He stepped down from the dais and moved out into the circle of the council chairs. He spread out his hands imploringly-hardly a characteristic gesture for the Dragon King, and it was not without effect.
“I leave it in your hands. Do not wait too long.”
He left the Council of War deep in hushed silence. No one dared to speak until he was far away from the room, and then the arduous debate began: Ameronis and Lupollen and their friends in opposition; Benniot, Fincher and several others just as strongly in favor of supporting the King’s call to arms.
The argument was bitter, loud and long, lasting the length of the day. Eskevar returned to his apartments in the castle to brood darkly upon the stubborn blindness of his independent, self-sufficient lords.
With every league the foothills of the Fiskills marched closer, changing in color from misty violet to blue above the mottled green of the forested hills. The party had set out due east cross-country toward the lofty heart of the rugged mountain range. In this part of Mensandor the Fiskills seemed to rise sharply out of rolling hills gently sloping upwards to their very feet. They were a wall, as Celbercor had intended them, a soaring fortress against all save the most foolish and determined. It was this fortress Quentin, Toli and Durwin dared to assail.
Each day the land rose higher. Quentin fancied he could feel the wind freshen and the cool air of the mountain heights waft down to breathe upon them in unexpected moments. In the happy countryside with its small, well-groomed villages, it became increasingly harder to believe the ominous events that had loomed so large when in Askelon. Even his own experiences in the camp of the Ningaal seemed as if they had happened to someone else and Quentin had merely heard about it. If not for his injured arm dangling from the sling, Quentin would scarcely have believed the tale.
Only at night did the sharp reminder prick him; it came in the form of the star, growing slightly larger night by night. It now seemed to outshine every other star in its quadrant. Hard and bright, it sent a corona of milky rays outward from its hot, white core. Everyone must see it burn, thought Quentin, laying rolled in his cloak at night. Everyone must surely feel the evil it portends.
But by morning’s light the Wolf Star faded, as did all the other lesser lights of heaven. The spell of the glowing star was broken by the coming of dawn.
“How far before we come to Inchkeith’s abode?” asked Quentin as they made ready early one morning to get underway.
“With luck,” answered Durwin, “we will sleep in featherbeds tonight.”
“Are we so close, then?” Quentin had no idea where the home of the legendary arms maker might be. But the rocky highlands they were now traversing did not strike him as the sort of place a master armorer would be found.
Durwin walked up the slope of a little hill where they had camped. Quentin followed, squinting as he moved out into the light of a crimson sunrise.
“Do you see that ridge of bare rock beyond the near valley?”
Quentin nodded. The ridge was a ragged gray wall which cast a black shadow across the green blanket of the pine-covered valley. “He lives beyond the ridge?”
“Not beyond it-within it!” laughed Durwin. “Or very nearly, as you shall see. Inchkeith is a strange man; he has many strange ways. But he is the man for us.”
“You know him, Durwin? You have never mentioned him in my hearing until most recently.” Quentin regarded his hermit friend with something approaching suspicion. Not that there was anything at all unlikely with Durwin’s being acquainted with such a man.
“There is much I do not mention in your hearing my young man. Only half of what I know will fit in my head at any one time!” He winked and laughed, his voice booming in the clear morning.
Toli whistled from below. When they joined him, all was ready.
“If we are to sleep on feathers tonight instead of pine needles, we had better away. See how long the shadows grow already.”
Toli’s dark eyes flashed with good humor. He was once more in his native element. Every day he seemed to slip more and more into the quiet enigma he had been when Quentin first met him years before. Give him back his deerskins and bone knife, thought Quentin, and he would be once more the Jher prince.”
“You would prefer pine needles, I would wager, Toli. But lead on! The day, as you say, is speeding from us!” Quentin, with difficulty but unaided, swung himself up into Blazer’s saddle and turned his face to the warmth of the rising sun.
Toward midday towering banks of clouds sweeping down from the north in a long line, gray as smoke beneath and white as new-bleached wool above, rolled high above them. The churning mass swelled and billowed, spreading a great flat anvil at its soaring crest as the fierce upper winds took the bank and flattened it.
“There will be rain soon,” said Toli.
“Do you think it will hold off until we have reached our destination?”
“Possibly,” replied Toli, squinting his eyes into the sky. “But the air is already growing cooler. Thunder whispers on the wind. The rain may hold and it may not.”
Quentin could hear no thunder, but since Toli had mentioned it he did seem to notice that the feathery breeze lifting the leaves in the trees around them now bore a cooler touch.
“Then let us not tempt it further by stopping to wag the chin!” cried Durwin. “Let us ride dry while we still may. A hot supper will make up for a meal missed on the trail.”
“I am for it!” called Quentin as he spurred Blazer ahead. “Let’s away!”
Durwin urged his brown palfrey forward, followed by Toli with the two pack horses; Quentin brought up the rear and kept a wary eye on the gathering clouds overhead. They had made good time that morning, stopping only to refresh the water in their skins at a rushing brook in the heart of the valley. Every time Quentin chanced to look up, the great gray wall of rock, glimpsed as a looming rampart between the shaggy branches of pine, seemed to have advanced dramatically closer.
Presently Quentin heard the splash of a nearby stream as it tumbled over rock. The party left the sheltering pines and came to a wild and rocky channel carved out by a shallow river which bounced and frothed over black stones, round as loaves of bread. The tumbling water, for all its activity, rose barely to the horses’ fetlocks, but it was as broad as a ward yard. Durwin struck along the loamy bank and turned upstream parallel to the face of the ridge.
Standing pools of water along the bank mirrored the bulging blue-black clouds overhead. The wind had freshened, and Quentin could smell the musty earth scent of rain.
The stream angled around a sweeping bend lined with tall, finger-dun, long-needled pines that whispered in the rising wind. “The rain is on the way!” shouted Durwin.
“Our destination is not too much further, I hope,” called Quentin as he came abreast. “Perhaps we should find a shelter and wait until the first downpour has passed.”
“If I remember correctly, we have not far to travel. Look ahead.” The hermit pointed to the gray cliffs directly before them once more, “See where the water emerges from the base of the ridge wall? It is just ahead.”
“It appears a seamless wall,” said Quentin.
“You will see. You will see.”
“Unless we hurry, Inchkeith the armorer will greet three very soggy travelers,” remarked Toli. As he spoke, the first fat drops of rain began plunking into the pools around them and plopping onto the trail, where they raised tiny puffs of dust.
They spurred their mounts ahead with renewed vigor as the ripe droplets splattered around them and made dark splotches upon their clothing.
As they came nearer the place Durwin had pointed out, Quentin could see a fold in the ridge wall he had not noticed before. Where the stream emerged, the left face of the cliff angled away sharply as the right face overlapped it. From a distance it gave the eye the impression of a continuous, unseamed wall. Closer, it began to open to them as they followed the river to the vast stony feet of the rock face.