The enormous Beachmaster opened his right eye to look at the dawn intruder, closed it again, and grunted disagreeably.
“Go ‘way! Can’t you see I’m sleeping.”
“Sorry to bother you,” Douglas answered pleasantly. “I just was wondering if you’d seen a flying horse about recently, sir....”
The Walrus groaned, rolled a bit to his left, and reopened his right eye.
“Who are you? You don’t live near here, I’m certain. Not many Men ever come to this side of the Darkest Mountains. I’ve seen your kind clambering about up there on the middle peaks. Puny little things! They wrench great hunks of rock from the mountains, pound them into gravel, and lug it off... for what reason I never could decide.”
“Men do such strange, unaccountable things,” Douglas agreed in a sympathetic tone. “Nice family you have here, sir! Do you live all year here beside the Ebony or... I’d have thought you’d prefer the colder waters of Sea, or the far north of the Ebony, maybe.”
“Ha! No sensible, warm-blooded creature prefers Far North. It’s a safe haven for birthing pups only, and catching delicious herring and pink salmon. My family has come here every summer long before Men ever did!”
Douglas walked around the pod of walruses, clucking in a friendly fashion to the huge females, who stared back at him uneasily, and chirping at the pups snuggled against their mothers’ sides for safety.
He saw no sign of flying horses anywhere and shortly returned to the flat, smooth rock on which the Dragon was just awakening.
“I don’t think they’re here yet,” the Wizard said to the Dragon. “Might as well find a sheltered spot and relax.”
“I’ll just sunbathe here for the morning,” murmured Lesser sleepily. “Dragons require more sleep than you Men. Call me if you need me.”
Taking the hint, Douglas walked some distance away and, finding a place where the stiff ocean breeze was partially blocked by a golden sandstone outcrop, called upon Blue Teakettle’s kitchen back at the High to provide blueberry waffles and maple syrup and crisp strips of hickory-smoked bacon, to be washed down by hot cocoa topped with sweet whipped cream.
“A Wizard’s life is not an easy one,” he sighed aloud to himself. “But there are compensations!”
The thunderstorm had4 long since cleared from the peaks and in the glass-clear air he felt a distant tingle that meant Myrn was awake and moving once again. With an effort he managed not to project his thoughts toward her while sensing that she was close to the saddle pass between two of the closer peaks.
There was another, darker feeling in the air, as well. A touch of unease. An acrid whiff of ill will. A sour taint of uneasy wickedness. It came, he decided, from the spear-sharp summit of the tallest peak in the immediate vicinity, a twisted tower of black rock overlooking everything else with a sort of rocky sneer.
A wisp of dirty gray cloud clung tenaciously to its very tip, like a soiled banner.
Up there, are you? Douglas thought. Well, I’ll keep an eye on you from here!
He settled down to compose a very minor Hiding Spell, just in case the Dark Servant should happen to glance his way. Nothing very strong nor too obvious—just a tiny bit of shadow that might be lost in the wide, empty land and seascape.
He deployed Wizardly awareness to receive impressions but not to project anything that might mark his location to a wakeful Darkness.
Ah! he thought. Do I sense just a hint of poor old Serenit? Yes!
It came, he decided, from the middle slopes of the mountain he dubbed Tallest Peak.
“That’s where our friend is imprisoned,” he decided. “Now, if Myrn can just get close while things are still fairly quiet...”
Myrn paused several times as they crept cautiously across the barren stone shoulder between Tallest Peak and its shorter neighbor, listening and searching with her Wizard’s senses.
Marbleheart and Cribblon, both still in disguise, also searched and observed, sniffing the cold air. The high pass was swept with a constant, chill breeze that brought to the Otter-monkey the familiar smells of saltwater, fish, Seabirds, beds of kelp, and... a Dragon and a Man, somewhere far below and to the south. If he hadn’t known they were there, he’d never have recognized the faint scents.
“Douglas ... over that way,” he whispered to Myrn as she started off again, choosing her path carefully for safe footing as well as good cover.
“Yes, I feel him,” the Journeyman Aquamancer replied softly. “He has sensed us, too. Careful now! A stray thought sent his way might establish a line the Servant could follow back to us. I’m positive the Dark Servant is already aware of Douglas. Do you feel it?”
Marbleheart nodded.
“But he’s not yet discovered us,’’ chirped the sparrow. “We can’t go much farther without being in full view, Myrn. Should I go ahead a bit and scout the eastern slopes? I’m small enough to go unnoticed among all the little birds and beasts now out enjoying morning’s sun.”
Myrn nodded.
“We’ll head for that ragged patch of purple heather clinging to the rocks in that bit of tilted meadow. You see it? Off to the left a bit.”
“I see it,” replied the little bird. “I’ll circle toward the base of the higher mountain on the left. My former Master is somewhere there, I sense. When you’ve lived near someone for years and years, you don’t forget his aura. Meet you under the lip of the alpine meadow ... noonish?”
“Go,” urged Myrn. “It’ll take us a couple of hours to reach the heather and find safe cover. What we need to determine is, first, the location of the Darkness Servant and, two, the exact location of Serenit’s prison. If you find either, come back to us at once.”
The tiny sparrow bobbed his head and darted off, hugging the dry, cold, rocky ground but skimming along at considerable speed. He tried to keep his eyes on the high, blue sky as he flew, to find a local raptor who might know of the Servant’s presence ... and perhaps the prison of the First Citizen of New Land, as well. He couldn’t watch above his head and under his belly at the same time.
It was a terrifying shock, therefore, when a silent shadow dropped suddenly over him and he felt sharp talons sink into the feathers on his neck and back.
“Gotcha!” rasped a voice just overhead.
Cribblon was whipped straight up, helpless in his efforts to free himself from a kestrel’s wickedly curved killing claws.
Douglas leaped to his feet with a shout.
“Lesser! Fly out over the water. Make a grand fuss! Lots of smoke and fire!”
Lesser Dragon awoke and, without stopping to question, erupted from the sand and shot into the air with a thunderous crack of his leathery wings. In moments he was out over the rolling Ebony, scattering flocks of terns and gulls from his path, spurting reddish flame and sepia smoke.
“Out of my way!” he bellowed at the top of his considerable voice, making the cliffs behind him ring with echoes. “That’s right! That’s perfect! Make lots of fuss, you noisy oyster-snappers and clam-grabbers! Ho! Ha! Yoicks!”
Glancing up at the twisted top of Tallest Peak, Douglas saw a stirring, a changing.
“Hey! Look at me, blast you!” he thundered in a Wizardly roar.
He flung a handful of bright red fire onto the sand at his feet.
His Wizard’s cloak flapped wildly in the stiff offshore breeze. He sent swift flashes of colored light up and out toward where the startled Servant crouched on its mountain peak.
Myrn leaped into the air also, snapping out a clear, short incantation that, before her jump had reached its apex, changed her from a dark-haired slip of a girl to bundle of streamlined, feathered fury.
“Find Serenit!” she screamed at the monkey as she shot upward into the bright air. “Get him out, if you can, and hide him somewhere!”
Marbleheart ducked away from the downdraft of the she-eagle’s powerful wings and watched as Myrn climbed at tremendous speed after the kestrel and his struggling prey.
Turning away from the scene
above, the Otter took the opportunity of the flurry of magic both close overhead and far below on the shore to shed his monkey form.
As a six-foot, sleek, swift Sea Otter, he plunged over the lip of the pass, slid between huge, tilted boulders, dashed through the patch of purple heather, and dropped, without stopping or even slowing, down a dry watercourse angling toward the shore far below.
The eagle, meanwhile, rapidly overtook the climbing kestrel and, screaming sharply, whizzed past him, missing his left wingtip feathers by less than a claw’s length. The slipstream of her passage came close to knocking the kestrel out of the air altogether.
“Mine! Mine!” squawked the smaller raptor, startled. “My breakfast! Shear off! No fair! No fair!”
“Life’s often unfair,” Myrn shrieked at the top of her eagle’s voice, twisting into a sharp turn. “Drop the sparrow, young kestrel! At once! I’ll tear your eyes from your head!”
Fighting for flying room, the kestrel folded his wings along his sides and plummeted like a stone toward the mountainside below.
“No you don’t,” snarled Cribblon, finally freeing one wing-tip long enough to make an appropriate Sign of Change.
The sparrow disappeared in a silent flash and in his place appeared a brown-and-white gyrfalcon. Before the kestrel could release his tight grip and swing away in panic, the gyrfalcon twisted over, breaking the grip on his back feathers, grasped the smaller raptor by neck and tail, and snapped out his own long pinions to slow their plunging descent.
“Mercy! Mercy!” mewed the thoroughly terrified kestrel, struggling to break Cribblon’s tight grip. “Let me be, I pray! Let me go! I beg you!”
“Not just yet,” hissed Cribblon, giving the smaller bird a sharp shake to settle him down. “Stop wriggling!”
The kestrel, recognizing a small hope in the gyrfalcon’s words, froze in fear. Cribblon veered to the right and plunged to roost on a lonely rock pinnacle rising from the side of the southern mountain.
“Follow me when you can, Cribblon,” called Myrn, dropping rapidly past them toward the rocky ground. “I’m going after the Otter to look for Serenit.”
“Leave it to me,” answered Cribblon. “Now! You! I’m going to let you go on this nice, quiet, peaceful pinnacle. Stay here to the count of a hundred before you move a single pinion. You can count to a hundred, can’t you?”
He shook the smaller raptor vigorously.
“Yes, yes!” squeaked the kestrel. “Oh, please, sir! Let me go. I’ll behave!”
“You’d better! Heed my advice, and stay clear of Darkest Mountains for a few days, kestrel. There’re things about to happen here you don’t want to catch you up, sirrah!”
Releasing his captive, Cribblon folded his wings and let his weight carry him straight down. At the last moment he snapped his wings flat out, fighting the pull of gravity with the push of the air on the underside of his pinions.
His streamlined body tipped, tilted, shuddered, and skimmed the rocky floor of the pass only a handful of feet above the scattered boulders. He caught a brief glimpse of the Myrn-eagle, far down the oceanward slope ahead of him.
“Right behind you, Myrn!” he screamed.
With the sure instincts of a longtime air-fighter, Lesser banked sharply, did a wing-over, and charged the great cloud of disturbed birds which had risen in his wake after his first pass.
“Move! Move it!” he bellowed, sending out a lurid spout of red-and-yellow flame and blue smoke. “Scatter!”
The birds screamed in fear and anger, then fled before the huge Dragon and his fiery breath. A few plunged into the waves below or flopped to the gravelly beach among the walruses, causing even greater tumults of bellowing and roaring.
Beachmaster shouted, at the top of his considerable basso profundo voice, “Into the water, everybody! Watch the young-uns! Stay together, blast you!”
Douglas popped to the top of the long-shore ridge waving his arms and sending loose stones and a cloud of bright sand flying into the air, there to burst into vivid, crackling flames.
He caught a quick glimpse of an eagle wheeling close to where Serenit was hidden. Turning to the south, he flung a spell of great force against the side of a towering cliff.
Slowly at first, then with increasing speed and a tremendous thundering, half the cliff slid, crumbled, tilted, and crashed into the ocean, sending up geysers of salt spray and boiling clouds of sand and mist twice as high as the cliff from which the avalanche had been calved.
****
Augurian set a large, crystal-clear ball of brook water on a square of blue watered silk in the middle of the hearth before the fire.
“At least we can see what’s going on,” he said, glancing at his friend Flarman.
“No harm in looking,” agreed the Pyromancer.
Behind them Bronze Owl perched on the back of a chair and Black Flame curled comfortably on the seat, bracketed by his wives—Party, chubby with her latest pregnancy, and a slimmer Pert.
Beyond the circle of light from the fire in Bryarmote’s great stone fireplace, the entire High staff ranked themselves on the kitchen table, on counters, and on cupboard shelves, silent except for occasional indignant whispers of “Down in front!” or “Ladies, please remove your tops!”
“Now,” rumbled Augurian after a few moments of intense peering into the watery globe. “Myrn is ... ah!... with the Sea Otter and ... that little bird is Cribblon, I see ... on some bare mountaintop.”
“Those are the Darkest Mountains of Nearer East,” Flarman declared, flipping hurriedly through a huge atlas nestled in his lap.
“Darkest Mountains ... the hidden lair of one of the runaway Servants of Darkness, I believe,” said Litholt, smoothing her skirts and leaning forward to see the water ball better. “Can you make it work more clearly, Water Adept? Or should I send for my crystal?”
“No, no,” muttered Augurian. “It’s just warming up. Yes! There’s my Journeyman girl! That great Sea eagle is actually Myrn, and the smaller bird must be Cribblon. Where’s that silly Otter? Run off somewhere, I suppose.”
“Not Marbleheart!” protested Bronze Owl. “Soul of bravery, when the chops are done!”
“You mean ‘chips’ ” muttered Flarman distractedly. “Ah! Now...”
“Chips! Chops! The same thing when it comes to our Sea Otter,” someone in the kitchenware crowd giggled nervously.
“Silence, now!” warned the Water Adept sternly. “Watch! Don’t talk!”
He reached out to tap the side of the globe of water with a fingernail, very delicately. It gave off a crystalline ping and the scene pictured in its depths shivered and shifted.
“What’s that!” gasped Litholt, pointing at the image of Tallest Peak.
“You’ve never seen the minions of The Darkness in person,” said the Water Adept. “That’s one of their Servants, for sure!”
“I believe I can name him,” said Flarman, snapping his fingers.
“Ah, the duel over Endless Steppes!” crowed Augurian, nodding. “I remember it well. Thank goodness it’s not one of the Overgray. If it were ...”
“... we’d be on our way there right now,” finished Flarman, bobbing his bald head. “We may have to shoot off eastward anyway, friends. Be ready, Litholt, my dear!”
“Wait a bit,” cautioned Augurian, clutching his friend’s sleeve. “So far not much is really happening!”
They hunched forward, staring at the scene shown in miniature in the ball of clear water.
“There!” whispered Bronze Owl, whose eyes were sharper than anyone else’s. “There’s Douglas and the great-great-grandnephew of Great Golden Dragon!”
“Yeah, Douglas! Go! Go! Go!” a line of Salad Forks cheered, jumping up and down.
Table Knives clashed their blades together and Cups and their Saucers rattled up a noisy tattoo as Douglas tore down half of a sea cliff and dropped it into the ocean with a most satisfying splash.
Blue Teakettle held her steamy breath, her lid jiggling with suppres
sed excitement.
****
Myrn the eagle swooped along the two-hundred-foot vertical cliff at the foot of Tallest Peak.
A distance below her flight path Marbleheart slid with surprising speed, for a water animal, among loose stones and broken chunks of splintered mountain.
Behind them the gyrfalcon whipped his wings up and down, dodging about taller pinnacles of wind-carved rock, keeping as many of them as he could between himself and the top of Tallest Peak, on which he glimpsed the vague outline of a squat, evil-looking shroud of gray dust and black smoke.
“He hasn’t seen us.. .yet,” Cribblon called, catching up with the eagle at last. “Not yet!”
The eagle spun about on one wingtip, screaming in sharp urgency.
“Where is Serenit?”
The air, shortly before clear as a bell, was quickly dimming and turning dun-colored and dirty. Great clouds of mottled mist, shot with short angry lightning bolts, rolled down the eastern side of Tallest Peak, gathering pebbles and stones at first, then boulders, and finally whole sheets of the rock face. It roared across the pebble beach below, where a few moments before Beachmaster’s family had been sunning.
Myrn swallowed an urge to shout a warning to her husband. Douglas shot into the clear air over the descending bank of debris, plucking short bolts of lightning from the thundering rubble and sending them back up toward the top of Tallest Peak.
Cribblon, following Myrn, drew up sharply.
From a narrow crack halfway up the south-facing side of Tallest Peak, he’d caught a momentary flash of white.
Whipping into a tight vertical turn, grazing the mountain with his right wingtip, he hugged the wall to retrace his path, looking for a second glimpse of white.
There it was! A handkerchief?
Waved through a narrow crack in the stone wall?
The Journeyman Air Adept slammed his chest and stomach flat against the cliff, scrabbling for purchase with his claws and beak. For a terrifying moment he felt himself sliding away into thin air. In his mind’s eye he saw himself dashed onto the scree of sharp stones fifty feet below.
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