"Ready to face dragons tomorrow, Naurag?" I asked him, leaning against his side while I toasted over a small fire the last of the cheese I had brought with me, preparatory to spreading it on the last of the stale bread. For conversational purposes I preferred the language of men; the Hidden Language was really not designed for general discussions. Besides, I hoped that Naurag would pick up human words the way an intelligent dog might; he already seemed to know his name.
He gave a friendly grunt, and I realized somewhat guiltily that he had no idea what I meant when I said "dragons." A sensible flying beast would stay as far from them as possible. But I was certainly not going to survive an encounter without him.
I had spent the last few days memorizing the spell for finding the Scepter as best I could; the first part, the part with the densest phrases in the Hidden Language, I had already attached to my old wizard's staff. It wouldn't have a tenth of the powers of the Scepter itself, but until I found the Scepter it had to do. Although I had to assume rather optimistically that the herbs also necessary for the old spells would occur to me between here and the dragons' valley, I was starting to believe that I might be able to work them—but only if I had rapid escape transportation.
* * * *
We started north the first thing in the morning, and within a few hours the landscape began to change. We flew over a row of low hills, brown and desolate as was almost everything here in the borderlands of the realm of wild magic, but beyond lay a small lake the same color as the sky, rimmed with plants of emerald green. I directed Naurag to fly lower for a closer look; warm air, completely out of season, wafted up to us, along with a scent of—melons?
He looked back over his shoulder at me; he had smelled them as well. I banked and swung lower still. Melon vines indeed grew along the edge of the sky-blue lake, along with bushes covered densely with white flowers. No sign of dragons or other danger. "How about if we stop for a snack?" I suggested.
Naurag thought this was a swell idea. In a moment I was seated on soft grass, plucking the sweet, pink-fleshed melons that grew in profusion on either hand, cracking and eating some myself but tossing the rest to my companion, who floated beside me a foot off the ground.
Among the flowering bushes that surrounded us, I now saw brilliantly-colored butterflies, drinking delicately from the blossoms. Though the blooms themselves were white, their pollen was golden, and all the red and yellow butterflies flashed gold from their abdomens as they flew. A splash from the lake next drew my attention, and I saw fish, the same sky-blue as the waters themselves, leaping upward and dropping again, eyeing me with what I could have sworn was interest.
When I leaned back I could see, thrusting skyward, the shimmering white peaks that separated human lands from those of wild magic. A band of mist swirled around the highest points for a moment, then dissipated, letting me look from the comfort of this magical valley up to the bitter snows and glaciers of mountains where man had never walked since the Ifriti first helped push them up from the earth's mud and stone.
It looked a little like a picture of heaven I dimly remembered seeing in a Sunday School book as a child, a flowering and fruitful land beside a lake at the foot of the mountains. Could this in fact be heaven? But if I were really dead I thought I would have noticed. Still, being dead from everybody else's point of view might turn out to be extremely liberating, I thought, and picked and cracked open another melon. There was no reason to do anything at all, except enjoy the pleasures of the land of magic.
With a snap of my fingers I created an enormous illusory beetle, metallic green, who swooped over the lake's surface. Some of the fish dove down in dismay, but others leaped at it with gusto, then fell back in disappointment when their mouths closed around nothing more substantial than air. Another snap of my fingers, and the beetle was gone, but both Naurag and I were invisible, only our shadows marking our continued presence. I had never before been able to make anything invisible beyond myself, and even that was always difficult. The next moment, we were again visible to the startled fish, but now the branches of the bushes started swaying and shaping themselves, to form letters spelling out Daimbert.
"I'd better stop," I said to Naurag with a laugh. "Spells are suddenly so easy that in a minute I'll persuade myself that I can face dragons with my bare hands. We should get underway again. But let's remember this place—when the snow is blowing in Yurt, it might be nice to have a lake of perpetual summer to which we could come."
We flew onward for a few miles, rose over another row of dry hills to the next valley, and almost collided with a giant.
He stood up, stretching with arms over his head, just as we flew past. Brown, placid eyes stared at us with the same mild alarm that might be shown by a cow seeing something small rustling in her pasture. Naurag avoided him with a few quick wing-beats, seeming unconcerned. The giant grinned at us as we darted by, showing teeth as big as my head. I nodded back in salute.
"Did you see that?" I asked Naurag excitedly. "He must have been the size of a house! And I'm glad you were able to avoid him—I bet he doesn't perform snappy maneuvers any easier than a house would. I've heard about giants all my life, but I never thought I'd see one."
But this giant was only the first of many we saw in the next hour. They had enormous, bulging muscles, which I thought they must need to move themselves around even here in the land of magic, but their strength seemed turned entirely to domestic purposes. I soon realized that the rather misshapen heaps of stone that dotted the landscape here were giants' huts, with tidy garden patches and normal-sized sheep out in back. The giants all seemed friendly enough, slow-moving, only slightly curious about us but delighted when I returned their waves.
"I wonder why I ever imagined the land of wild magic would be a dangerous place," I said to my purple companion. Talking to him, I had managed to reassure myself in the last few days, was entirely different from talking to myself. "I'm certain the dragons will be a challenge when we reach them, but everything else here is delightful."
It was at that point that I spotted the fanged gorgos.
At first I had thought the rough pile of stones was just another giant's hut. But rather than having a garden and sheep around it, it had bare, muddy earth and half-gnawed bones. "Is this some sort of outlaw giant?" I was just starting to ask, when a horrendous stench wafted toward me. My head jerked up to see, rising from behind the rocks, a creature five times the size of a man but with the wings of a bat. Its fanged jaws were enormous, even for its enormous head, and its eyes glowed like living coals.
It shot toward us, giving a horrible, slathering sound. I could recognize all too well what that sound meant—it meant hunger.
Without waiting for commands from me, Naurag sped northward, his wings beating faster than I had ever seen them move. The giants quickly disappeared behind us as we raced away across wooded hills and narrow green valleys. I had had no idea Naurag could go this fast—we must be covering many miles in not much more than a minute. Clinging desperately to his neck as I was almost thrown free, I glanced back to see that it wouldn't do any good. The gorgos, its enormous leather wings beating almost lazily and its mouth wide open, was rapidly drawing closer.
V
There was a way to stop a gorgos, a spell I had used on one a dozen years ago, if I could just remember through my terror what it was—
And suddenly the slathering sound and the fetid breath at the back of my neck were gone. Naurag, sensing the change too, jerked his head around. A trick? The gorgos had stopped dead, its winged shoulders hunched. A tiny piping noise in the distance resolved itself into someone's voice, shouting upward from the ground.
The gorgos turned abruptly and started south, back in the direction from which we had just come. It looked as though someone with much more powerful magic than anything of mine had just ordered it to leave, and it had obeyed.
I waited to let my heart slow down and then tried to act nonchalant. No use letting whoever it was see how terrified I
had been of something that obeyed him readily. "A wizard from the school, do you think, stationed up here, or some other kind of magical creature?" I asked Naurag. "Do you think whoever it is might be friendly to flying beasts?"
Naurag seemed to think so. He flew quickly toward whoever had shouted at the gorgos, his head up and all his purple scales sparkling in the sun. As we drew closer, I could see it was a person, and for a second I was not sure if it was a man or a woman: someone tall, wearing flowing white robes, crowned with silver hair that rippled loose in the wind.
A face turned up toward me, and I could see now that it was a man, indeed the most handsome man I had ever seen: youthful in spite of the silver hair, with sharply-chiseled features, including a cleft chin that the old Master's pet student back at the school would have envied. "Greetings!" he called up to me, as unconcerned to see a wizard riding a purple flying beast as he had apparently been a moment before at the sight of a fanged gorgos.
"Um, good day!" I called back. "Thanks for stopping the gorgos before it ate us."
He lifted one hand as though to shrug away this minor service, but it appeared to me as if he held something in his other hand, concealed in the folds of his robes. "Come down," he called, his voice deep and melodious. "We see so few humans here it would be a pleasure to meet you."
Then he's not human himself, said a sharp voice in the back of my mind. But, I answered myself, that needn't mean he intended me and my companion any harm. He had, after all, just saved our lives. And if a gorgos would listen to him, I rather doubted I could get safely away if he was so interested in my company.
"The pleasure will be all mine," I called down cheerfully. I pressed Naurag's sides with my knees, and he sailed down to hover next to this man, this being, this—
Elf, said the voice at the back of my mind. When I was a boy listening to my grandmother's stories, the stories that had doubtless led to my decision to become a wizard, I had imagined the northern land of wild magic as a place of elves and fairies. But somehow when I was eight years old I had not thought of elves as gloriously handsome and seven feet tall.
"My name is Daimbert," I said politely, "and my purple companion is named Naurag."
The man's chin lifted in surprise. "Naurag? I once knew someone— But that was many years ago. It is of no matter. You may call me Gir. Come. The others will be interested in seeing a human. And after your fright I am sure you would like to eat and drink."
I considered several ways to suggest that I had not been frightened of the gorgos at all and gave them all up as useless. Gir strode briskly downhill, and as we followed him it crossed my mind to wonder if he could possibly mean the original Naurag, the old wizard who had created the Dragons' Scepter. But I shook my head at such a fancy. This man was younger than I was.
As we went I looked around, seeing that the landscape here was one of steep, wooded hills, a brilliant green as of early summer, and that the air was as warm and soft as at the first little lake we had reached. I saw no sign of human—or elven—habitation other than the neat brick path that Gir was following. But, looking ahead, I thought that the grove of great trees that topped the next hill looked somehow strange—
He strode effortlessly up the steep incline before us, Naurag following with gentle strokes of his win gs, and now I could see why the trees seemed so odd. Their trunks bulged outwards halfway up to the crown, and set in those trunks were windows. Gir's people lived literally in the trees.
Several came out to meet us, both men and women tall and silver-haired, beautiful in features and grave in manner. But something about the gathering nagged at me as not quite right.
My flying beast seemed quite comfortable with them, letting them stroke him on the neck and looking around for melons. I told them when they asked that I was a wizard, that I came from hundreds of miles south of here, and that I was more than willing to visit their humble chambers. As they led me up a winding stair inside the trunk of the largest tree— Naurag flew up outside—I realized what was bothering me. This whole group seemed composed of men and women no older than King Paul, without anyone older, and without any children.
A recent settlement, then, of elves who had left the main group to establish a new colony? But the dazzling porphyry columns that circled what they referred to as their "humble" chambers certainly did not suggest a frontier colony.
"This is beautiful!" I said in awe, looking around at stone in shades of ivory, pink, and mauve, all brightly polished and set off by baskets of flowers and ivy. The elves seemed pleased; one made an allusion to how hard it had been finding the right stones, gathered from all over this land. Outside the windows we could see the leaves of other trees, as well as Naurag looking in.
They fed me spring water and fruit, melons like those I had eaten earlier, apples, strawberries, raspberries, and lemons, apparently all in season at the same time here in the land of magic. It was the best fruit I had ever had in my life, perfectly ripe, juicy, sweet, its aroma alone a sensuous pleasure. Gir had the young woman in charge of the gardens come forward rather shyly to describe to me her many years' project to bring the fruit to such a pinnacle. She must, I decided, have been gardening since she was old enough to walk.
Even if I never saw this place again, I thought, it was good to know that it was here: an enchanted spot thousands of miles from home, but to which, in the darkest winters and the harshest times, one might imagine coming.
"And may we ask," Gir asked when I had sampled some of everything and tossed Naurag a melon, "why a wizard has come to the land of dragons?"
I wiped my mouth on a delicate napkin, shining white like all their robes. "Actually, I need to get into a dragon's lair. I realize this may seem foolish to you, and I'm afraid I really can't explain why, but I wonder if you could tell me if it is very far from here."
The others looked at each other, and Gir shrugged. "It is not far at all. A five-minute flight on the beast you name Naurag will take you there."
"Maybe I'd better get started," I said reluctantly, "though first I do want to thank you for this wonderful food—"
But they urged me to stay for the rest of the day and the night: not, I thought, as though wanting to give me a mournful farewell dinner, but rather as though visiting the dragons would be mildly fatiguing event, which it was best to approach fresh.
After my escape from the gorgos, I was delighted to put off dragons and their fangs until tomorrow. "Isn't it dangerous," I asked, "having dragons virtually on your doorstep?"
"It could be, of course," Gir said gravely. "One must never underestimate either their ferocity or their cunning. But long ago we found a way to deal with them, and after all we endured before we came here, we do not find them so bad a watch-dog on our porch. Although our life here requires vigilance, I would not call it dangerous."
Perhaps, I tried to reassure myself, dragons' ferocity had been grossly overrated. But the voice at the back of my mind, which refused to look on the bright side, reminded me that I had met a dragon once, and although it was several decades ago now, time had not obliterated the memory of coming extremely close to being messily devoured.
Gir and his people wanted to entertain me. First the food and then this, I thought, toying with the idea of living here for the rest of my life while Elerius did whatever he wanted. They seated me in the middle of the grove of trees, brought out stringed instruments, and began to play. From the first notes, their melodies entered straight into my bloodstream, drawing me deep into the melody. One of the silver-haired women began to sing, words I could not understand, set in a minor key. Somehow, although I had no idea what she was singing about, her song brought me images: a brave band of explorers lost in a foreign land, their valiant efforts to survive, their sorrow and despair as their numbers began to dwindle, the unexpected discovery that gave them hope—
Something heavy and hot hit me on the leg. Startled, I looked down to see that Naurag was hovering next to me and had put his head across my knee. I put a hand on hi
s head and scratched it as though he were a cat, which he enjoyed tremendously, then went back to listening to the music. But the spell was gone, and the words to this song were no more to me than beautiful sounds in a foreign tongue.
The next song, however, I could understand, for it was sung in the language of men—for my benefit? Three of the women sang together, their voices light and clear, singing of the joys of their grove, their pride in their homes and in their fruit trees, the deep companionship among their group, their love for their neighbors the giants and even, if I understood them correctly, the dragons. I could appreciate why they danced with pure pleasure, robes whirling around them, as they sang this song.
Stories followed, stories of a small group of people living in what I gathered was one of the more northern parts of the Western Kingdoms, treated with growing suspicion as new neighbors migrated up from the south and settled near them. The story was set long ago, in the days of the distant Empire, but it was very poignant nonetheless. The people were first regarded with amazement and awe, but then increasing jealousy as their new neighbors could not grow food or build with beautiful stone as they did, especially when the neighbors died and they did not. Finally open resentment boiled up when the people did not have the wizardly skills their new neighbors seemed to expect. Attempts to migrate themselves were almost disastrous when they settled first near the lair of a gorgos—a danger with which I could certainly identify. I was pleased when, after a series of even more hair-raising adventures, the story finished with the people finally finding a place of peace.
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