"Very fat and very ugly. I should not have doubted you."
The goose let out an angry honk, seemed befuddled at the noise, and made a dash at Colwyn. It halted short of its target, apparently thinking better of the idea, and turned instead to waddle across to where a slip of paper rested by the pool's bank. It cocked a querulous eye at it, obviously in a fowl temper, and honked steadily and softly.
A white cloud enveloped it. Colwyn amused himself by trying to decide whether it revealed more goose than visitor. The cloud resolved the argument by disappearing with a soft popping sound, leaving the stranger behind. If naught else, the eflfort had cleaned him up a little.
He sounded only slightly chastened. "And from that you see what I could have done to you if I were a vengeful man." More softly he muttered, "Blasted matter transformations use so blasted much energy a body can't tell whether he's coming or going." He put a hand to his forehead.
"I am tired. Leave me now, lest a worse fate befall thee."
Colwyn finished putting out the fire and packed the last of his belongings. Ynyr waited patiently nearby, eyeing their intemperate guest with curiosity. Matter transformation was a difficult business. The little fellow was both adept and inept.
"We intend to take our leave of this campsite, but the forest is not safe. You'd best travel with us."
The stranger pulled himself up to his full height and glared imperiously at Colwyn. "Me? Travel with youl Do you know who I am? Do you have the faintest idea, lout, in whose presence you stand?"
Colwyn leaned against his horse. "No, but I have this odd feeling you're going to tell me."
Either the visitor was beyond sarcasm or else simply chose to ignore it. "I am Ergo the Magnificent; short in stature, tall in power, narrow of purpose, wide of vision." This was delivered with appropriately descriptive gestures. "And I do not travel with peasants and beggars. Good day to you." Whereupon he whirled and strode purposefully (though, insofar as Colwyn could see, aimlessly) into the woods.
He repressed a chuckle as he mounted. Ynyr pulled himself into his own saddle.
"He'll be the first member of our army."
Ynyr frowned, looked back over a shoulder. "Of what use could he be?"
"He is the master of a talent. Well, not a master, perhaps, but matter transformation is a tricky business."
"Indeed it is, my boy, but if casually handled it can be more dangerous than useful. I do not like to see such power indifferently employed."
"I seem to have heard that recently," said Colwyn with a grin. "But if such power confuses the one who employs it, think how it would confuse his enemies!"
"Confusion benefits no one, least of all us."
"I defer to you in matters of history and learning, Ynyr, but where combat is concerned I have studied long and hard under dedicated instructors. When assaulting an enemy of greater strength, confusion can be a potent ally. Besides which, he seems to be a man of spirit as well as spirits. Give me a fighter with steel in his backbone and I'll not concern myself with the composition of his sword. This one would stand by a friend."
"If he has any?'
"True enough. He does strike me as the obstreperous sort. I've seen his kind before, though. When they are unsure of
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their position, they feel it's best to strike out and see what their surroundings are made of."
"Have a care, Colwyn, that he does not accidentally strike at you."
"I'll be careful. Meanwhile, let's try and have patience with him, should he change his mind and rejoin us. Perhaps his instructor in alchemical matters was an indifferent one. Could you help him perfect his useful art?"
"I'm afraid my knowledge is of more practical matters. I do not dabble in arcane arts. But my opinion of this one," —and he gestured back across the pool—"is that in an awkward situation he'd most likely transform himself into a crow and fly like mad for the nearest place of safety."
"I think you do him an injustice. Still, there might be opportunities to test him further along the way."
Ynyr still stared back at where the forest was swallowing up the campsite. "No doubt there might be. If he rejoins us."
It was very quiet in the woods. Much quieter than the town from which Ergo the Magnificent had so recently and hastily beat a retreat. The moon hung faint and bilious in the lowing sky, hardly lifting the spirits of the trees surrounding him. Indeed, with each step he took, their branches seemed to bend a little lower, reaching toward him with stiff, sharp fingers. Dead leaves and toadstools crunched beneath his feet, and night murmurs assaulted his hearing. He longed for the bright lights and cheerful cries of Moukaskar, the city he'd fled. He would even have paid for the rifled trifle.
There—a noise, off to his left! A rabbit or some other evening forager, he assured himself. Harmless as the wind. The sound came a second time and he stopped to peer close. Saints and devils, was that an eye? A cold sweat broke out on the back of his neck. It surely was an awfully big eye. Much too big for a rabbit. It grew even larger as it moved suddenly toward him.
Then in the moonlight he saw a beardless face, and the source of the solitary stare was apparent. It was solitary I because that face held but a single eye.
He was too startled to cry out, but not too startled to whirl and break into a desperate sprint. Branches and leaves seemed \ determined to restrain him as he tore back toward the pool, retracing his steps in a third the time while glancing repeatedly back over his shoulder. The single eye vanished, outdistanced | by his mad flight. Or perhaps it had reasons for not pursuing.
He burst into the clearing bordering the stream and looked frantically about. No sign of the two men who'd witnessed his inglorious arrival. In panic he splashed through the water, crossing the stream where it narrowed again beneath the pool. Ah, there, just ahead! Movement among the bushes and the comforting sound of horses' hooves.
As he grew near he thought to slow to a stately walk and compose himself.
"Why, if it isn't Ergo the Magnificent. And the Breathless. Something give you a start?" Colwyn looked past the smaller man, back into the forest. He saw nothing.
"Nonsense," Ergo replied haughtily. "Ergo the Magnifi-cent is not frightenable."
"Nor does he talk very well when he's out of breath. You are sweating, my friend."
"My evening exercise. I never miss it."
"I see," Colwyn turned his attention back to the trail ahead. "Then what brings you so soon into our company again?"
"I just remembered that I have some urgent business in this I direction."
"I daresay, from the way you're breathing." He reached a i hand toward the other man. Ergo hesitated, then took the offer and swung himself up onto the horse behind Colwyn. "What business might that be?"
"Staying alive," Ergo confessed, glancing nervously behind them. Whatever creature it belonged to, the eye stayed mercifully hidden.
Colwyn chuckled. "Then it seems we are in the same business, my friend. And men who work the same business ought to stick together."
"Most assuredly," agreed Ergo quickly.
Lyssa had never thought of a nightmare as having walls and a floor, a ceiling and strangely hued hidden lights. A nightmare was thin and wispy, faint and impalpable. It ought not to ring hollowly beneath one's shoes or to twist and turn like the thoughts of an evil courtier.
Was she inside the Black Fortress or inside her own mind? She clung precariously to her sanity as she rushed down weaving, convoluted corridors that seemed spun of gold and ceramic instead of honest wood or stone. She could not imagine how such a place could have been built. Perhaps it had not been built in the sense men thought of as "built." Perhaps it had been grown, for certain of the tunnels and cavernous hallways she raced through resembled far more the inside of some stolid, immobile creature than the corridors of any building ever described to her in her lessons.