One Quest, Hold the Dragons

by Greg Costikyan

  "I thought you said you'd checked the wards thoroughly," said G.

  "I did!" Wolfe protested. "The ward effect doesn't extend underground. The gnome shouldn't have—"

  "We're screwed, Wolfe," said G.

  "Ohhhhhhh," said the earth mage.

  "We don't have a choice," said Wolfe, dropping to hands and knees. Soft earth compressed beneath her palms; the tunnel smelled of rich loam. Wolfe contemplated the likely presence of small, wiggly things.

  "This is lunacy," said G. "We're discovered. We daren't— "

  "Nnnnnnnoooooooowwwwwww," said the earth mage.

  "Shut up and follow me," said Wolfe. "Stantz wants the statue by tomorrow morning. It's my ass if he doesn't have it.

  "Tough for you," said G.

  "Tough for you," said Wolfe, "if you want to keep on working for the Ministry."

  G's lips twisted into a snarl. She'd been involved in too many sensitive affairs; if the Ministry ever felt she was no longer to be trusted, she wouldn't live long. Wolfe was not merely threatening her livelihood, but her life.

  "Whhhhhhhaaaaaaat," said the earth mage.

  Briefly, G contemplated the possibility of killing Wolfe; killed in action, yes, with only G escaping to tell the doleful tale. But it was too chancy, to kill an ally while penetrating enemy territory.

  "Dooooooo," said the earth mage.

  Wolfe had disappeared into the tunnel. G stepped down into the hole and got onto her knees. The fact that she'd get dirty bothered her not at all; to the contrary, dirtsmeared on face and hands would merely make her harder for the enemy to see in this dim light.

  "Ook," said Chad worriedly, clambering into the tunnel.

  "Iiiiiiii," said the earth mage. Slowly, he blinked. They were gone. "Dooooooooo," he said, finishing the sentence. What should he do now?

  That was the problem in dealing with hasty folk. They had such short attention spans. Always running off and leaving you standing around at the site of a felony.

  He sighed for several minutes. Well, something would no doubt happen within the next few (apparent) seconds; either Wolfe would be back, or someone would arrest him, or perhaps someone would try to kill him.

  Experimentally, the earth mage said, "I surrender," as quickly as he was able. It was most unsatisfactory; why were though so damned many syllables in "surrender"? Dreadful word for the purpose; you'd think there'd be something simpler. "Uncle," he said. Would that do?

  The moment Jasper crossed the line of the fence, he heard a distant gong. "Bother," he muttered; apparently he hadn't been sufficiently high. Or possibly the wards extended up and over the mansion, a hemispheric effect; he'd heard of such things before.

  Well, he was still invisible, mostly, and still capable of flying rather quickly; and he had his magic powers. Reconnaissance was still feasible. He could get into the house and find someone in charge, read a mind or two, and find out where the statue was.

  Sidney shouted something at him. Surely they wouldn't be so foolish as to follow him? Well, with any luck he'd only be a minute. If they were such idiots as to cross the fence after him, they'd provide a useful diversion. He'd be back momentarily, and they could all scoot back to the pension for a late meal. A split or two of champagne would go very well, Jasper thought.

  He zipped through the still night air. It was late enough that the crickets had ceased their racket. There was no noise, other than that infernal gong and the hoot of an owl behind him. Confound it, not Mortise, I hope, he thought. There was an open window at the bottom floor, a drape blowing gently out into the night as the house exhaled warm air into cooling darkness. Jasper flitted for the window—

  There was a sudden impact. Jasper's head and knees smarted something fierce. His vision dimmed for a moment, and when it gradually returned, little things danced in the edges of his sight. He was lying headlong on the grass.

  He brought up a hand to look at it, but was relieved to see he was still invisible. Or rather, only his flame remained, the green light at the center of his being; it marked, so he had been told, his soul. He rose back into the air and moved toward the window once more, poking gingerly toward it with a hand.

  To all appearances, the window was wide open. And the drape waved through it without obstruction. He sensed a magic there, a diffuse one: another damned ward, this one not along the fence, but protecting the mansion itself.

  A ward against magical flight, he thought? Or invisible things? Or-or what?

  Jasper de Mobray felt his rings. Rings on his fingers and bells on his toes; well, no bells, actually, but he had rings aplenty. Ten fingers, ten rings. Given a decade or two as an adventurer, one tended to accumulate all sorts of magic items. This one stored magic power; this one commanded Damon; that gave him flight; this invisibility.... Very useful, Jasper's rings.

  And he'd worn them so long their effect was redoubled. Magic is effected through similarity; his rings had been so long on his fingers, were so intimately associated with himthat they were similar, in some sense, to his very soul. And so their effect was intensified, when he used their powers.

  But similarity was a double-edged sword. They were so damned similar it was hard to take them off.

  Physically hard, too, Jasper thought, feeling his knuckles. He was no longer as young, or as svelte, as he once had been.

  Jasper de Mobray sat on the grass before the Drachehaus, left hand twisting the ring on the middle finger of his right, grunting with strain as he tried to pull it off. The damn thing would not come. It would not come. He must get it off; it was the ring that gave him flight. With it off, perhaps he could get through the window. Or it if wasn't that one that barred him, perhaps the left index finger was the one, the ring of invisibility. He hadn't had it off in, oh, a decade at least, but, well, there it was. Damnation, thought Jasper, yanking with all his might, have the damned things grown roots?

  In the distance, there was the baying of hounds.

  Kraki clambered up an elm, out on a limb, and into a second-story window.

  "Oh, my goodness," gasped a woman's voice. "It's my husband!"

  Kraki watched with interest, one foot over the windowsill. A naked young man exploded out of the four-poster bed, covers flying. He snatched at his clothes and ran toward the window, colliding with Kraki. For a moment he looked as if he were about to faint, but then steadied. "I don't believe so," he said, "not unless your husband has somehow magically transformed into a half-naked savage with an enormous sword. Anyhow, there's two of them."

  "What?" said Kraki, and looked around. Nick was pulling his way through the window after him. "Hallo, Nickie," he said.

  A blond-curled head stuck out from between the curtains of the bed and surveyed the scene at the window. "Oh," she said. "I heard the gong; are they barbarian reivers, you think? Traveling by longboat far upriver to plunder the riches of Hamsterburg?"

  "Sure, doll," said Nick, eyeing her with interest. "That's us."

  Kraki drew his sword and faced the young woman's lover. "Scream and I kill you," he said genially.

  "I say," said the young man, "that's rather extreme, don't you think?"

  "Egbert," said the woman in a scared voice, "they're going to ravish me! You must protect me!"

  The young man started a bit at this and looked about, as if hoping to spy someone else on whom he might fob off the job. "Um, yes," he said. "I suppose. Look here, my good man, there'll be no ravishment here today. Pillaging, yes, all right, we can put up with a bit of pillage here and there; burning, well, if you must, although we'd really rather you didn't, you know. But rapine is right out. I'm going to be very firm on that."

  Ignoring him, Nick sat down on the woman's bed and took her hand. "Now, now," he said soothingly. "That's not our way at all, you know. We barbarian reivers really aren't such bad sorts, you know; we just get bad press."

  "I must ask you to leave," Egbert said firmly.

  "Piss off, shorty," said Nick.

  Dismissing Egbert and the blonde as
threats, Kraki ran lightly across the room to its only door. He opened it a crack and peered down the hall. There seemed to be only one person in the hallway, an elderly man in nightgown and slippers, holding a lamp in one hand and a stick of some kind—Kraki guessed it to be a wand—in the other. "Be qviet," Kraki said. "Vhere is statue?"

  "Statue?" said the young man, still naked, holding his balled-up clothes in one hand. "I don't know of any—unless you mean the bronze fawn by the koi pond."

  "Oh, that thing Gerlad has been pottering about with," said the woman dismissively, gong continuing in the distance. "I haven't the faintest idea where it is. He's been very conspiratorial about it, heaven knows why. It's probably in the vault. Or possibly the potting shed."

  The old man in the hall had reached the door, and now spoke. "Millicent?" he said, pushing on the door. "Are you all right? Devil knows what's going on with this racket."

  "Oik," squeaked the young man, and threw himself out the window. There was a loud thud and a groan as he hit the ground, apparently having missed the limb of the elm tree.

  Kraki had unthinkingly resisted the old man's shove against the door, and the oldster, now alarmed that an ajar door should not open easily, hurled himself into it, shoulder first.

  Kraki stood away. When the old man's shoulder hit the door, it resisted not at all. The door smashed open, the old man tripping over the rug just inside and stumbling headlong across the room. He dropped the lamp, which smashed on the floor, spilling oil, and, arms flailing, flung his wand upward.

  Unable to halt himself before staggering the full length of the room, the old man stumbled into the knee-height windowsill and hurtled out the window.

  Kraki had thought that the wand was made of wood, but it must have been of porcelain or some similar substance. It dropped in a long arc onto the bricks of the hearth, where, as Kraki watched, it smashed to flinders.

  The magic energy contained in the wand was instantly discharged in a brilliant, noiseless flash. Kraki had the misfortune to be looking directly toward the actinic glare.

  From outside, there was another thump and a loud "Ouch!" as the old man hit the ground. "I say," said the old man after a moment, "very decent of you to break my fall, Egbert."

  "Ah—glad to oblige," said the young man.

  "Although," said the old man, voice tinged with sudden suspicion, "how is it that I find you here, half-clad, beneath my wife's window?"

  "Vhere are lights?" said Kraki, whipping his head from side to side. He couldn't see anything except for a large, blue orb, hanging in the darkness before his eyes.

  "You're blinded," said Nick. "The flash. Me too, I'm afraid."

  "That makes three of us," said Millicent. "Are you going to ravish me now?"

  Nick considered this. It was an attractive proposition in a way; on the other hand, mere physical release had never interested him particularly. It was the pursuit, and its successful conclusion that aroused him; the proof that he was found desirable, the guilty pleasure in cuckolding other men. Actually, he found the notion of rape rather distasteful. No, he regretfully concluded, he wasn't going to ravish the fair Millicent. Just not his style. Besides, he really ought to stick with Kraki ...

  The hand he had been holding wriggled out of his own and began to caress his leg.

  Hmm. Then again ... Nick grinned into darkness. "Ha ha," he said. "I have you now, my lovely."

  "You devil," said Millicent breathlessly, sitting up and pressing her bosom against his chest. "I beg you, be gentle."

  The gnome froze. After a moment, its nose fell off. Little clods of dirt pattered to the lawn. G poked it with a finger; it was, she saw, no longer animate, nothing but a vaguely humanoid pile of earth.

  "This way," said Wolfe, briskly pushing through some hydrangeas. G and the troll followed. Lights had appeared in the mansion ahead; people were shouting, and somewhere dogs barked excitedly. G scowled, reluctant to press on as it became increasingly obvious that their target was alerted.

  Wolfe halted suddenly, wiping at her dirt-smeared face with an equally filthy sleeve. G stumbled into her from behind. "What is it?" said G, peering over Wolfe's shoulder.

  A door at the rear of the house had opened. From it, dogs ran.

  Not mere dogs, G saw; they were the size of ponies, their foreheads low, their eyes aflame. From their massive fangs, blue fire dripped toward the ground, the incandescent slaver burning points of black into the lushness of the lawn: hellhounds. The animals ran toward them.

  G was prepared to face almost anything, but fearsome demonic monsters rather larger than she were low on the list. She hesitated almost a full second before reaching for her weapons. Even that, she suspected, was a futile gesture; the beasts would be on them in instants, would tear them to shreds, would—

  Would turn and tear around the corner of the house?

  G blinked in astonishment. Whom were they after? Could von Grentz's wards possibly have misread where the fence had been breached? Or—might there be a second set of intruders? "What's going on?" G demanded.

  "How the hell should I know?" said Wolfe irritably. "Maybe we're being suckered. Maybe they decided to teach a door-to-door salesman a lesson. Or maybe von Grentz just decided now was a nice time to play with the doggies."

  She left the cover of the hydrangeas, sprinting toward the rear of the house. G and Chad followed, pounding across well-groomed sod. They joined Wolfe flat against the stone wall of the building, out of sight of any door or window. Just to their right, a stairway led downward to a cellar door. "Just a minute," said Wolfe. She concentrated a bit and disappeared. A shadow slid under the cellar door.

  "Where she go?" asked Chad nervously.

  "To unlock the door from inside, I expect," said G. She, too, felt a little anxious; they were too exposed, out here against the wall.

  Sidney sprinted from the shelter of the rosebush across a bed of iris and under a weeping hemlock. Ahead of her, cubits away yet, she saw Kraki swing from the limb of an elm tree and onto the sill of a second-story window, Nick clambering up the tree behind him. Of the others there was no sign, although somewhere hooted an owl—Frer Mortise?

  That gong sounded again and again. Lights were going on in the mansion, and somewhere men shouted and dogs howled.

  Then an excited barking began. Around the corner of the house, a half dozen hounds hurtled, paws eating up the sod.

  Sidney yowled and leaped for a branch of the hemlock, clawing her way high up the trunk. Below, the hounds leaped and snapped, eyes glowing brilliant red in the darkness.

  They were no mere dogs, she saw: pony-sized, eyes aflame, blue flame flickering about their jaws. She'd never seen hellhounds in the flesh before.

  One howled in frustration at its inability to climb the tree; it tensed, holding a point, and made a curious coughing sound.

  Flames roared from its mouth, up into the branches of the tree. Leaves curled and blackened where flame touched them. Sidney felt the whiskers on one side of her face singe, and yowled again, leaping higher into the tree.

  She wondered what to do. She might turn human once again, but her weapons, like her clothes, were back outside the fence. Treed, she thought in self-disgust, how amateurish.

  Sidney glowered at the hellhounds below. The fool creatures wouldn't give up; they leaped and snapped at her, but she was far too high for them to get her, and their blasts of fire merely denuded the lower branches of needles. She was safe, for the nonce, but ...

  One hellhound stood on its hind legs and reached up the trunk. It seemed to concentrate; as Sidney watched, its claws began visibly to grow. After a moment, it dug those now sharp claws into the tree, gave a little growl of satisfaction, and hoisted itself upward, hind claws scrabbling until they, too, found purchase. Doggedly, it reached higher again. Its progress was painfully slow; even with enhanced claws, it was not designed to be a climbing creature.

  A second beast was climbing now, on the trunk's opposite side. They whined in expectation, blue
-burning slaver running down the sides of their snouts, eyes glowing hateful red in the darkness.

  Sidney leapt from one branch to another, but realized she had nowhere to go. There were other trees in the garden, but none close enough for her to reach.

  Sidney gave a small, worried meow.

  Frer Mortise flitted through the night air, hooting morosely. A mouse scurried through a flowerbed, down below; he fought a powerful urge to dive, seize it in his claws, and bite off its head with his sharp beak. He mustn't give in to such instincts, he told himself; he had more important concerns.

  Exactly what they might be, however, he couldn't quite say. He was out of his league here and knew it, a simple hedge priest lost in the big city. His night vision was excellent, and his height gave him a better vantage than any of the others. He saw soldiers forming up on the house's front steps. He saw the hellhounds, clustered about a tree. He saw Jasper's green light, motionless before a window, and von Kremnitz and Timaeus strolling through the gar; den in leisurely fashion, as if out to sniff the night air. And at the rear of the house, he saw what seemed to be an enormous molehill, and a troll and a woman standing flat against the wall.