He shifted his course to skirt it, and as he did the inky blackness of the water boiled, lashed to fury by something that struggled to emerge from it. A sinuous back humped up and broke through the blackness of the pool. Duncan's hand went to the sword hilt, half drew the blade. The sinuous back subsided and the water once more assumed its undisturbed oiliness. But in another pool a little farther on, the surface exploded in a froth of violence, and out of it shot a vicious head supported by a snakelike body that hurled itself erect, towering above the level of the pool. The head was triangular, not so large as might be expected from the size of the ropelike body. Two horns crowned the scaly head; the cheeks had the appearance of armor plate, pinching down to a beaklike snout. It opened its mouth, and the mouth was larger than the head. Cruel curved fangs projected from the jaws.

Duncan had the blade out by now and stood, holding it, ready for attack, but the attack did not come. Slowly, almost reluctantly, the body slid back into the pool and the head disappeared beneath the surface. The swamp lay quiet and black and menacing.

"I think you'd best come back," said Conrad.

Slowly, step by careful step, Duncan backed out of the swamp.

"No chance to get across," said Conrad.

Andrew came clumping down to where they stood, Beauty mincing along behind him.

"There is no swamp," he said. "There never was a swamp. It is all enchantment."

"Swamp or not," said Meg, huddled on top of Daniel, "a bewitchment such as this can kill you."

"Then what do we do?" asked Duncan.

"We try another route," said Andrew. "We pass the enchantment by. No matter how powerful may be the ones who laid this witchery on us, they cannot lay it over everything. They knew where we were going and it was along that route that the enchantment was laid."

"You mean into the hills," said Duncan. "If we go there, how well do you know this land?"

"Not as well as this valley, but I know it. A few miles from here, due east, there is another trail. A bad trail. Very crooked, up and down the hills. Hard going. But it will take us south. It will take us beyond these hills that block us from the south."

"I think," said Meg, "we best had seek that trail."

12

They found Andrew's trail, but it proved to be the wrong trail. Halfway up a steep hillside it petered out to nothing.

They had left the enchantment far behind them, had escaped from it. Now there were no rainbow tints, no feeling that the landscape had been skewed. The land was the kind of land one would have expected to find. The oaks were honest oaks, the honest boulders had honest lichens on them, the stretches of underbrush were normal underbrush. The feeling of gloom was gone, the foreboding had dropped away.

It had been hard work. There had been no level ground. Constantly they had been traveling steep slopes, or making their careful way down steep slopes, which in some cases was almost as exhausting as the climbing.

Now that the trail had finally disappeared, Duncan glanced up at the sky. The sun was almost at its zenith.

"Let us stop to eat and rest," he said. "Then we'll strike east and try to find the right trail." He said to Andrew, "You are sure that there is one."

Andrew nodded. "I've traveled it, but only a few times and that many years ago. I am not well acquainted with it."

The trail had been lost on a small shelf of fairly level ground, extending for not more than a few yards before the steep slope took up again. Conrad gathered wood and started a fire. Daniel and Beauty stood with hanging heads, resting from hard travel. Tiny flopped down on the ground.

"We could use Ghost," said Conrad, "but he is far away, spying out the land ahead of us."

"I'll say this for Ghost," said Andrew. "I have a lot more respect for him than I had before. It takes real courage for a ghost to go out in broad daylight and do the kind of job that he's been doing."

A gray shadow moved among the trees below them.

"There's a wolf," said Duncan.

"There are a lot of wolves around," said Andrew. "More than there ever were since the Harriers came."

Another gray shadow followed the first, and farther down the slope was yet another one.

"At least three of them," said Duncan. "And there may be more. Do you think they might be following us?"

"Nothing to worry about," said Conrad. "A wolf is a coward. Face up to one and he runs away."

Meg put her arms around herself, hugging herself, shivering a little. "They smell blood," she said. "They can smell blood before there is any blood."

"Old wives" tale," said Conrad.

"Not a tale," Meg said. "I know. They know when death is coming."

"Not our blood," said Conrad. "Not our death."

A wind had come up and far down the hill it could be heard moaning in the trees. The ground was thick with fallen leaves. And over all of it was a somberness, the sense of autumn, a psychic warning against the coming of the snow. Duncan felt a faint unease, although there was nothing, he told himself, to be uneasy about. In just a short time now they would find the right trail and be on their way again, following a harder road than they had first intended, but on their way at last.

How many more days, he wondered, and was amazed that he had no idea. Once they were through these hills, more than likely, they would make faster time. So far they had not hurried, but gone along at an easy pace. Now was the time, once they were squared around, he told himself, to really cover ground.

"If Snoopy were only here," said Andrew, "he would know the way, how to find the trail. But that is wishful thinking. There is no honor in him. Even when he told us, when he gave his word, he had no intention of being any help to us."

"We'll make out without him," Duncan said, a sharpness to his words.

"At least," said Conrad, "we walked out of the witchery that was laid for us."

"The witchery, yes," said Andrew. "But there will be other things."

They ate and then moved on, striking toward the east, or as close to east as was possible, for in this tangled, tortuous land there was no such thing as heading in any one direction. There were diversions—a bad lay of ground, a particularly steep climb that they tried to skirt, a tangle of fallen trees they must go around. But, in general, they trended toward the east.

The sun went down the sky and there was still no sign of any trail. They moved through a region that had no trace of men, or of there ever having been any men. There were no burned farmsteads, no cuttings where timber had been harvested. Ancient trees stood undisturbed, hoary with age.

From time to time they caught glimpses of wolves, but always at a distance. There was no way of knowing if they were the same wolves they had seen earlier.

We are lost, Duncan told himself, although he said nothing to the others. Despite all that Andrew said, all that he professed to know, there might not be a trail. For days they might keep plunging into the great wilderness and find nothing that would help them, floundering in confusion. Perhaps, he thought, it might be the enchantment still at work, although in a less obvious manner than had been the case before.

The sun was almost gone when they came down a long slope into a deep glen, rimmed by the hills, as if it might be sunk into the very earth, a place of quiet and shadows, filled with a sense of melancholy. It was a place where one walked softly and did not raise his voice. The light of the sun still caught the hilltops above them and gilded some of the autumn trees with flaming color, but here night was falling fast.

Duncan hurried ahead to catch up with Conrad.

"This place," said Conrad, "has an evil smell to it."