Quag Keep Page 18

  Fighting against the insidious pull of the dust, he rounded the base of a dune. Moonlight sent strange shadows across his way. The night was bitterly cold. But there was no wind and the dust disturbed by his floundering efforts fell quickly back again.

  There was light—not moonlight but a stronger gleam, though it did not have the warmth of a torch or the steady beam of a lantern. Rather. . . .

  Milo came to a stop. She stood with her back to him, her hands upheld to the moon itself. Between those hands swung a disk on a chain—a disk that made a second moon, a miniature of the one above her.

  Yevele!

  No helmet covered her head now, nor was her hair netted tight. Instead it flowed about her like a cloak. The pallid light of her moon pendant took away the warmth of color that was in her hair by day, gave to all of her a silvery overcast.

  She had used the spell of immobility—what other sorcery could she lay tongue and hand to? There were women secrets that even the wizards could not fathom. Milo had heard tell of them. He shook his head as if to loosen a pall of dust from his mind, as he had in part from his body.

  Women magic—cold. Moon magic. . . . All men knew that women had a tie with the moon which was knit into their bodies. What she wrought here might be as alien to him as the thoughts and desires of a dragon—or a liche—if the dead-alive had thoughts and not just hungers and the will of Chaos to animate them. Yet Milo could not turn away—for still that trilling enticed, drew him.

  Then she spoke, though she did not turn her head to see who stood there. It was as if she had knowledge of him, perhaps because she had sent this sorcery to draw him. That sudden thought, he discovered, held a strange new warmth.

  “So you heard me then, Milo?” There was none of the usual crisp note in her voice, rather gentleness—a greeting subtle and compelling as a scent.

  Scent? His nostrils expanded. The foul odor of the dead dragon was gone. He might have stood in a spring-greened meadow where flower and herb flourished to give this sweetness to the air.

  “I heard.” His answer was hardly more than a whisper. There worked in him now emotions he could not understand. Soldier’s women he knew, for he had the same appetites as any man. But Yevele—though mail like unto his own weighted upon her, blurred the curves of her body—Yevele was unlike any woman he had stretched out hand to before.

  Now his right hand did rise, without any conscious effort on his part, reaching toward Yevele, though she still did not turn to look at him. The cold light caught on the bracelet he wore with a flicker. It might have been that one of the dice had made a turn of which he was not aware. But the thought hardly touched his mind before she spoke again, driving it fully from him.

  “We have powers, Milo, we who follow the Horned Lady of the Sword and Shield. It is sent to us from time to time—the forelooking. Now it has come to me. And this forelooking tells me that our lives are being woven into a single cord—both of us being the stronger for that uniting. Also—” Now at last she did move and he saw clearly her features, which were as solemn and set as might be those of a priestess intoning an oracle from a shrine. “Also we have in truth a duty laid upon us.”

  Her straight gaze caught and held his eyes, and there appeared a dazzle between them. He raised higher the hand he had put out to her, to shade his eyes from that bemusing sparkle of light. But it was gone in an instant. Then he asked dully, “That duty being?”

  “We are to be the fore of the company, because we are in truth meant to be one. Strength added to strength shall march in the van. Do you not believe me, Milo?”

  Again the dazzle sprang between them. His thoughts fell into an ordered pattern, so he marveled that he had not realized this all long ago. Yevele spoke the truth, they were the ordained spearhead of the company.

  “Do you not understand?” She took one step, a second toward him. “Each of us has a different talent, welded together we make a weapon. Now is the time that you and I, swordsman, must play our own role.”

  “Where and how?” A faint uneasiness stirred in him. But Yevele before him was not the source of that uneasiness—she could not be. Was it not exactly as she had said? They were each but a part—together they were a whole.

  “That it has been given me to see in the foreknowledge.” Her voice rang with confidence. “We march—there!” The hand still holding the moon disk swept out, away—and the disk appeared to blaze, giving a higher burst of cold light to her pointing fingers.

  “See—” Now the stern quality left her voice. In its place was an eagerness. They might be fronting an adventure in the safe outcome of which she had full assurance. “I have brought the dust shoes. The moon is high and the light full. Also the storm is past—we have the night before us.”

  She stooped to pick up the crude shoes he knew well. Then her fingers touched lightly on Milo’s wrist, below the band of the bracelet. Though she looked so cold in this light, yet a warmth spread upward along his arm from that lightest of touches. Her eyes held his again, commanding, assured.

  Of course she was right. But . . .

  “Where?” He repeated part of his question.

  “To what we seek, Milo. No, you need no longer depend upon that ring of yours with its near-forgotten map. The Lady has given full answer to my pleas. See you!”

  She whirled the moonlit disk at the length of a chain, letting it fly free. It did not fall, to sink and be hidden in the dust. Rather there was another dazzle of light and Milo blinked. For in its place a spot of light hovered in the air at the level of Yevele’s eyes.

  “Moon magic!” She laughed. “To each his own, Milo. I do no more than any who has some spell training can do. This is a small thing of power, it will be drawn to any source of Power that is not known to us, or that is alien to our understanding. Thus it can lead us to that which we seek.”

  He grunted and went to one knee to tighten the lashings of the sand shoes. Magic was chancy—he was no spell-user. But neither, he was certain, could any agent of Chaos have marched with them undiscovered since they had left Greyhawk. Deav Dyne—Ingrge—both would have known, caught the taint of evil at their first meeting with Yevele.

  “The others?” he half-questioned as he arose again. She had moved a little away and there was a shade of impatience on her face. Though she now bore her helmet in the crook of one arm she made no attempt to re-net her hair and place it on her head.

  “They will come. But no night is without a dawn. And our guide can only show its merit by the moon under whose blessing it was fashioned. We must move now!”

  The disk of light quivered in the air. As the girl took a step forward, it floated on, always keeping at the same distance from the ground and ahead.

  One range of dunes was like unto another. Twice Milo strove to check their way with those lines upon his ring. But the veins in the stone were invisible in this light, which gathered more brightly around Yevele. She had begun that trilling again, so that all he had known before this time now seemed as dim as the setting of his strange ring.

  There was no change in the Sea of Dust. Dunes arose and fell as might the waves of a real sea. Looking back once, Milo could not even sight any trail that they left, for the powder straightway fell in upon and blurred any track. In fact he could not even tell now in which direction lay the body of the dragon and those others who had marched with them. This troubled him dimly from time to time. When such inner uneasiness awoke in him Yevele’s soft trilling struck a new note, drawing him back from even the far edge of questioning what they did—or were to do.

  Time lost meaning. Milo felt that he walked in a dream, slowly, his feet engulfed by a web that strove to entangle him. Still that disk floated ahead, Yevele sang without words, and the moon gave cold light to her floating, unbound hair, the carven features of her face.

  It was chance that brought a break in the web that enmeshed Milo. Or was there such a thing as chance he sometimes wondered afterwards? Did not the priests of Om advance the belief that all action
in the world, no matter how small or insignificant, had its part in the making of a pattern determined upon by Powers men could not even begin to fathom with their earthtied senses?

  The fastening on one dust shoe loosened and he knelt again to make it fast. As he pulled on the lacing, his left hand was uppermost. The dull dust clouded the setting of his second ring. But, though it was indeed filmed with dust, it was no longer dull! Milo wiped it quickly across the edge of his surcoat, for glancing at it alerted that uneasiness in him.

  No, it was no longer dull gray, without any spark of light. Something moved within it!

  Raising his hand against his breast Milo peered more closely at what was shafting within it. What—?

  “Milo!” Yevele had returned, was standing over him.

  Again (was it some hidden impulse of his own, or was he only the tool or player of some other power?) he put the hand wearing the ring up and out. His grip closed about her wrist.

  The dull stone was indeed alive. In its depths there stood a figure. Tiny as it was it showed every detail clearly. A woman, yes—very much of woman—well-endowed by nature. But not Yevele!

  Under the fingers that imprisoned her wrist there was no hardness of mail, no wiry arm strengthened by sword exercise to a muscularity near his own. Milo, still keeping that hold, faced her whom he so held. Not Yevele, no. . . .

  The hair that floated around her was as silver as the moonlight. In her marble-white face the eyes slanted, held small greenish sparks. Her jaws sharpened, fined to form a mask that held beauty, yes, but also more than a touch of the alien. Now her mouth opened a trifle to show sharp points of teeth such as might be the weapons of some beast of prey.

  That change in her jerked Milo free from the spell which had held him. He was on his feet, but he did not loose his hold on her. Save for a first involuntary pull against his strength, she, too, stood quiet.

  “Who are you?”

  For a moment she stared at him, her slanted eyes narrowing. There was on her face a shadow of surprise.

  Her lips moved. “Yevele.”

  Illusionist! His newly awakened mind, freed from the spells she could so easily weave about the unwary, gave him the true answer. He did not need to hear the truth from her—he already knew. Now he spoke it aloud. “Illusionist! Did you so entice the berserker?” They had been too occupied with danger to question Naile before the coming of the storm, but Milo believed that he now saw the answer to the other’s desertion of their party.

  She tried to fling off his grasp, her face more and more alien as her features formed a mask of rage. But Milo held her tight, as the once cloudy gem blazed, while the disk that had spun through the air whirled and dove for his face like a vicious insect. He flung up his other hand to ward it off.

  It dodged his defense easily, as might a living creature, swooped, and flattened itself against his skin above the wrist of the hand that gripped its mistress. Milo cried out—the pain from that contact, was as intense as any burn. In spite of himself, his hold loosened.

  The woman gave a sinuous twist of her arm and her body broke free. Now she laughed. For a moment he saw her waver, become Yevele. But the folly of keeping up such a broken cover of deceit was plain. Instead she turned from him, kicking off the clumsy sand shoes.

  She was mistress of more than one form of magic, for she skimmed across the surface of the dust apparently as weightless as the wind, not even raising in her passage the uppermost film of the sea. Above and around her whirled the moon disk, moving so swiftly that its very radiance wove a kind of netting for her defense.

  Useless though pursuit might now be, Milo followed doggedly after. He had no way, he was sure, to return to the party by the dragon. If there was any hope to win free of the sea it might be to trail his beguiler.

  She rounded a dune and was lost to his sight. Then he came to the point where she had disappeared. When he reached it he saw that flicker of light now so well ahead that he had no hope of catching up.

  However, now it kept to a straight line, for the dunes fell away and the surface of the Sea of Dust was as level as it had been in that place where they had found Naile battling with the dragon. There was something else . . . The light flickered, dipped, spun from the dull gray of the sea into what stretched not too far ahead, a mass of darkness rising unevenly.

  The blotch of that shadow swallowed up even the moonlight. Milo paused, his head up, his nostrils testing the smells of the night. He lacked the keen sense of the elf and the berserker, but he could give name to what he smelled now—the rank odor of a swampland. Yet to find this in the ever-abiding aridity of the Sea of Dust was such a strange thing it instantly warned him against reckless approach.

  That swampland was no barrier for her whom he followed. The light spun on out, wan and pale, into the embrace of the darkness, drew even more rapidly ahead. Milo’s dust shoes beat a path for him to the edge of the shadow. He caught a diminished glimmer of what might be a stretch of water; he could smell the fetid odor of the place. For the rest it was only darkness and menace. To follow out into that would be to entrap himself without any profit.

  But that he had reached the place they had been seeking, the place of which Lichis had told them, Milo had no doubt. Somewhere out in that quagmire, which defied all natural laws by its very being, lay the fortress of the enemy.

  What if he had remained in the illusionist’s spell—would she have left him immured in some bog, as treacherous as the dust, to be swallowed up? He looked down at the ring that had given him the warning. There was no light there now, the stone was once more dull and dead. Milo wheeled slowly, to look back, careful of how he placed his feet. There was no returning. . . .

  He had no idea how long he must wait for dawn, nor how he might reach the others, draw them hither to face the next obstacle in their quest. Using the dust shoes as a supporting platform, he hunkered down, his gaze sweeping back and forth along the edge of the swampland. There was growth there. He could trace it in the moonlit humps of vegetation. There was life also, for he started once and nearly spun off into the dust, as the sound of shrill and loud croaking made him think, with a shiver he could not entirely subdue, of that horror tale told about the Temple of the Frog and the unnatural creatures bred and nurtured therein to deliver the death stroke against any who invaded that hidden land. That, too, occupied the heart of a swamp, holding secrets no man of the outer world could more than guess.

  The line between the Sea of Dust and this other territory ran as straight as a sword’s point might have drawn it. None of the vegetation or muck advanced outward, no point of dust ran inward. That line of division was too perfect to be anything but artificial. Milo, understanding that, fingered his sword hilt.

  Wizardry—yet not even the wizardry he knew of—if Hystaspe had been right. A wizardry not of this world—and it was hard enough for a fighting man to withstand what was native. He had no spells except . . .

  Milo stretched out his right wrist. Moonshine could not bring to life the dice. He struggled to remember. They had turned—or one had—as he had followed the enticement of the illusionist into the night. Then he had been so under her spell that he had not been able to influence the turning. He advanced his other hand, flattened down the thumb to inspect the once more dead stone ring, putting it beside the other with the map he could not see. Where had he gained those rings?

  The swordsman fought to conquer memory, seek those passages in his mind that were blocked. He was—

  There was a flash of a mental picture, here and gone in almost the same instant. Sitting—yes, sitting at a table. Also he held a small object, carven, shaped—the image of a man! That was of some vast importance to him—he must struggle to bring the memory back—to retain it long enough to learn—He must . . .!

  Something flashed out of the air, hung before him. Moonlight glittered on it. But this was no disk—it hissed, shot out a spear tongue as if to make sure of his full attention. Memory was lost.

  “Afreeta.”r />
  The pseudo-dragon hissed as banefully as had her greater cousin, but his speaking of her name might have been an order. As speedily as she had come to him, she sped off through the night. So the others now had their guide. In so little was Milo’s distrust of the future lifted. He tried once more to capture that memory—thinking back patiently along the lines he had followed. He had looked at the bracelet, his rings—before that had been the call that had made him remember the Temple of the Frog. He was . . .

  Slowly he shook his head. Something in his hand—not the rings—not the bracelet that tied him to this whole venture. He thought of the scene with Hystaspes. What the wizard had said of an alien who had brought him—and the others—here to tie. . . . Tie what? Milo groped vainly for a clue. What lay away, hidden in the unnatural swamp, was of the highest danger. They were the ill-assorted hunting party sent to ferret out and destroy it. Why? Because there was a geas laid on them. Men did strange things to serve wizards whether they would or not. It was not of Chaos, that much he knew. For a swordsman could not be twisted and bent into the service of evil.

  But this tied him! He pounded his wrist against his knee in rising anger. It was a slave fetter on him, and he was no man to take meekly to slavery. His anger was hot; it felt good. In the past he had used anger to provide him with another weapon, for, controlled as he had learned to control it, that emotion gave a man added strength.

  Before him lay someone, something, that sought to make him a slave. And he was—

  Voices!

  He got to his feet, hand once more seeking sword hilt. Now he faced the swells of the dunes. From between them figures moved. More illusions?

  Milo consulted the ring. It did not come to life. As yet he had no idea of the range of that warning. He continued to hold his thumb out where he could glance from the setting to those drawing near at the pace dictated by the dust shoes.

  Though he could not see most of their faces because of the overhang of helmets, or cloak hoods, he knew them well enough to recognize that they had the appearance of those with whom he companied. Still he watched the ring.