Dragonslayer: A Novel Read Free Page A

blue, white, and rose so subtle that they vanished and reappeared, like shifting and magically layered seas. An infinitesimal spark lay captured in its center, and this was the source of the undulating moonlike radiance in the room.
    Ulrich bore the amulet to the table where the bowl lay, its liquid trembling slightly at his approach. He carried it with utmost reverence; candlelight glinted palely in the swaying gold of the chain. Holding it as he addressed the bowl he whispered, "Nunc, illo tempore! And now, the old, old time!"
    Again the liquid swam with visions. This time they took longer to form, and they churned the bowl with a darker and deeper turbulence than before. Tiny splashes reached for Ulrich's hands as if seeking to draw the amulet he held back into the darkening vortex of the bowl. Indeed, a vortex had formed, rotating clockwise, revealing the very bottom of the bowl which seemed at that instant, even as Ulrich watched amazed, to open farther into huge dark spaces speckled by random fires.
    Ulrich found himself again gazing into the Past—not merely the few millennia of human history, but the time for which there were no records but enigmas buried in the earth, buried in the troubled myths and dreams of men. At first it appeared as an undulating mass of plasma, gray and black and purple relieved by streaks of pale white, then brown, then orange, then finally yellow, broadening and fluctuating until at last what appeared were the irregular horizontals of sky and earth and water. Through these moved the first life, amorphous and ponderous shapes, lifting monstrous snouts through the scum, dragging themselves down hopeless paths. Then, later, gaunt frames were lifted on updrafts of ceaseless storms, coupled clumsily, spilled young; they died and were swept away to become rock at last, flesh liquefied, bones pulverized by pressure.
    Ulrich watched wearily. He had long known, had long understood. But what now occurred within the bowl was new to him, and despite the clamoring pains in his back and legs he eagerly leaned closer to watch.
    He saw a man first, a man clad in skins, poised in a sorcerer's stance that Ulrich knew well; it was the stance taken when attempting a spell beyond one's reach—determined, yet wary and defensive. Even as the vision clarified, the spell passed from that other sorcerer, leaving him drained and weak, and at the same time the scene shifted so that Ulrich saw the effects apparently through the eyes of his fellow.
    The charm had been directed at the earth and had entered it. At first it seemed that only a minor tremor would result; bushes shook and pebbles rattled down a rocky grade. But then the agitation grew, and very soon the earth, which was in places like a scaly hide, undulated rhythmically. Fires pocked its surface in cones and opening fissures, and tiny rivulets of fire snaked down the slopes. Streams of water vanished in sudden steam.
    Even as the sorcerer reeled back from the heat, a fissure wider than any others spread magenta lips, and from between them a creature emerged. Two sets of talons came first, and then a leg, and then the membranous tips of incandescent wings. It was a winged lizard, cowled heavily with a ropy brow. The head was bejewelled with ruby encrustations, the snout surmounted by a gray-brown shield. Its thick tongue was pure scarlet, like a gross red pepper. Embryonic horns knobbed the skull. As far as Ulrich could see, it had two legs only. The end of its tail was clenched in the corner of its mouth. Shreds of a membrane hung upon its scales, and from it there spread the stench of unearthly amniotic fluid. Its eyes had opened and were apparently sealed open, utterly unblinking. The slit pupils were horizontal, and looking into them was like staring across the horizons of time itself.
    Around and beneath, the earth gradually subsided, the trembling diminished. There was still the hissing of steam on hot rocks and a deep complaining as the last small