Quag Keep

by Andre Norton

  “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.”

  The druid, his pouch gone, his arms pulled behind him, the wrists tightly bound, was dragged up to them by Wymarc. Milo went to examine him who had played the role of another N
aile. There was a sluggish pulse, but his skull might be cracked. He could be bound and left.

  They had two conscious captives, the illusionist and the druid. Perhaps these two were of least use, though they were the most deadly, that since both had defenses that were not based on strength of body or weapon in hand. Over the gag Milo saw the woman’s intent gaze as he went to bring her to their council of war. But he knew that Yevele had been right in her warning. The last thing to do was to look into her eyes or let her compelling gaze cross his. He laid her down beside the druid. The man’s face worked frantically as he fought to open his lips, yet they remained close-set together.

  “I would not suggest we take them with us,” Wymarc spoke up. “To my mind it is a time to move fast, laying no extra burdens upon ourselves.”

  “Well enough,” agreed Naile. He drew his knife. “Give me room, bard, and this I shall lay across their throats. Then we need not think of them again.”

  “No.” Milo had seen plenty such blooding of captives on fields of victory. It was a custom among many of the weres, and not them alone. Better to leave only dead than to take prisoners, when to guard such defeated one’s purposes. Wymarc was right, they should not take with them these most dangerous of the enemy. But it was not in him to kill a helpless captive coldly and neatly out of hand.

  18

  Roll the Dice

  THEY DREW TOGETHER AT THE BLACK WALL, ITS TOP VEILED IN THE mist. With that as a guide they went warily forward, seeking some break in its surface. This was no natural upthrust of rock, but laid by the hand of either human or alien. The blocks were unfinished, placed one above the other, but so cunningly set that it was solid enough without mortar.

  Floating wisps of mist drifted above them, sometimes curling down that wall. Milo glanced back. There the mists had closed in, dropping a curtain between them and the recent battleground. Here, a pocket of clear air appeared to move with them. There was nothing to see but the black rock, with clusters of moisture bubbles gathering underfoot, or the wall. While, with every breath they drew, that dankness invaded their lungs, tainted as it was by the effluvia of the swamplands.

  Ingrge went down on one knee, intent upon something on the ground.

  “Gulth has come this way.” He indicated a smear on the rock. Some of the grayish slime growth, which spotted it leprously in places, had been crushed into a noisome paste.

  “How can you be sure that was left by Gulth?” Yevele demanded.

  The elf did not look at her. It was Milo who caught the clue—those scrape marks could only have been made by Gulth’s forward-jutting foot claws. But why had the lizardman deserted the fight, gone ahead?

  “I said it!” Naile broke into the swordsman’s thoughts. “To trust one of the scaled ones is folly. Can you not see? It was he who brought us here, delivered us as neatly as a merchant’s man brings a pack of trading goods across country to a warehouse.”

  Afreeta lifted her head, hissed with the viciousness of her kind. Naile raised one hand to rest on her body between fanning wings. With his axe in the other he went on with an agile tread surprising for his bulk.

  There was their gate—or door; a dark gap in the wall, waiting like the maw of some great, toothless creature. There was no door or bar—only a dark trough which they could not see. Naile swung his axe, slicing into that blackness as if it were a living enemy. The double-headed blade flashed inward, vanished from their sight. Then the berserker pulled it back once more.

  “Look to your wristlet!” Wymarc’s warning was hardly needed. A growing warmth of that metal had already alerted them all.

  The dice spots blazed, the metal bands themselves took on a glow that fought against the drab daylight of the rocky isle. But the dice did not spin, nor could Milo, concentrating with all the power he could summon, stir them into any action. They were alive with whatever force they had—but they did not move.

  “Power returns to power.” Deav Dyne held out his own banded arm. “Yet there is nothing here that answers to my questing.” He shook his beads.

  “Still—the geas holds. We must go on,” Wymarc returned.

  It was true. Milo felt that, too. The compulsion that had kept them moving ever southward and had sent them into the Sea of Dust here strengthened. Some force stood or hovered behind him, exerting rising strength to combat his will.

  Now all the power Hystaspes had summoned to find the geas built higher—as a flame leaps when fresh oil is poured into the basin of the lamp. There could be no arguing against the wizard’s will, no matter what might face them in or beyond that curtain of the dark hung across the arched opening of the wall.

  Without a word to each other, hooked like fish upon a line, they moved forward, while the warmth from their bracelets grew to an almost unbearable heat. Darkness closed about them—bringing a complete absence of all light. Milo took three strides, four, hoping to so win into a place where sight and hearing would once more function, for here he was blind, nor could he catch any sounds from those who shared his venture.

  He was isolated in the smothering dark. It was difficult to get a full breath, though the swamp air had been cut off when he had taken that first stride into the total black. Trap? If so he was fairly caught. The band on his wrist was burning, though here he could not see those flashes from the minute gems on the dice. He tried with the fingers of his left hand to free them, make them swing. It was impossible.

  Ever the command that Hystaspes had set on him sent him on and on. If this was all they could sense—how then might they combat an entity blindly? Such a defense as this on the part of the alien was more than they had expected.

  Milo shook his head. There was a kind of mist in his brain—slowing his thoughts, perhaps blacking out his mind even as this outer darkness had entrapped his body. He could move freely, yes, but he was not even sure now, in his state of increasing bewilderment and dizziness, that he moved straight ahead. Was he wandering in circles?

  And in his head. . . .

  A table, voices, something he clasped within his hand. A figure! Milo’s thought caught and held that fraction of memory in triumph. He had held a figure, beautifully wrought, of a fighting man armored and helmeted like—like Milo Jagon himself!

  Milo Jagon? He paused, enfolded in the dark. He was . . . was . . . Martin Jefferson!

  He was . . . was . . . With the beginning of panic he staggered on, his hands going to his head as he fought to control the seesaw of memories. Milo—Martin—Martin—Milo—Absorbed in that conflict, he stumbled on, one foot before the other, no longer aware of his surroundings.

  Then, just as the dark had closed about them upon their entrance through the wall, so did it end. Milo blundered out into the open once again. He squinted against a light that struck at him. To his eyes this was a punishing glare, so he blinked and blinked again. Then his sight adjusted.

  He stood in a room of rough stone walls and floors. There were no windows in those walls. Above his head the ceiling was the same drab black-gray, though it was crossed by heavy beams of wood. In the wall directly opposite there was the outline of a doorway—an outline only, for it had long ago been filled with smaller stones wedged tightly together to form what looked to be an impassable barrier.

  Before this stood Gulth, facing that blocked way, his back to those who had joined him. Milo strove to move forward, nearer to the lizardman. He had taken two strides to bring him out of the darkness into this place where the walls themselves gave forth an eerie glow without any benefit of lamp or torch. But, he now could go no farther in spite of all his willing. His feet might have been clamped to the stone floor.

  “Wizardry!” Naile rumbled at his right. “One wizard sends us on, the other traps us.” The berserker was twisting, trying to turn his body, manifestly attempting to loosen feet as immovable as Milo’s.

  “No spell of this world holds us,” Deav Dyne said. The cleric stood quietly, his beads coiled about his wrist, carefully looped not to touch the bracelet. On all their ar
ms those still glowed with minute sparks of light.

  “What do we now?” Yevele demanded. “Wait here like sheep in a butcher’s pen?”

  Milo moistened his lips with tongue tip. To be so entrapped sapped his resolution, and he understood the danger of such wavering. Now his voice rang out a fraction louder than he had intended. He hoped that no one of them could hear in it any inflection of uneasiness.

  “Who are we?”

  He saw all their heads turn, even that of Gulth, though the lizardman was far enough in advance that he could not really see who stood behind him.

  “What do you mean?” Yevele began and then hesitated. “Yes, that is so—who are we in truth? Can any of us give answer to that?”

  None replied. Perhaps within themselves they shifted memories, strove to find a common ground for the seesaw of those memories.

  It was Wymarc who made answer. “In that way lies our danger. Perhaps we have been so split now to disarm us, send us into some panic. While we stand here, comrades of the road, we must be one, not two!”

  Milo steadied. The bard was right. But could a man put aside those sharp thrusts of alien memory, be himself whole and one, untroubled by another identity? He glanced at the bracelet on his wrist. Naile had called this wizardry. The berserker was right. Could one wizardry be set against another in a last battle here?

  “Be those of Greyhawk!” A sudden instinct gave him that. “The swordsman has made an excellent suggestion,” Deav Dyne said slowly. “Divided we will be excellent meat, perhaps helpless before the alien knowledge. Strive to be one with this world, do not reach after that which was of another existence.”

  Milo—he was Milo—Milo—Milo! He must be Milo! Now he strove to master that other memory, put it from him as far as possible. He was Milo Jagon, no one else!