Quag Keep Read Free Page B

rubbing its head back and forth on the cheekplate of the boar-crowned helmet.
    Milo found himself watching, not the small reptile, but rather the bracelet on his wrist. It seemed to have loosened somewhat its grip against his mail. Two of the dice began slowly to spin.
    â€œNow!”
    Naile got to his feet. In his left hand he held a deadly battle axe of such weight that Milo, trained though he was to handle many different weapons, thought he could never have broughtto shoulder height. They were alone in the long room. Even those who had served had gone, as if they had some private knowledge of ill to come and would not witness it.
    Still, what Milo felt was not the warning prick of normal fear—rather an excitement, as if he stood on the verge of learning the answer to all questions.
    As Naile had done, he got to his feet, lifted his shield. The dice on his bracelet whirred to a stop as the hide door curtain was drawn aside, letting in a blast of late fall, winter-touched air. A man, slight and so well cloaked that he seemed merely some shadow detached from a nearby wall to roam homelessly about, came swiftly in.

2

Wizard’s Wiles
    THE NEWCOMER APPROACHED THEM DIRECTLY. HIS PALE FACE above the high-standing collar of his cloak marked him as one who dwelt much indoors by reason of necessity or choice. And, though his features were human enough in their cast, still Milo, seeing their impassivity, the thinness of his bloodless lips, the sharp-beak curve of his nose, hesitated to claim him as a brother man. His eyelids were near closed, but, as he reached the table, he opened them widely and they could see that his pupils were of no human color, rather dull red like a smoldering coal.
    Save for those eyes, the only color about him was the badge sewn to the shoulder of his cloak. And that was so intricate that Milo could not read its meaning. It appeared to be an entwining of a number of wizardly runes. When the newcomer spoke, his voice was low-pitched and had no more emotion than the monotone of one who repeated a set message without personal care for its meaning.
    â€œYou are summoned—”
    â€œBy whom and where?” Naile growled and spat again, the flush on his broad face darkening. “I have taken no service—”
    Milo caught the berserker’s arm. “No more have I. But it would seem that this is what we have awaited.” For in him that expectancy which had been building to a climax now blended into a compulsion he could not withstand.
    For a moment it seemed that the berserker was going to dispute the summons. Then he swung up his fur cloak and fastened it with a boar’s head buckle at his throat.
    â€œLet us be gone then,” he growled. “I would see an end to this bedazzlement, and that speedily.” The pseudo-dragon chittered shrilly, shooting its tongue at the messenger, as if it would have enjoyed impaling some part of the stranger on that spear-point.
    Again Milo felt the nudge of spinning dice at his wrist. If he could only remember! There was a secret locked in that arm-let and he must learn it soon, for as he stood now, he felt helplessness like a sharp-set wound.
    They came out of Harvel’s Axe on the heels of the messenger. Though the upper part of the city was well lighted, this portion was far too shadowed. Those who dwelt and carried out their plans here knew shadows as friends and defenses. However, as three of them strode along, they followed a crooked alley where the houses leaned above them as if eyes set in the upper stories would spy on passersby. Milo’s overactive imagination was ready to endow those same houses, closed and barred against the night and with seldom a dim glow to mark a small-paned window, with knowledge greater than his own, as if they snickered slyly as the three passed.
    Before they reached the end of the Thieves’ Quarter a dark form slipped from an arched doorway. Though he had had nowarning from the armlet,