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"Say he grants it. What then?"
"You can speak with dragons."
"I'm afraid so."
"Tell the old one--Moonbird--to take you to the dead crater on Anvil Mountain and there help you to recover the magical tool."
"The scepter?"
"Yes."
"Say this can be done."
"Then take it to Pol at Avinconet. "
"He will be all right in the meantime?"
"They may see fit to destroy him at any time. I do not know. If they do not, however, he may well need it soon."
"Who are you?"
"I do not know."
"How do you know all these things?"
"I was there. "
"Why do you wish to help Pol?"
"I am uncertain."
"How is it that I could not kill you?"
"A corpse ca
"Now it is I who do not understand."
"You know enough. Good-bye."
The red-haired man collapsed and lay still. Mouseglove approached him cautiously. There was no sign of breathing, and he considered the man's waxy pallor at closer range. He reached out and touched a cheek. It was cold.
He raised the right hand. It was cold, also; and a certain stiffness had already come into the limb. He pressed upon the fingernails one after the other. They all grew white and remained so. Finally, he leaned forward and lay his ear upon the chest near to the bullet hole. He discovered it to be a quiet place.
He arranged the body, crossing the arms upon the breast. He drew the white cowl up over the head and down across the face. He rose and moved away.
Crossing to the place where Pol and Larick had stood, he located their tracks and began following them. They disappeared quickly, however, in the rocky terrain. He halted there and spent several minutes pondering. Then he turned to the city of illusion and began his descent toward its flickering towers.
VIII
Wind whistling past him, cloak flapping behind him, Pol leaned forward upon the shoulders of the lesser dragon--a lithe, brown creature of similar mien and considerably less mass than the giant beasts of Rondoval--his legs gripping the sides of its back-ridge, hands upon a leather harness it wore. Twenty meters to his left and a few higher, Larick was similarly mounted upon one of the leathern-winged creatures. He glanced occasionally at Pol, who maintained an impassive attitude. A number of bright strands, visible at the second seeing, ran between them. Pol wondered how difficult it might be to kill the other when the time finally came. He decided that magic was too slow and uncertain a thing when employed against another sorcerer. He decided to strike quickly, with full violence and without warning once he had learned what he needed to know and could afford to dispense with the man. It would be foolhardy to leave enemies of his sort alive.
The sun was about to cut the throat of another day in the west and the moon had long since risen--a pale rag tossed above cloud-crests, brightening now over rough and shadowed land--as north and west they headed, long necks of their dark mounts extended, vanes outstretched and occasionally booming against gusts.
They had changed mounts four times during the day, finding the fresh ones magically tethered at a series of high locales. Pol's shoulder and leg muscles had long before ached themselves to the point of numbness. He stole a glance at Larick, who seemed tireless, bent forward and urging his mount to greater efforts. He stared ahead as if trying to burn holes through the darkening air.
Avinconet, Avinconet...He had repeated the name to himself for hours, in time with the rhythms of the flight. He had answered truthfully in telling Larick he had known nothing of it, yet--
It seemed now as if there might be some small familiarity attached. It seemed possible that there had been references in some of his father's earlier journals, though he could not recall anything specific.
Avinconet. Avinconet and Rondoval...Had there been some sort of tie?
The sun dipped lower and the moon grew brighter--and then, splashed with daysblood, he saw it, spread across the face of one of the more prominent peaks of a distant range. And he knew that he knew it.
Avinconet was the castle of his dreams, through which he had passed on his way to the Gate. Somehow, he had known all along that it was a real place. But seeing it... Seeing it gave rise to a train of disturbing sensations. He found himself anxious to enter the place, to locate the Gate. There was something that he had to do there, wanted to do, despite a reflex squeamishness at the very thought of the Gate. Yet, precisely what that action was, he could not say.
He watched the grim architecture grow before him, paling to yellow, silver, gray-white--a huge, central keep, stepped like a terrace, bristling with towers at many levels, flanked by long ranks of attached side-buildings--surrounded by high, wide ramparts, battlemented, possessed of numerous angles, a squat tower atop each turning. Windows were lighted at several levels toward the right side of the main structure. He shifted to the second seeing and immediately noted a tremendous massing of strands high in the air above the rear of the keep. He also noted a small, pale light drifting along the forward wall from left to right, pausing occasionally, wavering.
When they reached a position above the place, Larick swung his mount into a huge circle and Pol's followed, buffeted by strong winds. They commenced a slow, downward spiral.
As they descended toward the larger of a number of courtyards toward the rear, Pol continued to study the small light, visible only with the second seeing. It appeared human in form from this nearer distance, and there was a long, pale strand attached to it. Something about its aspect at this level touched him with a vague feeling of mournfulness.
As they dropped lower, Pol saw that the rear wall of the enclosed area was rough rock--a part of the mountainside itself--pierced by a number of irregular dark openings, several of them barred. It was at about this point that the light upon the ramparts disappeared from sight.
They touched down roughly and Larick alit at once. Moments later, Pol felt his strings jerked and he followed him. Larick unharnessed the beasts, shouted an order and watched them shuffle off into one of the cave-like openings. He followed them and drew upon something in the shadows. A metal grillwork dropped into place with a clang which echoed through the court.
Larick returned to Pol.
"We made excellent time because of the tailwinds," he commented. "I didn't think we'd be getting in till after midnight. He might be able to see you now. I don't know. Ill have to check."
"Who is 'he'?" Pol asked.
"Ryle Merson, the master of Avinconet."
"What does he want with me, wizard?"
"That is really for him to tell you. Come this way."
Pol felt a tugging upon the strands Larick had affixed to his person. He made no resistance but followed their lead toward an open archway to what he judged the northeast. They passed through into a flagstoned corridor where Larick led him about a series of turns.
Left, right, left, left, Pol memorized.
And then they halted before a low doorway. Its heavy wooden door stood ajar and Larick pushed it the rest of the way open. Pol noted that it could be secured from the outside by means of a heavy wooden bar.
"Inside," Larick said, and power pulsed in the strands.
Pol moved forward, stooped and entered. A bench ran along the righthand wall of the small, low-ceilinged room. There were no windows, only a few air-slits at the upper corners. A ragged blanket and a heap of sacking lay upon the bench. There was a chamber pot upon the floor nearby. An empty candle-bracket was affixed to the wall above the bench.