“Twenty-foot jets from each nostril.”
“Armored?”
“Stainless steel overlapping scales. Five-inch claws. Six-inch teeth. Lightning bolts from eyes.”
“Temperament?”
“Aggressive.”
“Resistive to magic?”
“Extremely. The Worm beds in Phazite, so has developed a considerable immunity.”
“I wonder what it was like in its prime?” Stile mused.
“No matter. In its prime it needed not the tribute of our kind.”
“But if the Platinum Flute were employed—”
“The magic of the Flute be stronger than the anti-magic of the Worm.”
“Then it is possible that an Adept carrying the Flute could dispatch the creature.”
“Possible. But hardly probable. The Worm cannot be abolished by magic alone.”
“Well, I’d be willing to make the attempt.”
“Nay!” the Lady Blue cried. “Few dragons hast thou encountered; thou knowest not their nature. Accept not this perilous mission!”
“I would not borrow a thing of value without giving service in return,” Stile said. “But if I could borrow the Flute to brace the Worm, thereafter I would feel justified in borrowing it for one task of mine own. There might be other uses I could make of it besides matching a unicorn stallion, until I locate the one for whom the Flute be intended.”
“Thou meanest to brace the Worm?” the Elder asked.
“At least to make the attempt. If I fail to dispatch it, I will return the Flute immediately to thee, if I remain able to do so.”
“Nay!” the Lady cried again. “This is too high a price to risk, for the mere postponement of the breeding of one mare. She is mine oath-friend, yet—”
“For that trifle thou dost this?” the Elder demanded, abruptly suspicious. “Thou dost risk thy life against the Worm, and thy pride against the Stallion, for …?”
“She is a very special mare, also mine oath-friend,” Stile said stiffly, not wanting to admit that things had pyramided somewhat.
“I fear my people will not support this,” the Elder said. “They will fear thou wouldst borrow the Flute merely to abscond with it, facing no Worm. Who would stop thee, armed with it?”
Both Stile and the Lady reacted with anger. “My Lord Blue does not cheat!” she flared. “I thought we had already made proof of this. Again will I stand hostage to that.”
“Nay,” Stile said, touched by her loyalty, though he knew it was the honor of the Blue Demesnes she was protecting rather than himself. “Thou’rt no hostage.”
The Elder’s canny gaze passed from one to another. “Yet perhaps this would do, this time. Let the Lady be my guest, here, for a few hours; do we care if others assume she be security for this loan of the Flute? Methinks no man would leave his love to be sacrificed to a dragon. If the Worm be slain, thy mettle is proved, and the loan is good.”
“The Lady is not my—” Stile started, then reconsidered. It was a matter he preferred not to discuss here. Also, he would be operating on an extremely tenuous footing if he denied his love for her. He would not permit her to be fed to the dragon, whatever her feeling for him.
“Others be not aware of that,” the Elder said, delicately skirting the issue. “Few know that the Lord of the Blue Demesnes has changed. Let her remain with me, and none of my people will hold thy motive in suspicion. She will not be ill-treated.” He glanced at the Lady. “Dost thou perchance play chess?”
“Perchance,” she agreed, smiling.
Stile realized that the Elder had proffered a viable compromise. It was a way to suppress the objections of the Mound Folk, without really threatening the Lady. Certainly Stile was not about to take her with him to meet the dragon!
“Do thou keep the harmonica during mine absence,” Stile said to the Lady, handing her the instrument. “This time I must use the Flute.”
“I like this not,” she said grimly. But she took the harmonica. If Stile did not return, she would at least retain this memento of her husband.
Pyreforge, meanwhile, was setting up the chessmen.
Stile carried the Flute with him into the depth of the crevice. Now he knew the origin of the hot wind and demonic odor from this crevasse. The Worm lurked below!
He had never fought a real dragon before, as the Lady had mentioned, and was not entirely sanguine about this one. The closest approach to a dragon he had made was the one in the Black Demesnes, actually formed from a line, and when balked it had unraveled literally into its component string. The Worm surely would not do that! Adept-quality magic should prevail—but still, if anything went wrong—
Well, he should have the advantage of surprise. The Worm would assume Stile was another item of tribute, a victim to be consumed. He should be able to get quite close before the monster realized what it was up against. That would give him time to survey the situation. Pyreforge had assured him that the Flute would facilitate his magic, yet he had also said that magic alone would not suffice; that suggested that the Flute was not quite as powerful a charm as the Mound Folk wished to believe.
Now they were well below the ledge they had hurdled before. Neysa picked her way carefully as the path narrowed, and Stile kept the Flute assembled and handy. For him it should serve double duty—both to protect his ability to do magic, and to summon the magic itself, since he needed music for his spells. He would have been in trouble if he had needed to play two different instruments simultaneously for those purposes! He was rehearsing those spells in his mind now—one to abate fire, another to shield him from biting, another to make him invisible. But mainly he needed one to eradicate the Worm, one way or another. Could the creature be banished to Hell? Here in this magic frame, there really was a Hell. He had accidentally sent Neysa there once; that had led to a lot of trouble. Which meant that that option was out, now; Neysa would not go for it. He was extremely wary of antagonizing his unicorn friend; unicorns were devastatingly stubborn once they made an issue of something.
Not Hell, then. How about a size change? Convert the giant Worm into a midget worm, harmless. Maybe in three more centuries it would grow back into a giant, but by then it should be far away—if some hungry bird hadn’t snapped it up in the interim. What would be a suitable spell? Monstrous Worm, be small as a germ. Hardly great art, he lamented as usual, but for the purpose of magic it only needed to rhyme and have appropriate meter.
What kind of magic would be wrought by superior verse? Some day he would have to experiment with genuine poetry, instead of doggerel, and see what happened.
Now the path leveled out. A large, round tunnel took off to the side—the bore of the Worm. A hot drift of air came from it. The Worm could not be far distant.
Stile hesitated. He leaned down to whisper into Neysa’s left ear, which rotated obligingly to receive his words. “If we march blithely into the Worm’s lair, methinks we’ll be slightly cooked,” he said. “Yet if we do not, the monster may become suspicious. I would like to lure it out to a location convenient for me, so that at least I can survey it before emerging to engage it—yet how can I bring it to me without engaging it?”
Neysa blew a short, positive note. Realizing that she had a notion, Stile dismounted.
She shimmered into girl-form, a petite, lovely, naked, semi-elven lass. “Tribute,” she murmured, making a gesture of innocence and helplessness.
Stile was delighted and appalled. “Thou’rt the perfect lure,” he said. “Thou fittest the part precisely. But I dare not risk thy getting caught by the monster.”
She shimmered again and became a firefly. The insect circled him once, then converted back to girl-form.
“That’s so,” Stile agreed. “I keep forgetting thy third form. Thou canst escape, if thou art not burned.”
“Fireproof,” she said.
“Thy firefly form is fireproof? Wonderful!” Neysa was a treasure of ever-new facets.
Stile reflected for a moment, then plotted their c
ourse. “I prefer to have some space to battle the Worm, even though I expect to banish it with a spell. One must always be prepared for the unexpected. So do thou lure it out to the crevice, then get thee swiftly to safety. If I destroy it not, and suffer death, do thou fly up to Elder Pyreforge and the Lady and tell them I have failed. I will hurl the Flute out to the crevice if I can, that it be not lost.” This sounded bold and brave, but Stile felt somewhat weak in the knees; he had not had much experience in this sort of thing. He really did not expect to be in serious danger of demise, otherwise he would have been terrified. He was just covering the extreme eventuality.
Neysa nodded, then walked to the center of the tunnel. Stile sang a spell to make himself invisible. This was external magic only; he remained just as solid as always, despite the change in appearance. He was getting accustomed to the limits of his power. When he lifted himself by magic he was changing his locale, not his body. He could not heal his own injured knees. He could not duplicate Neysa’s shape-changing or genuine insect-flying ability, though he could create the illusion of change in himself, and could fly artificially by magic means. There were some fine distinctions, but overall he was perhaps more vulnerable than Neysa, though he was also more powerful.
When she saw he was unseeable, Neysa went into her act. “Oh!” she cried. “I’m so afraid! The horrible dragon is going to eat me!” She was really working at it, since she didn’t like to talk. Stile felt a warm glow of appreciation. Once Neysa had given him her loyalty, she had been the truest of companions.
Soon there was a rumbling deep in the tunnel. A hotter, ranker wash of air passed, as if some enormous engine had started up. Stile’s imperfect confidence suffered attrition. There were after all so many things that might go wrong …
Neysa continued lamenting. The rumble increased. The Worm must be afraid that the prey would flee if not quickly nabbed—a reasonable assumption. That was one important thing Stile wanted to know about it—how alert it was, and how fast it moved. A big, ponderous creature would be easier to handle than—
All too soon the Worm arrived. It was indeed a dragon. It had a long narrow head with a conical snout, narrowing in ringlike stages. The derivation of this monster from a literal worm was evident. Of course there were many kinds of worms; Stile tended to think of earthworms because many Citizens employed them in their elegant gardens. But he knew there were other types, some of them vicious. This dragon was a vicious worm grown monstrous.
Neysa screamed realistically and skipped nimbly to the mouth of the passage. The Worm exhaled a puff of smog and slid forward. Its legs were puny compared to its bulk, not really used for its forward motion—but it did indeed have horrendous claws, and seemed to be fully adequate to the task of gutting a human being efficiently. Its metallic scales did not gleam; they were drab and dirty, more like the mud-caked treads of a caterpillar tractor. Stile did not doubt they were invulnerable to ordinary attack. Theoretically the point of a sword could be slid up under a layer of scales to penetrate the flesh beneath—but that could lead to a shallow slanting wound, only aggravating the monster. And what would the Worm be doing while the swordsman was making his insertion? Sitting still? Not likely!
All of this, Stile realized abruptly, was academic. He did not have a sword. He had forgotten to conjure one. He had only the Platinum Flute and his magic—which magic it was time to use.
Stile’s strategy had been to bring the monster out to the front, then cast his spell from the rear. Now a problem manifested; the Worm had no rear. Its giant cylindrical torso extended back into the gloom. The shape of a worm, naturally—long. He should have known.
Well, he should be able to enchant it anyway. Stile played the Flute, and the perfect notes poured out again, emerging like quicksilver to fill the tunnel with beauty. The magic gathered swiftly, unusually intense. Of course; they were down near the Phazite lode, so the power was near at hand.
The dragon reacted instantly. No senile mentality here! It had been about to lunge at the supposedly helpless damsel—Neysa was playing it uncomfortably close—but recognized the summoning of magic here. The tiny armored eyes oriented on Stile—and did not see him, since he was invisible. Nevertheless the front orifice opened, its diameter cranking wider in several stages until it was a good yard across. From it a blast of hot fog bellied out.
In this instant it occurred to Stile that the Worm had not tried to use heat on Neysa. Maybe it preferred its meals raw.
Time for self-defense. “From head to feet, immune to heat!” Stile sang.
But as the fog struck him, Stile discovered it was a false alarm. The stuff was hot but not burning. It was like being in a polluted sauna.
The dragon heaved again. This time its breath was hotter and smelled worse. The creature was old; it took it time to get up full steam. The third blast was burning, and the fourth contained pure fire. From hair-dryer to flamethrower, in easy stages!
Now for the attack. “O mighty Worm, complete thy term,” Stile chanted, willing instant death on it.
Then something strange happened. There was a coruscation in the air midway between them, as of a beam of light striking a refractive barrier. The Worm did not die.
Stile tried again. “O Worm of fire—weaken, expire!”
Again that dissipation enroute, and lack of effect. His spells were potent, but were not reaching the dragon!
Now the creature’s tiny eyes flashed. Stile had not realized that worms had eyes, but this one certainly did. He remembered the weapon he had been warned about. “Light—blight!” he cried, and the lightning fizzled out before reaching him. His backup spells were saving his hide.
The Worm paused, evidently taking stock. Stile did the same. His magic worked—but the Worm was shielded against it. The Worm had magic—that Stile could block. So the Flute enabled Stile to perform his magic here, but not to use it directly against the enemy. Like two armored knights, they were so well protected against attack that neither could hurt the other magically. The Elder elf had been right.
So much for his rehearsed spells. This conflict was about to get physical. And the Worm was a good deal more physical than Stile.
Still, he would have to make a try. For one thing, he was now trapped inside the tunnel; the bulk of the Worm was between him and the exit. In fact the bulk of the Worm surrounded him. The monster was slowly constricting, hemming him in. Neysa was on the far side of the dragon, unable to help.
Stile had no weapon, other than the Flute. Now he knew that the Flute, while effective, was not enough. Not against the magic Worm. What he needed at the moment was a good sword. What was that spell he had prepared, to summon such a weapon?
The Worm’s tube-mouth opened wider—and now a ring of teeth showed, six-inch teeth sure enough, pointing inward. No doubt useful for tunneling through rock—but surely adequate also to grind up one small man. Why couldn’t he think of that spell!
The head nudged closer. Stile held the Flute before him in a futile gesture of defense while he tried to cudgel his memory into yielding up the forgotten spell—damn this failure under pressure!—and discovered he held a sword. A shining platinum blade, long and sharp, two-edged. But light and balanced. Exactly the kind of sword he was well versed in.
“Well, now!” Stile exclaimed, confidence surging. The elves had not informed him of this aspect of the Flute! It was a shape-changer.
Stile stepped briskly forward and stabbed at the Worm’s side. He expected the point to bounce off the tough scales, but it penetrated. Aha! The enchantment of the Platinum Sword was proof against the Worm’s resistance. Maybe it was a different kind of spell, that when buttressed by forceful physical action—
The Worm screamed like a siren and whipped its head about. Stile jerked the sword out and retreated. A geyser of dark red blood shot out of the hole, sailing in an arc through the air to splash on the stone several feet away. A rank charnel smell rose from the fluid.
The dragon’s nose nudged up to the wound. A slimy
tongue slid out, intercepting the flow of blood. Did worms have tongues? This one did! Was it about to drink its own blood? A single slurp—and the flow abated.
The nose drew away. The blood remained staunched. Maybe it was the saliva: some magical curative property. This monster could heal itself.
The dragon’s head was orienting on Stile again. This was one tough worm! It might not be able to see him, but it could hear him and smell him, and in the poor light that was just about as good. Stile had foolishly delayed when he should have been edging around to rejoin Neysa, during the Worm’s distraction. Still, maybe he could—
Stile strode for the Worm’s side. Immediately the snout snapped toward him. Stile dodged back and sprinted past the head to reach the mouth of the tunnel.
Neysa was awaiting him in equine form. She too could place him readily by smell and sound. Next time he fought an animal, he would prepare spells of inaudibility and unsmellability! He leaped to mount her. “At least we know it can be injured by this sword,” he said. “Maybe if we charge in, slash, and charge out before it reacts, then wound it in a second place, and a third—”
He stopped. He no longer had a sword. He supported a long platinum lance. The magic Flute had shown another facet!
Stile braced the lance in his arms and Neysa charged the Worm as its head swung about. The point of the lance struck the neck just behind the head; Stile did not have his aim perfect yet. A lance was not the easiest thing to use! He really needed some sort of supportive harness. The shaft rammed in forcefully—and Stile was shoved off his mount.
Of course, he realized as he picked himself up. The instrument was enchanted so that it could not be jarred out of his grasp—but the shock of impact had had its natural effect on his body. He should have anticipated that.
The Worm screamed again. That puncture hurt! As Stile hauled the lance out, a larger gout of blood spurted—but this time the Worm could not get its mouth on the spot, because the wound was too close to the head.
Stile perceived his avenue of victory. He lifted the lance—and it was what he needed, a hefty double-bitted battle-axe. As the Worm’s head twisted vainly to the side, trying to reach the wound, the neck was exposed on the other side to Stile’s attack.
Blue Adept Page 14
