Quag Keep (30 page)

As Milo had exiled beginning fear, so now he battled with doubt. He was no wizard, no spell-master, whispered that doubt. There could be no real answer to the task he willed. Steel only was his weapon. In . . . in . . . in . . . .

As his world was deliberately narrowed to the rings, they grew larger until he could see only the strange gems. Both were coming alive, not exactly glowing as had the bracelet, rather as if their importance was being made manifest to him. In . . . in. . ..

Milo moved before he was aware that that which had held his feet had loosed hold. He took one slow step, another. It was
like wading through the treacherous mud of the swamp. To raise each foot required great effort. Still it could be done.

His shoulder brushed against Gulth's. They both stood facing the wall. On his other side he was dimly aware of Yevele coming up beside them, could hear, without understanding, a mutter of words she voiced. In. . . .

He took a last step. His outstretched hands, held at eye level so that he could concentrate on the rings, came palm flat against the small stones that had been set to block the doorway. Beside him, Gulth had also moved, his taloned hands resting beside Milo's.

Concentrate! He found it difficult to hold that fierce will-to-be on the rings. Then—

The wall barrier, which had looked and felt at his first touch so immovable, began to crumble. The blocks decayed into coarse rubble, which tumbled to the flooring. A brighter light than they had yet seen streamed out. Concentrate! Milo fought to keep his thoughts fixed steadily on the rings and hold there.

Those blocks were gone, their outstretched hands now met no opposition. Milo heard a soft cry from beside him, echoed it with a sharp breath of his own. The bracelet was no longer only warm. It formed a tormenting band of fire about his arm, bringing sharp pain.

However, his feet were not fixed. Aroused to sullen anger by that pain, he moved on, dimly aware that the rest of the party were fast on his heels.

What they faced. . . .

Illusion? Milo could not be sure. But as he stared ahead into that brightly lighted room his surprise was complete. Here were
no stone walls, no sign of any dwelling that one might find in this world.

The floor under his boots was wood, only half-covered by a rug of dull green. Planted in the center of it was a table. And on the table was stacked a pile of books—not the scrolls, tomes, parchment he might expect to find in a wizard's chamber—but books that the other person deep within him recognized. One, a loose-leaf notebook, lay open, back flat on the table. Facing it was a row of small figures, standing in scattered array on a large sheet of paper marked off into squares by different colored lines. On the wall behind the table hung a map.

Deav Dyne spoke. “This is the land we know.” He gestured to the map.

Milo came to the table. The figures. . . . Once more his hand curled as if he clasped their like in protecting fingers. Not chessmen—no—though these were playing pieces right enough, representations of men, of aliens, each beautifully fashioned with microscopic detail. He eyed them narrowly, almost sure that each of them must be one of the pieces. But that was not true. There were a druid, a dragon, others he could not be sure of without examining them closely—but no swordsman, no elf, bard, battle-maiden, no Gulth, Deav Dyne, Naile. . . .

There was no one in the room, no other entrance save the door they had opened for themselves. Still Milo had a feeling that they would not be alone long, that he who had opened that book, set out the figures, would at any moment return.

Yevele moved around the table, looking down at the papers spread there. She looked up.

“I know these—why?” There was a frown of puzzlement on
her face. “This is . . .” Her mental effort was visible to any watcher as she fought to find words. “This is—a game!”

Her last word was a key to unlock the door of memory. Milo was not transported back in person, but he was in mind in another room not too different from this in some ways. Ekstern should be there unpacking the new pieces. He held a swordsman—

“We—we are the pieces!” he broke out. He swung halfway around, pointing from one of the party to the next. “What can you remember now?” he demanded from them.

“Game pieces.” Deav Dyne nodded slowly. “New game pieces—and I picked one up to examine it more closely. Then”—he made a gesture toward himself, toward the rest of them—“I was in Greyhawk and I was Deav Dyne. But how can this be—wizardry of a sort I have no knowledge of? Was it the same with all of you?”

They nodded. Milo had already gone on to the next question, one that perhaps none of them might be able to answer. “Why?”

“Do you not remember what Hystaspes said to us?” counter-questioned the battlemaid. “He spoke of worlds tied together by bringing us here—of a desire to so link two planes of existence together.”

“Which would be a disaster!” Wymarc said. “Each would suffer from such a—”

Whatever he might have added was never voiced. There came a flickering in the opposite corner of the room. Then a man stood there, as if the very air itself had provided a doorway for his entrance.

An expression of complete amazement on his thin face was
quickly overshadowed by another of mingled fear and anger, or so Milo read it. The swordsman made the first move. He depended once more on the reflexes of his body, as his blade cleared scabbard and pointed toward the stranger in one clean, flowing act.

Yevele moved as speedily—but in a different direction. She snatched up the open notebook from the table.

“Let that alone!” Anger triumphed over both amazement and the trace of fear in the stranger.

“This is the key to your meddling, isn't it?” demanded the girl in return. “This—and those.” She pointed to the row of figures. “Are they to be your next captives?”

“You don't know what you are doing,” he snapped. Then he paused, before adding, “You don't belong here. Ewire!” His voice rose in a sharp, imperative call. “Ewire, where are you? You can't trick me with your illusions.”

“Illusions?” Naile rumbled. “Let me get my two hands on you, little man!” The berserker strode forward with a purposeful stride. “Then you will see what illusions can do when they are angered!”

The stranger backed away. “You can't touch me!” His tone now held a shrill note. “You're not supposed to be here at all!” He sounded aggrieved as well as impatient. “Ewire knows better than to try her tricks on me.”

Yevele leafed hastily through the ring-bound pages of the notebook. Suddenly she paused, and called out. “Wait, Naile, this is important to us all.” Steadying the book in one hand, she used a finger of the other to run lightly across the page as she read. “First shipment of figures on its way. Will run periodic checks. If the formula does work—what a perfect game!”

“So,” Milo held his sword with the point aimed at the other's throat. Thus far he kept rigid control of his anger. “We have been playing your game, is that it? I do not know how or why you have done this to us. But you can send us back—”

The stranger was shaking his head. “You needn't try to threaten me—you aren't real, don't you understand that? I'm the game master, the referee. I call the action! Oh—” He raised one hand and rubbed his forehead. “This is ridiculous. Why do I argue with something—someone who does not really exist?”

“Because we do.” Naile reached out one hand as if he would seize upon the stranger's shirt just above his heart. Inches away from the goal his fingers brought up against an invisible barrier. The stranger paid no attention to the aborted attack. He was staring at Yevele.

“Don't!” his voice reached a scream, he had suddenly lost control. “What are you doing?” Now he moved toward the table and the girl who held the notebook in her hands. She was methodically tearing out the pages, letting them drift to the floor. “No!”

The stranger made a grab for his possession. Even as Naile could not reach him, neither could he reach Yevele. Calmly she moved back and continued her destruction.

Then the other laughed. “You really can't be anyone now but yourselves,” he said in a voice he once more had under control. “It's a one-way road for you.”

“But not for you?” Deav Dyne asked with his usual mildness.

The stranger flashed a glance at him. “I'm not really here. You might term it ‘magic' in this benighted barbaric world. I project only a part of me. I have an anchor—back there. You do not. You serve my purpose by being here. Do you suppose I would
have left you any way back? The more of you”—he glanced at the figures on the table and away again—“who can answer to what is set in those figures—because each one holds that which will draw someone of the right temperament here—the stronger my plan will be.”

“Thank you for the information.” Wymarc reached the table to gather up the figures with a single sweep of his hand. He slammed them to the floor and stamped hard, flattening the metal into battered lumps.

The stranger watched him with a sly smile. “It doesn't put an end to it, you know. There are more of those waiting. I need only bring them through, link them here, and then—” He shrugged.

“I do not think you will do that.” From the back of the notebook Yevele drew a single sheet of time-browned paper. Milo caught only a glimpse of a straggle of dark lines across it.

Now the stranger let out a cry. “I—I couldn't have left that here!”

Once more he made an ineffectual attempt to seize what she held but the barrier that lay between them held. Yevele backed farther away, holding out the paper to Deav Dyne. The cleric grasped it and swiftly rolled it up, to be wrapped with his prayer beads. Yevele spoke to Milo.

“The dice, comrade, get the dice! It would seem he has forgotten them also.”

Milo lunged for the table, the stranger doing the same from the other side. It was he who overbalanced the board, sent it crashing on its side, barely missing Milo's feet. Dice such as those they wore in miniature rattled among the cascade of books and papers, to spin across the floor. Milo scooped up three, saw that Ingrge and Wymarc had the others.

“Roll the master one, roll it now, Milo! See what will happen,” Yevele ordered.

“No.” The stranger sprawled forward, on his knees, his arms reaching out in a vain attempt to gather his property.

“Does it work both ways then?” Milo did not expect an answer. But because he was impressed by Yevele's order and was willing at this moment to believe that perhaps magic was at work here, he spun the proper cube.

The result was startling. That man, cursing now in his futility, wavered; table, papers strewn across the floor, they and their owner were gone. Around the party the whole room began to spin, until they caught at one another dizzily. There came a rushing of wind, a chill of freezing air.

Once more they stood in a stone-walled room. Above them there was no longer any ceiling, for that wall ended in the jagged line of ruin. And they were alone.

“He is gone, and I believe I can swear by the High Altar of Astraha, he cannot return,” Deav Dyne announced.

“But
we
—we are here,” Yevele said slowly.

Milo looked straightly at her. “Perhaps he was right and for us there is no return. Still, there is much strange knowledge in this land that may aid us if we are fortunate. We have this.” He tossed the master cube in his hand and caught it. “Who knows what we can learn concerning it.”

“Well spoken,” Deav Dyne agreed. “And we are free of the geas also.”

It was true. Though Milo had not realized it, that faint uneasiness born of the geas no longer rode him.

Naile cleared his throat. “We can now go our own ways with no reason to bow to any other's wish—”

He hesitated and Yevele said, “Is that what you wish, berserker? That we should now part and each seek his own fortune?”

Naile rubbed his chin with one hand. Then he answered slowly. “A man usually chooses his battlemates and shield companions. However, now I say this. If you wish Naile Fangtooth, yes, even the scaled one there, to march your road—say so. I am free of all other vows.”

“I agree.” Wymarc shifted the bagged harp to an easier position on his shoulder. “Let us not be hasty in splitting our force. It has been proven we can act together well when the need arises.”

Ingrge and the cleric nodded. Last of all Gulth, looking from one face to the next, croaked, “Gulth walks your road if you wish.”

“So be it,” Yevele said briskly. “But where do we now go and for what purpose? From this foray we have gained little—save perhaps the confounding of this player of games.”

“We have this,” Milo tossed the die. His problem had been solved. He knew now that he was Milo Jagon and in that he took a certain amount of satisfaction. “Shall we roll to see what we can learn?”

“We are wed to that, the bracelets will not loosen.” Ingrge had been pulling at his, to no purpose. “Therefore, comrades of the road, take care of those same dice. But as you ask, swordsman, I now say—roll to see what comes of it. One chance is as good as another.”

Milo cupped the die tightly in his hand for a moment and went down to one knee. Then, wondering what might follow, he tossed the referee's control out on the rock floor of the ruined keep.