The Sword of The Dawn

WHEN THAT ASPECT of the Eternal Champion called Dorian Hawkmoon, last Duke of Koln, ripped the Red Amulet from the throat of the Mad God and made that powerful thing his own, he returned with Huillam D'Averc and Oladahn of the Mountains to the Kamarg where Count Brass, his daughter Yisselda, his friend Bowgentle the philosopher and all their people underwent siege from the hordes of the Dark Empire led by Hawkmoon's old enemy Baron Meliadus of Kroiden.

So powerful had the Dark Empire grown that it threatened to destroy even the well-protected province of the Kamarg. If that happened, it would mean that Meliadus would take Yisselda for his own and slay slowly all the rest, turning the Kamarg to a waste of ash. Only by the mighty force released by the ancient machine of the wraith-folk which could warp whole areas of time and space were they saved by shifting into another dimension of the Earth.

And so they found sanctuary. Sanctuary in some other Kamarg, where the evil and horror of Granbretan did not exist; but they knew that if ever the crystal machine were destroyed, they would be plunged back into the chaos of their own time and space.

For a while they lived in joyful relief at their escape, but gradually Hawkmoon began to finger his sword and wonder at the fate of his own world…

- The High History of the Runestaff

Chapter One THE LAST CITY

THE GRIM RIDERS spurred their battle-steeds up the muddy slopes of the hill, coughing as their lungs took in the thick black smoke rising from the valley.

It was evening, the sun was setting, and their grotesque shadows were long. In the twilight, it seemed that gigantic beast-headed creatures rode the horses.

Each rider bore a banner, stained by war, each wore a huge beast-mask of jewelled metal and heavy armour of steel, brass and silver, emblazoned with its wearer's device, battered and bloodied, and each gauntleted right hand gripped a weapon on which was encrusted the remains of a hundred innocents.

The six horsemen reached the top of the hill and dragged their snorting mounts to a halt, stabbing their banners into the earth where they flapped like the wings of birds of prey in the hot wind from the valley.

Wolf-mask turned to stare at Fly-mask, Ape glanced at Goat, Rat seemed to grin at Hound-a grin of triumph. The Beasts of the Dark Empire, each a Warlord of thousands, looked beyond the valley and beyond the hills to the sea, looked back at the blazing city below them where, faintly, they could hear the wails of the slaughtered and the tormented.

The sun set, night fell arid the flames burned brighter, reflected in the dark metal of the masks of the Lords of Granbretan.

"Well, my lords," said Baron Meliadus, Grand Constable of the Order of, the Wolf, Commander of the Army of Conquest, his deep, vibrant voice booming from within his great mask, "well, we have conquered all Europe now."

Mygel Hoist, skeletal Archduke of Londra, head of which he had barely escaped with his life, laughed, the Order of the Goat, veteran of the Kamarg, from "Aye-all Europe. Not an inch of it is not ours. And now great parts of the East belong to us also." The Goat helm nodded as if in satisfaction, the ruby eyes catching the firelight, flashing malignantly.

"Soon," merrily growled Adaz Promp, Master of the Order of the Hound, "all the world will be ours. All."

The Barons of Granbretan, masters of a continent, tacticians and warriors of ferocious courage and skill, careless of their own lives, corrupt of soul and mad of brain, haters of all that was not in decay, wielders of power without morality, force without justice, chuckled with gloomy pleasure as they watched the last European city to withstand them crumble and die. It had been an old city. It had been called Athena.

"All," said Jerek Nankenseen, Warlord of the Order of the Fly, "save the hidden Kamarg…"

And Baron Meliadus lost his humor then, made almost as if he would strike his fellow warlord.

Jerek Nankenseen's bejewelled Fly-mask turned a little to regard Meliadus and the voice from within the mask was baiting. "Is it not enough that you have chased them away, my lord Baron?"

"No," snarled the Wolf of Wolves. "Not enough."

"They can offer us no menace," murmured Baron Brenal Farnu of the Rat helm. "From what our scientists divined, they exist in a dimension beyond Earth, in some other time or space. We cannot reach them and they cannot reach us. Let us enjoy our triumph, unmarred by thoughts of Hawkmoon and Count Brass…"

"I cannot!"

"Or is it another name that haunts thee, brother Baron?" Jerek Nankenseen mocked the man who had been his rival in more than one amorous encounter in Londra. "The name of the fair one, Yisselda? Is it love that moves you, my lord? Sweet love?"

For a moment the Wolf did not reply, but the hand that gripped the sword tightened as if in fury. Then the rich, musical voice spoke and it had recovered its composure, was almost light in tone.

"Vengeance, Baron Jerek Nankenseen, is what motivates me…"

"You are a most passionate man, Baron…" Jerek Nankenseen said dryly.

Meliadus sheathed his sword suddenly and reached out to grasp his banner, wrenching it from the earth.

"They have insulted our King-Emperor, our landand myself. I will have the girl for my pleasure, but in no soft spirit will I take her, no weak emotion will motivate me…"

"Of course not," murmured Jerek Nankenseen, a hint of patronage in his voice.

"… And as for the others, I will have my pleasure with them, also-in the prison vaults of Londra. Dorian Hawkmoon, Count Brass, the philosopher Bowgentle, the unhuman one, Oladahn of the Bulgar Mountains, and the traitor Huillam D'Averc-all these shall suffer for many years. That I have sworn by the Runestaff!"

There was a sound behind them. They turned to peer through the flickering light and saw a canopied litter being borne up the hill by a dozen Athenan prisoners of war who were chained to its poles. In the litter lounged the unconventional Shenegar Trott, Count of Sussex. Count Shenegar almost disdained the wearing of a mask at all, and as it was he wore a silver one scarcely larger than his head, fashioned to resemble, in caricature, his own visage. He belonged to no Order and was tolerated by the King-Emperor and his Court because of his immense richness and almost superhuman courage in battle-yet he gave the appearance, in his jeweled robes and lazy manner, of a besotted fool.

He, even more than Meliadus, had the confidence (such as it was) of the King-Emperor Huon, for his advice was almost always excellent. He had plainly heard the last part of the exchange and spoke banteringly.

"A dangerous oath to swear, my lord Baron," said he softly. "One that could, by all counts, have repercussions on he who swears it…"

"I swore the oath with that knowledge," replied Meliadus. "I shall find them, Count Shenegar, never fear."

"I came to remind you, my lords," said Shenegar Trott, "that our King-Emperor grows impatient to see us and hear our report that all Europe is now his property."

"I will ride for Londra instantly," Meliadus said.

"For there I may consult our sorcerer-scientists and discover a means of hunting out my foes. Farewell, my lords."

He dragged at his horse's reins, turning the beast and galloping back down the hill, watched by his peers.

The beast-masks moved together in the firelight. "His singular mentality could destroy us all," whispered one.

"What matter?" chuckled Shenegar Trott, "so long as all is destroyed with us…"

The answering laughter was wild, ringing from the jeweled helms. It was insane laughter, tinged as much with self-hatred as with hatred of the world.

For this was the great power of the Lords of the Dark Empire, that they valued nothing on all the Earth, no human quality, nothing within or without themselves. The spreading of conquest and desolation, of terror and torment, was their staple entertainment, a means of employing their hours until their spans of life were ended. For them, warfare was merely the most satisfactory way of easing their ennui…

Chapter Two THE FLAMINGOES DANCE

AT DAWN, WHEN clouds of giant scarlet flamingoes rose from their nests of reeds and wheeled through the sky in bizarre ritual dances, Count Brass would stand on the edge of the marsh and stare over the water at the strange configurations of dark lagoons and tawny islands that seemed to him like hieroglyphs in some primeval language.

The ontological revelations that might exist in these patterns had always intrigued him, and of late he had taken to studying the birds, reeds and lagoons, attempting to divine the key to this cryptic landscape.

The landscape, he thought, was coded. In it he might find the answers to the dilemma of which even he was only half-conscious; find, perhaps, the revelation that would tell him what he needed to know of the growing threat he felt was about to engulf him both psychically and physically.

The sun rose, brightening the water with its pale light, and Count Brass heard a sound, turned, and saw his daughter Yisselda, golden-haired madonna of the lagoons, an almost preternatural figure in her flowing blue gown, riding bareback her white horned Kamarg horse and smiling mysteriously as if she, too, knew some secret that he could never fully comprehend.

Count Brass sought to avoid the girl by stepping out briskly along the shore, but already she was riding close to him and waving.

"Father-you're up early! Not for the first time recently."

Count Brass nodded, turned again to contemplate the waters and the reeds, looked up suddenly at the dancing birds as if to catch them by surprise, or by some instinctive flash of divination learn the secret of their strange, almost frenetic gyrations.

Yisselda had dismounted and now stood beside him.

"They are not our flamingoes," she said. "And yet they're so like them. What do you see?"

Count Brass shrugged and smiled at her. "Nothing. Where's Hawkmoon?"

"At the castle. He's still asleep."

Count Brass grunted, clasping his great hands together as if in desperate prayer, listening to the beating of the heavy wings overhead. Then he relaxed and took her by the arm, guiding her along the bank of the lagoon.

"It's beautiful," she murmured. "The sunrise."

Count Brass made a small gesture of impatience.

"You don't understand…" he began, and then paused. He knew that she would never see the landscape as he saw it. He had tried once to describe it to her, but she had lost interest quickly, had made no effort to understand the significance of the patterns he detected everywhere-in the water, the reeds, the trees, the animal life that filled this Kamarg in abundance, as it had filled the Kamarg that they had left.

To him it was the quintessence of order, but to her it was simply pleasurable to look at-something "beautiful," to admire, in fact, for its "wildness."

Only Bowgentle, the philosopher poet, Ms old friend, had an inkling of what he meant and even then Bowgentle believed that it reflected not on the nature of the landscape but on the particular nature of Count Brass's mind.

"You're exhausted, disorientated," Bowgentle would say. "The ordering mechanism of the brain is working too hard, so you see a pattern to existence that, in fact, only stems from your own weariness and disturbance…"

Count Brass would dismiss this argument with a scowl, don his armour of brass and ride away on his own again, to the discomfort of his family and friends.

He had spent a long while exploring this new Kamarg that was so much like his own save that there was no evidence of mankind's ever having existed here.

"He is a man of action, like myself," Dorian Hawkmoon, Yisselda's husband, would say. "His mind turns inward, I fear, for want of some real problem with which to engage itself."

"The real problems seem insoluble," Bowgentle would reply, and the conversation would end as Hawkmoon, too, went off by himself, his hand on the hilt of his sword.

There was tension in Castle Brass, and even in the village below, the folk were troubled, glad of their escape from the terror of the Dark Empire, but not sure that they were permanently settled in this new land so like the one they had left. At first, when they had arrived, the land had seemed a transformed version of the Kamarg, its colors those of the rainbow, but gradually those colors had changed to more natural ones, as if their memories had imposed themselves on the landscape, so that now there was little difference. There were herds of horned horses and white bulls to tame, scarlet flamingoes that might be trained to bear riders, but at the back of the villagers' minds was always the threat of the Dark Empire somehow finding a way through even to this retreat.

To Hawkmoon and Count Brass-perhaps to D'Averc, Bowgentle and Oladahn, too-the idea was not so threatening. There were times when they would have welcomed an assault from the world they had left.

While Count Brass studied the landscape and sought to divine its secrets, Dorian Hawkmoon would ride at speed along the lagoon trails, scattering herds of bulls and horses, sending the flamingoes flapping into the sky, looking for an enemy.

One day, as he rode back on a steaming horse from one of his many journeys of exploration along the shores of the violet sea (sea and terrain seemed without limit), he saw the flamingoes wheeling in the sky, spiraling upwards on the air currents and then drifting down again. It was afternoon and the flamingo dance took place only at dawn. The giant birds seemed disturbed and Hawkmoon decided to investigate.

He spurred his horse along the winding path through the marsh until he was directly below the flamingoes, saw that they wheeled above a small island covered in tall reeds. He peered intently at the island and thought that he glimpsed something among the reeds, a flash of red that could be a man's coat.

At first Hawkmoon decided that it was probably a villager snaring duck, but then he realized that if that had been so the man would have hailed him-at least waved him away to ensure he would not disturb the fowl.

Puzzled, Hawkmoon spurred his horse into the water, swimming it across to the island and on to the marshy ground. The animal's powerful body pushed back the tough reeds as it moved and again Hawkmoon saw a flash of red, became convinced that he had seen a man.

"Ho!" he cried. "Who's there!"

He received no answer. Instead the reeds became more agitated as the man began to run through them without caution.

"Who are you?" Hawkmoon cried, and it came to him then that the Dark Empire had broken through at last, that there were men hidden everywhere in the reeds ready to attack Castle Brass.

He thundered through the reeds in pursuit of the red-jerkined man, saw him clearly now as he flung himself into the lagoon and began to swim for the bank.

"Stop!" Hawkmoon called, but the man swam on.

Hawkmoon's horse plunged again into the water and it foamed white. The man was already wading onto the opposite bank, glanced back to see that Hawkmoon was almost upon him, turned right round and drew a bright, slender sword of extraordinary length.

But it was not the sword that astonished Hawkmoon most-it was the impression that the man had no face!

The whole of the head beneath the long, fair, dirty hair was blank. Hawkmoon gasped, drawing his own sword.

Was it some alien inhabitant of this world?

Hawkmoon swung himself from his saddle, sword ready, as the horse clambered onto the bank, stood legs astraddle facing his strange antagonist, laughed suddenly as he realized the truth. The man was wearing a mask of light leather. The mouth and eye slits were very thin and could not be distinguished at a distance.

"Why do you laugh?" the masked man asked in a braying voice, his sword on guard. "You should not laugh, my friend, for you are about to die."

"Who are you?" Hawkmoon asked. "I know you for a boaster only."

"I am a greater swordsman than you," replied the man. "You had best surrender now."

"I regret I can't accept your word on the quality of my swordsmanship or your own," Hawkmoon replied with a smile. "How is it that such a master of the blade is so poorly attired, for instance?"

With his sword he indicated the man's patched red jerkin, his trousers and boots of cracked leather. Even his bright sword had no scabbard, but had been drawn from a loop of cord attached to a rope belt on which also dangled a purse that bulged. On the man's fingers were rings of obvious glass and paste and the flesh of his skin looked grey and unhealthy. The body was tall but stringy, half-starved by the look of it.

"A beggar, I'd guess," mocked Hawkmoon. "Where did you steal the sword, beggar?"

He gasped as the man thrust suddenly, then withdrew. The movement had been incredibly rapid and Hawkmoon felt a sting on his cheek, put up his hand to his face and discovered that it bled.

"Shall I prick you thus to death?" sneered the stranger. "Put down your heavy sword and make yourself my prisoner."

Hawkmoon laughed with real pleasure. "Good! A worthy opponent after all. You do not know how much I welcome you, my friend. It has been too long since I heard the ring of steel in my ears!" And with that he lunged at the masked man.

His adversary deftly defended himself with a parry that somehow became a thrust which Hawkmoon barely managed to block in time. Feet planted firmly in the marshy ground, neither moved an inch from his position, both fought skillfully and unheatedly, each recognising in the other a true master of the sword.

They fought for an hour, absolutely matched, neither giving nor sustaining a wound, and Hawkmoon decided on different tactics, began gradually to shift back down the bank towards the water.

Thinking that Hawkmoon was retreating, the masked man seemed to gam confidence and his sword moved even more rapidly than before so that Hawkmoon was forced to exert all his energy to deflect it.

Then Hawkmoon pretended to slip in the mud, going down on one knee. The other sprang forward to thrust and Hawkmoon's blade moved rapidly, the flat striking the man's wrist. He yelled and the sword fell from his hand. Quickly Hawkmoon jumped up and placed his boot upon the weapon, his blade at the other's throat.

"Not a trick worthy of a true swordsman," grumbled the masked man.

"I am easily bored," Hawkmoon replied. "I was becoming impatient with the game."

"Well, what now?"

"Your name?" Hawkmoon said. "I'll know that first -then see your face-then know your business here-then, and perhaps most important, discover how you came here."

"My name you will know," said the man with undisguised pride. "It is Elvereza Tozer."

"I do know it, indeed!" remarked the Duke of Koln in some surprise.

Chapter Three ELVEREZA TOZER

ELVEREZA TOZER was not the man Hawkmoon would have expected to meet if he had been told in advance that he was to encounter Granbretan's greatest playwright-a writer whose work was admired throughout Europe, even by those who in all other ways loathed Granbretan. The author of King Staleen, The Tragedy of Katine and Carna, The Last of the Braldurs, Annala, Chirshil and Adutf, The Comedy of Steel and many more, had not been heard of of late, but Hawkmoon had thought this due to the wars. He would have expected Tozer to have been rich in dress, confident in every way, poised and full of wit. Instead he found a man who seemed more at ease with a sword than with words, a vain man, something of a fool and a poppinjay, dressed in rags.

As he propelled Tozer with his own sword along the marsh trails towards Castle Brass, Hawkmoon puzzled over this apparent paradox. Was the man lying? If so, why should he claim to be, of all things, an eminent playmaker?

Tozer walked along, apparently undisturbed by his change of fortune, whistling a jaunty tune.

Hawkmoon paused. "A moment," he said, and reached to grasp the reins of his horse, which had been following him. Tozer turned. He still wore his mask.

Hawkmoon had been so astonished at hearing the name that he had forgotten to order Tozer to remove the leather from his face.

"Well," Tozer said, glancing about him. "It is a lovely country-though short in audiences, I would gather."

"Aye," replied Hawkmoon, nonplussed. "Aye…"

He gestured towards the horse. "We'll ride pillion, I think. Into the saddle with you, Master Tozer."

Tozer swung up onto the horse and Hawkmoon followed him, taking the reins and urging the horse into a trot.

In this manner they rode until they came to the gates of the town, passed through them, and proceeded slowly through the winding streets, up the steep road to the walls of Castle Brass.

Dismounting in the courtyard, Hawkmoon gave the horse to a groom and indicated the door to the main hall of the castle. "Through there, if you please," he told Tozer.

With a small shrug, Tozer sauntered through the door and bowed to the two men who stood there by the great fire which blazed in the hall. Hawkmoon nodded to them. "Good morning, Sir Bowgentle-D'Averc. I have a prisoner…"

"So I see," D'Averc said, his gaunt, handsome features brightening a little with interest. "Are the warriors of Granbretan at our gates again?"

"He is the only one, so far as I can judge," Hawkmoon replied. "He claims to be Elvereza Tozer…"

"Indeed?" The ascetic Bowgentle's quiet eyes took on a look of curiosity. "The author of Chirshil and Adulf? It is hard to believe."

Tozer's thin hand went to the mask and tugged at the thongs securing it. "I know you, sir," he said. "We met ten years hence when I came with my play to Malaga."

"I recall the time. We discussed some poems you had recently published and which I admired." Bowgentle shook his head. "You are Elvereza Tozer, but…"

The mask came loose and revealed an emaciated, shifty face sporting a whispy beard which did not hide a weak, receding chin and which was dominated by a long, thin nose. The flesh of the face was unhealthy and bore the marks of a pox.

"And I recall the face-though it was fuller then.

Pray, what has happened to you, sir?" Bowgentle asked faintly. "Are you a refugee seeking escape from your countrymen?"

"Ah," Tozer sighed, darting Bowgentle a calculating look. "Perhaps. Would you have a glass of wine, sir?

My encounter with your military friend here has left me thirsty, I fear."

"What?" put in D'Averc. "Have you been fighting?"

"Fighting to kill," Hawkmoon said grimly. "I feel that Master Tozer did not come to our Kamarg on an errand of goodwill. I found him skulking in the reeds to the south. I think he comes as a spy."

"And why should Elvereza Tozer, greatest playwright of the world, wish to spy?" The words were delivered by Tozer in a disdainful tone that yet somehow lacked conviction.

Bowgentle bit his lip and tugged a bell rope for a servant.

"That is for you to tell us, sir," Huillam D'Averc said with some amusement in his voice. He coughed ostentatiously. "Forgive me-a slight chill, I think. The castle is full of drafts…"

"And I'd wish the same for myself," Tozer said, "if a draft could be found." He looked at them expectantly.

"A draft to help us forget the draft, if you understand me. A draft…"

"Yes, yes," said Bowgentle hastily and turned to the servant who had entered. "A jug of wine for our guest," he requested. "And would you eat, Master Tozer?"

" 'I would eat the bread of Babel and the meat of Marakhan…'", Tozer said dreamily. " Tor all such fruits as fools supply are merely…'"

"We can offer some cheese at this hour," D'Averc interrupted sardonically.

"Annala, Act VI, Scene V," Tozer said. "You'll remember the scene?"

"I remember," D'Averc nodded. "I always felt that section somewhat weaker than the rest."

"Subtler," Tozer said airily. "Subtler."

The servant re-entered with the wine and Tozer helped himself, pouring a generous amount into the goblet. "The concerns of literature," he said, "are not always obvious to the common herd. A hundred years from now and people will see the last act of Annala not, as some stupid critics have said, as hastily written and poorly conceived, but as the complex structure it really is…"

"I had reckoned myself as something of a writer," Bowgentle said, "but I must confess, I did not see subtleties… Perhaps you could explain."

"Some other time," Tozer told him, with an insouciant wave of the hand. He drank off the wine and helped himself to another full goblet.

"In the meanwhile," Hawkmoon said firmly, "perhaps you could explain your presence in the Kamarg.

After all, we had thought ourselves inviolate and now…"

"You are still inviolate, never fear," Tozer said, "save to myself, of course. By the power of my brain I propelled myself hither."

D'Averc sceptically rubbed his chin. "By the power of your-brain? How so?"

"An ancient discipline taught me by a master philosopher who dwells in the hidden valleys of Yel…"

Tozer belched and poured more wine.

"Yel is that south western province of Granbretan is it not?" Bowgentle asked.

"Aye. A remote, barely inhabited land, peopled by a few dark-brown barbarians who live in holes in the ground. After my play Chirshil and Adulf had incurred the displeasure of certain elements at Court, I deemed it wise to retire there for a while, leaving my enemies to take for themselves all goods, monies, and mistresses I left behind. What know I of petty politics? How was I to realize that certain portions of the play seemed to reflect the intrigues then current at the Court?"

"So you were disgraced?" Hawkmoon said, looking narrowly at Tozer. The story could be part of the man's deception.

"More-I almost lost my life. But the rural existence near killed me as it was…"

"You met this philosopher who taught you how to travel through the dimensions? Then you came here seeking refuge?" Hawkmoon studied Tozer's reaction to these questions.

"No-ah, yes…" said the playwright. "That is to say, I did not know exactly where I was coming…"

"I think that you were sent here by the King-Emperor to destroy us," Hawkmoon said. "I think, Master Tozer, that you are lying to us."

"Lying? What is a lie? What is truth?" Tozer grinned glassily up at Hawkmoon and then hiccupped.

"Truth," Hawkmoon replied evenly, "is a coarse noose about your throat. I think we should hang you."

He fingered the dull black jewel imbedded in his forehead. "I am not unfamiliar with the tricks of the Dark Empire. I have been their victim too often to risk being deceived again." He looked at the others. "I say we should hang him now."

"But how do we know if he is really the only one who can reach us?" D'Averc asked sensibly. "We cannot be too hasty, Hawkmoon."

"I am the only one, I swear it!" Tozer spoke nervously now. "I admit, good sir, that I was commissioned to come here. It was that or lose my life in the prison catacombs of the Great Palace. When I had the old man's secret, I returned to Londra thinking that my power would enable me to bargain with those at Court who were displeased with me. I wished only to be returned to my former status and know that I had an audience to write for once again. However, when I told them of my new-found discipline, they instantly threatened my life unless I came here and destroyed that which enabled you to enter this dimension… so I came-glad, I must admit, to escape them. I was not particularly willing to risk my skin in offending you good folk but…"

"They did not ensure, in some way, that you would perform the task they set you?" Hawkmoon asked.

"That is strange."

"To tell you the truth," Tozer said, downcast, "I do not think they altogether believed in my power. I think they merely wished to test that I had it. When I agreed to go and left instantly, they must have been shocked."

"Not like the Dark Empire Lords to allow such an • oversight," mused D'Averc, his aquiline face frowning.

"Still, if you did not win our confidence, there's no reason you should have won theirs. Nonetheless, I am not altogether convinced that you speak the truth."

"You told them of this old man?" Bowgentle said.

"They will be able to learn his secret for themselves!"

"Not so," Tozer said with a leer. "I told them I had struck upon the power myself, in my months of solitude."

"No wonder they did not take you seriously!"

D'Averc smiled.

Tozer looked hurt and took another draft of wine.

"I find it difficult to believe that you were able to travel here by exercise of your will alone," Bowgentle admitted. "Are you sure you employed no other means…?"

"None."

"I like this not at all," Hawkmoon said darkly.

"Even if he tells the truth, the Lords of Granbretan will wonder where he found his power by now, will learn all his movements, will almost certainly discover the old man-and then they will have the means to come through in strength and we shall be doomed!"

"Indeed, these are difficult times," Tozer said, filling his goblet yet again. "Remember your King Staleen, Act IV, Scene II-'Wild days, wild riders, and the stink of warfare across the world!' Aha, I was a visionary and knew it not!" He was now evidently drunk.

Hawkmoon stared hard at the weak-chinned drunkard, still finding it almost impossible to believe that this was the great playwright Tozer.

"You wonder at my poverty, I see," Tozer said, speaking with slurred tongue. "The result of a couple of lines in Chirshil and Adulf, as I told you. Oh, the wickedness of fate! A couple of lines, penned in good faith, and here I am today, with the threat of a noose about my gullet. You remember the scene of course, and the speech? 'Court and king, alike corrupt…?' Act I, Scene I? Pity me, sir, and do not hang me. A great artist destroyed by his own mighty genius."

"This old man," Bowgentle said. "What was he like? Where exactly did he live?"

"The old man…" Tozer. forced more wine down his throat. "The old man reminded me somewhat of Ioni in my Comedy of Steel. Act II, Scene VI…"

"What was he like?" Hawkmoon asked impatiently.

" 'Machine-devoured, all his hours were given o'er to that insidious circuitry, and old grew he, unnoticing, in the service of his engines.' He lived only for his science, you see. He made the rings…" Tozer put his hand to his mouth.

"Rings? What rings?" D'Averc said swiftly.

"I feel that you must excuse me," Tozer said, rising in a parody of dignity, "for the wine has proved too rich for my empty stomach. Your pity, if you please…"

It was true that Tozer's face had taken on a greenish tinge.

"Very well," Bowgentle said wearily. "I will show you."

"Before he leaves," came a new voice from near the door, "ask him for the ring he wears on the middle finger of his left hand." The tone was slightly muffled, a little sardonic. Hawkmoon recognized it at once and turned.

Tozer gasped and clamped his hand over the ring.

"What do you know of this?" he said. "Who are you?"

"Duke Dorian here," said the figure with a gesture towards Hawkmoon, "calls me the Warrior in Jet and Gold."

Taller than any of them, covered all in armour and helm of black and gold, the mysterious Warrior raised an arm and pointed a metal-clad finger at Tozer. "Hand him that ring."

"The ring is of glass, nothing more. It is of no value…"

D'Averc said. "He mentioned rings. Is the ring, then, what actually transported him here?"

Tozer still hesitated, his face stupid with drink and with anxiety. "I said that it was glass, of no value…"

"By the Runestaff, I command thee!" rumbled the Warrior in a terrible voice.

With a little nervous movement, Elvereza Tozer drew off the ring and flung it onto the flagstones.

D'Averc stooped and caught it up, inspecting it. "It's a crystal," he said, "not glass. A familiar kind of crystal, too…"

"It is of the same substance from which the device that brought you here was carved," the Warrior in Jet and Gold told him. He displayed his own gauntleted hand and there, on the middle finger, reposed an identical ring. "And it possesses the same properties-can transport a man through the dimensions."

"As I thought," Hawkmoon said. "It was no mental discipline that enabled you to come here, but a piece of crystal. Now I'll hang you assuredly! Where did you •get the ring?"

"From the man-from Mygan of Llandar. I swear that is the truth. He has others-can make more!"

Tozer cried. "Do not hang me, I pray you. I will tell you exactly where to find the old man."

"That we shall have to know," Bowgentle said thoughtfully, "for we shall have to get to him before the Dark Empire Lords do. We must have him and his secrets-for our security."

"What? Must we journey to Granbretan?" D'Averc said in some astonishment.

"It would seem necessary," Hawkmoon told him.

Chapter Four FLANA MIKOSEVAAR

AT THE CONCERT, Flana Mikosevaar, Countess of Kanbery, adjusted her mask of spun gold and glanced absently about her, seeing the rest of the audience only as a mass of gorgeous colours. The orchestra in the center of the ballroom played a wild and complex melody, one of the later works of Granbretan's last great musician, Londen Johne, who had died two centuries earlier.

The Countess's mask was that of an ornate heron, its eyes facetted with a thousand fragments of rare jewels. Her heavy gown was of luminous brocade that changed its many colours as the light varied. She was Asrovak Mikosevaar's widow, he who had died under Dorian Hawkmoon's blade at the first Battle of the Kamarg. The Muskovian renegade, who had formed the Vulture Legion to fight on the European mainland and whose slogan had been Death to Life, was not mourned by Flana of Kanbery and she bore no grudge against his killer. He had been her twelfth husband, after all, and the fierce insanity of the bloodlover had served her pleasure long enough before he had set off to make war on the Kamarg. Since then she had had several lovers and her memory of Asrovak Mikosevaar was as cloudy as all her other memories of men, for Flana was an inturned creature who barely distinguished between one person and another.

It was her habit, on the whole, to have husbands and lovers destroyed when they became inconvenient to her. An instinct, rather than any intellectual consideration, stopped her from murdering the more powerful ones. This was not to say that she was incapable of love, for she could love passionately, doting entirely on the object of her love, but she could not sustain the emotion for long. Hatred was unknown to her, as was loyalty. She was for the most part a neutral animal, reminding some of a cat and others of a spider-though in her grace and beauty she was more reminiscent of the former. And there were many who bore her hatred, who planned vengeance against her for a husband stolen or a brother poisoned, who would have taken that vengeance had she not been the Countess of Kanbery and cousin to the King-Emperor Huon, that immortal monarch who dwelt eternally in his womblike Throne Globe in the huge throne room of his palace.

She was the center of other attentions, also, since she was the only surviving kin of the monarch, and certain elements at court considered that with Huon destroyed she could be made Queen-Empress and serve their interests.

Unaware of any plots concerning her, Flana of Kanbery would have been unperturbed had she been told of them, for she had not the faintest curiosity about the affairs of any one of her species, sought only to satisfy her own obscure desires, to ease the strange, melancholy longing in her soul which she could not define.

Many had wondered about her, sought her favors with the sole object of unmasking her to see what they could learn in her face, but her face, fair-skinned, beautiful, the cheeks slightly flushed always, the eyes large and golden, held a look remote and mysterious, hiding far more than could any golden mask.

The music ceased, the audience moved, and the colours became alive as the fabrics swirled and masks turned, nodded, gestured. The delicate masks of the ladies could be seen gathering around the warlike helms of those recently returned captains of Granbretan's great armies. The Countess rose but did not move towards them. Vaguely she recognised some of the helms -particularly that of Meliadus of the Wolf Order, who had been her husband five years earlier and who had divorced her (an action she had hardly noticed).

There, too, was Shenegar Trott, lounging on heaped cushions, served by naked mainland slavegirls, his silver mask a parody of a human face. And she saw the mask of the Duke of Lakasdeh, Pra Flenn, barely eighteen and with ten great cities fallen to him, his helm a grinning dragon head. The others she thought she knew, and she understood that they were all the mightiest warlords, back to celebrate their victories, to divide up the conquered territories between them, to receive the congratulations of their Emperor. They laughed considerably, stood proudly as the ladies flattered them, all but her ex-husband Meliadus, who appeared to avoid them and conferred instead with his brother-inlaw Taragorm, Master of the Palace of Time, and the serpent-masked Baron Kalan of Vitall, Grand Constable of the Order of the Snake and chief scientist to the King-Emperor. Behind her mask, Flana frowned, remembering distantly that Meliadus normally avoided Taragorm…

Chapter Five TARAGORM

"AND HOW HAVE you fared, Brother Taragorm?" asked Meliadus with forced cordiality.

The man who had married his sister replied shortly:

"Well." He wondered why Meliadus should approach him thus when it was common knowledge that Meliadus was profoundly jealous of Taragorm's having won his sister's affections. The huge mask lifted a little superciliously. It was constructed of a monstrous clock of gilded and enameled brass, with numerals of inlaid mother-of-pearl and hands of filigree'd silver, the box in which hung its pendulum extending to the upper part of Taragorm's broad chest. The box was of some transparent material, like glass of a bluish tint, and through it could be seen the golden pendulum swinging back and forth. The whole clock was balanced by means of a complex mechanism so as to adjust to Taragorm's every movement. It struck the hour, half-hour and quarter-hour and at midday and midnight chimed the first eight bars of Sheneven's Temporal Antipathies,

"And how," continued Meliadus in this same unusually ingratiating manner, "do the clocks of your palace fare? All the ticks ticking and the tocks tocking, mmm?"

It took Taragorm a moment to understand that his brother-in-law was, in fact, attempting to joke. He made no reply.

Meliadus cleared bis throat.

Kalan of the serpent mask said: "I hear you are experimenting with some machine capable of travelling through time, Lord Taragorm. As it happens, I, too, have been experimenting-with an engine…"

"I wished to ask you, brother, about your experiments," Meliadus said to Taragorm. "How far advanced are they?"

"Reasonably advanced, brother."

"You have moved through time already?"

"Not personally."

"My engine," Baron Kalan continued implacably,

"is capable of moving ships at enormous speeds across vast distances. Why, we could invade any land on the globe, no matter how far away…"

"When will the point be reached," Meliadus asked, moving closer to Taragorm, "when a man can journey into the past or future?"

Baron Kalan shrugged and turned away. "I must return to my laboratories," he said. "The King-Emperor has commissioned me urgently to complete my work.

Good day, my lords."

"Good day," said Meliadus absently. "Now, brother, you must tell me more of your work-show me, perhaps, how far you have progressed."

"I must," Taragorm replied facetiously. "But my work is secret, brother. I cannot take you to the Palace of Time without the permission of King Huon. That you must seek first."

"Surely unnecessary for me to seek such permission?"

"None is so great that he can act without the blessing of our King-Emperor."

"But the matter is of extraordinary importance, brother," Meliadus said, his tone almost desperate, almost wheedling. "Our enemies have escaped us, probably to another era of the Earth. They offer a threat to Granbretan's security!"

"You speak of that handful of ruffians whom you failed to defeat at the Battle of the Kamarg?"

"They were almost conquered-only science or sorcery saved them from our vengeance. No one blames me for my failure…"

"Save yourself? You do not blame yourself?"

"No blame to me, at all, from any quarter. I would finish the matter, that's all. I would rid the Empire of her enemies. Where's the fault in that?"

"I have heard it whispered that your battle is more private than public, that you have made foolish compromises in order to pursue a personal vendetta against those who dwell in the Kamarg."

"That is an opinion, brother," Meliadus said, restraining with difficulty his chagrin. "But I fear only for our Empire's well-being."

"Then tell King Huon of this fear and he may then permit you to visit my palace." Taragorm turned away, as he did so his mask beginning to boom out the hour. Further conversation was momentarily impossible. Meliadus made to follow him, then changed his mind, walking, fuming, from the hall.

Surrounded now by young lords, each seeking to attract her deadly attentions, Countess Flana Mikosevaar watched Baron Meliadus depart.

By the impatient manner of his gait, she assumed him to be in uneven temper. Then she forgot him as she returned her attention to the flatteries of her attendants, listening not to the words (which were familiar to her) but to the voices themselves which were like old, favorite instruments.

Taragorm, now, was conversing with Shenegar Trott.

"I am to present myself to the King-Emperor in the morning," Trott told the Master of the Palace of Time.

"Some commission, I believe, that is at this moment a secret known only to himself. We must keep busy, Lord Taragorm, eh?"

"Indeed, we must, Count Shenegar, lest boredom engulfs us all."

Chapter Six THE AUDIENCE

NEXT MORNING Meliadus waited impatiently outside the King-Emperor's throne room. He had requested an audience the previous evening and had been told to present himself at eleven o'clock. It was now twelve and the doors had not yet opened to admit him. The doors, towering into the dimness of the huge roof, were encrusted with jewels that made up a mosaic of images of ancient things. The fifty mantismasked guards who blocked them, stood stock still with flame-lances ready at a precise angle. Meliadus strode up and down before them; behind him, the glittering corridors of the King Emperor's hallucinatory palace.

Meliadus attempted to fight back his feelings of resentment that the King Emperor had not granted him an immediate audience. After all, was he not paramount Warlord of Europe? Had it not been under his direction that the armies of Granbretan had conquered a continent? Had he not taken those same armies into the Middle East and added further territories to the domain of the Dark Empire? Why should the King-Emperor seek to insult him in this manner? Meliadus, first of Granbretan's warriors, should have priority over all lesser mortals. He suspected a plot against him. From what Taragorm and the others had said, they judged him to be losing his grip. They were fools if they did not realise the threat that Hawkmoon, Count Brass and Huillam D'Averc offered. Let them escape their deserved reckoning and it would inflame others to rebel, make the work of conquest less speedy. Surely King Huon had not listened to those who spoke against him? The King Emperor was wise, the King Emperor was objective.

If he were not, then he was unfit to rule…

Meliadus dismissed the thought in horror.

At last the jewelled doors began to move open until they were wide enough to admit a single man-and through this crack strode a jaunty, corpulent figure.

"Shenegar Trott!" exclaimed Meliadus. "Is it you who has kept me waiting so long?"

Trott's silver mask glinted in the light from the corridors. "My apologies, Baron Meliadus. My deep apologies. There were many details to discuss. But I am finished now. A mission, my dear Baron-I have a mission! Such a mission, ha, ha!"

And before Meliadus could tax him further on the nature of his mission, he had swept away.

From within the Throne Room now issued a youthful, vibrant voice, the voice of the King Emperor himself.

"You may join me now, Baron Meliadus."

The mantis warriors parted their ranks and allowed the baron to pass through them and into the Throne Room.

Into that gigantic hall of blazing color, where hung the bright banners of Granbretan's five hundred noblest families, which was lined on either side by a thousand statue-still mantis guards, stepped Baron Meliadus of Kroiden and abased himself.

Ornate gallery upon ornate gallery stretched upwards and upwards to the concave ceiling of the hall.

The armour of the soldiers of the Order of the Mantis shone black and green and gold, and in the distance, as he rose to his feet, Baron Meliadus saw his King Emperor's Throne Globe, a white speck against the green and purple of the walls behind it.

Walking slowly, it took Meliadus twenty minutes to reach the globe and once again abase himself. The globe contained a sluggishly swirling liquid that was milk-white but which was sometimes streaked with iridescent veins of blood-red and blue. At the center of this fluid was curled King Huon himself, a wrinkled, ancient, immortal foetus-like creature in which the only living things seemed the eyes, black, sharp and malicious.

"Baron Meliadus," came the golden voice that had been torn from the throat of a beautiful youth to furnish King Huon with speech.

"Great Majesty," murmured Meliadus. "I thank you for your graciousness in permitting this audience."

"And for what purpose did you desire the audience, baron?" The tone was sardonic, a trifle impatient. "Do you seek to hear us praise again your efforts in Europe on our behalf?"

"The accomplishment is enough, noble sire. I seek to warn you that danger still threatens us in Europe…"

"What? You have not made the continent wholly ours?"

"You know that I have, Great Emperor, from one coast to the other, to the very borders of Muskovia and beyond. Few live who are not totally our slaves. But I refer to those who fled us…"

"Hawkmoon and his friends?"

"The same, mighty King Emperor."

"You chased them away. They offer us no threat."

"While they live, they threaten us, noble sire, for their escape could give others hope, and hope we must destroy in all we conquer lest we are troubled by risings against your discipline."

"You have dealt with risings before. You are used to them. We fear, Baron Meliadus, that you may be forsaking your King Emperor's interests in favor of personal interests…"

"My personal interests are your interests, Great King Emperor, your interests are my personal intereststhey are indivisible. Am I not the most loyal of your servants?"

"Perhaps you believe yourself to be so, Baron Meliadus…"

"What do you mean, Powerful Monarch?"

"We mean that your obsession with the German Hawkmoon and that handful of villains he has as friends could not necessarily be in our interest. They will not return-and if they should dare return, why, we can deal with them then. We fear that it is vengeance alone which motivates you and that you have rationalised your thirst for vengeance into a belief that the whole Dark Empire is threatened by those you would be avenged upon."

"No! No, Prince of All! I swear that is not so!"

"Let them stay where they are, Meliadus. Deal with them only if they reappear."

"Great King, they offer a potential threat to the Empire. There are other powers involved who support them-else where could they have obtained the machine which plucked them away when we were about to destroy them? I cannot offer positive evidence now -but if you would let me work with Taragorm to use his knowledge to discover the whereabouts of Hawkmoon and his company-then I will find that evidence and you will believe me!"

"We are dubious, Meliadus!" There was a grim note now in the melodious voice. "But if it does not interfere with the other duties at court we intend to give you, you may visit Lord Taragorm's palace and seek his assistance in your attempts to locate your enemies…"

"Our enemies, Prince of All…"

"We shall see, baron, we shall see."

"I thank you for your faith in me, Great Majesty. I will-"

"The audience is not ended, Baron Meliadus, for we have not yet told you of those duties we mentioned."

"I shall be honoured to perform them, noble sire."

"You spoke of our security being in peril from the Kamarg. Well, we believe that we may be threatened from other quarters. To be precise we are anxious that the East may promise us a fresh enemy that could be as powerful as the Dark Empire itself. Now, this could have something to do with your own suspicions concerning Hawkmoon and his supposed allies, for it is possible that we entertain representatives of those allies this day at our court…"

"Great King Emperor, if that be so…"

"Let us continue, Baron Meliadus!"

"I apologize, noble sire."

"Last night there appeared at the gates of Londra two strangers who claimed to be emissaries from the Empire of Asiacommunista. Their arrival was mysterious-indicating to us that they have methods of transport unknown to us, for they told us they had left their capital not two hours before. It is our opinion that they have come here, as we would visit others in whose territories we were interested, to spy out our strength.

We, in turn, must try to gauge their power, for the time must come, even if it is not soon, when we shall be in conflict with them. Doubtless our conquests in the Near and Middle East have become known to them and they are nervous. We must discover all we can about them, try to convince them that we mean them no harm, try to persuade them to let us return emissaries to their domain. Should that prove possible, we should want you, Meliadus, to be one of those emissaries, for you have greater experience of such diplomacy than any other among our servants."

"This is disturbing news, Great Emperor."

"Aye, but we must take what advantage we can from the events. You will be their guide, treat them courteously, try to draw them out, make them expand upon the extent of their power and the size of their territories, the number of warriors their monarch commands, the power of their weaponry and the capabilities of their transports. This visit, Baron Meliadus, offers,. as you can see, a much more important potential threat than any which may come from the vanished castle of Count Brass."

"Perhaps, noble sire…"

"No-certainly, Baron Meliadus!" The prehensible tongue flickered from the wrinkled mouth. "That is to be your most important task. If you have any time to spare, that can be devoted to your vendetta against Dorian Hawkmoon and the rest."

"But, Mighty King Emperor…"

"Bide our instructions well, Meliadus. Do not disappoint us." The tone was one of menace. The tongue touched the tiny jewel that floated near the head and the globe began to dull until it had the appearance of a solid, black sphere.

Chapter Seven THE EMISSARIES

BARON MELIADUS COULD still not rid himself of the feeling that his King Emperor had lost trust in him, that King Huon was deliberately finding means of curtailing his own schemes regarding the inhabitants of Castle Brass. True the king had made a convincing case for Meliadus's need to involve himself with the strange emissaries from Asiacommunista, had even flattered him by hinting that only Meliadus could deal with the problem, and would have the opportunity, later, of becoming not only the First Warrior of Europe, but also Paramount Warlord of Asiacommunista. But Meliadus's interest in Asiacommunista was not as great as his interest in Castle Brass-for he felt that there was evidence for believing Castle Brass to be a considerable threat to the Dark Empire, whereas his monarch had no evidence to suppose that Asiacommunista threatened them.

Clad in his finest mask and most sumptuous garments, Meliadus made his way through the shining corridors of the palace towards the hall where the previous day he had sought out his brother-in-law Taragorm.

Now the hall was to be used for another reception-to welcome, with due ceremony, the visitors from the east.

As the King Emperor's deputy, Baron Meliadus should have considered himself fully honoured, for it gave him prestige second only to King Huon's; but even this knowledge did not entirely ease his vengeful mind.

He entered the hall to the sound of fanfares from the galleries that ran around the walls. All the noblest of Granbretan were assembled here, their finery splendid and dazzling. The emissaries from Asiacommunista had not yet been announced. Baron Meliadus walked to the dais on which were placed three golden thrones, mounted the steps and seated himself on the throne in the middle. The sea of nobles bowed before him and the hall was silent in anticipation. Meliadus himself had not yet met the emissaries. Captain Viel Phong of the Order of the Mantis had been their escort up to now.

Meliadus looked about the hall, noting the presence of Taragorm, of Flana, Countess of Kanbery, of Adaz Promp and Mygel Hoist, of Jerek Nankenseen and Brenal Farnu. He was puzzled for a moment, wondering what was wrong. Then he realised that of all the great warrior nobles, only Shenegar Trott was missing.

He remembered that the fat count had spoken of a mission. Had he left to fulfill it already? Why had not he, Meliadus, been informed of Trott's expedition?

Were they keeping secrets from him? Had he truly lost the trust of his King Emperor? His brain in turmoil, Meliadus turned as the fanfares sounded again and the doors of the hall opened to admit two incredibly garbed figures.

Automatically Meliadus rose to greet them, astonished at the sight of them, for they were barbaric and grotesque-giants of over seven feet high, walking stiffly like automatons. Were they, indeed, human? he wondered. It had not occurred to him that they would not be. Were these some monstrous creation of the Tragic Millenium? Were the folk of Asiacommunista not men at all?

Like the people of Granbretan, they wore masks (he assumed those constructions on their shoulders were masks) so that it was impossible to tell if human faces were within them. They were tall things, roughly oblong in shape, of brightly painted leather in blues, greens, yellows and reds, swirling patterns on which had been painted devil features-glaring eyes and teeth-filled mouths. Bulky fur cloaks hung to the ground and their clothes were leather, painted to travesty human limbs and organs, reminding Meliadus of the coloured sketches he had once seen in a medical text.

The herald announced them:

"The Lord Kominsar Kaow Shalang Gatt, Hereditary Representative of the President Emperor long Mang Shen of Asiacommunista and Prince Elect of the Hordes of the Sun."

The first of the emissaries stepped forward, his fur cloak drifting back to reveal shoulders that were at least four feet in width, the sleeves of his coat of bulky multi-colored silk, his right hand holding a staff of gem-encrusted gold that might have been the Runestaff itself, the care he took of it.

"The Lord Kominsar Orkai Heong Phoon, Hereditary Representative of the President Emperor Jong Mang Shen of Asiacommunista and Prince Elect of the Hordes of the Sun."

The second man (if man he was) stepped forward, similarly garbed but without a staff.

"I welcome the noble emissaries of the President Emperor Jong Mang Shen and let them know that all Granbretan is at their disposal to do with as they wish."

Meliadus spread his arms wide.

The man with the staff paused before the dais and began to speak in a strange, lilting accent as if the language of Granbretan, and indeed all Europe and the Near East, was not native to him.

"We thank you most graciously for your welcome and would beg to know what mighty man addresses us."

"I am the Baron Meliadus of Kroiden, Grand Constable of the Order of the Wolf, Paramount Warlord of Europe, Deputy to the Immortal King Emperor Huon the Eighteenth, Ruler of Granbretan, of Europe and all the Realms of the Middle Sea, Grand Constable of the Order of the Mantis, Controller of Destinies, Molder of Histories, Feared and Powerful Prince of All. I greet you as he would greet you, speak as he would speak, act in accord with all his wishes, for you must know that, being immortal, he cannot leave the mystic Throne Globe which preserves him and which is protected by the Thousand who guard him night and day." Meliadus thought it best to dwell for a moment upon the invulnerability of the King Emperor, to impress the visitors, should it have occurred to them, that an attempt on King Huon's life was impossible. Meliadus indicated the twin thrones on either side of him. "I ask you-be seated, be entertained."

The two grotesque creatures mounted the steps and, with some difficulty, placed themselves in the golden chairs. There would be no banquet, for the people of Granbretan regarded eating, on the whole, as a personal matter, for it could necessitate the removal of their masks and the horror of displaying their naked faces. Only thrice a year did they shed in public their masks and garments in the security of the Throne Room itself where they would indulge in a week-long orgy before the greedy eyes of King Huon, taking part in disgusting and bloody ceremonies with names existing only in the languages of their various Orders and which were never referred to save upon those three occasions.

Baron Meliadus clapped his hands for the entertainments to begin, the courtiers parted like a curtain and took their places on the two sides of the hall, then on came the acrobats and the tumblers, the Harlequins, Pierrots and Columbines, while wild music sounded from the gallery above. Human pyramids swayed, bent and suddenly collapsed to reform again in even more complex assemblages, clowns capered and played upon one another the dangerous jokes that were expected of them, while the acrobats and tumblers cavorted around them at incredible speeds, walking on wires stretched between the galleries, performing on trapezes suspended high above all the heads of the audience.

Flana of Kanbery did not watch the tumblers and failed to see any humour in the actions of the clowns.

Instead she turned her beautiful heron mask in the direction of the strangers and regarded them with what was for her unusual curiosity, thinking dimly that she would like to know them better, for they offered the possibility of a unique diversion, particularly if, as she suspected, they were not entirely manlike.

Meliadus, who could not rid himself of the suspicion that he was being prejudiced against by his king and plotted against by his fellow nobles, made a mighty attempt to be civil to the visitors. When he wished, he could impress strangers (as he had once impressed Count Brass) with his dignity, his wit and his manliness, but this night it was an effort and he feared that the effort could be detected in his tone.

"Do you find the entertainment to your liking, my lords of Asiacommunista?" he would say-and be met with a slight inclination of the huge heads. "Are the clowns not amusing?"-and there would be a movement of the hand from Kaow Shalang Gatt, who bore the golden staff-or: "Such skill! We brought those conjurers from our territories in Italia-and those tumblers were once the property of a Duke of Krahkov-you must have entertainers of equal skill at your own Emperor's court…" and the other, called Orkai Heong Phoon, would move his body in its seat, as if in discomfort. The result was to increase Baron Meliadus's sense of impatience, make him feel that these peculiar creatures somehow judged themselves above him or were bored by his attempts at civility, and it became more and more difficult for him to continue the light conversation that was the only conversation possible while the music played.

At length he rose and clapped his hands. "Enough of this. Dismiss these entertainers. Let us have more exotic sport." And he relaxed a trifle as the sexual gymnasts entered the hall and began to perform for the delight of the depraved appetites of the Dark Empire.

He chuckled, recognizing some of the performers, pointing them out to his guests. "There's one who was a Prince of Magyaria-and those two, the twins, were the sisters of a king in Turkia. I captured the blonde one there myself-and the stallion you see-in a Bulgarian stable. Many of them I personally trained." But though the entertainment relaxed the tortured nerves of Baron Meliadus of Kroiden, the emissaries of the President Emperor Jong Mang Shen seemed as unmoved and as taciturn as ever.

At last the performance was over and the entertainers retired (to the emissaries' relief, it seemed). Baron Meliadus, much refreshed, wondering if the creatures were of flesh and blood at all, gave the order for the ball to commence.

"Now gentlemen," said he rising, "shall we circulate about the floor so that you may meet those who have assembled to honour you and be honoured by you."

Moving stiffly, the emissaries of Asiacommunista followed Baron Meliadus, towering over the heads of even the tallest in the hall.

"Would you dance?" asked the baron.

"We do not dance, I regret," said Kaow Shalang Gatt tonelessly, and since etiquette demanded that the guests dance before the others could, no dancing was done.

Meliadus fumed. What did King Huon expect of him?

How could he deal with these automata?

"Do you not have dances in Asiacommunista?" he said, his voice trembling with suppressed anger.

"Not of the sort I suppose you to prefer," replied Orkai Heong Phoon, and though there was no inflection in his voice, again Baron Meliadus was given to think that such activities were beneath the dignity of the Asiacommunistan nobles. It was becoming, he thought grimly, exceedingly difficult to remain polite toward these proud strangers. Meliadus was not used to suppressing his feelings where mere foreigners were concerned and he promised himself the pleasure of dealing with these two in particular should he be given the privilege of leading any army that conquered the "Far East.

Baron Meliadus paused before Adaz Promp who bowed to the two guests. "May I present one of our mightiest warlords, the Count Adaz Promp, Grand Constable of the Order of the Hound, Prince of Parye and Protector of Munchein, Commander of Ten Thousand." The ornate dog-mask inclined itself again.

"Count Adaz led the force that helped us conquer all the European mainland in two years when we had allowed for twenty," Meliadus said. "His hounds are invincible."

"The baron flatters me," said Adaz Promp, "I am sure you have mightier legions in Asiacommunista, my lords."

"Perhaps, I do not know. Your army sounds as fierce as our dragon-hounds," Kaow Shalang Gatt said.

"Dragon-hounds? And what are they?" Meliadus enquired, remembering at last what his king had desired him to do.

"You have none in Granbretan?"

"Perhaps we call them by another name? Could you describe them?"

Kaow Shalang Gatt made a movement with his staff.

"They are about twice the height of a man-one of our men-with seventy teeth that are like ivory razors.

They are very hairy and have claws like a cat's. We use them to hunt those reptiles we have not yet trained for war."

"I see," Meliadus murmured, thinking that such warbeasts would require special tactics to defeat. "And how many such dragon-hounds have you trained for battle?"

"A good number," said his guest.

They moved on, meeting other nobles and their ladies, and each was prepared with a question such as Adaz Promp had asked, to give Meliadus the opportunity of extracting information from the emissaries.

But it became plain that although they were willing to indicate that their forces and weaponry were mighty, they were too cautious to provide details as to numbers and capacity. Meliadus realised that it would take more than one evening to gather that sort of information, and he had the feeling that it would be hard to get it at all.

"Your science must be very sophisticated," he said as they moved through the throng. "More advanced than ours, perhaps?"

"Perhaps," said Orkai Heong Phoon, "but I know so little of your science. It would be interesting to compare such things."

"Indeed it would," agreed Meliadus. "I heard, for instance, that your flying machine brought you several thousand miles in a very short space of time."

"It was not a flying machine," said Orkai Heong Phoon.

"No? Then how…?"

"We call it an Earth Chariot-it moves through the ground…"

"And how is it propelled? What moves the earth away from it?"

"We are not scientists," put in Kaow Shalang Gatt.

"We do not pretend to understand the workings of our machines. We leave such things to the lowlier castes."

Baron Meliadus, feeling slighted again, came to a halt before the beautiful heron mask of the Countess Flana Mikosevaar. He announced her and she curtsied.

"You are very tall," she said in her throaty murmur.

"Yes, very tall."

Baron Meliadus attempted to move on, embarrassed by the countess as he had half-suspected he would be.

He had only introduced her to fill the silence following the visitor's last remark. But Flana reached and touched Orkai Heong Phoon's shoulder. "And your shoulders are very broad," she said. The emissary made no reply, but stood stock still. Had she insulted him?

Meliadus wondered. He would have felt some satisfaction if she had. He did not expect the Asiacommunistan to complain, for he realised it was as much in the man's interests to remain on good terms with Granbretan's nobles as it was in Granbretan's interests, at this stage, to remain on good terms with them. "May I entertain you in some way?" asked Flana, gesturing vaguely.

"Thank you, but I can think of nothing at this moment," said the man, and they moved on.

Astonished, Flana watched them continue their progress. She had never been rejected thus before and she was intrigued. She decided to explore these possibilities further, when she could find a suitable time.

They were odd, these taciturn creatures, with their stiff movements. They were like men of metal, she thought.

Could anything, she wondered, produce a human emotion in them?

Their great masks of painted leather swayed above the heads of the crowd as Meliadus introduced them to Jerek Nankenseen and his lady, the Duchess Falmoliva Nankenseen who, in her youth, had ridden to battle with her husband.

And when the tour was completed, Baron Meliadus returned to his golden throne wondering, with increased frustration, where his rival, Shenegar Trott, had disappeared to, and why King Huon should have deigned not to trust him with the information of Trott's movements. He wanted urgently to rid himself of his charges and hurry to Taragorm's laboratories to discover what progress the Master of the Palace of Time had made and whether there was any possibility of discovering the whereabouts in time or space of the hated Castle Brass.

Chapter Eight MELIADUS AT THE PALACE OF TIME

EARLY NEXT MORNING, after an unsatisfactory night in which he had given up sleep and failed to find pleasure, Baron Meliadus left to visit Taragorm at the Palace of Time.

In Londra there were few open streets. Houses, palaces, warehouses and barracks were all connected by enclosed passages which, in the richer sections of the city, were of bright colours as if the walls were made of enamelled glass or, in the poorer sections, of oily, dark stone.

Meliadus was borne through these passages in a curtained litter by a dozen girl slaves, all naked and with rouged bodies (the only kind of slaves Meliadus would have to serve him). His intention was to visit Taragorm before those boorish nobles of Asiacommunista were awake. It could be, of course, that they did represent a nation helping Hawkmoon and the rest, but he had no proof. If his hopes of Taragorm's discoveries were realised, he might gain that proof, present it to King Huon, vindicate himself and perhaps, too, rid himself of the troublesome task of playing host to the emissaries.

The passages widened and strange sounds began to be heard-dull booms and regular, mechanical noises.

Meliadus knew that he heard Taragorm's clocks.

As he neared the entrance to the Palace of Time, the noise became deafening as a thousand gigantic pendulums swung at a thousand different rates, as machinery whirred and shifted, as jacks struck bells and gongs and cymbals, mechanical birds cried and mechanical voices spoke. It was an incredibly confusing din for, although the palace contained some several thousand clocks of differing sizes, it was itself a gigantic clock, the chief regulator for the rest, and above all the other sounds came the slow, ponderous, echoing clack of the massive escapement lever, far above near the roof, and the hissing of the monstrous pendulum as it swung through the air in the Hall of the Pendulum where Taragorm conducted most of his experiments.

Meliadus's litter arrived at last before a relatively small set of bronze doors and mechanical men sprang forward to block the way, a mechanical voice cutting through the din of the clocks to demand:

"Who visits Lord Taragorm at the Palace of Tune?"

"Baron Meliadus, his brother-in-law, with the permission of the King Emperor," replied the baron, forced to shout.

The doors remained closed for a good deal longer, Meliadus thought, than they should have done, then opened slowly to admit the litter.

Now they passed into a hall with curved walls of metal, like the base of a clock, and the noise increased.

The hall was full of ticks and clacks and whirrs and booms and thumps and swishes and clangs and, had not the baron's head been encased in its wolf-helm, he would have pressed his hands to his ears. As it was he began to be convinced that shortly he would become deaf.

They passed through this hall into another swathed in tapestries (inevitably representing in highly formalised design a hundred different time-keeping devices) which muffled the worst of the noise. Here the girl slaves lowered the litter and Baron Meliadus pushed back the curtains with gauntleted hands and stood there to await the coming of his brother-in-law.

Again (he felt) he had to wait an unconscionable time before the man appeared, stepping sedately through the doors at the far end of the hall, his huge clock mask nodding.

"It is early, brother," said Taragorm. "I regret I kept you waiting, but I had not breakfasted."

Meliadus reflected that Taragorm had never had a decent regard for the niceties of etiquette, then he snapped: "My apologies, brother, but I was anxious to see your work."

"I am flattered. This way, brother."

Taragorm turned and left through the door he had entered, Meliadus close on his heels.

Through more tapestried passages they moved until at last Taragorm pressed his weight against the bar locking a huge door. The door opened and the air was suddenly full of the sound of a great wind; the noise of a gigantic drum sounding a painfully slow beat.

Automatically Meliadus looked up and saw the pendulum hurtling through the air above him-its bob fifty tons of brass fashioned in the form of an ornate, blazing sun, creating a draft that fluttered all the tapestries in the halls behind them and raised Meliadus's cloak like a pair of heavy silken wings. The pendulum supplied the wind and the hidden escapement lever, high above, supplied the sound like a drum. Across the vast Hall of the Pendulum was stretched an array of machines in various stages of construction, of benches containing laboratory equipment, of instruments of brass and bronze and silver, of clouds of fine golden wires, of webs of jewelled thread, of time-keeping instruments-water-clocks, pendulum movements, lever movements, ball movements, watches, chronometers, orreries, astrolabes, leaf-clocks, skeleton clocks, table clocks, sun dials-and working on all these were Taragorm's slaves, scientists and engineers captured from a score of nations, many of them the finest of their lands.

Even as Meliadus watched, there would come a flash of purple light from one part of the hall, a shower of green sparks from another, a gout of scarlet smoke from elsewhere. He saw a black machine crumble to dust and its attendant cough, tumble forward into the dust and vanish.

"And what was that?" came a laconic voice from nearby. Meliadus turned to see that Kalan of Vitall, Chief Scientist to the King-Emperor, was also visiting Taragorm.

"An experiment in accelerated time," said Taragorm.

"We can create the process, but we cannot control it.

Nothing, so far, has worked. See there…" he pointed to a large ovoid machine of yellow, glassy substance…

"that creates the opposite effect and again, unfortunately, cannot be controlled as yet. The man you see beside it," he indicated what Meliadus had taken to be a lifelike statue (some mechanical figure from a clock being repaired), "has been frozen thus for weeks!"

"And what of travelling through time?" Meliadus said.

"Over there," Taragorm replied. "You see the set of silver boxes? Each of those houses an instrument we have created that can hurl an object through tune, either back or forth-we are not sure for what distances. Living things, however, suffer much when undergoing the same journey. Few of the slaves or animals we have used have lived, and none have not suffered considerable agonies and deformities."

"If only we had believed Tozer," Kalan said, "perhaps then we might have discovered the secret of travelling through time. We should not have made such a joke of him-but, really, I could not believe that that scribbling buffoon had truly discovered the secret!"

"What's that? What?" Meliadus had heard nothing of Tozer. "Tozer the playwright. I thought him dead!

What did he know of time travel?"

"He reappeared, trying to reinstate himself in the King Emperor's graces with a story that he had learned how to journey through time from an old man in the West-a mental trick, he said. We brought him here, laughingly asked him to prove the truth of his words by travelling through time. Whereupon, Baron Meliadus, he vanished!"

"You-you made no effort to hold him…?"

"It was impossible to believe him," Taragorm put in. "Would you have?"

"I would have been more careful in testing him."

"It was in his interest to return, we thought. Besides, brother, we were not clutching at straws."

"What do you mean by that-brother?" retorted Meliadus.

"I mean that we are working in the spirit of pure scientific research, whereas you require immediate results in order to continue your vendetta against Castle Brass."

"I, brother, am a warrior-a man of action. It does not suit me to sit about and play with toys or brood over books." Honour satisfied, Baron Meliadus returned his attention to the subject of Tozer.

"You say the playwright learned the secret from an old man in the West?"

"So he said," replied Kalan. "But I think he was lying. He told us it was a mental trick he had developed, but we did not think him capable of such discipline. Still, the fact remains, he faded and vanished before our eyes."

"Why was I not told of this?" Meliadus moaned in frustration.

"You were still on the mainland when it took place,"

Taragorm pointed out. "Besides, we did not think it was of interest to a man of action like yourself."

"But his knowledge could have clarified your work,"

Meliadus said. "You seem so casual about having lost the opportunity."

Taragorm shrugged. "What can we do about it now?

We are progressing little by little…" somewhere there was a bang, a man screamed and a mauve and orange flash illuminated the room… "and we shall soon have tamed time as we are taming space."

"In a thousand years, perhaps!" snorted Meliadus.

"The West-an old man in the West? We must locate him. What is his name?"

"Tozer told us only that he was called Mygan-a sorcerer of considerable wisdom. But, as I said, I believe he was lying. After all, what's in the West save desolation? Nothing has lived there but malformed creatures since the Tragic Millenium."

"We must go there," Meliadus said. "We must leave no stone unturned, no chance overlooked…"

"I'll not journey to those bleak mountains on a wild goose chase," said Kalan with a shudder. "I have my work to do here, fitting my new engines into ships; ships to enable us to conquer the rest of the world as swiftly as we conquered Europe. Besides, I thought you, too, had responsibilities at home, Baron Meliadus-our visitors…"

"Damn the visitors. They cost me precious time."

"Soon I shall be able to offer you all the time you require, brother," Taragorm told him. "Give us a little while…"

"Bah! I can learn nothing here. Your crumbling boxes and exploding machines make spectacular sights, but they are useless to me. Play your games, brother, as you please. I'll bid you good morning!"

Feeling relieved that he no longer had to be polite to his hated brother-in-law, Meliadus turned and stalked out of the Hall of the Pendulum, through the tapestried corridors and halls, back to his litter.

He flung himself into it, grunted for the girls to bear him away.

As he was borne back to Ms own palace, Meliadus considered the new information.

At the first opportunity he would rid himself of his charges and journey to the West, to see if he could retrace Tozer's steps and discover the old man who held not only the secret of time, but also the means of his at last exacting his full vengeance upon Castle Brass.

Chapter Nine INTERLUDE AT CASTLE BRASS

AT CASTLE BRASS, in the courtyard, Count Brass and Oladahn of the Bulgar Mountains, straddled their horned horses and rode out, through the red-roofed town, and away to the fens, as was their habit now every morning.

Count Brass had lost some of his brooding manner and had begun to desire company again since the visit of the Warrior in Jet and Gold.

Elvereza Tozer was held captive in a suite of rooms in one of the towers and had seemed content when Bowgentle had given him supplies of paper, pens and ink and told him to earn his keep with a play, promising him an appreciative, if small audience.

"I wonder how Hawkmoon fares," he said, as they rode together in pleasurable companionship. "I regret that I did not draw the straw which would have enabled me to accompany him."

"I, too," said Oladahn. "D'Averc was lucky. A shame there were only two rings that could be used-Tozer's and the Warrior's. If they return with the rest, then we'll all be able to make war on the Dark Empire…"

"It was a dangerous idea, friend Oladahn, to suggest, as the Warrior suggested, they visit Granbretan itself and try to discover Mygan of Llandar in Yel."

"I have heard it said that it is often safer to dwell in the lion's lair than outside it," Oladahn said.

"Safer still to live in a land where there are no lions," Count Brass retorted with a small quirk of his lips.

"Well, I hope the lion does not devour them, that is all, Count Brass," said Oladahn frowning. "It may be perverse of me, but I still envy him his opportunity."

"I have a feeling that we shall not long have to put up with this inaction," Count Brass said, guiding his horse along the narrow track between the reeds, "for it seems to me that our security is threatened from not one quarter but many…"

"It is not a possibility that worries me overmuch," said Oladahn, "but I fear for Yisselda, Bowgentle and the ordinary folk of the town, for they have no relish for the sort of activity we enjoy."

The two men rode on to the sea, enjoying the solitude and at the same tune yearning for the din and the action of battle.

Count Brass began to wonder if it.were not worth smashing the crystal device that was their security, plunging Castle Brass back into the world they had left, and making a fight of it, even though there was no chance of defeating the hordes of the Dark Empire.

Chapter Ten THE SIGHTS OF LONDRA

THE ORNITHOPTER'S WINGS thrashed at the air as the flying machine hovered over the spires of Londra.

It was a large machine, built to carry four or five people, and its metal bulk gleamed with scrollwork and baroque designs.

Meliadus bent his head over the side and pointed downward. His guests leaned forward also, barely polite. It seemed that their tall, heavy masks would fall from their shoulders if they leaned any further.

"There you see the palace of King Huon where you are staying," Meliadus said, indicating the crazy magnificence of his King Emperor's domicile. It towered above all the other buildings and was set apart from them, in the very center of the city. Unlike most other buildings, it could not be reached by a series of corridors. Its four towers, glowing with a light of deep gold, were even now above their heads, though they sat in the ornithopter, well above the tops of the other buildings. Its tiers were thick with bas-reliefs depicting all manner of dark activities beloved of the Empire. Gigantic and grotesque statues were placed on corners of parapets, seeming about to topple into the courtyards far, far below. The palace was blotched with every imaginable colour and all the colours clashed in such a way as to make the eye ache in a matter of seconds.

"The Palace of Time," said Meliadus, indicating the superbly ornamented palace that was also a giant clock, and then: "My own palace." This was brooding black, faced with silver. "The river you see is, of course, the River Tayme." The river was thick with traffic. Its blood-red waters bore barges of bronze, ebony and teak ships emblazoned with precious metal and semiprecious jewels, with huge white sails on which designs had been sewn or printed.

"Further to your left," said Baron Meliadus, deeply resenting this silly task, "is our Hanging Tower. You will see that it appears to hang from the sky and is not rooted upon the ground. This was the result of an experiment of one of our sorcerers who managed to raise the tower a few feet but could raise it no further. Then, it appeared, he could not recall it to Earth-so it has remained thus ever since."

He showed them the quays where the great, garnetburnished battleships of Granbretan dispensed their stolen goods; the Quarter of the Unmasked where lived the scum of the city; the dome of the huge theatre where once Tozer's plays had been performed; the Temple of the Wolf, headquarters of his own order, with a monstrous and grotesque stone wolf head dominating the curve of the roof, and the various other temples with similarly grotesque beast heads carved in stone and weighing many tons.

For a dull day they flew over the city, stopping only to refuel the ornithopter and change pilots, with Meliadus growing hourly impatient. He showed them all the wonders that filled that ancient and unpleasant city, seeking, as his King Emperor had demanded, to impress the visitors with the Dark Empire's might.

As evening came and the setting sun stained the city with unhealthy shades, Baron Meliadus sighed with relief and instructed the pilot to direct the ornithopter to the landing stage on the roof of the palace.

It landed with a great flurry of metal wings, a wheezing and a clattering and the two emissaries climbed stiffly out; like the machine, they remained semblances of natural life.

They walked to the hooded entrance of the palace and moved down the winding ramp until they were at last again in the corridors of shifting light, to be met by their guard of honor, six high-ranking warriors of the Order of the Mantis, their insect masks reflecting the brightness from the walls, who escorted them back to their own chambers where they would rest and eat.

Leaving them at the door of their apartments, Baron Meliadus bowed and hurried away, having promised that tomorrow they should discuss matters of science, and compare the progress of Asiacommunista with the achievements of Granbretan.

Flinging himself through the hallucinatory passages he almost bowled over the King Emperor's relative, Flana, Countess of Kanbery.

"My lord!"

He paused, made to pass her, stopped. "My ladymy apologies."

"You are in a hurry, my lord!"

"I am, Flana.", "You are in uneven temper, it seems."

"My temper is poor."

"You would console yourself?"

"I have business to attend to…"

"Business should be conducted with a cool head, my lord?"

"Perhaps."

"If you would cool your passion…"

He started to continue his progress, then stopped again. He had experienced Flana's methods of consolation before. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps he did need her. On the other hand he needed to make preparations for his expedition to the West as soon as the emissaries had departed. Still, they would be here for some days at least. Also, the previous night had proved unsatisfactory and his morale was low. At least he could prove himself a lover.

"Perhaps…" he said again, this time more thoughtfully.

"Then let us make haste to my apartments, my lord," said she with a trace of eagerness.

With mounting interest, Meliadus took her arm.

"Ah, Flana," he murmured. "Ah, Flana."

Chapter Eleven THOUGHTS OF THE COUNTESS FLANA

FLANA'S MOTIVES in seeking the company of Meliadus had been mixed, for it was not the baron in whom she was chiefly interested, but in his charges, the two stiff-limbed giants from the East.

She asked him about them as they lay in their sweat in her enormous bed and he confided his frustrations, his hatred of his task and his hatred of the emissaries, told her of his real ambition, which was to avenge himself of his enemies, the slayers of her husband, the inhabitants of Castle Brass, told her of his discovery that Tozer had found an old man in the West, in the forgotten province of Yel, who might have the secret of reaching his foes.

And he murmured of his fears that he was losing his power, his prestige (though he knew he should not speak such secret thoughts to Flana of all women) and that the King Emperor was these days trusting others, such as Shenegar Trott, with the knowledge that he once only gave to Meliadus.

"Oh, Flana," he said, shortly before he fell into a moody sleep, "if you were Queen, together we could fulfill our Empire's mightiest destiny."

But Flana scarcely heard him, was scarcely thinking, merely lay there and moved her heavy body from time to time, for Meliadus had failed to ease the aching in her soul, had barely eased the craving in her loins and her mind was on the emissaries who lay sleeping only two tiers above her head.

At length she rose from the bed, leaving Meliadus snoring and moaning in his sleep, and dressed herself again in gown and mask, and slipped from her room to glide along the corridors, up the ramps, until she came at last to the doors that were guarded by the Mantis warriors. The insect masks turned questioningly.

"You know who I am," said she.

They did know and they withdrew from the doors.

She chose one and pressed it open, entering the exciting darkness of the emissaries' apartments. ft

Chapter Twelve A REVELATION

MOONLIGHT ALONE ILLUMINATED the room, falling on a bed in which a figure stirred, showing her the discarded ornaments, armor and mask of the man who lay there.

She moved closer.

"My lord?" she whispered.

Suddenly the figure shot up in the bed and she saw his startled face, saw his hands fly up to cover his features, and she gasped in recognition.

"I know you!"

"Who are you?" He leapt from beneath the silken sheets, naked in the moonlight, ran forward to seize her. "A woman!"

"Aye…" purred she. "And you are a man." She laughed softly. "Not a giant at all, though of goodly height. Your mask and armor made you seem more than a foot taller."

"What do you want?"

"I sought to entertain you, sir-and be entertained. But I am disappointed, for I believed you to be other than human. Now I know you to be the man I saw in the Throne Room two years ago-the man Meliadus brought before the King-Emperor."

"So you were there that day." His grip tightened on her and his hand rose to yank off her mask and cover her mouth. She nibbled the fingers; stroked the muscles of the other arm. The hand on her mouth relaxed.

"Who are you?" he whispered. "Do others know?"

"I am Flana Mikosevaar, Countess of Kanbery. None suspects you, daring German. And I will not call in the guards, if that is what you expect, for I have no interest in politics and no sympathy with Meliadus. Indeed, I am grateful to you, for you rid me of a troublesome spouse."

"You are Mikosevaar's widow?"

"I am. And you I knew immediately by the black jewel in your forehead which you sought to hide when I entered. You are Duke Dorian Hawkmoon von Koln, here in disguise, no doubt, to learn the secrets of your enemies."

"I believe I shall have to kill you, madam."

"I have no intention of betraying you, Duke Dorian.

At least, not at once. I came to offer myself for your pleasure, that is all. You have rid me of my mask."

She turned her golden eyes upward to regard his handsome face. "Now you may rid me of the rest of my garb…"

"Madam," he said hoarsely. "I cannot. I am married."

She laughed. "As am I-I have been married countless times."

There was sweat on his forehead as he returned her gaze and his muscles tensed. "Madam-I-I cannot…"

There was a sound and they both turned.

The door separating the apartments opened and there stood a gaunt, good-looking man who coughed a little ostentatiously and then bowed. He, too, was completely naked.

"My friend, madam," said Huillam D'Averc, "is of a somewhat rigid moral disposition. However, if I can assist…"

She moved toward him, looking him up and down.

"You seem a healthy fellow," she said.

He turned his eyes away. "Ah, madam, it is kind of you to say so. But I am not, not a well man. On the other hand," he reached out and took her shoulder, guiding her into his chamber, "I will do what little I can to please you before this failing heart gives up on me…"

The door closed, leaving Hawkmoon trembling.

He sat on the edge of his bed, cursing himself for not having slept in his cumbersome disguise, but the exhausting tour of the day had made him dispense with caution of that kind. When the Warrior in Jet and Gold had put the plan to them, it had seemed unnecessarily dangerous. The logic had been sound enough-they must discover if the old man from Yel had been found before they went off searching for him in Western Granbretan. But now it seemed their chances of getting such information were dashed.

The guards must have seen the countess enter. Even if they killed her or imprisoned her, the guards would suspect something. They were in a city that was, to a man, totally dedicated to their destruction. They had no allies and there was no possible hope of escape once their real identities became known.

Hawkmoon racked his brains for a plan that would at least enable them to flee the city before it became alerted, but all seemed hopeless.

Hawkmoon began to pile on his heavy robes and armour. The only weapon he had was the golden baton which the Warrior had given him to complete the impression of a noble dignitary from Asiacommunista.

He hefted it, wishing he had a sword.

Pacing the room, he continued to try to think of a feasible plan of escape, but nothing came.

He was still pacing when morning came and Huillam D'Averc put his head through the door and grinned.

"Good morning, Hawkmoon? Have you had no rest, man? I sympathize. Neither have I. The countess is a demanding creature. However I am glad to see you ready for a journey. We must hurry."

"What do you mean, D'Averc? I have tried all night to conceive a plan, but I can think of nothing…"

"I have been questioning Flana of Kanbery and she has told me everything we need to know, for Meliadus, apparently, has confided much in her. She has also agreed to help us escape."

"How?"

"Her private ornithopter. It is ours for the taking."

"Can you trust her?"

"We must. Listen-Meliadus has not yet had time to seek out Mygan of Llandar. By good fortune, it was our arrival kept him here. But he knows of himknows, at least, that Tozer learned his secret from an old man in the West-and means to find him. We have the chance to find Mygan first. We can go part of the way by Flana's ornithopter which I will fly and continue the rest of the journey on foot."

"But we are weaponless-without proper clothes!"

"Weapons and clothes I can obtain from Flanamasks also. She has a thousand trophies of past conquests in her chambers."

"We must go to her chambers now!"

"No. We must wait for her to return here."

"Why?"

"Because, my friend, Meliadus may still be sleeping in her apartments. Have patience. We are in luck. Pray that it will hold!"

Not much later Flana returned, took off her mask and kissed D'Averc almost hesitantly, as a young girl might kiss a lover. Her features seemed softer and her eyes less haunted, as if she had found some quality in D'Averc's lovemaking that she had not experienced before-possibly gentleness, which was not a quality of the men of Granbretan.

"He is gone," she said. "And I have half a mind, Huillam, to keep you here, for myself. For many years I have contained a need which I could not express, never satisfy. You have come close to satisfying it…"

He bent and kissed her lightly on the lips and his voice seemed sincere when he said: "And you, too, Flana, have given me something…" He straightened stiffly, having donned his heavy, built-up garments.

He placed his tall mask upon his head. "Come, we must hurry, before the palace wakes."

Hawkmoon followed D'Averc's example, donning his own helmet, and once again the two resembled strange, half-human creatures, the emissaries from Asiacommunista.

Now Flana led them from the apartments, past the Mantis guards, who fell in behind them, and through the twisting, shining corridors until her own apartments were reached. They ordered the guards to remain outside.

"They will report that they followed us here," D'Averc said. "You will be suspected, Flana!"

She doffed her heron mask and smiled. "No," she said and crossed the deep carpet to a polished chest set with diamonds. She raised the lid and took out a long pipe, at the end of which was a soft bulb. "This bulb contains a poison spray," she said. "Once inhaled, the poison turns the victim mad so that he runs wild and berserk before dying. The guards will run through many corridors before they perish. I have used it before. It always works."

She spoke so sweetly of murder that Hawkmoon was forced to shudder.

"All I need do, you see," she continued, "is to push the hollow rod through the keyhole and squeeze the bulb."

She placed the apparatus on the lid of the chest and led them through several splendid, eccentrically furnished rooms, until they came to a chamber with a huge window that looked out onto a broad balcony.

There on the balcony, its wings neatly folded, fashioned to resemble a beautiful scarlet and silver heron, was Flana's ornithopter.

She hurried to another part of the room and drew back a curtain. There, in a great pile, was her bootyclothes, masks and weapons of all her departed lovers and husbands.

"Take what you need," she murmured, "and hurry."

Hawkmoon selected a doublet of blue velvet, hose of black doe-skin, a sword-belt of brocaded leather which held a long, beautifully balanced blade and a poignard. For his mask he took one of his slain enemy's-Asrovaak Mikosevaar's-glowering vulture masks.

D'Averc dressed himself in a suit of deep yellow with a cloak of lustrous blue, boots of deerhide and a blade similar to Hawkmoon's. He, too, took a vulture mask, reasoning that two of the same Order would be likely to be travelling together. Now they looked truly great nobles of Granbretan.

Flana opened the window and they stepped out into the cold, foggy morning.

"Farewell," whispered Flana. "I must get back to the guards. Farewell, Huillam D'Averc. I hope we shall meet again."

"I hope so, also, Flana," replied D'Averc with unusual gentleness of tone. "Farewell."

He climbed into the cockpit of the ornithopter and started the motor. Hawkmoon hastily got in behind him.

The thing's wings began to beat at the air and with a clatter of metal it rose into the gloomy sky of Londra, turning West.

Chapter Thirteen KING HUON'S DISPLEASURE

MANY EMOTIONS CONFLICTED in Baron Meliadus as he entered the Throne Room of his King Emperor, abased himself and began the long trudge toward the Throne Globe.

The white fluid of the globe surged more agitatedly than usual, alarming the Baron. He was at once furious that the emissaries had disappeared, nervous of his monarch's wrath, anxious to pursue his quest for the old man who could give him the means of reaching Castle Brass. Also he feared lest he lose his power and his pride and (the king had been known to do it before) be banished to the Quarter of the Unmasked. His nervous fingers brushed his wolf-helm and his step faltered as he neared the Throne Globe and looked anxiously up at the foetus-like shape of his monarch.

"Great King Emperor. It is your servant Meliadus."

He fell to his knees and bowed to the ground.

"Servant? You have not served us very well, Meliadus!"

"I am sorry, Noble Majesty, but…"

"But?"

"But I could have no knowledge that they planned to leave last night, returning by the means with which they came…"

"It should have been your business to sense their plans, Meliadus."

"Sense? Sense their plans, Mighty Monarch…?"

"Your instinct is failing you, Meliadus. Once it was exact-you acted according to its dictates. Now your silly plans for vengeance fill your brain and being and make you blind to all else. Meliadus, those emissaries slew six of my best guards. How they killed them, I know not-perhaps a mental spell of some land-but kill them they did, somehow leaving the palace and returning to whatever machine brought them here. They have discovered much about usand we, Meliadus, have discovered virtually nothing about them."

"We know a little of their military equipment…"

"Do we? Men can lie, you know, Meliadus. We are displeased with you. We charged you to perform a duty and you performed it only partially and without your full attention. You spent time at Taragorm's palace, left the emissaries to their own devices when you should have been entertaining them. You are a fool, Meliadus. A fool!"

"Sire, I-"

"It is your stupid obsession with that handful of outlaws who dwell in Castle Brass. Is it the girl you desire? Is that why you seek them with such single-mindedness?"

"I fear they threaten the Empire, noble sire…"

"So does Asiacommunista threaten our Empire, Baron Meliadus-with real swords and real armies and real ships that can travel through the earth. Baron, you must forget your vendetta against Castle Brass or, we warn you, you had best be wary of our displeasure."

"But, sire…"

"We have warned you, Baron Meliadus. Put Castle Brass from your mind. Instead, try to learn all you can of the emissaries, discover where their machine met them, how they managed to leave the city. Redeem yourself in our eyes, Baron Meliadus-restore yourself to your old prestige…"

"Aye, sire," Baron Meliadus said through gritted teeth, controlling his anger and chagrin.

"The audience is at an end, Meliadus."

"Thank you," said Meliadus, blood pounding in his head, "sire."

He backed away from the Throne Globe.

He turned on his heel and began to pace the long hall.

He reached the jewelled doors, pushed past the guards and strode down the gleaming corridors of shifting light.

On he marched, and on, his pace rapid and his movements stiff, his hand white on the hilt of his sword which it gripped tightly.

He paced until he had reached the great reception hall of the palace where waited the nobles craving audience with the King Emperor; descended the steps that led to the gates opening on the outer worlds, signed for his girls to come forward with his litter, clambered into it and dumped himself heavily on its cushions, and allowed himself to be borne back to his black and silver palace.

Now he hated his King Emperor. Now he loathed the creature who had humiliated him so, thwarted him so, insulted him so. King Huon was a fool not to realise the potential danger offered by Castle Brass. Such a fool was not fit to reign, not fit to command slaves, let alone Baron Meliadus, Grand Constable of the Order of the Wolf.

Meliadus would not listen to King Huon's stupid orders, would do what he thought best and, if the King Emperor objected, then he would defy him.

A little later, Meliadus left his palace on horseback.

He rode at the head of twenty men. Twenty handpicked men whom he could trust to follow him anywhere-even to Yel.

Chapter Fourteen THE WASTES OF YEL

THE COUNTESS FLANA'S ornithopter dropped closer and closer to the ground, its belly brushing the tops of tall pines, its wings narrowly missing becoming entangled with the branches of birches, until at last it landed on the wiry heather beyond the forest.

The day was cold and a sharp wind whistled across the heath, biting through their flimsy costumes.

Shivering, they clambered from the flying machine and looked warily about them. No one was in sight.

D'Averc reached into his jerkin and produced a scrap of thin leather on which a map was scrawled.

He pointed. "We go in that direction. Now we must get the ornithopter into the woods and hide it."

"Why cannot we leave it? The chances of anyone finding it for a day or so are slim," Hawkmoon said.

But D'Averc spoke seriously. "I do not wish any harm to come to Countess Flana, Hawkmoon. If the machine were discovered, it could be ill for her. Come."

And so they tugged and shoved at the metal machine until it was in the pinewood and thickly covered with brash. It had borne them as far as it could until its fuel gave out. They had not expected it to carry them the whole way to Yel.

Now they must continue on foot.

For four days they walked through woods and across heaths, the terrain gradually becoming less and less fertile as they neared the borders of Yel.

Then one day Hawkmoon paused and pointed.

"Look, D'Averc-the Mountains of Yel."

And there they were in the distance, their purple peaks in cloud, the plain and the foothills beneath them all tawny yellow rock.

It was a wild, beautiful landscape, such as Hawkmoon had never seen before.

He gasped. "So there are some sights in Granbretan not entirely offensive to the eye, D'Averc."

"Aye, it is pretty," D'Averc agreed. "But daunting also. We have to find Mygan there somewhere. Judging by the map, Llandar is still many miles into those mountains."

"Then let us press on." Hawkmoon adjusted his sword belt. "We had a small advantage over Meliadus to begin with, but it is possible that even now he is on his way to Yel in hot quest of Mygan."

D'Averc stood on one leg and ruefully rubbed his foot. "True, but I fear these boots will not, last the distance. I picked them from pride, for their prettiness, not for their sturdiness. I am learning my mistake."

Hawkmoon clapped him on the shoulder. "I've heard wild ponies roam these parts. Pray we find a couple we can tame."

But no wild ponies could be found and the yellow ground was hard and rocky and the sky above became full of a livid radiance. Hawkmoon and D'Averc began to realise why the folk of Granbretan were so superstitious of this region, for there did seem to be something unnatural about both land and sky.

At last the mountains were entered.

Seen close to, these were also of a yellowish color, though with streaks of dark red and green, all glassy and grim. Strange-looking beasts skittered away from their path as they clambered on over jagged rocks and peculiar man-like creatures, with hairy bodies topped by completely hairless heads, measuring less than a foot high, regarded them from cover.

"They were once men, those creatures," D'Averc said. "Their ancestors dwelt in these parts. But the Tragic Millenium did its work here well."

"How do you know this?" Hawkmoon asked him.

"I have read my books. It was in Yel, worse than any other part of Granbretan, that the Tragic Millennium's effects were felt. That is why it is so desolate, for people will not come here any longer."

"Save Tozer-and the old man, Mygan of Llandar."

"Aye-if Tozer spoke the truth. We could still be on a wild goose chase, Hawkmoon."

"But Meliadus had the same story."

"Perhaps Tozer is merely a consistent liar?"

It was close to nightfall when the mountain creatures came scuttling from their caves high above and attacked Hawkmoon and D'Averc.

They were covered in oily fur, with the beaks of birds and the claws of cats, huge eyes blazing, beaks parting to reveal teeth, emitting a horrible hissing sound. There were three females and about six males as far as they could tell In the semi-darkness.

Hawkmoon drew his sword, adjusting his vulture mask as he would adjust an ordinary helm, and set his back to a wall of rock.

D'Averc took up a position beside him. Then the beasts were on them.

Hawkmoon slashed at the first, carving a long, bloody scar across its chest. It recoiled with a shriek.

A second was taken by D'Averc, stabbed through the heart. Hawkmoon neatly slit the throat of a third, but a fourth's claws were gripping his left arm. He struggled, muscles straining as he tried to turn his dagger upward to stab the creature's wrist, while meanwhile he slashed at one trying to take him from the other side.

Hawkmoon coughed and felt nauseous, for the beasts stank horribly. He at last wrenched his hand round and dug the point of his dagger into its forearm. It grunted and let go.

Instantly Hawkmoon drove the blade of the dagger deep into one staring eye and left the weapon there as he turned to deal with the next creature.

It was dark now and hard to make out how many of the beasts were left. D'Averc was holding his own, shouting filthy insults at the creatures as his blade moved rapidly this way and that.

Hawkmoon's foot slipped on blood and he staggered, catching the small of his back on a spur of rock. With a hiss another beaked beast was on him, clutching him in a bearlike grip, pinning both arms to his sides, the beak snapping at his face and closing with a snap on the vulture visor.

Hawkmoon sweated to break the grip, tore his head from the mask, leaving it in the creature's beak, wrenched the thing's arms apart and punched it heavily in the chest. It staggered in surprise, not realising that the vulture mask had not been part of Hawkmoon's body.

Quickly Hawkmoon drove Ms sword into its heart and turned to assist D'Averc, who had two of the things on him.

Hawkmoon lopped one's head completely from its shoulders and was about to attack the next when it released D'Averc and screamed, rushing off into the night, clutching part of his jerkin.

They had accounted for all but one of their disgusting attackers.

D'Averc was panting, wounded slightly in the chest where the claws had ripped his jerkin away. Hawkmoon ripped up a piece of his cloak and padded the wound.

"No great harm done," said D'Averc. He yanked off his battered vulture mask and flung it away. "Those came in useful, but I'll wear mine no longer since I see you've discarded yours. That jewel in your forehead is unmistakable, so there's no point in my continuing to disguise myself!" He grinned. "I told you the Tragic Millenium had produced some ugly creatures, friend Hawkmoon."

"I believe you," smiled Hawkmoon. "Come, we had best find a place to camp for the night. Tozer marked a safe resting spot on his map. Bring it out into the starlight so we can read it."

D'Averc reached into his jerkin and then his jaw dropped in horror. "Oh, Hawkmoon! We are not so lucky!"

"Why so, my friend?"

"That section of my jerkin the creature carried off contained the pocket in which I had the map supplied by Tozer. We are lost, Hawkmoon!"

Hawkmoon cursed, sheathed his sword and frowned.

"There's nothing for it," he said. "We must trail the beast. It was slightly wounded and might have left a trail of blood. Perhaps it has dropped the map on its way back to its lair. Failing that we shall have to follow it all the way to where it lives and find a means of getting back our map when we arrive!"

D'Averc frowned. "Is it worth it? Can we not remember where we are bound?"

"Not well enough. Come, D'Averc."

Hawkmoon began to clamber over the sharp rocks in the direction in which the creature had disappeared and D'Averc came reluctantly after him.

Luckily the sky was clear and the moon bright and Hawkmoon at last saw some gleaming patches on the rocks that must have been blood. A bit further on he saw more patches.

"This way, D'Averc," he called.

His Mend sighed, shrugged and followed.

The search went on until dawn, when Hawkmoon lost the trail and shook his head. They were high up on a mountain slope, with a good view of two valleys below them. He ran his hand through his blond hair and he sighed.

"No sign of the thing. And yet I was sure…"

"Now we are worse off," D'Averc said absently, rubbing his weary eyes. "No map-and no longer, even, on our original trail…"

"I am sorry, D'Averc. I thought it the best plan."

Hawkmoon's shoulders sagged. Then suddenly he brightened and pointed.

"There! I saw something moving. Come on." And he was sprinting along the shelf of rock to disappear from D'Averc's sight.

D'Averc heard a shout of surprise and then a sudden silence.

The Frenchman drew his sword and followed after his friend, wondering what he had met with.

Then he saw the source of Hawkmoon's amazement. There, far below in a valley, was a city all made of metal, with shiny surfaces of red, gold, orange, blue and green, with curving metal roadways and sharp metal towers. It was plain to see, even from here, that the city was deserted and falling to pieces, with rusting walls and adornments.

Hawkmoon stood looking down at it. He pointed.

There was their remaining antagonist of the night before, sliding down the rocky sides of the mountain toward the city.

"That must be where he lives," Hawkmoon said.

"I like not to follow him down there," D'Averc murmured. "There could be poison air-the air that makes your flesh crumple from your face, that causes vomiting and death…"

"The poison air does not exist any more, D'Averc, and you know it. It only lasts for a while and then disappears. Surely there has been no poison air here for centuries." He began to clamber down the mountain in pursuit of his foe who still clutched the piece of jerkin containing Tozer's map.

"Oh, very well," groaned D'Averc. "Let's seek death together!" And once again he began to follow in his friend's wake. "You are a wild, impatient gentleman, Duke von Koln!"

While loose stones rattled down and made the creature they pursued run all the faster towards the city, Hawkmoon and D'Averc gave chase as best they could, for they were unused to mountainous terrain and D'Averc's boots were almost in shreds.

They saw the beast enter the shadows of the metal "city and disappear.

A few moments later they, too, had reached the city and looked up, in some trepidation, at the huge metal structures that loomed into the sky, creating menacing shadows below.

Hawkmoon noticed some more bloodstains and threaded his way between the struts and pylons of the city, peering with difficulty in the murky light.

And then suddenly there was a clicking sound, a hissing sound, a peculiar land of subdued growl-and the creature was upon him, its claws about his throat, digging deeper and deeper. He felt one pierce, then another. He whipped up his own hands and tried to prise the clawed fingers away, felt the beak snap at the back of his neck.

Then there was a wild shriek and a yell and the claws released his throat.

Hawkmoon staggered round to see D'Averc, sword in hand, looking down at the body of the beaked beast.

"The disgusting creature had no brains," said D'Averc lightly. "What a fool it was to attack you and leave me free to slay it from behind." He extended his arm and delicately skewered the missing piece of cloth that had fallen from the dead thing's claw. "Here's our map, as good as ever!"

Hawkmoon wiped blood from his throat. The claws had not pierced too deeply. "The poor thing," he said.

"No softness now, Hawkmoon! You know how it alarms me to hear you speaking thus. Remember the creatures attacked us."

"I wonder why. There should be no shortage of their natural prey in these mountains-there are all kinds of edible creatures. Why feast on us?"

"Either we were the nearest meat they saw,"

D'Averc suggested, looking about him at the lattice of metal everywhere, "or else they have learned to hate men."

D'Averc re-sheathed his sword with a flourish and began to make his way through the forest of metal struts that supported the towers and streets of the city above them. Refuse lay everywhere and there were bits of dead animals, offal; rotting, unidentifiable stuff.

"Let's explore this city while we're here," D'Averc said, climbing up one girder. "We could sleep here."

Hawkmoon consulted the map. "It's marked," he said. "Halapandur's its name. Not too far to the east of where our mysterious philosopher has his cavern."

"How far?"

"About a day's march in these mountains."

"Let's rest here and press on tomorrow," D'Averc suggested.

Hawkmoon frowned for a moment. Then he shrugged.

"Very well." He, too, began to clamber up through the girders until they reached one of the strange, curving metal streets.

"We'll strike out for yonder tower," suggested D'Averc.

They began to walk along the gently sloping ramp towards a tower that gleamed turquoise and sultry scarlet in the sunshine.

Chapter Fifteen THE DESERTED CAVERN

AT THE BASE of the tower was a small door that had been driven inwards as if by the punching of a giant fist. Clambering through the aperture, Hawkmoon and D'Averc tried to peer through the gloom to see what the tower contained.

"There," said Hawkmoon. "A stairway-or something very like one."

They stumbled over rubble and discovered that it was not a stairway leading up into the higher parts of the tower, but a ramp, not unlike the ramps that connected one building to another in the city itself.

"From what I've read this place was built only shortly before the Tragic Millenium," D'Averc told Hawkmoon as they continued up the ramp. "It was a city wholly given over to scientists-a Research City, I believe they called it. Every kind of scientist came here from all parts of the world. The idea was that new discoveries would be made by cross-fertilisation.

If my memory serves me, the legends say that many strange inventions were created here, though most of their secrets are now completely lost."

Up they went until the ramp led them onto a wide platform which was completely surrounded by windows of glass. Most of the windows were cracked or completely blown out, but from this platform it was possible to see the whole of the rest of the city.

"Almost certainly this was used to view the goings off all over Halapandur," Hawkmoon said. He looked about him. Everywhere were the remains of instruments whose function he could not recognize. They bore the stamp of things prehistoric; all in dull, plain cases with austere characters engraved on them, totally unlike the baroque decoration and flowing numerals and letters of modern times. "Some sort of room controlling the functions of the rest of Halapandur."

D'Averc pursed his lips and pointed. "Ay-you can observe its uses at once. Look, Hawkmoon."

Some distance away, on the opposite side of the city from the one they had entered, could be seen a line of horsemen in the helmets and armour of Dark Empire troops. They could make out no details from this height.

"My guess is that Meliadus leads them," Hawkmoon said, fingering his sword. "He cannot know exactly where Mygan is, but he can have discovered that Tozer was in this city at some time, and he'll have trackers with him who'll soon discover Mygan's cave.

We cannot afford to rest here now, D'Averc. We must press on at once."

D'Averc nodded. "A shame." He stooped and picked up a small object he had seen on the floor, placing it in his tattered jerkin. "I think I recognise this."

"What is it?"

"It could be one of the charges used for the old guns they used," D'Averc said. "If so, it will be useful."

"But you have no old gun!"

"One does not always need one!" said D'Averc mysteriously.

They ran back down the ramp to the entrance of the tower. Risking being seen by the Dark Empire warriors, they dashed along the large, outer ramps as fast as they could, then swung back again down the girders and out of sight.

"I don't think we were seen," D'Averc said. "Come on-we go this way for Mygan's lair."

They began to race up the side of the mountain, slithering and sliding in their anxiety to reach the old sorcerer before Meliadus.

Night came, but they moved on.

They were starving, for they had eaten practically nothing since they had set out for Llandar Valley, and they were beginning to weaken.

But they struggled on and just before dawn came to the valley marked on the map. The valley where the sorcerer Mygan was said to live.

Hawkmoon began to smile. "Those Dark Empire riders will have camped for the night, almost certainly. We'll have time to see Mygan, get his crystals, and be away before they ever arrive!"

"Let's hope so," said D'Averc, thinking privately that Hawkmoon needed rest, for his eyes were a little feverish. But he followed him down to the valley and consulted the map. "Up there," he said. "That's where Mygan's cave's supposed to be, but I see nothing."

"The map has it halfway up yonder cliff," said Hawkmoon. "Let us climb up and see."

They crossed the floor of the valley, leaping over a small, clear stream that ran down a fissure in the rock the length of the valley. Here there were, indeed, signs of Man, for there was a path down to the river and a wooden apparatus that had evidently been used for drawing up water from the stream.

They followed the path to the side of the cliff. Now they found old, worn handholds in the rock. They had not been carved recently, but had been there, it appeared, for ages, well before Mygan had been born.

They began to climb.

The going was difficult, but at last they reached a ledge of rock on which a huge boulder stood, and there, behind the boulder, was the dark entrance to a cavern!

Hawkmoon went forward, eager to enter, but D'Averc put a cautionary hand on his shoulder.

"Best take care," he said and drew his sword.

"An old man cannot harm us," Hawkmoon said.

"You are tired, my friend, and exhausted, otherwise you would realise that an old man of the wisdom Tozer claimed for him will possibly have weapons which could harm us. He has no liking for men, from what Tozer said, and there is no reason why he should think us anything more than enemies."

Hawkmoon nodded, drew his own blade, and then advanced.

The cavern was dark and seemingly empty, but then they saw a glimmer of light from the back. Approaching the source of this light, they discovered a sharp bend in the cavern.

Rounding the bend they saw that the first cavern led on to a second, much larger. This was fitted up with all sorts of things, instruments of the kind they had seen in Halapandur, a couple of cots, cooking materials, chemical equipment and much more. The source of the light was a globe in the center of the cave.

"Mygan!" called D'Averc, but there was no reply.

They searched the cave, wondering if there was yet another extension, but found nothing.

"He has gone!" Hawkmoon said in desperation, his nervous fingers rubbing at the black jewel in his forehead. "Gone, D'Averc, and who knows where. Perhaps after Tozer left him, he decided that it was no longer safe to remain and has moved on."

"I think not," D'Averc said. "He would have taken some of this stuff with him, would he not?" He looked around the cave. "And that cot looks recently slept in. There is no dust anywhere. Mygan has probably gone off on some local expedition and will be back soon. We must wait for him."

"And what of Meliadus-if that was Meliadus we saw?"

"We must simply hope he moves slowly on the trail and takes some time to discover this cave!"

"If he's as eager as you said Flana told you, then he'll not be far behind us," Hawkmoon pointed out. He went to a bench on which there were various dishes of meat, vegetables and herbs, helping himself greedily.

D'Averc followed his example.

"We'll rest here and wait," D'Averc said. "It is all we can do now, my friend."

A day passed, and a night, and Hawkmoon hourly grew impatient as the old man did not return.

"Suppose he has been captured," he suggested to D'Averc. "Suppose Meliadus found him wandering in the mountains."

"If so, then Meliadus is bound to bring him back here and we shall win the old man's gratitude by rescuing him from the baron," D'Averc replied with forced cheerfulness.

"There were twenty men we saw, armed with flamelances if I was not mistaken. We cannot take twenty, D'Averc."

"You are in low spirits, Hawkmoon. We have taken twenty before-more!"

"Aye," Hawkmoon agreed, but it was plain that the journey had taken much out of him. Perhaps, too, the deception at the Court of King Huon had been a greater strain on him than on D'Averc, for D'Averc appeared to relish deception of that kind.

At length, Hawkmoon strode to the outer cave and onto the ledge beyond. Some instinct seemed to draw him out, for he looked into the valley and saw them.

Now it was close enough to be sure.

The leader of the men was, indeed, Baron Meliadus.

His ornate wolf mask glinted ferociously as it turned up and saw Hawkmoon at the instant Hawkmoon looked down.

The great, roaring voice echoed through the mountains. It was a voice full of mingled rage and triumph, the voice of a wolf that has scented its prey.

"Hawkmoon!," came the cry. "Hawkmoon!"

Meliadus flung himself from Ms saddle and began to scale the cliff. "Hawkmoon!"

Behind him came his well-armed men and Hawkmoon knew there was little chance of fighting them all off. He called back into the cavern. "D'Averc-Meliadus is here. Quickly man, he'll trap us in these caves.

We must reach the top of the cliff."

D'Averc came running from the cavern, buckling on his sword belt, glanced down, thought for a moment, then nodded. Hawkmoon ran to the face of the cliff, seeking handholds on the rough surface, hauling himself upward.

A flame-lance beam splashed against the rock close to his hand, singeing the hairs on his wrist. Another landed beneath him, but he climbed on.

Perhaps at the top of the cliff he could stand and make a fight, but he needed to protect his life and D'Averc's for as long as possible, for the security of Castle Brass could depend on it.

"Haaawkmoooon!" came the echoing cry of the vengeful Meliadus. "Haaaawkmoooooon!"

Hawkmoon climbed on, scraping his hands on the rock, gashing his leg, but not pausing, taking incredible risks as he clambered up the cliff face, D'Averc close behind him.

At last they reached the top and saw a plateau stretching away from them. If they attempted to cross it, the flame-lances were bound to cut them down.

"Now," Hawkmoon said grimly, drawing his sword, "we stand and fight."

D'Averc grinned. "At last. I thought you were losing your nerve, my friend."

They glanced over the edge of the cliff and saw that Baron Meliadus had reached the ledge by Mygan's cavern and was darting in, sending his men on ahead in pursuit of his two hated foes. Doubtless he hoped to find some of the others there-Oladahn, Count Brass -or even, perhaps Yisselda, whom Hawkmoon knew was loved by the baron, however much he refused to admit it.

Soon the first of the wolf warriors had reached the cliff and Hawkmoon delivered a jarring kick to his helmet. He did not fall, however, but reached out and clutched Hawkmoon's foot, either trying to drag himself back to safety or drag Hawkmoon with him over the cliff.

D'Averc sprang forward, stabbing the man in the shoulder. He grunted, released the grip on Hawkmoon, sought to grasp a spur of rock on the cliff edge, missed and tumbled backwards, arms flailing, to yell one long yell all the way to the floor of the valley, far, far below.

But now others were clambering over the edge.

D'Averc engaged one, while Hawkmoon suddenly found himself with two to contend with.

Back and forth along the edge of the cliff they fought, the valley hundreds of feet below them.

Hawkmoon took one in the throat, between helm and gorget, neatly skewered another through the belly, where his armour did not reach, but two more quickly took their place.

They fought for an hour thus, keeping back as many as they could from gaining the top of the cliff, engaging with their swords those they could not dissuade from getting to the top.

Then they were surrounded, the swords pressing in on them like the teeth of some gigantic shark, until their throats were threatened by a band of blades and Meliadus's voice came from somewhere, full of gloating malice. "Surrender, gentlemen, or you'll be butchered, I promise."

Hawkmoon and D'Averc lowered their swords, glancing hopelessly at each other.

They both knew that Meliadus hated them with a terrible, consuming hatred. Now they were his prisoners in his own land. There was no possibility of escape.

Meliadus seemed to realize this, too, for he cocked his wolf mask on one side and chuckled.

"I do not know how you came to Granbretan, Hawkmoon and D'Averc, but I do know you now for a pair of fools! Were you too seeking the old man? Why, I wonder? You already have what he has."

"Perhaps he has other things," said Hawkmoon, deliberately attempting to obscure the matter as much as possible, for the less Meliadus knew, the more chance they had of deceiving him.

"Other things? You mean he has other devices useful to the Empire? Thanks for telling me, Hawkmoon.

The old man himself will doubtless be more specific."

"The old man has left, Meliadus," said D'Averc smoothly. "We warned him you might be coming."

"Left, eh? If that's the case, you'll know where he has gone, Sir Huillam."

"Not I," said D'Averc, looking peeved as the warriors bound him and Hawkmoon together and tied a noose under their arms.

"We'll see." Meliadus chuckled again. "I appreciate the excuse you offer me to begin a little torture here and now. A soupcon of vengeance for the moment.

We'll explore the full possibilities when we return to my palace. Then, too, perhaps I'll have the old man and his secret of travelling through the dimensions…"

Privately he told himself that he was bound, in this way, to reinstate himself with the King Emperor and achieve Huon's forgiveness for leaving the city without permission.

His gauntleted hand reached out to stroke Hawkmoon's face almost lovingly. "Ah, Hawkmoon-soon you shall feel my punishment; soon…"

Hawkmoon shuddered to the roots of his being, then spat full into the grinning wolf mask.

Meliadus recoiled, hand going up to mask, then sweeping out and striking Hawkmoon across the mouth.

He growled in rage. "Another moment of anguish for that, Hawkmoon. And those moments, I promise you, will seem to last for aeons!"

Hawkmoon turned his head away in disgust and pain, was thrust roughly forward by the guards and pushed, together with Sir Huillam D'Averc, over the edge of the cliff.

The rope around their bodies stopped them from falling far, but they were lowered un-gently to the ledge and Meliadus joined them shortly.

"I must still find the old man," said the baron. "I suspect he's lurking somewhere hereabouts. We'll leave you well bound in the cavern, put a couple of guards at the entrance just in case you somehow free yourselves from your bonds, and set off to look for him. There is no escape for you now, Hawkmoon, none for you either, D'Averc. You are both mine at last! Drag them inside. Bind them with all the rope you can find.

Remember-guard them well, for they are Meliadus's playthings!"

He watched as they were trussed and dragged into the nearer cavern. Meliadus placed three men at the entrance of the cavern and began to clamber back down the cliff in high spirits.

It would not be much longer, he promised himself, before all his enemies were in his power, all their secrets had been tortured from them, and then the King Emperor would know that he had spoken the truth.

And if the King Emperor did not think well of him -what matter?

Meliadus had plans to right that error, also.

Chapter Sixteen MYGAN OF LLANDAR

NIGHT FELL OUTSIDE the cavern and Hawkmoon and D'Averc lay in the shadow cast by the light from the second cave.

The broad backs of the guards filled the entrance and the ropes of their bonds were tight-bound and considerable.

Hawkmoon tried to struggle, but his movements were virtually restricted to moving his mouth, his eyes and his neck a little. D'Averc was in a similar position.

"Well, my friend, we were not cautious enough,"

D'Averc said with as light a tone as he could muster.

"No," Hawkmoon agreed. "Starvation and weariness makes fools of even the wisest of men. We have only ourselves to blame…"

"We deserve our suffering," D'Averc said, somewhat doubtfully. "But do our friends? We must think of escape, Hawkmoon, no matter how hopeless it seems."

Hawkmoon sighed. "Aye, If Meliadus should succeed in reaching Castle Brass…"

He shuddered.

It seemed to him from his brief encounter with the Granbretanian nobleman, that Meliadus was even more deranged than previously. Was it his defeat, several times, by Hawkmoon and the folk of Castle Brass? Was it the thwarting of his victory when Castle Brass had been spirited away? Hawkmoon could not guess. He only knew that his old enemy seemed less in control of his mind than earlier. There was no telling what he would do in such an unbalanced condition.

Hawkmoon turned his head, frowning, thinking he had heard a noise from within the far cavern. From where he lay, he could see a little of the lighted cave.

He craned his neck, hearing the sound again.

D'Averc murmured, very softly so that the guards should not hear, "There is someone in there, I'll swear…"

And then a shadow fell across them and they stared up into the face of a tall, old man with a great, rugged face that seemed carved from stone and a mane of white hair that helped his leonine appearance.

The old man frowned, looking the bound men up and down. He pursed his lips and looked out to where the three guards stood at attention, looked back at Hawkmoon and D'Averc. He said nothing, simply folded his arms across his chest. Hawkmoon saw that there were crystal rings on his fingers-all but the little finger of the left hand bore rings, even the thumbs.

This must be Mygan of Llandar! But how had he got into the cave? A secret entrance?

Hawkmoon looked at him desperately, mouthing his pleas for help.

The giant smiled again and bent forward a little so that he could hear Hawkmoon's whisper.

"Please, sir, if you be Mygan of Llandar, know that we are friends to you-prisoners of your enemies."

"And how do I know you speak truth?" said Mygan, also in a whisper.

One of the guards stirred outside, beginning to turn, doubtless sensing something. Mygan withdrew into the cavern. The guard grunted.

"What are you two muttering about? Discussing what the baron will do with ye, eh? Well, you can't imagine what entertainments he's got fixed up for you, Hawkmoon."

Hawkmoon made no reply.

When the guard had turned back, chuckling, Mygan bent closer again.

"You're Hawkmoon?"

"You've heard of me?"

"Something. If you're Hawkmoon, you may be speaking the truth, for though I be of Granbretan, I hold no brief for the Lords who rule in Londra. But how do you know who my enemies are?"

"Baron Meliadus of Kroiden has learned of the secret you imparted to Tozer who was your guest here not long ago…"

"Imparted! He wheedled it from me, stole one of my rings when I slept, used it to escape. Wanted to ingratiate himself with his masters in Londra, I gather…"

"You are right. Tozer told them of a power, boasted that it was a mental attribute, demonstrated his power and turned up in the Kamarg…"

"Doubtless by accident. He had no conception of how to use the ring properly."

"So we gathered."

"I believe you, Hawkmoon, and I fear this Meliadus."

"You'll free us so that we can attempt to escape from here, protect you against him?"

"I doubt if I need your protection."

Mygan disappeared from Hawkmoon's view.

"What does he plan, I wonder," said D'Averc, who had deliberately remained silent until now.

Hawkmoon shook his head.

Mygan reappeared with a long knife in his hand. He stretched out and began slicing through Hawkmoon's bonds until at last the Duke von Koln was able to free himself, keeping a wary eye on the guards outside.

"Hand me the knife," he whispered, and took it from Mygan's hand. He began cutting away D'Averc's ropes.

From outside they heard voices.

"Baron Meliadus is returning," one of the guards said. "He sounds in an evil temper."

Hawkmoon darted an anxious glance at D'Averc and they sprang up.

Alerted by the movement, one of the guards turned, crying out in surprise.

The two men darted forward. Hawkmoon's hand stopped the guard from drawing his sword. D'Averc's arm went round another's throat and drew his sword for him. The sword rose and fell even before the guard could scream.

While Hawkmoon wrestled with the first guard, D'Averc engaged the third. The clang of swords began to sound in the air and they heard Meliadus's shout of surprise.

Hawkmoon threw his opponent to the ground and placed a knee in his groin, drew the dagger that was still sheathed at his side, prised back the mask and struck the man in the throat.

Meanwhile, D'Averc had despatched his man, stood panting over the corpse.

Mygan called from the back of the cavern. "I see you wear crystal rings, like those I have. Do you know how to control them?"

"We know only how to return to the Kamarg! A turn to the left…"

"Aye. Well, Hawkmoon, I would help you. You must turn the crystals first to the right and then to the left. Repeat the movement six times and then…"

The great bulk of Meliadus loomed in the entrance to the cavern.

"Oh, Hawkmoon-you plague me still. The old man! Seize him!"

The rest of Meliadus's warriors began to surge into the cavern. D'Averc and Hawkmoon fell back before them, desperately fighting.

The old man shouted in fury: "Trespassers. Back!"

He rushed forward with his long knife raised.

"No!" cried Hawkmoon. "Mygan-let us do the blade work. Keep away. You are defenceless against such as these!"

But Mygan did not retreat. Hawkmoon tried to reach him, saw him go down before a blow from a wolf sword, struck out at the one who had struck Mygan.

The cavern was in confusion as they retreated back into the inner cave. The sound of the swords echoed, counterpointed by Meliadus's enraged shouts.

Hawkmoon dragged the wounded Mygan back to the second cave, warding off the blows that fell upon them both.

Now Hawkmoon faced the singing blade of Meliadus himself, who swung his sword two-handed.

Hawkmoon felt a numbing shock in his left shoulder, felt blood begin to soak his sleeve. He parried a further blow, then struck back, taking Meliadus in the arm.

The baron groaned and staggered.

"Now, D'Averc!" called Hawkmoon. "Now, Mygan!

Turn the crystals! It is our only hope of escape!"

He turned the crystal in his ring first to the right and then to the left, then six times more to right and left.

Meliadus growled and came at him again. Hawkmoon raised his sword to block the blow.

And then Meliadus had vanished.

So had the cavern, so had his friends.

He stood alone upon a plain that stretched flat in all directions. It was noon, for a huge sun hung in the sky.

The plain was of turf of a kind that grew close to the ground and the smell it gave off reminded Hawkmoon of spring.

Where was he? Had Mygan tricked him? Where were the others?

Then the figure of Mygan of Llandar began to materialize close by lying on the turf and clutching at his worst wound. He was covered in a dozen sword cuts, his leonine face pale and twisted with pain. Hawkmoon sheathed his sword and sprang towards him.

"Mygan…"

"Ah, I'm dying, I fear, Hawkmoon. But at least I've served in the shaping of your destiny. The Runestaff…"

"My destiny? What do you mean? And what of the Runestaff? I've heard so much of that mysterious artifact, and yet no one will tell me exactly how it concerns me…"

"You'll learn when it's time. Meanwhile…"

Suddenly D'Averc appeared, staring around him in astonishment. "The things work! Thank the Runestaff for that. I'd thought us all surely slain."

"You-you must seek…" Mygan began to cough.

Blood spurted from between his teeth, falling down his chin.

Hawkmoon cradled his head in his arms. "Do not try to speak, Mygan. You are badly wounded. We must find help. Perhaps if we returned to Castle Brass…"

Mygan shook his head. "You cannot."

"Cannot return? But why? The rings worked to bring us here. A turn to the left…"

"No. Once you have shifted in this way, the rings must be re-set."

"How shall we set them?"

"I will not tell you!"

"Will not? You mean cannot?"

"No. It was my intention to bring you through space to this land where you must fulfill part of your destiny. You must seek-ah, ah! The pain!"

"You have tricked us, old man," said D'Averc.

"You wish us to play some role in a scheme of your own. But you are dying. We cannot help you now. Tell us how to return to Castle Brass and we shall get someone to doctor you."

"It was no selfish whim that instructed me to bring you here. It was knowledge of history. I have travelled to many places, visited many eras, by means of the rings. I know much. I know what you serve, Hawkmoon, and I know that the time has come for you to venture here."

"Where?" Hawkmoon said desperately. "In what time have you deposited us? What is the land called? It seems to consist entirely of this flat plain!"

But Mygan was coughing blood again and it was plain that death was close.

"Take my rings," he said, breathing with difficulty.

"They could be useful. But seek first Narleen and the Sword of the Dawn-that lies to your south. Then turn north, when that's done, and seek the city of Dnarkand the Runestaff." He coughed again, then his body shook with a great spasm and life fled him.

Hawkmoon looked up at D'Averc.

"The Runestaff? Are we then in Asiacommunista where the thing is supposed to dwell?"

"It would be ironic, considering our earlier ruse," said D'Averc, dabbing with his kerchief at a wound on his leg. "Perhaps that is where we are. I care not. We are away from that boorish Meliadus and his bloodthirsty pack. The sun above is warm. Save for our wounds, we are considerably better off than we might have been."

Looking about him, Hawkmoon sighed. "I am not sure. If Taragorm's experiments are successful, he could find a way through to our Kamarg. I would rather be there than here." He fingered his ring. "I wonder…"

D'Averc put out his hand. "No, Hawkmoon. Do not tamper with it. I'm inclined to believe the old man.

Besides, he seemed well-disposed toward you. He must have meant you well. Probably he intended to tell you where this was, give you more explicit directions as to how to reach the places-presuming they were places-he spoke of. If we try to work the rings now, there's no telling where we'll find ourselves-possibly even back in that unpleasant company we left in Mygan's cave!"

Hawkmoon nodded. "Perhaps you're wise, D'Averc. But what do we do now?"

"First we do as Mygan said, and remove his rings. Then we head south-to that place-what did he call it?"

"Narleen. It could be a person. A thing."

"South, at any rate, we go, to find out if this Narleen be place, person or thing. Come." He bent beside the corpse of Mygan of Llandar and began to strip the crystal rings from his fingers. "From what I saw of his cavern, it's almost certain that he found these in the city of Halapandur. That equipment he had in his cave evidently came from there. These must have been one of the inventions of those people before the onset of the Tragic Millenium…"

But Hawkmoon was barely listening to him. Instead he was pointing out across the plain.

"Look!"

The wind was blowing up.

In the distance something gigantic and reddish purple came rolling, emitting lightnings.