Quag Keep Page 2

  The berserker scowled. “Spells—they have a stink to ’em. And, yes, swordsman, I can pick up that stink a little. Afreeta”—the pseudo-dragon flickered its thread of tongue like a signal—“has already sniffed it. Yet it is not, I think, one sent by a dark-loving devil.” He had kept his voice low with a visible effort as if his natural tone was more of a full-throated roar.

  Milo noted that the eyes beneath those heavy brows were never still, that Naile Fangtooth watched the company in the room with as keen an eye for trouble as he himself had earlier. Those who whispered together had not once made any move to suggest that the two were of interest to them. The shabby druid licked his spoon, then raised the bowl to his lips to sup down the last of the broth it contained. And two men wearing the shoulder badges of some merchant’s escort kept drinking steadily as if their one purpose in life was to see which first would get enough of a skinful to subside to the rush-strewn, ill-swept floor.

  “They—none of them—wear these.” Milo indicated the bracelet on his own wrist. The dice were now quiet on their gimbals. In fact when he tried to swing one with his fingernail, it remained as fixed as if it could never move, yet it was the same one he had seen turn just before Naile had joined him.

  “No.” The berserker blinked. “There is something—something that nibbles at my mind as a squirrel worries away at a nut. I should know, but I do not. And you, swordsman?” His scowl did not lighten as he looked directly at Milo. There was accusation in it, as if he believed the swordsman knew the secret of this strange meeting but was purposefully keeping it to himself.

  “It is the same,” Milo admitted. “I feel I must remember something—yet it is as if I beat against a locked door in my mind and cannot win through that to the truth.”

  “I am Naile Fangtooth.” The berserker was not speaking to Milo now, but rather affirming his identity as if he needed such assurance. “I was with the Brethern when they took the Mirror of Loice and the Standard of King Everon. It was then that my shield brother, Engul Widehand, was cut down by the snake-skins. Also it was there later that I picked Afreeta from a cage so she joined with me.” He raised a big hand and gently stroked the back of the dragon at a spot between its continually fluttering wings. “These things I remember—yet—there was more. . . .”

  “The Mirror of Loice . . .” Milo repeated. Where had he heard of that before? He raised both fists and pressed them against his forehead, pushing up the edge of the helmet he wore. The edges of the two thumb rings pressed against his skin, giving him a slight twinge of pain. But nothing answered in his memory.

  “Yes.” There was pride now in his companion’s voice. “That was a mighty hosting. Orcs, even the Spectre of Loice herself, stood against us. But we had the luck of the throws with us for that night. The luck of the throws—!” Now it was Fangtooth’s turn to look at the bracelets on his own wrist. “The throws—” he repeated for the second time. “It means . . . it means . . . !”

  His face twisted and he beat upon the table board with one calloused fist, so mighty a blow that the horn cup leaped though it did not overturn. “What throws?” The scowl he turned upon Milo now was as grim as a battle face.

  “I don’t know.” Milo wet his lips with his tongue. He had no fear of the berserker even though the huge man might well be deliberately working himself into one of those rages that transcended intelligence and made such a fighter impervious to weapons and some spells.

  Once more he struggled to turn the dice on the bracelet. Far back in his mind he knew them. They had a very definite purpose. Only here and now he was like a man set down before some ancient roll of knowledge that he could not read and yet knew that his life perhaps depended upon translating it. “These,” he said slowly. “One turned just before you joined me. They are like gamers’ dice, save that there are too many shapes among them to be ordinary.”

  “Yes.” Naile’s voice had fallen again. “Still I have thrown such—and for a reason, or reasons. But why or where I cannot remember. I think, swordsman, that someone thinks to play a game with us. If this be so, he shall discover that he has chosen not tools but men, and therefore will be the worse for his folly.”

  “If we are bespelled . . .” Milo began. He wanted to keep the berserker away from the battle madness of his kind. It was useful, very useful, that madness, but only in the proper place and time. And to erupt, not even knowing the nature of the enemy, was rank folly.

  “Then sooner or later we shall meet the spell caster?” To Milo’s relief, Fangtooth seemed well able to control the power of were-change that was his by right. “Yes, that is what I believe we wait for now.”

  The druid, without a single glance in their direction, had set by his now empty bowl and got to his feet, ringing down on the table top a small coin. He wore, Milo noted as he turned and his robe flapped up a little, not the sandals suitable for city streets, but badly cured and clumsily made hide boots such as a peasant might use for field labor in ill weather. The bag marked with the runes of his training was a small one and as shabby as his robe. He gave a jerk to bring his cowl higher over his head and started for the outer door, nor did he make any attempt to approach their table. Milo was glad to see the last of him. Druids were chancy at best, and there were those who had the brand of Chaos and the powers of the Outer Dark at their call, though this one was manifestly lowly placed in that close-knit and secret fraternity.

  Fangtooth’s lips pursed as if he would spit after the figure now tugging aside the door curtain.

  “Cooker of spells!” he commented.

  “But not the one who holds us,” Milo said.

  “True enough. Tell me, swordsman, does your skin now prickle, does it seem that, without your helm to hold it down, your very hair might rise on your head? Whatever has netted us comes the closer. Yet a man cannot fight what he cannot see, hear, or know is alive.”

  The berserker was far more astute than Milo had first thought him. Because of the very nature of the bestial ferocity such fighters fell into upon occasion, one was apt to forget that they had their own powers and were moved by intelligence as well as by the superhuman strength they could command. Fangtooth had the right of it. His own discomfort had been steadily growing. What they awaited was nearly here.

  Now the five whisperers also arose and passed one by one beyond the curtain. It was as if someone, or something, were clearing the stage for a struggle. Yet still Milo could not locate any of the signs of Chaos. On the berserker’s shoulder the pseudo-dragon chittered, rubbing its head back and forth on the cheekplate of the boar-crowned helmet.

  Milo found himself watching, not the small reptile, but rather the bracelet on his wrist. It seemed to have loosened somewhat its grip against his mail. Two of the dice began slowly to spin.

  “Now!”

  Naile got to his feet. In his left hand he held a deadly battle axe of such weight that Milo, trained though he was to handle many different weapons, thought he could never have brought to shoulder height. They were alone in the long room. Even those who had served had gone, as if they had some private knowledge of ill to come and would not witness it.

  Still, what Milo felt was not the warning prick of normal fear—rather an excitement, as if he stood on the verge of learning the answer to all questions.

  As Naile had done, he got to his feet, lifted his shield. The dice on his bracelet whirred to a stop as the hide door curtain was drawn aside, letting in a blast of late fall, winter-touched air. A man, slight and so well cloaked that he seemed merely some shadow detached from a nearby wall to roam homelessly about, came swiftly in.

  2

  Wizard’s Wiles

  THE NEWCOMER APPROACHED THEM DIRECTLY. HIS PALE FACE above the high-standing collar of his cloak marked him as one who dwelt much indoors by reason of necessity or choice. And, though his features were human enough in their cast, still Milo, seeing their impassivity, the thinness of his bloodless lips, the sharp-beak curve of his nose, hesitated to claim him as a brother ma
n. His eyelids were near closed, but, as he reached the table, he opened them widely and they could see that his pupils were of no human color, rather dull red like a smoldering coal.

  Save for those eyes, the only color about him was the badge sewn to the shoulder of his cloak. And that was so intricate that Milo could not read its meaning. It appeared to be an entwining of a number of wizardly runes. When the newcomer spoke, his voice was low-pitched and had no more emotion than the monotone of one who repeated a set message without personal care for its meaning.

  “You are summoned—”

  “By whom and where?” Naile growled and spat again, the flush on his broad face darkening. “I have taken no service—”

  Milo caught the berserker’s arm. “No more have I. But it would seem that this is what we have awaited.” For in him that expectancy which had been building to a climax now blended into a compulsion he could not withstand.

  For a moment it seemed that the berserker was going to dispute the summons. Then he swung up his fur cloak and fastened it with a boar’s head buckle at his throat.

  “Let us be gone then,” he growled. “I would see an end to this bedazzlement, and that speedily.” The pseudo-dragon chittered shrilly, shooting its tongue at the messenger, as if it would have enjoyed impaling some part of the stranger on that spear-point.

  Again Milo felt the nudge of spinning dice at his wrist. If he could only remember! There was a secret locked in that arm-let and he must learn it soon, for as he stood now, he felt helplessness like a sharp-set wound.

  They came out of Harvel’s Axe on the heels of the messenger. Though the upper part of the city was well lighted, this portion was far too shadowed. Those who dwelt and carried out their plans here knew shadows as friends and defenses. However, as three of them strode along, they followed a crooked alley where the houses leaned above them as if eyes set in the upper stories would spy on passersby. Milo’s overactive imagination was ready to endow those same houses, closed and barred against the night and with seldom a dim glow to mark a small-paned window, with knowledge greater than his own, as if they snickered slyly as the three passed.

  Before they reached the end of the Thieves’ Quarter a dark form slipped from an arched doorway. Though he had had no warning from the armlet, Milo’s hand instantly sought his sword hilt. Then the newcomer fell into step with him and the very dim light showed the green and brown apparel of an elf. Few, if any, of that blood were ever drawn into the ways of Chaos. Now better light from a panel above the next door made it plain that the newcomer was one of the Woods Rangers. His long bow, unstrung, was at his back and he bore a quiver full of arrows tight packed. In addition both a hunter’s knife and a sword were sheathed at his belt. But most noticeable to the swordsman, on his wrist he, too, wore the same bracelet that marked the berserker and Milo himself.

  Their guide did not even turn his head to mark the coming of the elf, but kept ahead at a gliding walk which Milo found he must extend his stride to match. Nor did the newcomer offer any greeting to either of the men. Only the pseudo-dragon turned its gem-point eyes to the newcomer and trilled a thin, shrill cry.

  Elves had the common tongue, though sometimes they disdained to use it unless it was absolutely necessary. However, besides it and their own speech, they also had mastery over communication with animals and birds—and, it would seem, pseudo-dragons. For Naile’s pet—or comrade—had shrilled what must be a greeting. If the elf answered, it was by mind-talk alone. He made no more sound than the shadows around them; far less than the hissing slip-slip of their guide’s footgear which was oftentimes drowned out by the clack of their own boot heels on the pavement.

  They proceeded into wider and less winding streets, catching glimpses now and then of some shield above a door to mark a representative of Blackmer, a merchant of substance from Urnst, or the lands of the Holy Lords of Faraaz.

  So the four came to a narrow way between two towering walls. At the end of that passage stood a tower. It was not impressive at first, as were some towers in Greyhawk. The surface of the stone facing was lumpy and irregular. Those pocks and rises, Milo noted, when they came to the single door facing the alley that had brought them and could see the door light, were carving as intricately enfolded and repeated as the patch upon their guide’s cloak.

  From what he could distinguish, the stone was not the local grayish-tan either, but instead a dull green, over which wandered lines of yellow, adding to the confusion of the carven patterns in a way to make the eyes ache if one tried to follow either carving or yellow vein.

  He whom they followed laid one hand to the door and it swung immediately open, as if there was no need for bars or other protection in this place. Light, wan, yet brighter than they had seen elsewhere, flowed out to engulf them.

  Here were no baskets of fire wasps. This light stemmed from the walls themselves, as if those yellow veins gave off a sickly radiance. By the glow Milo saw that the faces of his companions looked as palely ghostlike as those of some liche serving Chaos. He did not like this place, but his will was bound as tightly as if fetters enclosed his wrists and chains pulled him forward.

  They passed, still in silence, along a narrow corridor to come at the end of it to a corkscrew of a stairway. Because their guide flitted up it, they did likewise. Milo saw an oily drop of sweat streak down the berserker’s nose, drip to his chin where the bristles of perhaps two days of neglected beard sprouted vigorously. His own palms were wet and he had to fight a desire to wipe them on his cloak.

  Up they climbed, passing two levels of the tower, coming at last into a single great room. Here it was stifling hot. A fire burned upon a hearth in the very middle, smoke trailing upward through an opening in the roof. But the rest of the room . . . Milo drew a deep breath. This was no lord’s audience chamber. There were tables on which lay piles of books, some bound in wooden boards eaten by time, until perhaps only their hinges of metal held them together. There were canisters of scrolls, all pitted and green with age. Half the floor their guide stepped confidently out upon was inlaid with a pentagon and other signs and runes. The sickly light was a little better here, helped by the natural flames of the fire.

  Standing by the fire, as if his paunchy body still craved heat in spite of the temperature of the chamber, was a man of perhaps Milo’s height, yet stooped a little of shoulder and completely bald of head. In place of hair, the dome of his skin-covered skull had been painted or tattooed with the same unreadable design as marked the cloak patch of his servant.

  He wore a gray robe, tied with what looked like a length of plain yellowish rope, and that robe was marked with no design or symbol. His right wrist, Milo was quick to look for that, was bare of any copper, dice-set bracelet. He could have been any age (wizards were able to control time a little for their own benefit) and he was plainly in no cheerful mood. Yet, as the swordsman stepped up beside Naile, the elf quickly closing in to make a third, Milo for the first time felt free of compulsion and constant surveillance.

  The wizard surveyed them critically—as a buyer in the slave market might survey proffered wares. Then he gave a small hacking cough when smoke puffed into his face and waved a hand to drive away that minor annoyance.

  “Naile Fangtooth, Milo Jagon, Ingrge.” It was not as if he meant the listing of names as a greeting, but rather as if he were reckoning up a sum important to himself. Now he beckoned and, from the other side of the fire, four others advanced.

  “I am, of course, Hystaspes. And why the Great Powers saw fit to draw me into this meeting. . . .” He scowled. “But if one deals with the Powers it is a two-way matter and one pays their price in the end. Behold your fellows!”

  His wave of the hand was theatrical as he indicated the four who had come into full sight. As Milo, Naile, and the elf Ingrge had instinctively moved shoulder to shoulder, so did these also stand.

  “The battlemaid Yevele.” Hystaspes indicated a slender figure in full mail. She had pushed her helmet back a little on her fore
head, and a wisp of red-brown hair showed. For the rest, her young face was near as impassive as that of their guide. She wore, however, Milo noticed, what he was beginning to consider the dangerous bracelet.

  “Deav Dyne, who puts his faith in the gods men make for themselves.” There was exasperation in the wizard’s voice as he spoke the name of the next.

  By his robe of gray, faced with white, Deav Dyne was a follower of Landron-of-the-Inner-Light and of the third rank. But a bracelet encircled his wrist also. He gave a slight nod to the other three, but there was a frown on his face and he was plainly uneasy in his present company.

  “The bard Wymarc—”

  The red-headed man, who wore a skald’s field harp in a bag on his back, smiled as if he were playing a part and was slyly amused at both his own role and the company of his fellow players.

  “And, of course, Gulth.” Hystaspes’s visible exasperation came to the surface as he indicated the last of the four.

  That introduction was answered by a low growl from Naile Fangtooth. “What man shares a venture with an eater of carrion? Get you out, scale-skin, or I’ll have that skin off your back and ready to make me boots!”

  The lizardman’s stare was unblinking. He did not open his fanged jaws to answer—though the lizard people used and understood the common tongue well enough. But Milo did not like the way that reptilian gaze swept the berserker from head to foot and back again. Lizardmen were considered neutral in the eternal struggles and skirmishes of Law and Chaos. On the other hand a neutral did not awake trust in any man. Their sense of loyalty seldom could be so firmly engaged that they would not prove traitors in some moment of danger. And this specimen of his race was formidable to look upon. He was fully as tall as Naile, and in addition to the wicked sword of bone, double-edged with teeth, that he carried, his natural armament of fang and claw was weaponry even a hero might consider twice before facing. Yet on his scaled wrist, as on that of the bard and the cleric, was the same bracelet.