There was a brief pause before the bass rumble of the answer drifted down. "Your name I know already, slayer of dragons. And if I tell you my name now, you are almost certain to misunderstand. Perhaps later."
Nestor nodded. "Next, some questions about the creature that brought me here. I have never seen anything like it before, and I have some experience. It flew straight here to you as if it were acting on your orders, under your control. Is it truly a dragon, or some thing of magic? Did you create it? Did you send it after me?"
"It is a dragon, and I did send it. I am sorry that you were injured, for I meant you no harm. But I took the risk of harming you, for the sake of certain information I felt I had to have. Rumors had reached me, through the dragons, of a man who killed their kind with a new magical power that was embodied in a sword. And other word had reached me, through other means, of other swords that were said to have been made by the gods… I have good reason to want to know about these things."
Nestor thought that possibly he was becoming used to the burden of that dark gaze. Now he could meet it once again. "You are a friend of dragons, then, and talk to them."
The giant hesitated. "'Friend' is perhaps not the right word for it. But in some sense I talk to them, and they to me. I talk with everything that lives. Now, I would ask you to answer a few more questions for me, in turn."
"I'll try." "Good. There is an old prophecy… what do you know of the Gray Horde?"
Nestor looked back blankly. "What should I know? I have never heard the words before. What do they mean?"
His interrogator considered. "Come with me and I will show you a little of their meaning." With that, the towering figure turned and paced away toward the temple. Nestor followed, sword in hand. He smiled briefly, faintly, at the enormous furred back moving before him; the other had not thought twice about turning his back on a strange man with a drawn sword. Not that Nestor was going to think even once about making a treacherous attack. Even if he'd had something to gain by it, he would as soon have contemplated taking a volcano by surprise.
The front entrance of the temple was high enough for the giant to walk into it without stooping. Now, once inside, Nestor observed that the building had indeed been constructed of some hardened and preserved wood — traces of the grain pattern were still visible. He thought that it must be very old. Much of the roof had fallen in, but the ceiling was still intact in some of the rooms. So it was in the high chamber where Nestor's guide now stopped. Here it was already quite dark inside. As Nestor's eyes adapted to the gloom, the fantastic carvings that filled the walls seemed to materialize out of the darkness like ghosts.
The giant, his body outlined in the night by his own faintly luminous fur, had halted beside a large open tank that was built into the center of the floor. The reservoir was surrounded by a low rim of the same preserved wood from which the floor and walls were made, and Nestor thought that it was probably some kind of ritual vat or bath.
Moving a little closer, he saw that the vat was nearly filled with liquid. Perhaps it was only water, but in the poor light it looked black.
From a shelf his guide took a device that Nestor, having seen its like once or twice before, recognized as a flameless Old World lantern, powered by some force of ancient technology. The giant focussed its cold, piercing beam down into the black vat. Something stirred beneath that inky surface, and in another moment the shallowness of the tank was demonstrated. The liquid it contained was no more than knee-deep on the smallish, man-shaped figure that now rose awkwardly to its feet inside. Dark water, bright-gleaming in the beam of light, ran in rivulets from the gray naked surface of the figure. Its hairless, sexless body reminded Nestor at once of the curved exoskeleton of some giant insect. He did not for a moment take it as truly human, though it was approximately of human shape.
"What is it?" Nestor demanded. He had backed up a step and was gripping his sword.
"Call it a larva." His guide's vast voice was almost hushed. "That is an old word, which may mean a ghost, or a mask, or an unfinished insect form. None of those are exact names for this. But I think that all of them in different ways come close."
"Larva," Nestor repeated. The sound of the word at least seemed to him somehow appropriate. He observed the larva carefully. Once it had got itself fully erect, it stood in the tank without moving, arms hanging at its sides. When Nestor leaned closer, peering at it, he thought that the dark eyes under the smooth gray brow fixed themselves on him, but the eyes were in heavy shadow and he could not be sure. The mouth and ears were tiny, puckered openings, the nose almost non-existent and lacking nostrils. Apparently the thing did not need to breathe. Nestor thought it looked like a mummy. "Is it dead?" he asked.
"It has never been alive. But all across the Great Swamp the life energies of the earth are being perverted to produce others like it. Out there under the surface of the swamp thousands of them ate being formed, grown, raised by magical powers that I do not understand. But I fear that they are connected somehow with the god-game, and the swords. And I know that they are meant for evil."
The god-game again. Nestor had no idea what he ought to say, and so he held his peace. He thought he could tell just from looking at the figure that it was meant for no good purpose. It did not really look like a mummy, he decided, but more like some witch's mannikin, fabricated only to facilitate a curse. Except that, in Nestor's limited experience at least, such mannikins were no bigger than small dolls, and this was nearly as big as Nestor himself. Looking at the thing more closely now, he began to notice the crudity of detail with which it had been formed. Surely it would limp if it tried to walk. He could see the poor, mismatched fit of the lifeless joints, how clumsily they bulked under the smooth covering that was not skin, or scale, or even vegetable bark.
The giant's hand reached out to pluck the figure from the tank. He stood it on the temple floor of hardened wood, directly in front of Nestor. As the hand released it, the figure made a slight independent movement, enough to correct its standing balance. Then it was perfectly still again. Now Nestor could see that its eyes under the gray brows were also gray, the color of old weathered wood, but still inanimate as no wood ever could have been. The eyes were certainly locked onto Nestor now, and they made him feel uncomfortable.
And only now, with an inward shock, did Nestor see that the figure's arms did not end in hands but instead grew into weapons; the right arm terminated in an ugly blade that seemed designed as an instrument of torture, and the left in a crude, barbed hook. There were no real wrists, and the weapons were of one piece with the chitinous-looking material of the forearms. And the bald head was curved and angled like a helm.
With a faint inward shudder Nestor moved back another step. Had he not been carrying the sword, he might have retreated farther from the figure. Now he made his voice come out with an easy boldness that he was far from feeling: "I give up, oh giant who wishes to be nameless. What is this thing? You said 'a larva', but that name answers nothing. I swear by the Great Worm Yilgarn that I have never seen the like of it before."
"It is one cell of the Gray Horde, which, as I said, is spoken of in an old prophecy. If you are not familiar with that prophecy, believe me that I cannot very well explain it to you now."
"But thousands of these, you say, are being grown in the swamp. By whom? And to what end?"
The giant picked up the two-legged thing like a toy and laid it back into the tank again. He pressed it down beneath the surface of the liquid, which looked to Nestor like swamp-water. No breath-bubbles rose when the larva was submerged. The vast figure in glowing fur turned off the bright light and replaced the lantern on the shelf. He watched the tank until its surface was almost a dark mirror again. Then once more he said to Nestor: "Come with me."
Nestor followed his huge guide out of the temple. This time he was led several hundred paces across the wooded island and into the true swamp at its far edge. A gibbous moon was rising. By its light Nestor watched the furred giant wade waist deep into the still water, seeking, groping with his legs for something on the bottom. He motioned unnecessarily that Nestor should remain on solid ground.
For a full minute the giant searched. Then he suddenly bent and plunged in an arm, big enough to have strangled a landwalker, to its fullest reach. With a huge splash he pulled out another larva. It looked very much like the one in the tank inside the temple, except that the two forearms of this one were connected, grown into one piece with a transverse straight gray shaft that went on past the left arm to end in a spearhead.
The larva let out a strange thin cry when it was torn up from the muck, and spat a jet of bright water from its tiny mouth. Then it lay as limp as a broken puppet in the huge furry hand.
The giant shook it once in Nestor's direction, as if to emphasize to the man the fact of its existence. The larva made no response to the shaking. "This outh cannot breathe," the giant said. "Or even eat or drink, much less speak, or sing. It can only whine as you have just heard, or howl. It can only make noises that I think are intended to inspire human terror."
Nestor gestured helplessly with the sword that he still carried. "I do not understand."
"Nor do I, as yet. I had feared for a time that the gods themselves, or some among them, were for their own reasons causing these things to come into existence. Just as, for their own reasons, some of the gods decided that you should be given great power to kill dragons. But so far I can discover no connection between the two gifts. So I do not know if it is the gods who are raising these larvae, or some magician of great power. Whoever is doing it, I must find a way to stop it. The life energies of the land about the swamp will be exhausted to no good purpose. Already the crops in nearby fields are failing, human beings are sickening with hunger."
Nestor, looking at the larva, tried to think. "I believe I can tell you one thing. I doubt that the gods had any hand in making these. Because the swords made by the gods are beautiful things in themselves, whatever the purpose behind them may be." And Nestor raised the weapon in his right hand.
The giant, looking at the sword, rumbled out what might have been a quotation:
"Gong roads the Sword of Fury makes
Hard walls it builds around the soft… "
Nestor waited for more that did not come. Then he lowered the sword, and suddenly demanded: "Why do you deny that you are a god yourself?"
The enormous furred fist tightened. The gray carapace of the larva resisted that pressure only for a moment, then broke with an ugly noise. Gray foulness in a variety of indistinct shapes gushed from the broken torso. What Nestor could see of the spill in the moonlight reminded him more of dung than of anything else. The gray limbs twitched. Wildly, the spear waved once and was still.
The giant cast the wreckage from him with a splash, then washed his hands of it in the black water of the swamp. He said: "I am too small and weak by far, to be a proper god for humankind."
Nestor was almost angry. "You are larger than Hermes was, and I did not doubt the divinity of Hermes for a moment once I had seen him. Nor have I any doubts about you. Is this some riddle with which you are testing me? If so, I am too tired and worn right now to deal with riddles." And too much in need of help. Indeed, the feeling of strength and well-being that Nestor had experienced when the giant first touched him was rapidly declining into weariness again.
The other gazed at him for a moment in silence, and then in silence waded out of the swamp. The mud of the swamp would not stick to his fur, which still glimmered faintly, radiant on the edge of vision. He paced back in the direction of the center of the island, where stood the temple.
Nestor, following, had to trot in his effort to keep up. He cried to the giant's back: "You are no demon, surely?"
The other answered without turning, maintaining his fast pace. "I surely am not."
Nestor surprised himself, and ran. Almost staggering with the effort, he got ahead of the giant and confronted him face to face. With his path thus blocked, the giant halted. Nestor was breathing hard, as if from a long run, or as if he had been fighting. Leaning on his sword, he said: "Before I saw Hermes face to face, I did not believe in the gods at all. But I have seen him, and I believe. And now when I see — well, slay me for it if you will…"
Surprising himself again, he went down on one knee before the other. He had the feeling that his heart, or something else vital inside him, was about to burst, overloaded by feelings he did not, could not, understand.
The giant rumbled: "I will not slay you. I will not knowingly kill any human being."
"…but whether you admit you are a god or not, I know you. I recognize you from a hundred prayers and stories. You are the Beastlord, God of Healing, Draffut."
The high gray walls of Kind Sir Andrew's castle were growing higher still, and darkening into black against the sunset. Mark watched their slow approach from his place in the middle of the wagon's seat. Barbara, slumping tiredly for once, was at his right, and Ben at his left with driver's reins in hand.
Now that their road had emerged from the forest and brought the castle into view, Barbara stirred, and. broke a silence that had lasted for some little time. "I guess we're as ready as can be. Let's go right on in."
No one else said anything immediately. From its battered cage back in the wagon's covered rear, the battered dragon chirped. Ben looked unhappy about their imminent arrival, but he twitched the reins without argument and clucked to the team, trying to rouse the limping, weary loadbeasts to an enthusiasm he obviously did not feel himself. Earlier in the day Ben had suggested that they ought to travel more slowly though they were late already, delaying their arrival at Sir Andrew's fair for one more day, giving Nestor one more chance to catch up with them before they got there. But Ben hadn't argued this idea very strongly. Mark thought now that neither Ben nor Barbara really believed any longer that Nestor was going to catch up with them at all.
As for Mark himself, he pretty well had to believe that Nestor was going to meet them somewhere, with Townsaver in hand. Otherwise Mark's sword was truly lost.
It had been pretty well established, in the few days that the three of them had been traveling without Nestor, that Barbara was now the one in charge. She was little if any older than Ben was — Mark guessed she was about seventeen — and probably not half Ben's weight. But such details seemed to have little to do with determining who was in charge. Barbara had stepped in and made decisions when they had to be made, and had held the little group and the enterprise together.