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  Once more the bird loosed its mighty scream. Ingrge fronted it eye to eye in the same form of silent communication they had earlier held. Milo fidgeted at his side, not for the first time wishing that some of the talents of the elven kind were also shared by men.

  That confrontation of elf and bird continued for what seemed a long space. Then Ingrge stepped within the overhang of the cave as huge wings fanned the air. Up into the thin atmosphere of the heights sped the gar-eagle, while the elf returned to the company now roused and waiting by the fire.

  “Lichis lies to the south in a place he has made his own,” Ingrge reported shortly. “It remains to be seen if he will accept our company. Your little one”—now he spoke to Naile—“it is she who must speak for us in the end.”

  The berserker nodded. “Afreeta knows. But how far is this dragon dwelling? We have not the wings of your messenger. Nor can Afreeta take the way such a mighty one follows. A single blast from the wind in these reaches would beat her far off course.”

  “She need not try her wings, not until we reach the boundaries Lichis has established to protect himself,” returned the elf. “As to how far away—” He shrugged. “That I cannot measure in our distance upon land—for Reec”—he waved to the outer world, plainly naming the gar-eagle—“does not reckon distance as do we who are wingless. He has set the way in a pattern for my mind only—as he looked down upon it from afar. However, we can descend to the lower lands and move from one valley to another, sheltering in part from the cold.”

  Even Gulth aroused enough to sit one of the mounts, still wrapped as well as they could manage against the chill of the heights, making no complaint as Deav Dyne led his horse once more out into the blasts that had nearly killed the lizardman. Thus they followed the path of the ledges down, until scrub trees, finally forest giants, closed about them in a dark green silence through which Ingrge took a twisting route with the same confidence as one treads a well-marked road.

  11

  Lichis the Golden

  THE SILENCE ABIDING IN THE FOREST WAS DAUNTING. MILO FOUND himself glancing over his shoulder now and then, not because he heard any sound, but rather because he heard nothing. This was the same feeling that had gripped him in the inn at the start of this whole wide adventure, that he was under covert observation.

  Perhaps some distant kin of Ingrge patroled these ways, keeping out of sight. But it was strange that no bird called within the dark green fastness, that the party caught no sight, heard no sound of any beast.

  There was no way of telling the hours, and so zigzag was the path the elf followed that Milo could not be sure whether they still headed south or west. They did mount rises separating one valley from another. From these ridges all he could see was the loom of the cloud-veiled mountains behind, with other dark and dreary-looking peaks massing ahead.

  At length they emerged from the trees into a section where the rough terrain was of congealed lava, long hardened, yet retaining sharp edges. This brought their progress to a crawl, making it necessary to constantly watch for the safety of their own footing and that of their animals.

  Above them, at last, was the break in the mountainside through which, ages ago, this once molten flood had found a path. Ingrge waved to that opening in the rock wall and spoke to Naile. “It is time to loose Afreeta. We stand at the outer edge of Lichis’s own domain. Beyond this point we do not dare to go without invitation.”

  “So?” The berserker raised his hand to the pseudo-dragon nested within the upturned collar of his hide cloak. “Well enough.”

  Afreeta uncoiled, crawled out upon his palm, her wings shimmering in the air as she exercised them. This time she seemed too eager to even look at the man she had chosen to companion; rather she took off in a glide. Then her wings whirred swiftly as she beat her way up toward that break in the mountainside. So swiftly did she go that she vanished as if blown afar by some act of magic.

  “We wait.” Ingrge moved out among their ponies, unfastening the feed bags. Milo and Wymarc joined him, measuring out handsful of corn which the small beasts greeted with eager whinnies. The horses munched the grain and were watered from bags not nearly as plump as they had been earlier. The riders rationed themselves to a small portion of water, well below the rim of a cup Ingrge filled and passed from hand to hand.

  Gulth slumped in the saddle of his mount. Milo guessed that had the lizardman dismounted it could well be that he could not have won aloft again. His cowled head hung forward so that his snout nearly touched his breast. But, as usual, he uttered no complaint.

  Naile strode back and forth. It was never easy for one of his mixed nature to wait patiently. As he paced, he turned his head ever upward, seeking a glimpse of Afreeta returning.

  Deav Dyne set his back to a jutting rock. He began to pass his prayer beads through the fingers of one hand, while the other rested on the breast of his robe, guarding what secrets he carried there in the inner pockets.

  A man, raised and trained in the precincts of one of the great temple-abbeys, would find consorting with the dragonfolk hard. Those of the scaled and winged kind owned no gods—or demons either. Their own judgment of right or wrong was not that of mankind, and their actions could not be either foreseen or measured by those whom they considered lesser beings.

  The Golden Dragon himself was known to have always favored the road of Law. Lesser beings of his race consorted openly with Chaos, giving aid capriciously to Dark adepts. The stories concerning Lichis all stated that, when he withdrew from the world, he had, finally, fiercely bade men go their own heedless ways and expect no more commerce with him. That he would break with his word now, even though they had indeed come to his private nest place—how dared they count on any favorable reception?

  Milo fingered the bracelet that bound him to both a mad and seemingly endless quest, finding little good in such thoughts.

  “If this be indeed Lichis’s nest,” Yevele’s voice was thoughtful as she came to stand beside the swordsman, “why should he harken to us?”

  “That same question I have been asking myself,” Milo answered. He surveyed the jagged, broken top of the heights. Unlike the mountain of the pass, here was no cloud to conceal any part of those forbidding pinnacles cutting into the dull sky. In the west, behind the peaks, a sullen, dire, blood-red band across the heavens proclaimed the hour of sundown.

  The girl raised her arm, her attention for the band about her wrist.

  “If we play a game, swordsman, then it is a doom-darkened one. This wizard-talk of things not of our world using the very fact of our existence to weave some spell . . .” She shook her head slowly. “Though there are always new things, both good and ill, waiting to be learned—”

  What she might have added was cut off by a harsh cry from Naile. The berserker came to a halt, facing up slope, his thick muscled arm flung out in greeting and to serve as a perch for Afreeta. The pseudo-dragon settled, her claws clicking on his mail as she climbed to his shoulder and there fell to hissing, her head bobbing almost as fast as her wings moved in the air.

  Naile’s eyes gleamed bright beneath the overhang of his helm.

  “We can go on,” he reported. Ingrge nodded and set about, with the others’ help, to get their train in order. Only this time Naile took the lead, Afreeta, plainly excited to a high pitch, sometimes sitting on his shoulder, sometimes whirring aloft for short flights, impatient at the careful plodding of those who must walk on two feet or four.

  The lava flow formed the most tricky of roads. All but Gulth dismounted, sometimes needing to turn back and lead a second or a third of their beasts across some very broken strip. As they made that very slow climb the light faded more and more from the sky. Dusk closed in too rapidly.

  True twilight had fallen when they reached at last the lip of the break through which the then molten lava had flowed. Here they halted, looking down into the domain of Lichis.

  A crater formed an irregular cup, but the fires that had burst loose from the earth
’s core at this point had long since died. There was the gleam of water in the deepest part of the center and around that a rank growth of shrub and grass, not autumn browned but still sullenly green.

  Water birds, looking hardly larger than Afreeta from this distance, wheeled above that small lake, settled on it, took off again as whim directed. Save for them, no other life could be sighted. Once more Afreeta cried and leaped into the air, circling Naile’s head, then winging out, not toward the downward descent that ended at the lakeside, but rather along the rim of the crater to the left.

  Deav Dyne fumbled in his robe, to produce a ball of dull silver about which he ringed the prayer bead string. The dullness of the globe vanished, rays of light which rivaled beams of a full moon sped forth. He pushed by Naile and went slowly, holding his strange torch closer to the ground so that, by its pale, steady light, they could see any obstacle.

  Their pace now became little more than a crawl. All at once Deav Dyne halted. What his improvised torch showed them was another cleft in the rock. And, as he threw himself belly down, lowering the globe by a coil of his bead string, they could sight below a level of path angling over the ridge, down into the now-shadowed crater.

  Ingrge swung over, went down on one knee, peering at that path. When the elf’s white face was lifted into the stronger glow of the globe, he was already speaking. “This is a game trail of sorts. I would say that if we loose the animals they will drift down for feed and water. There they will abide unstraying.” Now he spoke once more directly to Naile, about whose head Afreeta was buzzing and darting impatiently. “What we seek is here above?”

  “Yes,” rumbled the berserker.

  Even the globe could not continue to aid them through the steadily growing dark. To force their mounts and the ponies farther on such a rough way could well mean a broken leg, a snapped hoof, or injuries even Deav Dyne, with all his skill, could not heal.

  So they followed Ingrge’s suggestion, stripping the weary mounts and the pack ponies, urging them carefully down into the cut and giving them their heads. Straightway, horses whinnied, ponies nickered as they trotted free to where water and grazing waited. Piling most of their gear among the rocks, the party made ready to forge ahead.

  Gulth, perhaps because he had ridden through most of their day’s travel, seemed able to keep his feet. But Wymarc, without a word, moved up close enough to the lizardman to lend a hand if aid should become necessary.

  Even though they did not now have to seek the best way for the breasts, their advance was slow. But at last they came to a narrow seam turning inward along the crater wall. Down this they crept step by cautious step, their left hands gripping whatever hold they could find. Then Deav Dyne moved out upon a ledge and stood, globe held high, to light them down.

  Even as a ledge backed by the cave had been their refuge in the mountains, so did this one also furnish a threshold for a great arch of rock. It might have been that their arrival before that dark hole was a signal. The restricted light of Deav Dyne’s torch was swallowed up in a blaze of radiance, feverishly red, dyeing all their faces. Out of that crimson flood came not a voice but a thought which pierced minds with the same clarity as a shout might have reached their ears, a thought so strong that to receive and understand it brought a feeling of pain.

  “Man and elf—were and small kin—aye, and scaled one of the water, come you in. You who have dared disturb my quiet.”

  Go in they did. Milo was sure they could not have withstood the will behind that mind-voice even had they so wished. About them washed scarlet light, forming mist through which they could move, yet could not see.

  Out of habit and instinct Milo’s mittened hand rested on his sword. He unconsciously brought up his battered shield. The dragonkind were legend, had been legend for generations. Deep in him there was awe born of those same legends.

  The red mist swirled, puffed, arose as one would draw upward a curtain. Under their boots was no longer gray rock, rather a patterned flooring of glinting crystals, perhaps even of gems, set in incomprehensible designs. Red—all shades of red—and yellows and the white of ice were those bits of brilliance. But only for a moment did Milo see and wonder at them.

  For now the mist moved high to disclose the master of this nest. Confronting them was another ledge, this one with a rim to hold back what it contained, though here and there some of that shifting substance had cascaded to the floor, sent spinning by movements of great limbs. What formed that bedding (if bedding it might be termed) was lumps and pieces of gold, some of it coins so old that their inscriptions were long since worn away.

  Bright and gleaming as that metal was, the creature who used it as the softest of beds was more resplendent. Afreeta was indeed a miniature copy of this huge and ancient kinsman, but, like the gar-eagle of the heights, Lichis’s size was such as to reduce all facing him to the insignificance of small children. His body scales were larger than Naile’s hand, and over the basic gold of their coloring gem lights rippled steadily, as the water of a pool might be stirred by a summer breeze. Mighty wings were folded and the snouted head was high held in a curious, near-human way by the resting of the fanged jaw on a taloned paw folded in upon itself like a fist, the “elbow” of that huge limb supported in turn by the rim of the gold-filled nest.

  The great eyes were still half-lidded, as if their arrival had disturbed its slumber. No man could read any expression on that face. Then the mighty tail stirred, sending a fresh shower of gold thudding out onto the gem-set floor.

  “I am Lichis.” There was a supreme confidence in that thought which overbore all defenses, struck straight into their minds. “Why come you here to trouble me in the peace I have chosen?”

  He regarded them drowsily and then, though Milo had expected that one of the others—the cleric who dealt in magic, the elf whose blood was akin to the land itself, or even Naile who companioned with Afreeta—would be set to answer that half-challenge, it was at the swordsman that question had been aimed.

  “We lie under a geas,” Milo verbalized because that was more natural for him. “We seek. . . .” Then he fell silent for it seemed to him that some invisible projection from Lichis reached deep into his mind, seeking, sorting, and he could raise no defense against that invasion, try as he might.

  Milo was not even aware that his shield had clanged to the floor, that his hands pressed against his forehead. This was a frightening thing—part of it a sickening revulsion, a feeling of rape within the very core of his mind.

  “So—” Invasion ceased, withdrew. Lichis reared his head higher, his eyes fully opened now so that their slitted pupils were visible.

  That clawed paw on which he had rested his jaw made a gesture. About them the whole of the cave nest trembled. The mountain wall itself quivered in answer to Lichis’s thought demand, though Milo sensed force, aimed not at him but elsewhere, thrusting into dimensions beyond the comprehension of those who knew not the talent.

  A ball of scarlet haze rolled from overhead, began to spin. Though it made him increasingly sick and dizzy to watch its gyrations, Milo found that he could not turn his eyes from it. As it spun, its substance thickened and then flattened. The ball became a flat surface, steadying vertically above the floor at Milo’s shoulder height.

  On that disk arose configurations. The red faded to the gray of the mountain lands. Lapping the wall of rock was now an expanse of yellow-gray, without any features, just a billowing surface.

  “The Sea of Dust,” Ingrge said. Lichis did not glance in the direction of the elf. Rather he leaned his great head forward, staring intently at the miniature landscape which ever changed, grew more distinct. Mountains lay to the right—the Sea stretched on over three-quarters of the rest of the disk.

  Now, at the extreme left, within the dust land, there arose a dark shadow, irregular—like a blot of ink dropped from the pen of a scribe to spread across a yet unlettered parchment. The stain became fixed on the very edge of the disk.

  Lichis’s head d
rooped still more, until his great snout nearly touched that blot. Milo thought that he saw the dragon’s wide nostrils expand a little as if he were sniffing.

  Then once more the thought voice reached out for the swordsman.

  “Stretch forth your right hand, man.”

  Obediently he swung his palm up and out, not allowing his flesh to touch the miniature landscape. On his thumb the oblong of the ring began to glow. The minute red lines and dots on it awoke into a life of their own.

  “You carry your own guide,” Lichis announced. “Loosen your hand, man—now!”

  So emphatic was that order that Milo obeyed. He tried to allow his hand to go limp where it hung above the miniature mountains walling the pictured sea. His flesh met and rested upon some invisible support in the air. Then, by no will of his, it moved from right to left, slowly, inexorably, while on the ring the lines and dots waved and waned. Toward the blot on the left his hand swung. The compulsion that held him, tugged him into taking one step forward and then another. His index finger, close to the thumb, clung tightly, one length of flesh near-wedded to the other. Now that finger pointed straight to the blot.

  “There is your goal.” Lichis sank back to his former indolent position. Below Milo’s outstretched hand the disk spun furiously, bits of the mist from which it had been fashioned breaking off, the clear-cut picture of the land disappearing.

  “The Sea of Dust,” Ingrge mused. “No man—or elf—has dared that and returned—”

  “You have seen where lies that which you would find.” Lichis’s thought conveyed no emotion. “What you do with this knowledge is your own affair.”

  Perhaps because the Golden Dragon had used him to point out their path and he was beginning to be irked at being another’s tool, Milo dared to raise another question. “How far must we go, Dragon Lord? And—”

  Lichis shifted on his bed of gold. There was a rippling of color across his scales. From him, to catch in their minds, flowed a warning spark of the ancient lord’s irritation.