“Your plan is most ingenious, my lord, and no doubt it will succeed. Of course I will do everything I can. It appears that we are about to have a long evening. We will need our strength, and it would be a shame to waste this excellent meal. Let us finish our dinner, and then this Gray and I will go off to meet the Hartford.” By way of example Mara thrust the fragment into her mouth and motioned to Castor to refill her plate.

  “A worthy idea. I’ll need my strength for the days ahead. Gray, more wine and another scoop of stuffing—this has gone cold.”

  Castor filled the goblet, then ladled a generous portion of the rot-root-laced compound onto Hazar’s plate. The Gogol lord captured a heaping forkful of the rich brown mixture. Castor and Mara watched anxiously as he conveyed the stuffing to his mouth. Hazar’s jaw snapped open, his lips pulled back, and the tip of his fork began to enter his maw. At that instant Hazar gasped and grabbed his stomach with both hands. Abandoned in midair, the fork clattered noisily to the enameled plate, spewing its load of stuffing across the table. Convulsed with a series of violent cramps, Hazar doubled over and clutched his. midriff. Greyhorn’s attack had begun.

  Mara stared indecisively at the writhing form. After a few seconds’ delay, she called to the guards. Derma and two guards raced into the room. For a moment they also stood frozen as they beheld Hazar’s agony.

  “Fool!” Hazar groaned through clenched teeth. “Call my overdeacons. Bring them at once!”

  Derma sent one of the guards to fetch Hazar’s associate wizards, then strode forward himself to attempt to aid his lord. By the time Croman, Jasper, and Wax entered the chamber Hazar, with Derma’s assistance, had already succeeded in neutralizing the worst of the pangs.

  Hazar moaned a series of instructions and Croman quickly called up an appropriate protective spell. The pains rapidly subsided. Hazar, although clearly shaken by the attack, returned, more or less, to normal. Livid with rage, he screamed at his underlings:

  “Complete your incantations; call up the Firebird. I have work aplenty for the demon tonight.”

  At a sign from the overdeacons, Derma instructed, the guards to clear the table. The ends of the tablecloth were pulled together to form a sack, upending plates, tureens, and goblets in the process.

  Croman, Jasper, and Wax scratched a large chalk triangle onto the table’s surface. Each seated himself at one of the figure’s points. Satchels were brought forth. Each of the overdeacons extracted powders, vials, crystals, fragments of bone and flesh, and, at last an ivory simulacrum of a great winged lizard.

  The overdeacons worked rapidly, reassembling the implements of the spell over which they had struggled all afternoon. Soon the crystals were positioned, the powders spread in the appropriate patterns, their faces and hands anointed with the required fluids. In droning resonant tones each recited his portion of the spell As the incantation proceeded the room grew dimmer, as if the wizards were sucking the very light from the glowpods to energize their .spell. As the moment of climax approached each extracted a blade and sliced the middle finger on his left hand. Their arms extended, bisecting the edge of the triangle opposite their seats; their fingers met in the center of the figure, touched, and dripped blood in a common stream, thick, red, clinging drops splattering onto the figure of the Firebird.

  By now the glowpods had flickered almost out. The only illumination derived from a phosphorescent glow in the air. above the triangle, a radiance which illuminated the wizards’ faces with a pearly light. From beyond the outer wall of Hazar’s apartments could now be heard the sound of a raging whirlwind tattooed with the snaps and scrapes of nail and claw.

  “He comes,” Jasper whispered.

  A wild screech sounded, a howl which pierced stone and flesh as if both were no more substantial than paper.

  “He is here,” Croman proclaimed in hushed tones. “Your orders, my lord?”

  “He is to leave this place, to fly east over the farmlands, beyond the Weirdlands, beyond Grenitch Wood, across the Guardian Mountains to the manor house of the wizard Greyhorn two leagues west of the Hartford town of Alicon. There, ignoring all barriers, he is to take possession of the sorcerer Greyhorn, to clutch the living wizard in his talons and return here with him at once. Now, set him free. Send him on his errand.”

  ’ The overdeacons resumed their incantations. Lines of strain creased their faces as they joined hands and silently communed with their creation. In seeming climax to their spell the glowpods flashed briefly, went black, and then slowly returned to their normal illumination. The deacons slumped forward. In exhaustion, they released their hands. Wax muttered:

  “It is done; he goes to Greyhorn.”

  “Excellent. Now to our other duties. You there, Gray-how are you called?”

  “Castor,” the Ajaj said, deliberately refusing to add the honorific “my lord.”

  “The famous Castor, is it—the Gray with backbone? Good; you’re well suited to your mission tonight. Derma, get five guards and come with me; we’ll follow out of sight just behind. Mara, Castor, go to the tumbles and bring forth Grantin’s sleeping body and, if possible, the Fanist as well. Tonight I will conclude my dealings with the two Hartfords, uncle and nephew both.”

  Castor and Mara hesitated for only an instant, then, with no other course available, left Hazar’s apartments and walked toward the Gate of Dread.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Mightily disturbed at the cruel fates which had dogged his heels, Grantin grumbled two or three sullen oaths and sought vainly for a comfortable position on Castor’s stone floor. He thought it terribly unfair that a person of his breeding, intelligence, and tender sensibilities should be subjected to such repeated indignities. Were the world to function as it ought he would be back at Greyhorn’s manor relaxing after a pleasant repast and planning his triumphs at the fair at Gist.

  With the merest flip of his hand the doughnuts would float outward to center unerringly upon the winning pegs. So inundated would he be with marvelous prizes that within an hour or two he would be required to hire a sturdy lad to carry his winnings. Grantin smiled at the pleasant thought, then found his attention distracted by a knob of granite which poked insistently against the center of his spine. With ill grace he edged his lanky form slightly to one side and refocused his attention to happier circumstances.

  The women, the lovely women; what a pleasant sight was that to imagine. When he was dressed in his smart new tunic, brushed leather trousers, richly adorned and manfully scented, the maidens would flock to him like stingwings to a flame. They should be tall, but not too tall; he found it awkward kissing eye to eye. Soft and shapely, but not overly endowed; that kind tended to run to fat. Long-haired, but not too long; hair of an excessive length became a nuisance on certain occasions.

  The vision in his mind’s eye rippled and adjusted itself as each new criterion was added to his list. Finally the picture was complete—a maiden striking, shapely, sensuous, yet soft, loving, complaint. The perfect girl. As the vision cleared, with more than a little surprise Grantin noted that the woman bore a striking resemblance to Mara. Somehow he found that disturbing.

  A pebble crept stealthily forward and lodged itself beneath his calf. The image vanished. Grantin found himself wide awake and more uncomfortable than ever.

  “I swear I was more at ease in the middle of the forest. How can the Ajaj sleep like this?” Grantin grumbled as he sat up and massaged several sore spots in his back.

  ’They do not,” Chom’s voice called out from the corner of the darkened parlor.

  “Do not what?”

  “Sleep like this. The open space disturbs them. Their beds are in niches carved into the walls.”

  “I should have known they wouldn’t endure this discomfort. Doesn’t this fellow have a guest niche or two where we could sleep?”

  “We could,” Chom answered with a gurgling laugh, “provided we squeezed in half our body at a time’. It could become rather confining.”

  “Chom, do you think he’ll be able to bring Mara? Do you think this is ever going to end? I’m so tired of living like a peasant!”

  “I am certain that all of this discomfort will end,” Chom answered reassuringly, “one way or another.”

  “I can think of one way. What’s the ‘another’?”^

  “There are several, really. They could chop your arm off and set you free, or they could chop your hand off and set you free, or they might execute you altogether, or—”

  “Enough!”

  “You asked for my evaluation of the possibilities.”

  “That was before you overwhelmed me with the optimism of your predictions,” Grantin replied sulkily.

  The termination of their conversation magnified the silence in Castor’s apartment, a quiet which was soon broken by a new sound. From the jagged rocks beyond the parlor wall came the scratch and scrape of moving figures. Grantin heard the scuff of leather upon stone, then the soft chatter of pebbles skittering down the slope.

  In the rock-walled darkness Grantin became disoriented. Though he was tempted to ask for Chom’s advice, his fear ‘of discovery would not allow him to speak. Minute by minute the sounds grew inexorably closer and more pronounced. At last Grantin heard the slab at the entrance to Castor’s tunnel being dragged aside.

  The scrape of the stone dissolved Grantin’s paralysis. In an instant he jumped to his feet, crept to the tunnel exit, and slid his dagger from its sheath. Behind him Grantin heard the telltale hissing of Chom’s horny feet against the floor. The scrapes and clicks were measurably louder now as their volume was amplified by the acoustics of the tunnel. A foot from the tunnel exit, a voice called out:

  “Grantin, Chom, are you there? Don’t be afraid; it’s me, Castor.”

  Grantin let out a pent-up sigh and hissed into the darkness; “Why didn’t you say something before? Poor Chom was extremely disturbed. He thought you were a Gogol trying to sneak up on us.”

  “Do not worry; his concern is not wasted. Hazar’s guards will be here soon enough,” Castor replied as he paced soundlessly across the room to where his glowpod hung.

  Grantin could barely make out the Ajaj’s form in the darkness. He turned to follow Castor’s motion. From behind came a renewed patter of scrapes and clicks, sounds which so startled Grantin that, in turning, his dagger flew from his hand and clattered to the floor.

  “The guards…!” Grantin squeaked. He found his limbs paralyzed with fright. He was able to do no more than stare stupidly at the tunnel’s black exit Castor silently excited his glowpod to a weak yellow-green radiance. At the edges of its dim illumination Mara crawled into the room, then stood simultaneously straightening her garments and slapping the dust from the hem of her skirt “This is the female you asked me to bring,” Castor announced, “the one called Mara.”

  Mara examined Grantin critically while the young Hartford was still searching for his voice.

  “You are the same one after all,” she whispered. After a brief pause she reached for Grantin’s left hand. Pulling it sideways to catch the glowpod’s feeble beams, she was able to discern the ruby stone which still adorned Grantin’s index finger.

  “Are you really the same Mara who gave me this ring in Alicon? Was it only a week ago? It seems like years.”

  “For me as well. Somehow I had not believed them, but seeing you here—did you really come for me?”

  “Castor’s told you, then? Yes, “I’ve come a long way to find you. You have no idea of the indignities that Chom and I have endured. Oh, excuse me, I forget myself. Mara, allow me to introduce to you my friend and companion, Chom—as you can see, a Fanist of the highest order.”

  Now it was Mara’s turn to be startled as she spied the native standing quietly in the shadows a few feet from her right shoulder.

  “Do you know the danger you are in, Grantin?” Mara asked, turning back to the human.

  “I can make a very good estimate, but I had no choice. It was so important that I find you…”

  “My mother told me that Hartford men were all worthless and untrustworthy. I see now she was wrong. To think of the risks you’ve taken on my account! So much love, and all for nothing.” To his complete dismay Grantin noticed that Mara had begun to cry. “I cannot do it; I just cannot go through with it Even if your love is foolish and misplaced at least it is sincere. To think that a man, especially a Hartford, could feel that way^without me using my enchantments, could risk everything for me alone. I don’t know what to do. You are so young to die.”

  “Die!”

  “It is the Gogols,” Castor explained. “They have found out that you are here. Hazar has ringed the tumbles with guards and sent Mara in to bring you out without a fight. The female was supposed to inject you with a drug which would put you to sleep. Then, with you and the power of your ring out of the way, she was to call for the Fanist to surrender.”

  “But how did they find us?”

  “Obron, the leader of my people. She saw me bring you here. In order to protect my kinsmen from retribution she reported your presence. The shame is mine. As punishment I will share your fate.”

  “Is there another way out?” Chom asked.

  “In an Ajaj’s quarters? None that any of you could fit through,” Castor said, nodding toward the tunnel. “That is the only way.”

  “Could we fight our way out?”

  “Against one or two guards perhaps, but not the army that Hazar has poised—at least thirty of his soldiers. You might conquer a few of them, but you would never escape alive.”

  “What can we do? There must be some solution, some alternative, something.”

  “I see two choices,” Chom announced. “Surrender, or defeat as many of them as possible before we are killed.”

  “Killed!”

  “It’s all right, Grantin,” Mara said, throwing her arms around him and stifling her sobs. “I can’t let you walk out there alone. I will die with you.”

  “Die? Are you crazy? I have no intention of dying over a stupid piece of jewelry. You can do what you want, but I am going to go out there and let them take the ring. Chom, are you coming with me?”

  ‘

  “It seems I have little alternative,” the Fanist responded evenly. “Who goes first?”

  For long moments the four figures seemed rooted to Castor’s granite floor. At last Mara slipped forward, bent over, and entered the tunnel.

  Chapter Forty

  From behind granite boulders, abutments, and tip-sided slabs Hazar’s guards peered through the darkness and waited for the signal to attack. Several of the men carried cocked crossbows, bolt tips swinging aimlessly back and forth across the center of the tumbles. These were the. best weapons the common soldier possessed.

  From time to time gunpowder had been formulated and pistols reinvented, but each such experiment ended in disaster. The chemical energy released by an explosion eventually was tapped by the combatants and incorporated, deliberately or accidentally, into fearfully dangerous spells. Time and again experimenters were horrified to see their guns explode. The last such disastrous experiment had taken place in Cicero only twenty years before, an object lesson in terror which would, no doubt, refer similar innovation for another twenty or thirty years hence.

  It was one of the crossbowmen, one Huber by name, who first saw Mara emerge from Castor’s tunnel. Huber steadied his crossbow and strained to discern the target more clearly.

  A glowpod flickered to life in Mara’s hand, and she swung it carefully over her head in the all-clear signal. Hazar’s men cautiously advanced while Mara, then Grantin and the rest, picked their way down the rock-strewn slope. A semicircle of bowmen pocketed the prisoners at the bottom of the tumbles. Two members of the household guard, specially trained as hexmen, quickly released their spells of nullification, restraint, and deactivation, workmanlike incantations which, for a short while at least, would inhibit even powerful wizards from launching a magical counterattack. The group now physically and psychically secure, the captain of the-guards signaled that Hazar might approach.

  The Gogol wizard advanced briskly, his red-and-black gown streaming behind him. His feet picked their way unerringly over the rock-strewn sand at the base of the tumbles.

  “You have restrained them?” be asked the hexmen.

  “Indeed, my lord, they made no struggle.”

  “You did well, Mara, in arranging their capture. I seem to recall, however, that the plan called for this one”—Hazar jerked his thumb at Grantin—“to be drugged. But no matter. He is here and you have saved us having to carry him down the slope. You are Grantin of Alicon, I presume?” Hazar asked the young man politely. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Hazar, Lord of the Gogols and Master of the Gate of Dread. And this being who accompanies you?”

  “My human name is Chom.”

  “Both travelers from a far land. Allow me to show you our Gogol hospitality. I think you will find your quarters in Cicero somewhat different from those here in the Ajaj camp—and while I’m on that subject, there is business that remains unfinished.” Hazar turned to the captain of the guard and issued a sharp command: “Bring me Obron, the leader of the Grays.”

  The soldier motioned to two of his underlings. A moment later Obron was escorted forward to Hazar’s side.

  “These two were given shelter in your city,” Hazar began. “As you know very well, no unauthorized persons are permitted in our realm. Clearly your people are responsible. Why should I not make them pay?”

  “They had nothing to do with it, my lord. The presence of these travelers was reported to your guards.”

  “Perhaps that is all part of a clever scheme to try and avoid the punishment which is due you. Very well; I will test your sincerity. You saw these people captured by my men?”