It was too much for them. They were trained to handle unruly canines, but there was a psychological horror to a wild man. They retreated.

  We ran down an alley, the Police Dogs following at a fair distance and baying out an all-points bulletin. Soon we would be surrounded and overwhelmed!

  Suddenly there was a nondescript cat in front of us. This, too, was strange; my Weimaraner had never before chased cats.

  Then I saw that the cat was not fleeing, but leading. She dodged around a Painter mutt working on a house, hissed off a slender Dayhound, and leaped right over a sleeping Balldog. She was showing us an escape route!

  Could that have been Waldo’s crime, here? Helping a cat? Now she or one of her friends was repaying the favor!

  Abruptly we were at my door, and the cat was gone. I stopped to look back—and the neighborhood was familiar. No big dog houses or cat houses in sight, no chained, naked men. Just the conventional human suburban sprawl.

  I knew it would do no good to backtrack; I would never find the realm of the canine masters. Waldo would not dare show his muzzle there again, either; they would be on watch for him. But now the favors were all even, and I comprehended at last the scheme from which my dog had come.

  I reached down and rubbed his floppy gray ear. “Come on, pal,” I said, taking a deep and painless breath. “I’ll split a steak with you.”

  1986

  Plague of Allos

  In 1985 I received a brochure from the ElfQuest folk. I had met Richard Pini at a convention in 1983, and my daughter Cheryl, then thirteen and a dedicated ElfQuest fan, was thrilled to actually talk with the proprietor of that series. We have a picture of her about to burst, because she had taken a mouthful of a soda and he said something to make her laugh. We had remained in touch, expecting to do business in due course, as indeed we later did with their graphic adaptation of Xanth #13 Isle of View, in which Jenny Elf from the World of Two Moons comes to the Land of Xanth. But this brochure was about a different project, BLOOD OF TEN CHIEFS. It was to be ten stories set in the ElfQuest realm, each covering one of the ancestral chiefs. Would I like to participate?

  Well, I pondered. There was a time when I was eager for invitations like this, but that time is long past. The thing is, payment for a story is measured in cents per word, while for a novel I can earn dollars per word. Since I like the novels I do, and I like being well paid, simple economics converted me from a story writer to a novel writer, and I have had more novels published than stories. So I no longer write stories for money. I do get paid for them, but that isn’t my motivation, since every story I do represents a net loss of income for me, as does every collaboration. But I did want to remain in the good graces of the ElfQuest folk, and Cheryl would love to have me rise in the literary realm enough to appear in an ElfQuest volume, so I agreed.

  I told them to give me whatever Chief no one else wanted. That turned out to be Prey Pacer, the third in the line. So when I finished writing my novel Being A Green Mother I got to it, and early in 1986 wrote my story of Prey Pacer and his challenges both romantic and adventurous. I had Cheryl give me pointers about the ElfQuest realm. But in one case she steered me wrong. Were there rabbits there? I asked, and she said no. So I made a similar creature, a ravvit. Later I learned that there were rabbits there. But it seemed that the ElfQuest folk liked my notion, because thereafter ravvits showed up elsewhere among the elves.

  I named my characters descriptively, and sometimes it seemed I went wrong there too. Thus Hoverhair became Wreath in the published edition. But since this is my volume, I’m rendering this in the original version, flawed as it may be.

  One more point: I am a vegetarian, which means I eat no meat, fish or fowl, and I try to avoid anything that causes animals pain in the acquisition, such as leather. But I do not impose my personal foibles on my readers, regardless of what critics claim. On the World of Two Moons blood flows frequently, so it does also in this story.

  BLOOD OF TEN CHIEFS was a success, and went on to other volumes, but I did not contribute because my time just got more and more jammed. It was nice being part of that world once, though.

  Plague of Allos

  The great wolf lay as if asleep, so that even when a random leaf tumbled across his nose no whisker twitched. His fur was as brown as blown sand, his paws as gray as weathered stones; when he lay still, as now, he tended to fade into the landscape. Instead it was his elf-friend Prune Pit who moved, and rather clumsily too. There seemed to be no chance for a successful ravvit stalk. Yet the elf seemed confident; his sling was poised, a solid pit in the pouch.

  His arm moved. The pit flung forward to strike in a thick patch of grass. Sure enough: A fat ravvit leaped out, startled by the near miss.

  The elf jumped to the prey’s right, herding it toward the still wolf. The ravvit veered left.

  Now! the elf cried in thought, sending not so much a word as a target region: a spot in the air not far to the side of the wolf’s nose.

  The ravvit leaped, coming to that spot just as the wolf’s jaws closed.

  In a moment it was over; the prey hung from the wolf’s mouth, dead. Another hunt had been concluded successfully.

  “Let’s go home, Halfhowl,” Prune Pit said, satisfied. “There isn’t another suitable animal in the vicinity.” He sent another spot location, and leaped at it; the wolf made a swift dive, putting his back just beneath that spot as the elf arrived. Prune Pit mounted so efficiently that it seemed as though they had rehearsed that maneuver many times. Actually they had not; the elf’s sending made rehearsal unnecessary.

  Prune Pit was the son of Rahnee the She-Wolf, but there was no evidence of this in his aspect. He was neither handsome nor large, and his brown hair fell down across his eyes in chronic tangles. His skill with his chosen weapon was mediocre; he normally missed his target, as he had just now. He had to carry a good supply of ammunition because of this. Prune pits were lighter than stones, and their regular shapes made it easier for him, but still it was evident that he lacked the physical coordination ever to be truly effective. Worse, his sending was defective; he could not properly tune into other elves, and consequently was forever getting things garbled. He was not simpleminded, but sometimes seemed so. The other elves of the tribe were of course circumspect about their attitude, but it was true that if any member of the tribe could be said to be held in contempt, that member was Prune Pit. Rahnee had never expressed disappointment in him, but surely she had felt it.

  Yet it was also true that in this time of the hunting drought, he alone had maintained his ratio of kills. This was because his telepathy was attuned to animals rather than to his own kind. Halfhowl had been the first wolf to recognize this, and had chosen Prune Pit to be his rider. Theirs was the closest bond between elf and wolf, and this was part of the reason their hunts were almost inevitably successful. Halfhowl never had to listen for Prune Pit’s directive, either physical or verbal; he knew it as fast as the elf did. He was always there when the elf wanted him, and there was no subservience in this, it was as though the desire to be there had originated with the wolf. Often that might be true; it did not matter. What mattered was that the two never miskeyed; they always acted with such perfect coordination that the other elves and wolves could only watch with muted envy.

  The other part of the reason for their success was Prune Pit’s identification with the prey. He could tell the prey’s next move at the same time as the prey did, for animals did not think ahead in the way elves did. From a distance this made no difference; there was no catching the prey anyway. But in close action, the prey’s specific dodge became critical. In the hunt just completed, Prune Pit had in effect linked the minds of ravvit and wolf, allowing the two bodies to coincide.

  The others of the tribe had chosen to believe that Prune Pit was mostly lucky; it was hard for them to accept the notion that this elf who could hardly send to his own kind could be superior with other kinds. Thus Prune Pit’s status was higher among the wolves than among the elves. It seemed likely that he would in time turn to animal-healing as his life’s work.

  There was confusion as they drew near the holt. Something had happened—and Prune Pit felt a surge of dread. Another elf would have known instantly what the problem was, but the vague dread was all that Prune Pit could receive. It involved his mother, known as the she-wolf.

  Rahnee had led a party out to explore the nature of the allos, the big saurians who seemed to be swarming into this region. The allos were huge, vicious reptiles, not as efficient predators as the wolves, but their increasing numbers were making them a nuisance. When the horde swept through a region, hardly any other species of creature survived. The allos were normally solitary hunters, and their relative clumsiness enabled them to prey mainly on the old, the infirm and the unlucky. Now, their numbers increased perhaps a hundred-fold, they required no subtlety of approach; they saturated the range, snapping up everything that moved. Migratory prey had all but disappeared, if its migration took it through the infested regions.

  It was obvious that blind, ravening hunger would bring the allos to the region of the holt, for here the hunting had until recently been good. Now it was not—because of the depredations of the allos—and it was likely to get much worse. What would the reptiles hunt, after the last legitimate prey was gone? The answer just might be: elves.

  So Rahnee had gone out to assess the menace—and now there was a commotion, and no sign of her wolf, Silvertooth.

  Softfoot hurried to intercept him. “Your mother—” she cried. “Silvertooth is terribly injured, and—”

  Then he knew. Rahnee was dead, and the tribe was without its chief.

  It was worse than that. Rahnee’s party had included the best hunters in the tribe—and most of them were dead too. There was no obvious prospect for new leadership. Rahnee’s lifemate Zarhan was loyal and good, but he had no interest in taking her place. Prune Pit, her son, seemed to follow his father’s temperament. He had never imagined challenging her for leadership, and would have felt disloyal to try for it now that she was dead. Even had he not felt this way, he would have known that no elf would follow a leader who was defective in sending; how could the tribe coordinate in times of crisis? He did not grieve for Rahnee as a son might, for they had not been really close after he grew up. But her loss was tragic for the tribe and he wanted to steal no part of her glory. There had to be a leader, for the dread allos were swarming closer, and in a few days would be here.

  In the confusion of the horror of the disaster, one voice emerged with clarity. This was Hoverhair, the loveliest of the younger female elves, the object of much male interest. She was brave, beautiful and cold; her fair hair floated above her like a lattice of snow. It was said that her heart was formed of extremely pretty ice. She had never, to Prune Pit’s knowledge, done anything for anyone other than because of calculated self-interest. She was a fine huntress, adept with the bow, but had no pretensions toward leadership; it seemed that that would have been too much work to suit her. When she encountered a male routinely, her inclination was to inhale, smile, and give her magnificent cloud of hair a careful toss, causing him to catch his breath and lick his lips, while his heart accelerated. Her own heart never fluttered, however. In short, she was a flirt, not a leader. She had been looking for some time for a companion, but had wanted to be absolutely sure she had the best match. That meant Recognition—and it hadn’t come. Perhaps, Prune Pit thought, that was just as well.

  “Why don’t we choose as chief the one who can stop the menace of the allos?” she inquired briefly. “Because if we don’t stop them, soon they will wipe out all the prey in our forest, and then we’ll starve.”

  This made so much sense that the others were amazed. Why hadn’t any of them thought of it? There was a murmur of agreement.

  “So who knows how to stop the allos?” Hoverhair inquired. That was where it went sour. No one had any notion. The allos, according to the description of the survivors of the party who had straggled home, were big, vicious and numerous. No single wolfrider could stand against an allo in combat, and indeed, the holt’s best hunters had been savaged as a group. The elves were simply overmatched.

  “If we don’t get a leader,” Hoverhair pointed out, “we shall have to flee our holt.”

  But no elf stepped forward. If the she-wolf had been unable to stop the menace, how could any of them?

  The tribe spent a glum night. Softfoot stayed up late, talking with Prune Pit. “There has to be a way!” she kept saying. She was a warm, understanding person, lovely in her personality rather than her appearance. Her hair was like a fuzzy dark blanket. Her feet had seemed malformed in her childhood; they had in time grown normally, but she was not swift on them, and was a much better rider than runner. She was good with the spear, when on her wolf. She, alone of the tribe, had appreciated Prune Pit’s strength, and had not perceived him as mentally stunted. It had not been hard for him to love her, and he had never regretted their association.

  Reluctantly, Prune Pit spoke. “I think there might be—but if I’m wrong, it would be even worse than now.”

  She virtually pounced on him. “A way! What way?”

  “You know how I hunt by relating to the prey,” he said, “and by putting it in touch with Halfhowl.”

  “Yes, of course; you have never received proper credit for your skill.”

  “Well, if I could relate to an allo, then we could hunt allos. That would give us and our wolves suitable prey, and help reduce the numbers of the reptiles, until the normal ratios of animals returned.”

  Softfoot shook her head. “You couldn’t hunt an allo, Prune Pit! They say that a single allo killed Rahnee and two of her hunters and two wolves, and it wasn’t even the largest allo! Those monsters have horny scales that make them almost invulnerable to our weapons, and their teeth are horrendous. We can’t even recover Rahnee’s body from them.”

  “They are reptiles,” he said doggedly, suppressing the thought of his mother’s body; there was indeed nothing the elves could do about that. “That means they are slow to move in the cool morning, and not too smart. They can’t have armor in their eyes. If we knew how to avoid their teeth and claws, we should be able to score on a weak point. And I do know.”

  She began to be swayed. “You aren’t afraid? An allo is no ravvit, you know; it’s a predator.”

  Prune Pit’s mouth was dry. “I’m terrified. But we have to find a way to fight allos, and I think I can.”

  “Sleep now,” Softfoot decided. “If you still think the same way in the morning, we’ll talk with someone.” This was her way, to consider something, then sleep, and reconsider. It seemed to work well enough. She had done it when they had become lifemates, taking time to be certain. Prune Pit was glad to have her doing it now. If she concluded that his notion was viable, in the morning, then perhaps it was. He had spoken forthrightly enough, but the thought of hunting an allo made his body cold.

  “I think we should test it,” Softfoot announced in the morning. “But not on an allo.”

  Prune Pit hadn’t thought of that. He liked the notion. “What can we test it on? There isn’t any prey near.”

  “On mock-prey,” she said. “One of the wolves, maybe. If you can catch a bit of leather the wolf holds between his teeth, when he knows you are trying to do it and doesn’t want you to—”

  Prune Pit considered. He had never tried that on a wolf; his effort had always been to cooperate with Halfhowl. Yet Softfoot’s reasoning seemed valid: If he could do it with an alert wolf, he could probably do it with an allo. “But what wolf? We need to integrate with our own wolf-friends; that’s the key to this. I won’t attack an allo alone; I need to coordinate an attack by a hunting party.”

  “Maybe a volunteer,” she suggested.

  Prune Pit called to Halfhowl with his mind. As always, he did not send coherent instructions; it was more of a single thought, the concept of a wolf agreeing to do something special. In a moment Halfhowl tuned out; he was inquiring among his kind.

  Prune Pit and Softfoot walked out through the forest, waiting to meet with the wolves. The dew was bright on the leaves, and things seemed peaceful. Yet they knew that the ravening horde of allos was moving closer; peace was illusory.

  Three wolves cut through the trees toward them. They were Halfhowl, Hardfoot, and Silvertooth. The first two were Prune Pit and Softfoot’s wolf-friends, both tawny and somewhat shaggy. But the third—

  “You are the volunteer, Silvertooth?” Softfoot inquired, astonished. “But your injuries—”

  Silvertooth was Rahnee’s wolf-friend, and had dragged herself back to help give the warning after the disaster. She was silver in more than the tooth; her fur was like the light of the moons, seeming almost to glow despite her advanced age. She was limping now, and moved slowly, for she had lost blood. She should have been lying in her den, recovering what strength she could.

  Prune Pit touched her mind, and understood. “She feels she has no better use than this, now,” he reported, translating the feeling to human terms. “She could not save her elf-friend, and may die herself, but she can help the rest of us oppose this menace.”

  “That is very generous of her,” Softfoot agreed. “Then we can do it now.”

  But another wolf approached, this one with a rider. “Do what?” Hoverhair asked. “Why is Silvertooth out here?” Her wolf, Curlfur, stopped, and she dismounted. She was, as always, a splendid figure of a woman, even bundled as she was for the morning. “I saw the wolves coming here, and so I followed.”

  “Prune Pit has a way to stop the allos,” Softfoot said. “We’re about to test it.”

  “Oh? What is it?” Hoverhair turned to Prune Pit, gazing directly into his face for the first time.

  As their eyes met, something happened. Prune Pit had always known that Hoverhair was beautiful; now her beauty seemed to intensify like the sunrise, striking through to his heart. He stared at her, almost unblinking. “Aiyse,” he said, awed. It was her soul-name, a thing she had never told another person.