Quag Keep (29 page)

The druid, his pouch gone, his arms pulled behind him, the wrists tightly bound, was dragged up to them by Wymarc. Milo went to examine him who had played the role of another Naile. There was a sluggish pulse, but his skull might be cracked. He could be bound and left.

They had two conscious captives, the illusionist and the druid. Perhaps these two were of least use, though they were the most deadly, that since both had defenses that were not based on strength of body or weapon in hand. Over the gag Milo saw the woman's intent gaze as he went to bring her to their council of war. But he knew that Yevele had been right in her warning. The last thing to do was to look into her eyes or let her compelling gaze cross his. He laid her down beside the druid. The man's face worked frantically as he fought to open his lips, yet they remained close-set together.

“I would not suggest we take them with us,” Wymarc spoke
up. “To my mind it is a time to move fast, laying no extra burdens upon ourselves.”

“Well enough,” agreed Naile. He drew his knife. “Give me room, bard, and this I shall lay across their throats. Then we need not think of them again.”

“No.” Milo had seen plenty such blooding of captives on fields of victory. It was a custom among many of the weres, and not them alone. Better to leave only dead than to take prisoners, when to guard such defeated one's purposes. Wymarc was right, they should not take with them these most dangerous of the enemy. But it was not in him to kill a helpless captive coldly and neatly out of hand.

18

THEY DREW TOGETHER AT THE BLACK WALL, ITS TOP VEILED IN THE
mist. With that as a guide they went warily forward, seeking some break in its surface. This was no natural upthrust of rock, but laid by the hand of either human or alien. The blocks were unfinished, placed one above the other, but so cunningly set that it was solid enough without mortar.

Floating wisps of mist drifted above them, sometimes curling down that wall. Milo glanced back. There the mists had closed in, dropping a curtain between them and the recent battleground. Here, a pocket of clear air appeared to move with them. There was nothing to see but the black rock, with clusters of moisture bubbles gathering underfoot, or the wall. While, with every breath they drew, that dankness invaded their lungs, tainted as it was by the effluvia of the swamplands.

Ingrge went down on one knee, intent upon something on the ground.

“Gulth has come this way.” He indicated a smear on the rock.
Some of the grayish slime growth, which spotted it leprously in places, had been crushed into a noisome paste.

“How can you be sure that was left by Gulth?” Yevele demanded.

The elf did not look at her. It was Milo who caught the clue—those scrape marks could only have been made by Gulth's forward-jutting foot claws. But why had the lizardman deserted the fight, gone ahead?

“I said it!” Naile broke into the swordsman's thoughts. “To trust one of the scaled ones is folly. Can you not see? It was he who brought us here, delivered us as neatly as a merchant's man brings a pack of trading goods across country to a warehouse.”

Afreeta lifted her head, hissed with the viciousness of her kind. Naile raised one hand to rest on her body between fanning wings. With his axe in the other he went on with an agile tread surprising for his bulk.

There was their gate—or door; a dark gap in the wall, waiting like the maw of some great, toothless creature. There was no door or bar—only a dark trough which they could not see. Naile swung his axe, slicing into that blackness as if it were a living enemy. The double-headed blade flashed inward, vanished from their sight. Then the berserker pulled it back once more.

“Look to your wristlet!” Wymarc's warning was hardly needed. A growing warmth of that metal had already alerted them all.

The dice spots blazed, the metal bands themselves took on a glow that fought against the drab daylight of the rocky isle. But the dice did not spin, nor could Milo, concentrating with all the power he could summon, stir them into any action. They were alive with whatever force they had—but they did not move.

“Power returns to power.” Deav Dyne held out his own banded arm. “Yet there is nothing here that answers to my questing.” He shook his beads.

“Still—the geas holds. We must go on,” Wymarc returned.

It was true. Milo felt that, too. The compulsion that had kept them moving ever southward and had sent them into the Sea of Dust here strengthened. Some force stood or hovered behind him, exerting rising strength to combat his will.

Now all the power Hystaspes had summoned to find the geas built higher—as a flame leaps when fresh oil is poured into the basin of the lamp. There could be no arguing against the wizard's will, no matter what might face them in or beyond that curtain of the dark hung across the arched opening of the wall.

Without a word to each other, hooked like fish upon a line, they moved forward, while the warmth from their bracelets grew to an almost unbearable heat. Darkness closed about them—bringing a complete absence of all light. Milo took three strides, four, hoping to so win into a place where sight and hearing would once more function, for here he was blind, nor could he catch any sounds from those who shared his venture.

He was isolated in the smothering dark. It was difficult to get a full breath, though the swamp air had been cut off when he had taken that first stride into the total black. Trap? If so he was fairly caught. The band on his wrist was burning, though here he could not see those flashes from the minute gems on the dice. He tried with the fingers of his left hand to free them, make them swing. It was impossible.

Ever the command that Hystaspes had set on him sent him on and on. If this was all they could sense—how then might
they combat an entity blindly? Such a defense as this on the part of the alien was more than they had expected.

Milo shook his head. There was a kind of mist in his brain—slowing his thoughts, perhaps blacking out his mind even as this outer darkness had entrapped his body. He could move freely, yes, but he was not even sure now, in his state of increasing bewilderment and dizziness, that he moved straight ahead. Was he wandering in circles?

And in his head. . . .

A table, voices, something he clasped within his hand. A figure! Milo's thought caught and held that fraction of memory in triumph. He had held a figure, beautifully wrought, of a fighting man armored and helmeted like—like Milo Jagon himself!

Milo Jagon? He paused, enfolded in the dark. He was . . . was . . . Martin Jefferson!

He was . . . was . . . With the beginning of panic he staggered on, his hands going to his head as he fought to control the seesaw of memories. Milo—Martin—Martin—Milo—Absorbed in that conflict, he stumbled on, one foot before the other, no longer aware of his surroundings.

Then, just as the dark had closed about them upon their entrance through the wall, so did it end. Milo blundered out into the open once again. He squinted against a light that struck at him. To his eyes this was a punishing glare, so he blinked and blinked again. Then his sight adjusted.

He stood in a room of rough stone walls and floors. There were no windows in those walls. Above his head the ceiling was the same drab black-gray, though it was crossed by heavy beams of wood. In the wall directly opposite there was the outline of a
doorway—an outline only, for it had long ago been filled with smaller stones wedged tightly together to form what looked to be an impassable barrier.

Before this stood Gulth, facing that blocked way, his back to those who had joined him. Milo strove to move forward, nearer to the lizardman. He had taken two strides to bring him out of the darkness into this place where the walls themselves gave forth an eerie glow without any benefit of lamp or torch. But, he now could go no farther in spite of all his willing. His feet might have been clamped to the stone floor.

“Wizardry!” Naile rumbled at his right. “One wizard sends us on, the other traps us.” The berserker was twisting, trying to turn his body, manifestly attempting to loosen feet as immovable as Milo's.

“No spell of this world holds us,” Deav Dyne said. The cleric stood quietly, his beads coiled about his wrist, carefully looped not to touch the bracelet. On all their arms those still glowed with minute sparks of light.

“What do we now?” Yevele demanded. “Wait here like sheep in a butcher's pen?”

Milo moistened his lips with tongue tip. To be so entrapped sapped his resolution, and he understood the danger of such wavering. Now his voice rang out a fraction louder than he had intended. He hoped that no one of them could hear in it any inflection of uneasiness.

“Who are we?”

He saw all their heads turn, even that of Gulth, though the lizardman was far enough in advance that he could not really see who stood behind him.

“What do you mean?” Yevele began and then hesitated. “Yes, that is so—who are we in truth? Can any of us give answer to that?”

None replied. Perhaps within themselves they shifted memories, strove to find a common ground for the seesaw of those memories.

It was Wymarc who made answer. “In that way lies our danger. Perhaps we have been so split now to disarm us, send us into some panic. While we stand here, comrades of the road, we must be one, not two!”

Milo steadied. The bard was right. But could a man put aside those sharp thrusts of alien memory, be himself whole and one, untroubled by another identity? He glanced at the bracelet on his wrist. Naile had called this wizardry. The berserker was right. Could one wizardry be set against another in a last battle here?

“Be those of Greyhawk!” A sudden instinct gave him that. “The swordsman has made an excellent suggestion,” Deav Dyne said slowly. “Divided we will be excellent meat, perhaps helpless before the alien knowledge. Strive to be one with
this
world, do not reach after that which was of another existence.”

Milo—he was Milo—Milo—Milo! He must be Milo! Now he strove to master that other memory, put it from him as far as possible. He was Milo Jagon, no one else!

The bracelet. . . . The swordsman fastened his gaze on it, holding out his arm so that he could see it clearly. Dice—spinning dice—no, do not look at that—do not think of them! He fought to drop his arm once more to his side, discovered that it was as fixed in the raised position as his feet were to the stones of the floor. Look away! At least that he could do. He
forced up his chin. By an effort that made the sweat bead on his skin, he broke the intent stare of his eyes.

“Well done.” Deav Dyne spoke with the firm tone of one who had fronted wizardry of many kinds and had not been defeated. Milo glanced at the others. Their arms, even that of the cleric, were held out stiff before them, but every one had broken the momentary spell that had held them in thrall to the motionless dice.

“This is the magic of
this
time and place,” the cleric continued. “Milo has told us—be of Greyhawk. Let us use the weapons of Greyhawk against this alien. Perhaps that is the answer. Each of us has something of magic in us. Ingrge holds that knowledge which is of the elves and which no human man can understand or summon, Naile puts forth the strength of the were-folk. Yevele has some spells she has learned, Wymarc controls the harp, Milo wears upon his hands ancient rings of whose properties we cannot be sure. I have what I have learned.” He swung his beads. “I do not think Gulth, either, lacks some power. So, let us each concentrate his mind on what is ours and bears no relation to those bands set upon us against our wills.”

His advice was logical, but Milo thought they were trusting in a weak hope. Still the illusion-breaking ring
had
worked during their fight outside these walls. He looked at the two rings, moving his other hand out beside the one held so stiffly straight before him. Now he concentrated, as Deav Dyne had bade, upon them. What other strange powers they might control when used by one with the right talent, he had no idea. He could only hope. . . .

He pressed his two thumbs tightly together, thus the settings
touched side by side. Wizards were able to move stones, rocks as heavy as those making up these walls, with mind power alone when it was properly channeled. No, he must not let his mind stray as to what could be done by an adept. He must only think now on what might be done by Milo Jagon, swordsman.

Cloudy oval, oblong green bearing forgotten map lines—he stared at them both, strove to reduce his world to the rings only, though what he groped so dimly to seize upon he could not have explained. In . . . in . . . in . . . Somewhere that word arose in his mind, repeated—it had a ring of compulsion, a beat that spread from thought to the flesh and bone. In—relax—let it rise in you.

What rise? Fear of the unknown tried to break loose. Resolutely Milo fought that, drove it from the forepart of his mind. In . . . in . . . in . . . .

The beat of that word heightened, added to now by a strain of music, monotonous in itself but repeating the same three notes again and again, somehow adding force to his will. In . . . in . . . in . . . .