared in muffled tones, "He's going to say it's an improvement, but I hold quite firmly to another view."
"I'm not so sure," Hawkril told him, straight-faced. "Leave it on for a time, whilst I think on this, hey?"
"And what might your name be, good matron?" the still-hooded Craer asked sweetly, crossing his arms beneath a frankly nonexistent bosom.
Hawkril drew himself up and declaimed with dignity, "Call me Vordra."
It was Sarasper's turn to double over in mirthful sputters, echoed by Craer from within the hat.
Embra raised an eyebrow. "There's something howlingly funny about 'Vordra'?"
"Vordra," Sarasper told her, "was one of your father's most prized breeding cows. A very good milker." He frowned. "He kept you that locked up?"
"Gods,