Serpent's Silver by Piers Anthony

as he had first thought her, Kian also found her a bit annoying at times. “I heard those stories when I was a child, but until now nothing has ever shown up to confirm them.”
    “Mouvar. Mouvar showed up,” Kian pointed out. Why did pretty women seem to have an innate ability to irritate him?
    “Maybe he did, and maybe he’s just a story.” She looked at him quizzically, and he had the feeling that she knew something, despite being a woman and a recently intended sacrifice. Why did she choose to disbelieve him? He had come to rescue her, after all.
    Glancing around the camp, frustrated, he was surprised at the faces he almost recognized. Men whose aspects he had seen around the palace during his youth. Some of them he identified with guardsmen. They had been loyal to his mother the queen, but enemies of his father and Kelvin. Could all of this similarity be mere chance? He shuddered, thinking about it. He wished he were elsewhere—at least until he had figured out more about this situation. He would just have to watch his step.
    A very small man running on the short legs of a dwarf came from a nearby tent and up to them. Quickly this person took the reins of the war-horse, and led it to a spot near the fence where he tethered it to a ring set in a large rock. He clambered up on the rock and moved the horse around while he wiped it down with a rag. Then, rushing to the tent, his legs blurring with the speed, he turned quickly and called, “Happy return, Master!” just as he plunged inside. A moment later he returned, carrying a sack of grain for the horse on his bent but adequate back.
    “Queeto!” Kian said. Queeto—the dwarf apprentice to the magician Zatanas. Destroyed, along with his evil master, by Kelvin and a great cleansing fire.
    “What’s that?” Jac asked.
    “Queeto. The dwarf.”
    “Heeto, here,” Jac said. “You knew him well?”
    “Not very.” He did not care to elaborate. Queeto had been a most misshapen creature in both body and mind, as evil and fearsome as his magician master.
    Jac called his attention to the way the dwarf was patting the horse’s muzzle and feeding it by hand. “That one’s a saint. Kindest person I ever saw. Hardest-working person I ever knew. Cheerfulest, best-natured person ever. Was he in your world as well?”
    “Not exactly a saint,” Kian said, thankful that he did not have to tell the embarrassing truth.
    “How do you plan on finding them?” Jac asked.
    Kian jerked his attention away from the dwarf and back to his host. “What? Oh, my parents. I have a plan. Unless, of course, you can help me.”
    “What’s your plan?”
    Kian told him about the dragonberries and showed them. “You have anything like these in Hud?”
    Jac shook his head. “Never heard of ‘em. But they sound like something that might eliminate the need for a lot of spy work.”
    “They did.” He proceeded to tell about Heln’s spying on the evil queen and magician during the war. Carefully he avoided mentioning that they were his mother and grandfather, and that he himself had fought on their side.
    “When you going to take one?”
    “I thought—” He swallowed, made uncomfortable by the thought. “Maybe when I had somebody to watch me. My heart will stop beating. My breathing will stop. I’ll took as if I’m dead.”
    “I’ll watch,” Jac said. “Come along to my tent.”
    Kian followed him. In a few moments he was stretched out on a bearver hide on the floor of the tent, holding one of the small dark berries up to the lamplight. Nothing much to do now but to go through with it, though he dreaded the prospect. Not giving himself a chance to think, he popped the berry into his mouth.
    He tasted a taste that made him want to retch. He fought off the urge, then swallowed.
    There was nothing for a moment. Wasn’t it working? He felt a guilty relief. But if it didn’t work, then how would he search for his father?
    Then he noticed that the top of the tent was nearer than