Quag Keep (3 page)

Fangtooth's lips pursed as if he would spit after the figure now tugging aside the door curtain.

“Cooker of spells!” he commented.

“But not the one who holds us,” Milo said.

“True enough. Tell me, swordsman, does your skin now prickle, does it seem that, without your helm to hold it down, your very hair might rise on your head? Whatever has netted us comes the closer. Yet a man cannot fight what he cannot see, hear, or know is alive.”

The berserker was far more astute than Milo had first thought him. Because of the very nature of the bestial ferocity such fighters fell into upon occasion, one was apt to forget that they had their own powers and were moved by intelligence as well as by the superhuman strength they could command. Fangtooth had the right of it. His own discomfort had been steadily growing. What they awaited was nearly here.

Now the five whisperers also arose and passed one by one beyond the curtain. It was as if someone, or something, were clearing the stage for a struggle. Yet still Milo could not locate any of the signs of Chaos. On the berserker's shoulder the pseudo-dragon chittered, rubbing its head back and forth on the cheekplate of the boar-crowned helmet.

Milo found himself watching, not the small reptile, but rather the bracelet on his wrist. It seemed to have loosened somewhat its grip against his mail. Two of the dice began slowly to spin.

“Now!”

Naile got to his feet. In his left hand he held a deadly battle axe of such weight that Milo, trained though he was to handle many different weapons, thought he could never have brought
to shoulder height. They were alone in the long room. Even those who had served had gone, as if they had some private knowledge of ill to come and would not witness it.

Still, what Milo felt was not the warning prick of normal fear—rather an excitement, as if he stood on the verge of learning the answer to all questions.

As Naile had done, he got to his feet, lifted his shield. The dice on his bracelet whirred to a stop as the hide door curtain was drawn aside, letting in a blast of late fall, winter-touched air. A man, slight and so well cloaked that he seemed merely some shadow detached from a nearby wall to roam homelessly about, came swiftly in.

2

THE NEWCOMER APPROACHED THEM DIRECTLY. HIS PALE FACE
above the high-standing collar of his cloak marked him as one who dwelt much indoors by reason of necessity or choice. And, though his features were human enough in their cast, still Milo, seeing their impassivity, the thinness of his bloodless lips, the sharp-beak curve of his nose, hesitated to claim him as a brother man. His eyelids were near closed, but, as he reached the table, he opened them widely and they could see that his pupils were of no human color, rather dull red like a smoldering coal.

Save for those eyes, the only color about him was the badge sewn to the shoulder of his cloak. And that was so intricate that Milo could not read its meaning. It appeared to be an entwining of a number of wizardly runes. When the newcomer spoke, his voice was low-pitched and had no more emotion than the monotone of one who repeated a set message without personal care for its meaning.

“You are summoned—”

“By whom and where?” Naile growled and spat again, the flush on his broad face darkening. “I have taken no service—”

Milo caught the berserker's arm. “No more have I. But it would seem that this is what we have awaited.” For in him that expectancy which had been building to a climax now blended into a compulsion he could not withstand.

For a moment it seemed that the berserker was going to dispute the summons. Then he swung up his fur cloak and fastened it with a boar's head buckle at his throat.

“Let us be gone then,” he growled. “I would see an end to this bedazzlement, and that speedily.” The pseudo-dragon chittered shrilly, shooting its tongue at the messenger, as if it would have enjoyed impaling some part of the stranger on that spear-point.

Again Milo felt the nudge of spinning dice at his wrist. If he could only remember! There was a secret locked in that arm-let and he must learn it soon, for as he stood now, he felt helplessness like a sharp-set wound.

They came out of Harvel's Axe on the heels of the messenger. Though the upper part of the city was well lighted, this portion was far too shadowed. Those who dwelt and carried out their plans here knew shadows as friends and defenses. However, as three of them strode along, they followed a crooked alley where the houses leaned above them as if eyes set in the upper stories would spy on passersby. Milo's overactive imagination was ready to endow those same houses, closed and barred against the night and with seldom a dim glow to mark a small-paned window, with knowledge greater than his own, as if they snickered slyly as the three passed.

Before they reached the end of the Thieves' Quarter a dark form slipped from an arched doorway. Though he had had no
warning from the armlet, Milo's hand instantly sought his sword hilt. Then the newcomer fell into step with him and the very dim light showed the green and brown apparel of an elf. Few, if any, of that blood were ever drawn into the ways of Chaos. Now better light from a panel above the next door made it plain that the newcomer was one of the Woods Rangers. His long bow, unstrung, was at his back and he bore a quiver full of arrows tight packed. In addition both a hunter's knife and a sword were sheathed at his belt. But most noticeable to the swordsman, on his wrist he, too, wore the same bracelet that marked the berserker and Milo himself.

Their guide did not even turn his head to mark the coming of the elf, but kept ahead at a gliding walk which Milo found he must extend his stride to match. Nor did the newcomer offer any greeting to either of the men. Only the pseudo-dragon turned its gem-point eyes to the newcomer and trilled a thin, shrill cry.

Elves had the common tongue, though sometimes they disdained to use it unless it was absolutely necessary. However, besides it and their own speech, they also had mastery over communication with animals and birds—and, it would seem, pseudo-dragons. For Naile's pet—or comrade—had shrilled what must be a greeting. If the elf answered, it was by mind-talk alone. He made no more sound than the shadows around them; far less than the hissing slip-slip of their guide's footgear which was oftentimes drowned out by the clack of their own boot heels on the pavement.

They proceeded into wider and less winding streets, catching glimpses now and then of some shield above a door to mark a
representative of Blackmer, a merchant of substance from Urnst, or the lands of the Holy Lords of Faraaz.

So the four came to a narrow way between two towering walls. At the end of that passage stood a tower. It was not impressive at first, as were some towers in Greyhawk. The surface of the stone facing was lumpy and irregular. Those pocks and rises, Milo noted, when they came to the single door facing the alley that had brought them and could see the door light, were carving as intricately enfolded and repeated as the patch upon their guide's cloak.

From what he could distinguish, the stone was not the local grayish-tan either, but instead a dull green, over which wandered lines of yellow, adding to the confusion of the carven patterns in a way to make the eyes ache if one tried to follow either carving or yellow vein.

He whom they followed laid one hand to the door and it swung immediately open, as if there was no need for bars or other protection in this place. Light, wan, yet brighter than they had seen elsewhere, flowed out to engulf them.

Here were no baskets of fire wasps. This light stemmed from the walls themselves, as if those yellow veins gave off a sickly radiance. By the glow Milo saw that the faces of his companions looked as palely ghostlike as those of some liche serving Chaos. He did not like this place, but his will was bound as tightly as if fetters enclosed his wrists and chains pulled him forward.

They passed, still in silence, along a narrow corridor to come at the end of it to a corkscrew of a stairway. Because their guide flitted up it, they did likewise. Milo saw an oily drop of sweat
streak down the berserker's nose, drip to his chin where the bristles of perhaps two days of neglected beard sprouted vigorously. His own palms were wet and he had to fight a desire to wipe them on his cloak.

Up they climbed, passing two levels of the tower, coming at last into a single great room. Here it was stifling hot. A fire burned upon a hearth in the very middle, smoke trailing upward through an opening in the roof. But the rest of the room . . . Milo drew a deep breath. This was no lord's audience chamber. There were tables on which lay piles of books, some bound in wooden boards eaten by time, until perhaps only their hinges of metal held them together. There were canisters of scrolls, all pitted and green with age. Half the floor their guide stepped confidently out upon was inlaid with a pentagon and other signs and runes. The sickly light was a little better here, helped by the natural flames of the fire.

Standing by the fire, as if his paunchy body still craved heat in spite of the temperature of the chamber, was a man of perhaps Milo's height, yet stooped a little of shoulder and completely bald of head. In place of hair, the dome of his skin-covered skull had been painted or tattooed with the same unreadable design as marked the cloak patch of his servant.

He wore a gray robe, tied with what looked like a length of plain yellowish rope, and that robe was marked with no design or symbol. His right wrist, Milo was quick to look for that, was bare of any copper, dice-set bracelet. He could have been any age (wizards were able to control time a little for their own benefit) and he was plainly in no cheerful mood. Yet, as the swordsman stepped up beside Naile, the elf quickly closing in to make
a third, Milo for the first time felt free of compulsion and constant surveillance.

The wizard surveyed them critically—as a buyer in the slave market might survey proffered wares. Then he gave a small hacking cough when smoke puffed into his face and waved a hand to drive away that minor annoyance.

“Naile Fangtooth, Milo Jagon, Ingrge.” It was not as if he meant the listing of names as a greeting, but rather as if he were reckoning up a sum important to himself. Now he beckoned and, from the other side of the fire, four others advanced.

“I am, of course, Hystaspes. And why the Great Powers saw fit to draw me into this meeting. . . .” He scowled. “But if one deals with the Powers it is a two-way matter and one pays their price in the end. Behold your fellows!”

His wave of the hand was theatrical as he indicated the four who had come into full sight. As Milo, Naile, and the elf Ingrge had instinctively moved shoulder to shoulder, so did these also stand.

“The battlemaid Yevele.” Hystaspes indicated a slender figure in full mail. She had pushed her helmet back a little on her forehead, and a wisp of red-brown hair showed. For the rest, her young face was near as impassive as that of their guide. She wore, however, Milo noticed, what he was beginning to consider the dangerous bracelet.

“Deav Dyne, who puts his faith in the gods men make for themselves.” There was exasperation in the wizard's voice as he spoke the name of the next.

By his robe of gray, faced with white, Deav Dyne was a follower of Landron-of-the-Inner-Light and of the third rank. But
a bracelet encircled his wrist also. He gave a slight nod to the other three, but there was a frown on his face and he was plainly uneasy in his present company.

“The bard Wymarc—”

The red-headed man, who wore a skald's field harp in a bag on his back, smiled as if he were playing a part and was slyly amused at both his own role and the company of his fellow players.

“And, of course, Gulth.” Hystaspes's visible exasperation came to the surface as he indicated the last of the four.

That introduction was answered by a low growl from Naile Fangtooth. “What man shares a venture with an eater of carrion? Get you out, scale-skin, or I'll have that skin off your back and ready to make me boots!”

The lizardman's stare was unblinking. He did not open his fanged jaws to answer—though the lizard people used and understood the common tongue well enough. But Milo did not like the way that reptilian gaze swept the berserker from head to foot and back again. Lizardmen were considered neutral in the eternal struggles and skirmishes of Law and Chaos. On the other hand a neutral did not awake trust in any man. Their sense of loyalty seldom could be so firmly engaged that they would not prove traitors in some moment of danger. And this specimen of his race was formidable to look upon. He was fully as tall as Naile, and in addition to the wicked sword of bone, double-edged with teeth, that he carried, his natural armament of fang and claw was weaponry even a hero might consider twice before facing. Yet on his scaled wrist, as on that of the bard and the cleric, was the same bracelet.

Now the wizard turned to the fire, pointed a forefinger.
Phrases of a language that meant nothing to Milo came from his lips in an invoking chant. Out of the heart of the flames spread more smoke but in no random puff. This was a serpent of white which writhed through the air, reaching out. It split into two and one loop of it fell about Milo, Naile and the elf before they could move, noosing around their heads, just as the other branch noosed the four facing them.