Like a flash of light the gleaming sword swept down. A fraction of a second later a portion of it no longer gleamed: it was crimson! And Queen Dionaea\'s head bounced down the stairway into her garden of live oaks. A few seconds of thought remained to it before it would be very dead; but her thought was confused by shock—her eyes rolled uncontrollably while she tried to remember some cantrap or rune from her long association with the Goddess Diana. Desperately she tried to recite the proper abracadabra to stay the swift death that was sweeping through her mind; but it is hard for a head to chant a charm with no body to draw a breath....
Druga, his job of execution finished, sheathed his bloody sword and turning, stalked away. Thus it was that he did not see the amazing thing that happened in the gloom of the ancient live oaks....
Baena was a serpent, a huge river of strength up to his giant head, and he lived among the mighty branches of the oaks. Being a serpent, Baena was far from equal to a human being in his brainpower, but even his dim perception told him that harm had come to his one and only benefactress—and that meant harm to him, too, for Queen Dionaea had always cared for the needs of his stomach. Through her he ate and lived. Without her, he would die. And so, he glided rapidly down from the trunk of his favorite tree and emerged into the paths of the garden just as Dionaea\'s bleeding head rolled out from the base of the steps.
Baena coiled his length protectingly about Dionaea. For an instant he was at a loss, noting her horribly desperate attempts to speak without breath, her mouth opening and closing and her tongue licking snake-like in and out.
Baena realized after a moment that there was no hope for the Queen to go on living. A head must have a body.
Glancing about, Baena saw nothing but the numerous coils of his own body, and after an instant\'s hesitation, he took his tail in his mouth up to the tenth joint and bit it off! Shrinking along all his length with the terrible necessity that faced him, Baena quickly slapped the bloody stump of his tail fast to the bleeding neck of Dionaea and said one of the few magic spells he could remember....
Turning his body slowly until his severed nerves told his spine that the connections were as accurate as could be expected, Baena waited while the spell slowly took effect. He lay there all night, waiting for his own life\'s blood to reanimate the mind of Dionaea.
As Dionaea came back to her senses, Baena began to experience the strange phenomena of wanting to go two ways at once, and as the phenomena became more and more troublesome, he decided that he had better have an understanding with Dionaea once and for all. But what poor male ever won an argument with a woman?
Thus it was that Baena resigned himself to a life of traveling backward, and that was that.
As a snake, he wished only to eat and bask in his favorite tree, but as Dionaea, he wanted only one thing—and that with all the fervor of hate a sorceress is capable of—a fitting revenge on the man who had visited her execution upon her!
Day and night Dionaea plotted, and in her mind a fitting revenge grew—it would include the lovely Feronia, Druga\'s beloved.... Carefully she prepared the incantation.
It is here that my story really begins. What has happened, and how it happened is of little consequence to what is to come—except perhaps to introduce you to the characters. It is very simple. Dionaea was a very evil sorceress, and Druga, most heroic of men, had long sought to bring her into his power, and to end her evil days. Armed with the white magic of Feronia, his loved one, who was also a sorceress, but one who worked her charms only for the good of mankind, he had tracked Dionaea to her castle, and there slain her. Or he would have, had it not been for Baena, the serpent....
What is past is past. It is best not to think of it. There is much in the past of all of us that would need a long, tiresome explanation to a newcomer, and you are newcomers. To explain all of the past to everyone would be an impossible task. You need know only that Druga, champion of mankind, and his lovely Feronia, face now the most awful menace of their lives, and unknowing of it, too, for thinking their arch enemy slain!
Where do all our characters live? In Fantasia, a land far away. A land where wondrous things always happen. It is of one of the most wondrous adventures of all that you are about to hear now—let the past lie, cold and dead as it is, and come with me into the present, and into danger!
Who am I? Does it make any difference? If you must know, I am the Red Dwarf, and I have seen and recorded everything! I was there, and if you can but understand, everything has happened because I was there! If it were not so, how could you be sure what I tell is true? For it is true....
It was evening. As Druga and Feronia sat talking, before retiring, the horror fell upon them.
Feronia\'s hair fell like a living torrent to fondle her gleaming shoulders and toy everywhere with the strangely electric invisible vitality of her glowing skin. Her eyes were molten pools, dark and liquid as the waters of the lost caverns, and the brows above them were mystic lines of beauty left by the touch of a raven wing. Her generous mouth was smiling the wondrous lovely magic that was Feronia, red as a new-born rose, dewy and waiting for Druga. Her capable hands were soft with expecting him, and cooler than the moss beneath the fern.
Her breasts were as naked as sun-bleached coral, white as a cloud in a summer sky, white as truth, white as her own teeth laughing tantalizingly at him.
Quite suddenly, shockingly, her lovely figure became transfused with a vile, interloping energy that struck at Druga\'s sensitivities with a sickening piercingness, so that he sprang to his feet in fear.
Standing there helplessly, Druga watched the evil energy transform the strong, deep breasted beauty of his Feronia, change her devilishly and subtly and gradually before his suffering eyes.
The white magic of her body became transfused with dark, throbbing force, and as she strove to rise and act, Druga saw that she could not move her limbs in any way!
Before his eyes her skin turned black as ebony, her eyes became stony and fixed; even the sweet curling of her hair became hard and solid, her whole body became changed to black, hated stone.
As suddenly as the horrible pulsing had come, it went away, leaving Druga that least of all desirable women, one of virtuous stone.
So with one stroke Dionaea repaid Druga and Feronia; Druga by the loss of his best beloved, and Feronia by the retention of her faculties in a body of stone. That Feronia had to sit immovable and watch poor Druga in his grief and loss was particularly excruciating.
Days of horror dragged by.
No matter what he proposed to do upon arising, mid-morning found him reclining before the frozen statue-like body of his beloved, and night would come down at last to hide the black stone of Feronia from his wet eyes.
This existence became at last unbearable, and he resolved to go out into the world and seek some means of making his days less horrible to him. That Feronia was not dead, and that he might have obtained her release by appealing to some greater power, did not occur to Druga in his grief. Indeed he could never become accustomed to the ways of witches and their overlords, nor to thinking in terms of magic at all. He was a logical person, and no matter what wonders he blundered into and saw with his own eyes, he never quite believed any of it.
It was with a heavy heart that Druga sealed up the doors of Feronia\'s home and made his sad way to the stable, mounted and rode slowly away.
All ............