Quag Keep (9 page)

The elf knew very well what he was about. He found them shelter snug against detection. Visual detection, that was, for one could never be sure if someone of the Power were screening or casting about to pick up intimations of life. It was beyond the skill of all save a near adept to hide from such discovery.

Rocks by the river had been something of an understatement. Here the stream, shrunken in this season before the coming of the late fall rains, had its bed some distance below the surface of the plain. There was a lot of tough brush and small trees to mark its length, and, at the point where Ingrge had led
them, something else. Water running, wild, in some previous season, had bitten out a large section of the bank below a projection of rock, forming a cave, open-ended to be sure, but piling up brush would suffice to mask that.

In such a place they might dare a fire. The thought of that normal and satisfying heat and light somehow was soothing to the uneasiness Milo was sure they all shared, though they had not discussed it. They watered the animals, after stripping them of their saddles and packs, and put them on picket ropes, to graze the scanty grass along the shrunken lip of the stream.

Milo, Naile, Yevele, and Wymarc used their swords to chop brush, bringing the larger pieces to form a wall against the night, shorter lengths to provide them with some bedding, though the soil and sand beneath that overhang were not too unyielding.

Deav Dyne busied himself with arranging the armloads they dragged in, while Ingrge had prowled off on foot, heading along the water, both his nose and his eyes alert. He had found them this temporary camp, but his instincts to prepare against surprise must be satisfied.

Gulth squatted in the water, prying up small stones, his talons stabbing downward now and then to transfer a wriggling catch to his mouth. Milo, watching, schooled himself against revulsion. If the lizardman could so feed himself, it would mean that there would be lesser inroads on the provisions later. But he wanted no closer glimpse of what the other was catching.

They did have their fire, a small one, fed by dried drift, near smokeless. Though the lizardman appeared to have little liking for it, (or perhaps for closer company with these of human and elfin kind) the rest sat in a half-circle near it.

They would have a night guard, but as yet it was only twilight
and they need not set up such a patrol. Milo stretched out his hands to the flames. It was not that he was really chilled in body—it was the strangeness of this all that gnawed upon him now. Though Milo Jagon had camped in a like manner many times before, the vestiges of that other memory returned to haunt him.

“Swordsman!”

He was startled out of his thoughts by the urgency of that voice—so much so his hand went to his sword hilt as he quickly glanced up, expecting to see some enemy that had crept past the elf by some trick.

Only it was not Ingrge who had spoken. Rather Deav Dyne leaned forward, his attention centered on Milo's hands.

“Swordsman—those rings . . .”

Rings? Milo once again extended his hands into the firelight. His attention had been so centered on the bracelet and what power it might have over him (or how he might possibly bend it to his will) that he had forgotten the massive thumb rings. Apparently they were so much a part of the man he had become that he was not even aware of their weight.

One oval and cloudy, one oblong green veined with red, neither seemed to be any gem of sure price, while the settings of both were only plain bands of a very pale gold.

“What of them?” he asked.

“Where did you get them?” Deav Dyne demanded, a kind of hunger in his face. He pushed past Yevele as if he did not see her and, before Milo could move, he squatted down and seized both the swordsman's wrists in a tight grasp, raising those captive hands closer to his eyes, peering avidly first at one of the stones and then the other.

“Where did you get them?” he demanded the second time.

“I do not know—”

“Not know? How can you not know?” The cleric sounded angry.

“Do you forget who we are?” Yevele moved closer. “He is Milo Jagon, swordsman—just as you are Deav Dyne, cleric. But our memories are not complete—”

“
You
tell me what they are!” Milo's own voice rang out. “What value do they have? Is
your
memory clear on that?” He did not struggle to free himself of the cleric's grip. The rings were queer, and if they carried with them something either helpful or harmful, and this recorder and treasurer of strange knowledge knew it, the quicker he himself learned, too, the better.

“They are things of power.” Deav Dyne never glanced up from his continued scrutiny of the two stones. “That much I know—even with my halved memory. This one”—he drew the hand with the green stone a fraction closer to the firelight—“do you not see something about it to remind you of another thing?”

Now Milo himself studied the stone. All he could pick out was a meaningless wandering of thread-thin lines with a pinpoint dot, near too small to distinguish with the naked eye, here and there.

“What do you see then?” He did not want to confess his own ignorance, but rather pry out what the cleric found so unusual.

“It is a map!” There was such certainty in that answer that Milo knew Deav Dyne was convinced.

“A map.” Now Naile and Ingrge moved closer.

“It is too small, too confused.” The berserker shook his head.

But the elf, inspecting the ring closely, reached for a small
stick of the drift they had piled up to feed the fire and with his other hand smoothed a patch of the earth in the best light those flames afforded. “Hold still!” he commanded. “Now, let us see—”

Looking from stone to ground and back again he put the point of his stick to the earth and there inscribed a squiggle of line or a dot. The pattern he produced showed nothing that made sense as far as Milo was concerned, but the cleric studied the drawing with deep interest.

“Yes, yes, that is it!” he cried triumphantly as Ingrge added a last dot and sat back on his heels to survey his own handiwork critically. However, nothing in that drawing awoke any spark of memory in Milo. If it had been of some value to the swordsman part of him, that particular memory was too deeply buried now.

“Nothing I've ever seen.” Naile delivered his verdict first.

It was the bard who laughed.

“And, judging by the expression on our comrade's face,” he nodded to Milo, “he is as baffled as you, berserker, even though he seems to be in full possession. Well, will your prayers”—now he turned to Deav Dyne—“or your scout eye,” he addressed Ingrge, “provide us with an answer? As a bard I am a far wanderer, but these lines mean naught to me. Or can the battlemaiden find us an answer?”

There was a moment of silence and then all answered at once, denying any recognition. Milo twisted free from Deav Dyne's hold.

“It would seem that this is a mystery past our solving—”

“But why do you wear it?” persisted the cleric. “It is my belief that you would have neither of those on you”—he pointed to the
rings—“unless there is a reason. You are a swordsman, your trade lies with weapons, perhaps one or two simple spells. But these are things of true Power—”

“Which Power?” Yevele broke in.

“Not that of Chaos.” Deav Dyne made prompt answer. “Were that so, Ingrge and I, and even the skald, would sense that much.”

“Well, if we have in this a map which leads nowhere,” Milo shook his right thumb, “then what lies within the other?” He stuck out the other thumb with the dull and lifeless stone.

Deav Dyne shook his head. “I cannot even begin to guess. But there is one thing, swordsman. If you are willing, I can try a small prayer spell and see if thus we can learn what you carry. Things of Power are never to be disregarded. Men must go armed against them for, if they are used by the ignorant, then dire may be the result.”

Milo hesitated. Maybe if he took the rings off—he had no desire to be wearing them while Deav Dyne experimented. Only, when he endeavored to slip either from its resting place he found they were as firmly fixed as the bracelet. The cleric, witnessing his efforts, did not seem surprised.

“It is even as I have thought—they are set upon you, just as the geas was set upon us all.”

“Then what do I do?” Milo stared at the bands. Suddenly they had changed into visible threats. He shrank from Things of Power, which he did not in the least understand, and which, as Deav Dyne had pointed out, might even choose somehow to act, or make
him
act, by another's control.

“Do you wish me to try a Seeing?”

Milo frowned. He did not want to be the focus of any magic. But, on the other hand, if these held any danger, he needed to know as soon as possible.

“All right—” he replied with the greatest reluctance.

6

TWILIGHT DIM DREW A DARK CURTAIN WITHOUT. NOW GULTH
heaved up from his place a little behind the rest of the company. His claws settled his belt, the only clothing that he wore, more firmly about him. From it hung a sword, not of steel, which in the dankness of his homeland might speedily rust away, but a weapon far more wicked looking—a length of heavy bone into the sides of which had been inserted ripping teeth of glinting, opaline spikes. He had also a dagger nearly as long as his own forearm, more slender than the sword, sheathed in scaled skin. But his own natural armament of fang and claw were enough to make any foeman walk warily.

Now he hissed out in the common speech, “I guard.”

Naile half heaved himself up as if to protest the lizardman's calm assumption of that duty. His scowl was as quick as it always was whenever he chanced to glance at Gulth. Wymarc had risen, too, his shoulder so forming a barrier before the berserker. Even though the bard was by far the slighter man, yet
the move was so deftly done that Gulth had become one with the twilight before Naile could intercept him.

“Snake-skin?” Naile spat out. “He has no right to ride with real men!”

Afreeta wreathed about the berserker's throat, where her head had been tucked comfortably under his chin, swung out her snout, opened slits of eyes, and hissed. Straightway, Naile's big hand arose to scratch, with a gentleness foreign to his thick, calloused fingers, the silvery underpart of her tiny jaw.

“Gulth wears the bracelet,” Milo pointed out. “It could well be also that he likes us and our company as little as you appear to care for him.”

“Care for him!” exploded Naile. “Tarred with the filth of Chaos they are, most of his kind. My shield brother was dragged down and torn to pieces by such half a year gone when we ventured into the Troilan Swamps. That was a bad business and I am like never to forget the stink of it! What if he does wear the bracelet—the lizardfolk claim to be neutral, but it is well known they incline to Chaos rather than the Law.”

“Perhaps,” Yevele said, “they find their species do not get an open-handed reception from us. However, Milo is right—Gulth wears the bracelet. Through that he is one with us. Also the geas holds him.”

“I do not like that—or him,” Naile grumbled. Wymarc laughed.

“As you have made quite plain, berserker. Yet you are not wholly adverse to all of the scaled kind or you would not have Afreeta with you.”

Naile's big hand covered part of the small flying reptile as if the bard had threatened her in some manner.

“That is different. Afreeta—you do not yet know how well she can be eyes, yes, and ears for any man.”

“Then, if you trust her, but not Gulth,” Milo suggested, “why not set her also to watch? Let the guard have a guard.”

Wymarc's laugh was hearty. “Common logic well stated, comrade. I would suggest we cease to exercise our smaller fears and suspicions and let Deav Dyne get on with what he would do—the learning of what kind of force our comrade here has wedded to his hands.”

Milo felt that Naile wanted to refuse. Reluctantly the berserker held out his hand and Afreeta released her hold about his throat to step upon his flattened palm, her wings already spreading and a-flutter. She took a small leap into the air, soared nearly to the roof of the rock over their heads, then was gone after Gulth.

The cleric had paid no attention to them. Instead he knelt by that same patch of earth on which Ingrge had drawn the map and was now busy emptying out the contents of the overlarge belt pouch that he wore.

He did not erase the crude markings the elf had made, but around them, using a slender wand about the length of palm and outstretched midfinger, he began to sketch runes. Though Milo found stirring in his mind knowledge of at least two written scripts, these resembled neither.

As he worked, Deav Dyne, using the dry and authoritative tone of a master trying to beat some small elements of knowledge into the heads of rather stupid and inattentive pupils, explained what he did.