"Are you mad?" howled Sniveley. "Do you know what you have done? Of all the nincompoop ideas—"
"What is the matter?" asked Oliver. "What do you mean?"
"You moron!" shouted Sniveley. "You cretin! You should have known. There is such a university!"
He stopped in midsentence and fixed his gaze on Gib, shifted it onto Hal.
"You two," he said, "you're not supposed to know. No one outside the Brotherhood is supposed to know. It is an old secret. It is sacred to us."
He grabbed Oliver by the shoulder and jerked him to his feet. "How come you didn't know?"
Oliver cringed away. "So help me, I never knew. I never heard of it. I am just a lowly rafter goblin. Who was there to tell me? We thought it was a fable."
Sniveley let Oliver loose. Coon crouched in Gib's lap, whimpering.
"Never in my life," said Hal to Sniveley, "have I seen you so upset."
"I have a right to be upset," said Sniveley. "A pack of fools. A set of various fools who have been snared up in something they should have kept their fingers out of. But, worse than that, an agent of the Inquisition has been given knowledge, faked knowledge that happens to be true, and what do you think he'll do with it? I know what he'll do—head straight into the Wasteland. Not for the treasure that was mentioned, but for the ancient books. Can't you see the power and glory that would descend upon a churchly human who found old heathen books and consigned them to the flames?"
"Maybe he won't get them," Gib said hopefully. "He may try for them and fail."
"Of course he'll fail," said Sniveley. "He hasn't got a chance. All the hellhounds of the Wasteland will be snapping at his heels, and any human who gets out alive will do so through pure luck. But for centuries now there has been peace—at times unwilling peace—be- tween humans and the Brotherhood. But this will light the fires. The Borderland will become unsafe. There'll be war again."
"There is one thing that puzzles me," said Gib. "You had no great objection to Cornwall going into the Wasteland—foolish certainly, but no great objection. I think you rather admired him for his courage. You were willing to give me a sword for him…»
"Look, my friend," said Sniveley, "there is a vast difference between a lowly scholar going out into the Wasteland on an academic and intellectual search and a minion of the Church charging into it with fire and steel. The scholar, being known as a scholar, might even have a chance of coming out alive. Not that he'd be entirely safe, for there are some ugly customers, with whom I have small sympathy, lurking in the Wasteland. But by and large he might be tolerated, for he would pose no danger to our people. He would not bring on a war. If he were killed, he'd be killed most quietly, and no one would ever know how or when it happened. Indeed, there would be few who would ever mark his going there. And he might even come back. Do you see the difference?"
"I think I do," said Gib.
"So now what do we have?" asked Sniveley of Gib. "There is this journey that you are honor bound to make, carrying the book and ax the hermit gave you for delivery to the Bishop of the Tower. And on this journey your precious scholar will travel with you and then continue on into the Wasteland. Have I got the straight of it?"
"Yes, you have," said Gib.
"You have no intention of going into the Wasteland with him?"
"I suppose I haven't."
"But I have such intentions," said the rafter goblin. "I was in at the start of it; I might as well be in at the end of it, whatever that may be. I have come this far and I have no intention whatsoever of turning back."
"You told me," said Hal, "that you had a great fear of open spaces. You had a word for it…"
"Agoraphobia," said Oliver. "I still have it. I shiver at the breath of open air. The uncovered sky oppresses me. But I am going on. I started something back there in that Wyalusing garret, and I cannot turn back with it half done."
"You'll be an outlander," said Sniveley. "Half of the Brotherhood, half out of it. Your danger will be real. Almost as much danger to you as there is danger to a human."
"I know that," said Oliver, "but I arn still going."
"What about this matter of you carrying something to the Bishop of the Tower?" Hal asked Gib. "I had not heard of it."
"I had meant to ask you if you'd show us the way," said Gib. "We want to travel overland and I fear we might get lost. You must know the way."
"I've never been there," said Hal. "But I know these hills. We'd have to stay clear of paths and trails, especially with this Inquisition agent heading the same way. I suppose he will be coming through the Borderland. So far there has been no word of him."
"If he had passed by," said Sniveley, "I would have had some word of him."
"If I am to go," asked Hal, "when should I be ready?"
"Not for a few days," said Gib. "Mark has to heal a bit, and I promised Drood I'd help him get some wood."
Sniveley shook his head. "I do not like it," he said. "I like no part of it. I smell trouble in the wind. But if the scholar lad's to go, he must have the sword. I promised it for him and it'll be a sorry day when a gnome starts going back on his promises."
11
They had traveled for five days through sunny autumn weather, with the leaves of the forest slowly turning to burnished gold, to deep blood-red, to lustrous brown, to a pinkness of the sort that made one's breath catch in his throat at the beauty of it.
Tramping along, Mark Cornwall kept reminding himself time and time again that in the past six years he had lost something of his life. Immured in the cold, stone walls of the university, he had lost the color and the smell and the headiness of an autumn forest and, worst of all, had not known he had lost it.
Hal led them, for the most part, along the ridgetops, but there were times when they must cross from one ridge to another or had to leave the high ground to keep out of sight of a ridgetop clearing where a woodcutter or a farmer scratched out a bare existence. While there was no danger in such places; where, indeed, a welcome and a rough sort of hospitality might be accorded them, it was considered best to avoid detection as much as possible. Word would travel fast concerning the movements of such a motley band as theirs and there might be danger in having the fact of their journey noised about.
Plunging down from the ridges into the deep-cut valleys that ran between the hills, they entered a different world—a deep, hushed, and buried world. Here the trees grew closer and larger, rock ledges jutted out of steep hillsides, and massive boulders lay in the beds of brawling creeks. Far overhead one could hear the rushing of the wind that brushed the hilltops, but down below the brows of the rearing bluffs there was no hint of wind. In the quietness of this deeper forest, the startled rush of a frightened squirrel, his foraging disturbed, through the deep layer of autumn leaves, was startling in itself. That, or the sudden explosion of wings as a ruffed grouse went rocketing like a twilight ghost through the tangle of the tree trunks.
At the end of a day's journey they went down into one of the deep hollows between the hills to find a camping place. Hal, scouting ahead, would seek a rock shelter where a fissure in the limestone of a bluff face was overhung either by a ledge of rock or by the bluff itself, offering some protection. The fire was small, but it gave out warmth against the chill of night, holding back the dark, making a small puddle of security and comfort in a woods that seemed to turn hostile with the coming of the night.
Always there was meat, for Hal, wise to the woods and an expert with his bow, brought down squirrels and rabbits, and on the second day, a deer, and on other occasions, grouse. So that, as a result of this, they made lesser inroads on the provisions they carried—wild rice, smoked fish, cornmeal, sparse fare, but sustaining and easy to carry.