He had never thought that anything that huge could move so fast. The dragon lunged like a lizard. Waking from his trance, Rudy could scarcely have moved if he had been ready. But instead of ripping, eight-inch fangs, all that struck him was a whiplash of kicked sand, for the dragon turned in mid-spring with a metallic hiss of rage and pain. Rudy threw himself aside to avoid the lashing hind foot, then raised his head from the ground in time to see Ingold leap away from the steaming deluge of blood that burst from the monster's slashed flank. From the end of that long neck, the armoured head struck like a snake. Ingold sprang clear of it, his sword striking sparks from the mailed nose.
The dragon reared itself back on the massive fulcrum of its long hind legs, its belly gleaming like stained ivory in the sick grey light. It strode forward and lunged down again, snapping, then half-turned to slash with twenty-five feet of spined tail whose force could easily have broken a man's back. Ingold moved out of range, but a moment later his sword whined in again, cleaving through air rotten with the choking fumes of the dragon's breath, to strike at the slashing teeth and iron mouth.
Don't go for the head, dammit, Rudy thought cloudily. There's nothing but armour there. Then, as the wizard ducked back from the lash of the tail again, he realized what Ingold was doing. He was opening the dragon up, distracting its attention, so that Rudy could go in for the kill.
The fanning mane of its protective bone shield guarded the dragon's neck from the front, making it impossible for its victim to get in any kind of killing blow. But every time the monster brought its head down to snap at Ingold, the whole of its neck brushed the ground. From where he lay belly-down in the sand, Rudy could see how delicate were the beaded scales covering the pumping arteries of the throat. A single blow would do it - provided, of course, a man was willing to run in under that heaving crimson wall of angry flesh.
His knees weak at the thought, Rudy scanned that mountain of scarlet iron for another target.
He could see none. His scanty knowledge of anatomy didn't cover dragons. He had no idea where they kept their hearts; and anyway, he doubted his sword would pierce
the polychrome mail of its side.
The spiked club of the tail cut the air like a whip, its barbs skimming Ingold's shoulder as he dodged it, with a force that spun him, bleeding, into the sand. The claws raked at him like swords; Ingold cut at them desperately from where he lay. Rudy knew that if the dragon pinned the old man, it would be all over for them.both. He gathered his feet under him and drew his sword, watching for his chance. The wizard rolled to his feet somehow, staggering, but kept drawing the attack backward and in his direction, never letting Rudy get within the creature's line of sight. Absurdly, Rudy heard the old man saying far back along the trail, 'I have even actually slain a dragon -rather, I acted as decoy and Lohiro did the sword work...'
If Lohiro could do it, Rudy thought grimly, so can I. Anyway, it was a curious comfort to know that the Archmage had been relegated to the butcher position, rather than the infinitely trickier post as decoy.
The dragon struck out with its claws again, and Ingold went down, his bloodied sword gleaming as he slashed at the snatching mouth. The huge shadow spread over him in the drenched and smoking sand. Rudy was on his feet as the massive head reached down. Ingold saw him coming, cut, and rolled, the great head swinging to follow, green drool splattering from the chisel teeth. Rudy's sword cleaved the air as if he were chopping wood. It split the jugular vein, and he barely ducked aside in time to avoid the firehose of blood that exploded outward, steaming in the air as it roared thickly against the rock of the canyon wall, some forty feet away. The dragon screamed, flinging up its head, its huge tail lashing as it clawed at the streaming wound.
Rudy plunged in under the writhing shadow to drag Ingold to his feet, hauling him
toward the talus slope as the ground all around them was drenched in a burning rain
of splattering blood. His hands felt scorched by it; his lungs were seared by the fumes.
The lashing tail struck the ground so near that it covered them in a wave of thrown
sand. Stumbling on the base of the slope, Rudy looked back, staring upward in horror
at that huge, gaudy body swaying against the pallid sky..,
Then the dragon fell, hitting the earth like a derailed freight train, and the ground shook under the impact of its weight. It heaved itself halfway up, screaming harshly and metallicly, its beribboned mane lashing in the frenzy of its death throes. The trees cracked where it heaved against them, their leaves shrivelling in the scorch of its blood.
Rudy pulled Ingold a little farther up the loose rock of the slope, so weak with terror and reaction that he felt he could hardly move himself. The old man was a dead weight in his arms, the back of his mantle sticky where the claws had raked through to the flesh.
In malice or unknowing agony, the dragon reared and made one final lunge at them, the vast jaws snapping shut in a spew of blood and drool. Then the great body twisted in one last convulsive heave and lay still. Black liquid trickled from between the chisel teeth.
Rudy whispered, 'Jesus Christ...*
But Ingold said softly, 'Hush.'
The gold eyes opened. They stared upward, baleful, inhuman, at the two wizards crouched out of its reach on the slope. Then they blinked, filmy, translucent shutters sliding down over the dying inner fire, and for a moment there was a blank, curious question in the dragon's eyes. The hideous mask of scarlet bone was incapable of expression; but for a fleeting instant, Rudy had the impression of some other personality looking out through the sunken eyes. A thin, dark, bearded face, he thought, whose dragon gaze rested briefly on Ingold before those dim, amber lamps were extinguished forever.
Around them, the hush was like the draw of expectant breath. Rudy felt the air stir and change, though there was no breeze; it was like the shifting in a curtain of perception.
'Look behind you,' Ingold said softly.
Rudy turned his head to look. A path, old and overgrown, wound on up toward the pass that was, he saw now, less than five miles from the end of the canyon. For the first time since they'd come to the Seaward Mountains, he had no sense of illusion or misdirection. He looked down at the crimson carcass where it lay amid the decaying broken trees and smoking sand, its gaudy tags and scales already beginning to blacken in the virulence of its own body chemistry. Then he looked back at Ingold's face, to see it white with shock, hollow and stretched and old.
'What is it?' Rudy whispered.
Bleak blue eyes shifted to his own. 'It's the road to the pass, Rudy,' he said quietly. The road into Quo.'
'It wasn't there before.'
'No.' Ingold got stiffly to his feet, catching his breath as he tried to move. 'He -removed the illusion. Just before he died.'
'He?' Rudy echoed, confused. 'He who? The dragon? But how did the dragon have any power over the maze?'
The wizard turned wearily and led the way to the top of the slope, where Che could be heard, squealing in panic and fighting his tether. Ingold took his staff from where he'd left it propped against the scabby bark of a twisted oak and, leaning heavily on it, limped to free the burro. Rudy realized his own staff had been left down below, scorched to charcoal in the dragon's blood.
Ingold went on. 'I think the inference is obvious. You and I, Rudy, have just killed one of the makers of the maze - one of the members of the Council of Wizards. I have told you before how easy it is to forget your own nature, once you have taken on the nature of a beast.' He looked back down the slope to where the dragon lay, steaming faintly, gay colours quenched in darkening blood. 'Having taken on the being of a dragon, he forgot what it was to be a man and a wizard. He became a prisoner in his own maze. Only in death did he recognize me and remember, to do what he could for me in memory of o.ur friendship.' Under the slime of blood and dirt, his face was a