Free Monsters and Magicians by Robert Adams Page B

the plants and trees and grasses all about) and mineral (from the rock-studded soil and that soil itself). Adapting, restructuring and shaping

    the constituents of all these in the manner first taught by the Elder Ones hundreds of generations before to the first hybrids, the blond young man slowly became transformed into a large wild ox—a bovine that later, much later, generations of humans would call aurochs or bos taurus primigenius.
    The final creation was, to Fitz, impressive in the extreme. In this dream as in previous ones of similar nature, he was not only participant but observer, and so he could view the formed beast as from a close distance even while he realized that he along with his host-body were actually a part of the beast.
    Its color was so dark a brown as to look almost black, which caused the two-inch-wide white stripe down the length of its spine to stand out in startling contrast. The long, thick horns were a yellowish-white, save at the sharp-pointed tips where they were shiny black. Under the glossy hide, the creature was a mass of thick bones, steely sinew and rolling muscles, a good six feet in height at the withers, with the big head carried even higher, the cud-chewing mouth and wide nostrils edged with off-white.
    Within that huge, weighty, very powerful and vital body, Fitz noted how much concentration was required on the part of his host, Seos, to maintain his creation in its present shape and to prevent his own mind from becoming submerged in the simpler mind of the beast. Fitz, from his vantage point, could understand how such a thing was done but discovered that his own, human mind owned no words or even speakable concepts to explain it.
    Then the young aurochs bull set out across the

    rolling plain at a slow trot, leaving the "leopard" to her bloody feast just inside the confines of the thicket, admonishing him telepathically, "Have your fun with those heifers and cows, brother-mine, but be careful, too; big as you now are, you're still not as big as some of the king-bulls I've seen here and there. There still are but few enough of us and I fear that our sire would be most wroth were I to arrive back upon our island with only your well-horned body."
    In great good spirits, Seos replied, "You be careful too, my sister-mate. That form you now inhabit is such as to set any male leopard to full arousal, and I think our sire might be equally wroth were you to throw before him a litter of furry, fanged and clawed grand-get. Hahahaha."
    Despite the flippancies of the exchanges, Fitz knew that there was real and abiding love between the sister and brother, who also were sexual mates, in the ages-old tradition of their hybrid race, and both love and awesome respect for their sire, Keronnos, ruler of their small group of Elder Ones-human hybrids, resident on the rocky but verdant island in the midst of the sea.
    The mind of Seos was as an open book to Fitz, and the man-bull was completely oblivious to the presence or delvings of the "visitor" within him. In the memories of Seos, Fitz could see that island—soaring peaks flung high above broad, long plains, little deep-green glens between hills, large and smaller streams of crystal-clear water flowing from the montane springs to cascade down rocks and race down hillsides and flow upon the plains and feed the lakes and ponds before finding ways to the purple sea—was able to

    know that, before Keronnos and his kin had come upon and settled it, there had never been humans or even primates thereon. Even now, after the passage of hundred of winters, there were few on the large island—though only a bit over twenty miles in average width, the island's length was more than eight times that distance—for, though the hybrids lived very long as compared to pure-strain humans, their birthrates were very low.
    In hopes of partially rectifying these problems, Keronnos and all of the others had taken to seeking out among the smaller clans and tribes of