“An interesting question,” Yambu acknowledged, “even if not immediately pertinent. What, or whom, does this Ancient Master of evil fear above all else? It is probably pointless to try to imagine anyone whom he might love.”
Ben nodded. “But as you say, those questions will have to wait. Now we face others that must be answered. Two or three people cannot share the powers of this Sword. One of us must take it to the island, and use it to look for Mark. Now, which of us carries it? And what do the other two do to help?”
“The question of who takes the Sword must lie between you two, I think,” said Lady Yambu. “Because I ought to be perfectly able to visit the mysterious islanders without its help.” Reading the question in her companions’ faces, she explained: “Why should not I, as a former queen, pay a courtesy call upon whatever power now rules those rocks?”
Ben ruminated on that idea. “We certainly don’t have to tell you how great the risks might be. Are you really willing to accept that danger, to help a former enemy?”
The former queen spoke sharply in reply. “You certainly do not have to tell me about the risks, especially now that you have already managed to do so. We have made an agreement, you and I, and I intend to abide by it. And remember that in my day I have faced the Dark King himself; so I feel no uncontrollable trembling at the prospect of encountering this usurper; let him be as ancient as he likes.”
Zoltan was nodding. And Ben, after a little more thought, nodded his approval too. “All right, my lady. Make your visit to the island as you wish, if you are able to arrange for one. Meanwhile the Prince’s nephew and I will somehow settle between us the use of the Sword. But I have one more question for you, my lady, before we wrestle with that decision.”
She returned him a look of cool inquiry.
He asked: “About that little dragon you dispatched. What result may we expect from it, assuming that the creature was not devoured in midair?”
“If I were you,” the lady answered, “I should expect nothing. We must do what we can on our own.” Then she softened a trifle. “I have good reason for keeping silent, I assure you.”
The men exchanged a look but said no more on the subject.
“You have a means of transport to the island?” Zoltan asked the lady.
“I have said I do not expect much trouble in arranging that.”
Ben shrugged, and said: “It is agreed, then. We will make our separate ways out to the castle on the island, and meet and communicate with each other as best we can when we are there.” He paused, considering. “A mad-sounding plan, if it can even be called a plan at all. But we lack the knowledge to make plans with any greater intelligence, and I for one cannot simply sit here and wait.”
“Nor I,” Zoltan put in quickly.
“Then it is agreed, as you say,” Yambu answered firmly. “And now, gentlemen, I bid you good-bye for the time being. And good luck.”
* * *
A few minutes later, Ben and Zoltan were making their way along the shoreline of the lake, heading east, in the direction away from the town. Zoltan carried Sight-blinder, balancing in one hand the belt, the jeweled sheath, and the blade that it contained.
Their tentative plan, which they were trying to put into a more solid shape as they walked, was to commandeer a small boat somewhere along the shore—given the Sword’s powers, there should be no great difficulty about that. Once in possession of a boat, they would make their way out to the islands. Whether there would be any advantage in waiting for darkness before they set out across the water was something they had not yet decided.
“I should be the one to carry Sightblinder when we go,” said Barbara, Ben’s diminutive, dark-haired wife, walking now beside Ben where a moment ago Prince Mark had been striding blithely along. Then Barbara turned her face toward Ben, grew in stature to his own height or a trifle more, and suddenly possessed blue eyes and long hair of a flaming red. He had to look away.
“You’ll be my prisoner,” his companion went on, now speaking to Ben in a voice Ben had never forgotten, that of Yambu’s daughter, Ariane. “No one will try to stop us on the way to the island dungeons—every castle has a dungeon, doesn’t it?—and that’s where we’ll find Uncle Mark. There should be no problem unless we run directly into whoever now has Shieldbreaker—what’s the matter?” The speaker’s voice abruptly deepened at the end.
Ben dared to turn his head for another look, and saw Prince Mark walking beside him again, engaged in plotting his own rescue.
“Therefore,” said Ben, “we must take care not to run into him.” He nodded grudgingly. “The plan you propose has some merit. Not much, but perhaps more than any other we are likely to be able to devise in the small time we have to work with.”
Striding around the shoreline of a cove, they passed a small wooden dock, on the verge of total abandonment if not already past it. The only vessel at the dock, a small rowboat, now rested half-sunken in the shallows, where, if moss and discoloration were any evidence, it had been resting for a long time. A couple of meters inland stood an upright post, which had probably once supported a partial roof over the facility. Stuck lightly to this post, and stirring in the breeze as if to call attention to itself, was a torn and shabby paper poster. Ben, driven by a vague though desperate yearning for any kind of information, paused to peel the loosened paper from the wood—it was an advertisement for what sounded like a traveling carnival, described in large, crude printing as the Magnificent Traveling Show of Ensor.
Still clutching this piece of paper absently in his hand, Ben walked on. Zoltan, now wearing the aspect of Ben’s young daughter Beth, walked at his side. Ben looked down at the sturdy, half-grown girl taking her short steps, and said to Zoltan: “Did your uncle Mark ever tell you how he once played a role in a small traveling show? I was in it too. Probably this one is much like that one.”
“He’s mentioned something about it,” Prince Mark said, taller than Ben again and taking long strides, longer than Ben’s, beside him. “You were the strongman, of course?”
“No,” the huge man answered vaguely. Again becoming aware of the paper still in his hand, he looked at it. “ ‘The next performance in Triplicane,’ ” he quoted, “ ‘will be at the time of the Harvest Festival.’ Which must be rapidly approaching in these parts, I suppose, though there can’t be much growing on these rocky slopes for anyone to harvest.”
“Unless they’re counting the lake’s fish as the main crop. And I thought I saw some indication of vineyards on the high slopes there, farther on.” It was Ariane who gestured at the hills.
Half an hour later Ben and his variable companion were still walking along the shore, having had no success in finding a suitable boat, when with little warning a small cloud of fierce flying creatures fell upon them from the clouded sky.
Ben fought back with his staff, and Zoltan raised the keen-edged Sword. But in a matter of moments they realized that they were not under attack at all. The strange hybrid flyers were not coming to tear them apart, but to offer service. They circled nearby, then landed on the ground, wrapping themselves in leathery wings; they recoiled from the blows of Ben’s staff, not as attackers would dodge back but cringingly, jaws closed and ears laid back in submission, like beasts trying to avoid punishment.
“What dolts we are!” said Ben. “It is the Sword, of course. They take you for someone else, some human lord that they are bound to serve.” He spoke openly, having no fear that beasts like these would be able to understand more than the simplest words of human speech.
“Of course,” said his wife, Barbara, and lowered Sightblinder’s keen steel. “What do we do now?”
Before Ben could decide upon an answer, a new factor had entered the situation. A griffin descended from the upper air to circle majestically, looking the scene over. Presumably it was the same creature that had carried off Prince Mark—even in the stories there was never more than one griffin at a time—but it was now equipped with a saddle, saddlebags, and stirrups.
After circling round the two men several times at low altitude, making the smaller flyers scatter in excitement, the griffin landed near Zoltan, who recoiled somewhat in spite of himself. The creature crouched there with its great wings folded, its eagle’s eyes staring at him over one feathered shoulder. When he did not move, it backed toward him a short distance and crouched lower.
Ben edged away a little. The griffin ignored him totally.
“Ben?” Zoltan’s voice quavered slightly. “I think it expects me to get on and ride it.”
Somehow the dignity of the beast’s gaze made it look more intelligent as well as larger than any of the more ordinary flyers—not a difficult standard to surpass.
“Ben? Magicians do ride them, don’t they?”
Ben opened his mouth and closed it. He didn’t know what to advise.
The griffin was looking at Zoltan as an intelligent riding-beast might have looked, waiting patiently for its master to climb into the saddle.
“I’m going to do it,” Zoltan decided.
“Maybe I should be the one to ride it,” the big man muttered, but even as he spoke he was edging away from the griffin a little more, and he was unable to muster any great enthusiasm behind the words.
“You obviously can’t—you weigh a ton and a half, to begin with.”
“I doubt that would matter much to a griffin. From all I’ve heard, they fly more by magic than by muscle.”
But Zoltan, though showing signs of trepidation, was already climbing aboard the half-feathered and half-furred creature’s back. In a moment his feet were in the stirrups and he was as firmly in the saddle as a man could be. Now it was apparent that there were no reins to grip.
All was not well, however. The great beast clamored and snarled, and breathed out other noises less definable. It moved on its feet and stretched its wings, but it did not take off. Instead, with Zoltan helplessly on its back, it stood up on its two mismatched pairs of legs and turned toward Ben. Awkwardly it walked closer to him, still making unearthly noises. When its beak opened, there were no teeth to be seen, but the beak itself looked as dangerous as a scimitar.
“I think,” Ben said, gripping his staff, “it doesn’t like me.”
“Maybe it recognizes you somehow as an enemy. Might the problem be that it doesn’t want me to leave you here unguarded?”
“That’s an idea, but I don’t know what we can do about it. Chop my head off before you go.”
Meanwhile the squadron of lesser flyers, apparently taking a cue from the griffin, had reformed itself in the air and was fluttering around Ben, cawing and snarling menacingly. The moving circle of the creatures tightened on him. His repeated gestures of submission had no effect, nor did Zoltan’s tentative efforts to take command.
Neither man had any idea of how to go about giving these creatures orders, beyond shouting human speech at them, and making crude gestures. Zoltan tried these methods now, to no avail.
“Wait, I have an idea,” Zoltan announced. He shouted at the beasts until their clamoring had stilled to some degree. Then he spoke to Ben. “See that shed over there?”
Ben turned to look. There was some fisherman’s outbuilding, big as a small house, dilapidated and by all appearances long-deserted, but intact in basic structure.
Zoltan went on: “I’ll lock you up in that. What do you think? Close the door on you anyway. At worst it shouldn’t take you a minute to kick your way out again, once we’re, uh, out of sight.”
Ben got the idea, and walked ahead when Zoltan, once more dismounted, urged him along with an imperious gesture. In a few moments they were at the shed. When Ben pulled open the ill-fitting door, the interior proved to have two rooms. The floors in both rooms were of earth, and both contained piles of crates and other fisherman’s gear, looking long disused. And a good part of the back wall of the building was actually missing; there were holes in it through which a man would be able to crawl out any time.
Such niceties were evidently beyond the understanding of the small flyers who were circling the building now. These happily abated their clamor as soon as Ben had gone inside the shack and passed out of their sight. Meanwhile the griffin, maintaining its dignity, remained in front.
With a sigh of relief Ben moved through the first room, on into the room that was farther from the door. There, a narrow space between the rough planks of the wall facing the beach offered a chance for him to observe what happened next.
He could hear Zoltan stumbling around somewhere in the first room, behind him; there was a slight delay before the young man appeared in the doorway to the second. There he stood, regarding Ben with a rather odd expression.
Ben demanded: “What’s the trouble? If you don’t want to trust yourself to that thing in flight, well, I don’t blame you. But I’ll give it a try if you don’t.”
“Never mind,” Zoltan answered after staring at him a moment longer. “Here I go.” He turned and left the room.
And a moment later Ben, looking out through the crack between the planks, saw Prince Mark stride out to greet the waiting flyers, and Barbara vaulted again onto the griffin’s back. In a moment the whole flock was airborne once again. And only moments after that they were well out over the water, fading rapidly into the dusky sky.
* * *
Yambu, after bidding her new allies a farewell on the hillside above the town, had returned directly to the inn. There she quickly hired a man to transport her modest luggage down to the docks—she might easily have carried the few things herself, but now it was time to consider the matter of status once again. As she was paying her bill at the inn the proprietor told her that the Maid of Lakes and Rivers had arrived at last. She took the news as a good omen.
In another few minutes she was at the docks. There the captain of the newly-arrived riverboat made an effort to intercept the determined-looking lady before she could step onto his deck. He told her that if she was the passenger he had heard about, the pilgrim lady who wished to go far downriver, she would have to wait. He had already been summoned out to the island, with his boat and entire crew.
That was news to Yambu, but she would not admit it. “But of course, my man, I want to go to the island. You may cast off as soon as my luggage is on board.”
A moment later, Yambu was standing on the deck. And the captain was at least half-convinced that her wish to visit the island was the real reason he had been ordered to take his boat there.
The dirty deck and modest deckhouse offered no spot suitable for a lady to sit down, and so she stood, with dignity. Her attire of course was far from queenly; but then it was the dress of a pilgrim, and even a queen, once she put on the gray of pilgrimage, might become hard to distinguish from a commoner.
Yambu was still waiting on deck for the short voyage to begin, gazing unseeingly at the remnants of a white poster of some kind affixed to a nearby bollard, when a high, wild, inhuman cry, faint with distance, made her look up into the darkening sky.
The moon, near full, was newly risen; and as she watched a dark shape passed across its disk, as of a flying creature that bore a human being on its back.
Chapter Eight
Emerging cautiously from the shed into the rapidly thickening dusk, Ben looked out over the lake. The islands now were no more than ghostly little clouds, almost invisible in the last light of the sun and the rising glow of the newly risen moon.
He wished Zoltan well.
He began moving carefully eastward along the shore, still determined to gain possession of a boat if it was humanly possible to do so. With the Sword gone to where it was more urgently needed, he might need to use craft or violence to achieve his purpose. But he was determined that somehow, before the dawn—
He had proceeded for no more than about twenty paces along the shore when a sound behind him made him whirl. Out of the ruined shed a figure staggered, then turned through the dusk toward Ben. It was holding one hand to the top of its head.
Ben raised his staff to gu
ard position and moved to meet the apparition. In a moment he dropped his weapon, recognizing Zoltan.
“Gods and demons! Why aren’t you—?” Helplessly Ben shifted his gaze out over the darkening lake; the griffin and its passenger had long since passed out of sight. He turned back to the swaying form before him.
Zoltan sat down with a crunch in the rough, damp shingle that made up the shoreline here. “I’m not out there, if that’s what you’re asking, because I’m still here. I was just on my way into the shed for a last word with you…. Someone must have hit me over the head. I’m getting a lump the size of an egg.”
“Hit you? Hit you Then who in all the hells was that, astride that flying thing?”
“It was whoever hit me, I suppose. How the hell should I know? I couldn’t see him.”
Ben closed his eyes. In memory he could see how Zoltan had come from one room of the ruined shed into the other. And he, Ben, had seen Zoltan as Zoltan, not as Mark or Barbara. “I should have known,” the big man muttered to himself, and opened his eyes again.
His fears were quickly confirmed. There was no longer any sword belt at Zoltan’s waist. No jeweled scabbard, and, of course, no Sword.
Again Ben turned his gaze again out over the darkening lake, then back to Zoltan. He said: “Whoever it was, it seems he has taken Sightblinder with him.”
Zoltan nodded, then paused for a few breaths to deal with whatever was going on inside his skull. Then he asked dazedly: “What do we do now?”
Ben swore a few more oaths. Then, in a quiet voice, he said: “As soon as you’re able to walk a straight line again, you can help me find a boat. What else?”
* * *
The wind from the south side of the lake was picking up, distant thunder also rumbling from that direction, and the surface of the water was growing choppy when the Maid of Lakes and Rivers under light sail eased up to the small docks at the foot of the castle. The small stone docks seemed pinned down by the frowning mass of those high, gray walls.
Sightblinder's Story Page 7