Quag Keep (28 page)

One could only see a short distance ahead, but Naile had a method for overcoming that difficulty. Afreeta took off, spiraling up, then darting into the mist at the higher level to which that stairway climbed. Milo and Gulth found fingerholds to which
they clung as Naile swung over, setting his feet firmly on the first stone.

The berserker climbed up out of sight while they still held so. One by one the others passed between them to follow. Then Milo clambered over, and the lizardman was quick to follow, leaving the raft to drift away.

Here fog enfolded them even more thickly. They could not see those they followed. However, the mist did not muffle a sudden shout or the sound of steel against steel. Milo, sword in hand, made the last part of that assent in two bounds. Nor did he forget a quick glance once more at his wrist. The dice neither shone nor moved. It would seem the phenomenon on which they depended still did not work.

Gulth, moving with more supple speed than the swordsman had seen him use since their quest began, gave one leap that surpassed Milo's efforts and vanished into the mist. The swordsman was not far behind. With a last spurt of effort he broke through the fog, into open space. This lay under a gray and lowering sky to be sure, but one might see his fellows as more than just forms moving in and out of eye range.

What he did witness was Naile, axe up to swing, as if the berserker had fastened on Milo himself as the enemy. Yet—
there
was Naile, further off, confronting a shambling, stone-hided troll!

Illusion! Milo lifted the hand wearing the ring, half-afraid that, in the atmosphere of this alien setting, it, too, might have ceased to possess its spell-breaking quality. But, like the geas, it still served. The Naile about to attack him changed swiftly, in a flicker of an eye, to a man he had seen before—the animal trader Helagret. His axe was a dagger, its upright blade discolored
by a greenish stain. Milo swung at this opponent with the practiced ease of a trained infighter.

His sword met that dagger arm, but did not sheer deeply for the edge found the resistance of a mailed shirt beneath the other's travel-stained jerkin. But the force of the blow, delivered so skillfully, sent the dagger spinning from the other's hand, rendered him off balance. Milo tossed the sword to his other hand, caught it by the blade and delivered with the heavy hilt a trick stroke he had learned through long and painful effort.

As the pommel thudded home on the side of Helagret's head, the man's eyes rolled up. Without a cry he slumped to the rock. His huddled body lay now in the way of Naile, retreating from the lunges of the troll, for no matter how skillfully the berserker wrought with his bone-shattering axe strokes, none of them appeared to land where he had aimed them.

“No.” Milo threw up his ring hand, dodging past Naile, stooping just in time to escape one of the berserker's wider swings, and touched the troll.

There was again that flicker of dying illusion. What Naile faced now was not an eight-foot monster toward the head and neck of which he had aimed his attack, but rather a man, human as Milo, and well under the berserker's own towering inches. Knyshaw, the thief-adventurer, his lips drawn into a snarl, dove forward, stretching forth both hands as the troll had earlier threatened Naile with six-inch talons. Strapped to his digits were the wicked weapons of the soundless assassin, keen knives projecting beyond his own nails. The tips of two were stained and Milo guessed that the lightest scratch from one would bring a painful death.

The axe arose and fell as Naile voiced a shrill squeal of boar
anger. There was no mail here to stop that stroke. Knyshaw screamed, stumbled. The hands with their knives were on the ground. From the stumps of his wrists spouted blood. Again Naile struck. The thief, his head beaten in, fell, the hands hidden beneath his twitching body.

Milo leaped over that body, heading for the rest of the skirmish. Deav Dyne crouched by a spur of rock, his belt knife drawn, but his other hand cradled his beads, and he chanted, intent on keeping his attacker from him while he wrought some spell of his own calling. That attacker slunk, belly to the ground, a scaled thing that might well have issued from the quagmire. Its body was encased in a shell, but the head, swaying back and forth, was that of a serpent, and the eyes, staring fixedly at the priest, were evilly wise.

Milo brought the ring against its shell. This time there was no change. He swung up his sword, only to be elbowed aside by Naile. His axe flashed up, then down, with an executioner's precision, to behead the monster. Through the air spun viscous yellow stuff that the creature had spat at the crouching cleric just before its head bounced to the rock. A few drops fell on the edge of Deav Dyne's robe. A wisp of smoke arose and the cloth showed a ragged hole.

“ 'Ware that!” Naile cried. He had turned and was already on the move.

Wymarc and Ingrge stood back to back, alert to those who circled them. A little apart the druid Carlvols paced around and around the beleaguered two and their enemies. The latter were black imps, spears in hand, their coal-red eyes ever upon those they teased and tormented, flashing in to deliver some prick with their spears. To Milo's surprise neither the elf nor the bard
strove to defend himself with a sword, though trickles of blood ran down their legs unprotected by mail.

Naile roared and leaped forward, swinging his axe at the prancing demons. The steel head passed through the bodies he strove to smash as it might have through wisps of smoke. Milo, seeing that, understood the strange passiveness of the two in that circle.

Carlvols did not look at either Milo or the berserker. His body was tense, strain visible on his face. The swordsman guessed that, though the magic worker had had the ability to summon these creatures from whatever other plane they knew as home and keep them tormenting the two they encircled, it was a dire energy drain for him to hold the spell in force. None of the demons turned to attack either Naile or Milo. Thus there was clearly a limit to what the druid could order them to do. Yet they were well able to keep up the threat against both elf and bard, and their spear attacks were growing stronger, the circle narrower.

“Stand aside!” Deav Dyne shouldered by Milo. The cleric whirled his string of prayer beads as if it were a scourge he could lay across an imp's back and rump. Even so did he aim it at the nearest.

Milo was content to leave this skirmish to the two priests and what they could summon. Now he looked for Yevele—to find two battlemaids, locked together in combat.

So much was one girl the image of the other that, as he crossed the rock to where sword met sword, shield was raised against blade, the swordsman could not say which of the two was she with whom he had marched out of Greyhawk.

There was a stir in the rocks beyond. From the shadow there
ran a man. He carried a mace in both hands and ranged himself behind the circling Yeveles, striving to use his weapon on one. Yet it would seem that he himself was not sure which was which and that he hesitated to attack for that reason. Milo bore down on the newcomer. Though the stranger stood near as tall as the swordsman, his face under the plain helm he wore had the features of an orc. And his lips were tightly drawn so that his fanglike teeth were visible between.

Milo, sword upraised, was upon him before the other realized it. Then he whirled about with a sidewise swing of the mace, aimed at Milo's thigh. There was enough force in that blow, the swordsman thought, to break a hip. Only narrowly was he able to avoid being hit. The ring on his thumb did not gleam so this fighter was no illusion. Swords could make little impression as this enemy wore a heavy mail shirt, reinforced breast and back with plates of dingy and rust-reddened metal.

For all his squat thickness of body, the orc was a cunning fighter—and a stubborn one. No man dared underrate this servant of Chaos. But no orc, no matter how powerful or skillful, could in turn face what came at him now from another angle while his attention was fixed on Milo.

This was no axe-swinging berserker but the were-boar, near as tall as the orc at the massive shoulder, grunting and squealing in a rage that only the death of an enemy might assuage. Milo leaped quickly to one side, lest the animal in battle madness turn on him also, as had been known to happen when friend and foe were pinned in narrow compass. He could leave the orc to the were. There remained Yevele, locked in combat with what appeared to be herself. Once more he turned to the battling women.

One of them had forced the other back to stand with her shoulders against a barrier Milo saw clearly for the first time—a wall looming from more mist. He threw out his arm to touch the one who had forced her opponent into that position.

There was no flare of the ring. Now Milo's sword swept up between the women, both their blades knocked awry by that stroke they had not foreseen.

“Have done!” He spoke to Yevele. “This witch may answer what we need to know.”

For a moment it seemed that the battlemaid would not heed him. He could see little of her face below the helm. Though her head swung a fraction in his direction, he knew she was still watchful.

The other Yevele took that chance to push forward from the wall and stab at him with her blade. But he caught the blow easily on the flatside of his sword, his strength bearing down her arm. She drove her shield straight at him, and he lashed out with his foot, catching her leg with a blow made the crueler by his iron-enforced boot.

Screaming, she staggered back, her shoulders hitting the wall as she slid down along its surface. Milo stooped to touch her with the ring. Her helmet had been scraped off in her fall, showing tight braids of hair beneath it.

They were no longer red-brown—rather much darker. And it was not Yevele's sun-browned features now that were completely visible. The nose was thinner, higher in the bridge, the face narrowed to a chin so pointed it was grotesque. Her mouth was a vivid scarlet and her full lips twisted as she spat at him, stabbing upward with her sword.

Yevele kicked this time, her toe connecting expertly with the
illusionist's wrist. The sword dropped from fingers suddenly nerveless. Then the fallen woman screeched out words that might have been a curse or a spell. But if it were the latter she never got to finish it. As deftly as Milo had done in his own battle, Yevele reversed her sword and brought the hilt down on the black head.

The illusionist crumpled, to lie still. Yevele smiled grimly.

“Swordsman,” she said, not looking at Milo, rather bending over the illusionist while she unbuckled the other's swordbelt to bind her arms tightly to her body, “no longer will I think that you were telling some tavern ruffler's tale when you said that you had met me in the dust dunes by moonlight.” She went down on one knee. Tearing off a strip from the cloak she had dropped earlier, she thrust a wad of the stout cloth into the illusionist's mouth, making fast the gag with another strip. “Now she will throw no more spells of that or any other nature.” Yevele sat back on her heels, her satisfaction easy to read.

“Yes,” she continued after a moment's survey of her captive, “not only can this one appear before me wearing my face, but look you—she has had some study of the rest of me—even the dents upon my shield and the sifting of dust! Swordsman, I would say that we have been watched carefully and long—probably by magic means.”

Yevele spoke the truth. What the unconscious girl before them wore was an exact duplication of her own apparel. When the illusionist had played her tricks upon him in the night—then her armor had also been an illusion, vanishing when he broke the spell. But this time the clothing was real.

“Look not into her eyes, if indeed she opens them soon,” the battlemaid continued. “It is by sight—
your
sight linked to
theirs'—that such addle a brain. Perhaps”—her tone turned contemptuous as she arose—“this one thought to bedazzle me so by a mirror image that I could be easily taken. She speedily discovered such tricks could not bemuse me. And”—now she swung around, Milo turning with her—“it would appear we have all given good account of ourselves. But—where is Gulth?”

Boar stood, forefeet planted on the body of the orc, a ragged piece of mail dangling from one yellowish tusk. Wymarc and Ingrge were no longer surrounded by any encircling of dancing imps. Instead they backed Deav Dyne who swung his beads still as he might a whip advancing on the black druid who cowered, dodged, and tried to escape, yet seemingly could not really flee. The prayer beads might be part of a net to engulf him, as well as a scourge to keep him from calling on his own dark powers. For to do that, any worker of magic needed quiet and a matter of time to summon aides from another plane, and Carlvols was allowed neither.

Yevele was right. There was no sign of the lizardman. He had been with Milo when they had climbed to this spot—or at least the swordsman had thought so. Yet now Milo could not recall having seen Gulth since he himself had plunged into battle. He cupped his hands about his mouth and called:

“Ho—Gulth!”

No answer, nothing moved—save that Naile performed once again his eye-wrenching feat of shape-changing.

“Gulth?” Milo called again.

Afreeta darted down from the mist above them, circled Naile's head, to alight as usual on his shoulder. Of the lizardman there was neither any sign nor hint of what might have become of him.

A silence had fallen as Deav Dyne got close enough to his quarry to draw the beads across his shoulder. The black druid clapped both hands over his mouth and fell to his knees, his body convulsed by a series of great shudders. Stepping back the cleric spoke.

“By the Grace of Him Who Orders the Winds and the Seasons, this one is now our meat—for a space. Do you bind him so that he may not lay hand to any amulet or tool he might have about him. Take also that pouch he wears upon his belt. Do not open it, for what it may contain is for his hand alone. Rather take it and hurl it away—into the swamp, if you will. In so much can we disarm him. As for Gulth—” He came to join Naile, Milo, and Yevele. “It might be well that we seek him. Also, be prepared for what else can face us.”