The small man slipped through the golden hole in the center of the room and it began to close behind him. A contracting halo, an optical aberration, the view through the opening was not that of the far side of the sumptuous apartment. Instead, the eye followed the dwindling form of the dark-clad man who had passed that way across a high tapestry-hung hall as it approached an arched gallery past pillars dark and light.
Then the wavering lens closed upon itself, flickered and was gone. Ibal slumped back upon the heap of cushions on which he had been sitting bolt upright. His breathing was suddenly deep and rapid; perspiration dotted his brow.
Vonnie, kneeling beside him, delicately blotted his face with a blue silk kerchief.
"There are not many," she said, "can do the door spell well."
He smiled.
"It is a strain," he acknowledged, "and, to tell the truth, not something I'd ever intended to work again. This time, though ..."
"...it was different," she finished.
He nodded.
"What are you going to do now?"
"Recover," he answered.
"You know that is not what I mean."
"All right. Recover and forget. I've given him a hand. My honor is satisfied."
"Is it? Really?"
He sighed.
"At my age, that is all the honor I can afford. The days are long gone when I would care to get involved in something like this."
Her hands passed through his hair, dropped to his well-muscled shoulders, rubbed there for a time, then led him back to a seated position. She raised a cool drink to his lips.
"How certain are you of your assessment of the case?" she finally inquired.
"The gods know what else it could be!" he said. "Something not at all natural sends Mouseglove to me, with the story that the young man I'd sponsored is old Det's son and that he's just been kidnaped by Ryle Merson. Honor says that I should do something because Ryle has made off with the man I sponsored. So I have. Fortunately, all Mouseglove wanted was a fast trip back to Rondoval--and I've just provided it."
"Is that really enough?"
"It is not as if he were my apprentice. I was only doing the man a favor. I barely know him."
"But--" she began.
"That is all," he replied.
"But it was not what I meant."
"What, then?"
"The things you said at first--could they be true?"
"I forget what I said."
"You said that it is a continuation of something that began before Pol was born ..."
"I suppose that it is."
"...the thing that had led to the wars."
He took the goblet into his hands and drained it.
"Yes, I believe so," he said then.
"Something that could reopen that whole business?"
He shrugged.
"Or close it. Yes. I think that might be the case--or that Ryle believes it might be the case. Same thing."
He set the goblet aside, raised his hands and looked at them.
"Pol has apparently aroused the concern of something poweful and supernatural," he said, "and he also has the good offices of the friend we just sent on his way."
"I was not talking about Pol. I am thinking of the entire situation of which that is but a part. This place is full of important practicioners of the Art. It is the only occasion in four years when they will all be together like this. I would almost say that it seems more than coincidental. Don't you feel that we ought to bring this to their attention?"
Ibal began to laugh.
"Stop and think about it for a minute," he said later. "I think it would be the worst possible thing to do. There were attractive things about both sides in that conflict. Some stood to benefit, some did not. Do you really think we'd get a concensus? We can start the next war right here, if you'd like."
She had stiffened as he spoke and her eyes widened slightly.
"Gods!" she said. "You may be right!"
"So why don't we forget about the entire thing?" he finished. He reached out and took her hand. "And I know exactly how to go about it."
"I believe I'm getting a headache," she said.
Mouseglove did not look back. He accepted the sorcery which had brought him to Rondoval as a part of life. If magic were used against him, things could be very bad. If it worked to his benefit, he was grateful. Until he had met Pol, he had generally attempted to avoid the notice of sorcerers, counting them--usually correctly--as an untrustworthy lot. He mouthed a few words of thanks to Dwastir, patron of thieves, that this one had been helpful, as he hurried into the great hall and made his way down the stairway.
He located the bundle of faggots Pol had charmed for him, raised one and spoke the necessary words over it. He turned then and headed without hesitation along the confusion of tunnels, moving back toward the caverns where he had obtained more than one's normally allotted span of rest.
For a long while he passed through the cool places of dancing shadows before he reached the entranceway where the great slab Pol had toppled lay in shattered ruin all about.
Picking his way among the rubble, he continued into a place where the echoes died in the distance and the walls and roof were no longer visible, a place where the odor of the beasts hung heavy and the torch flickered in vagrant drafts. Here, too, he knew his way, and he proceeded along it with much less trepidation than he would have experienced some months earlier.
The vast, still mounds of scaled and furred bodies were sprawled casually about, many of them sleeping in the depths of magical charges as they had, he had, before. Some few others slept out their natural daily, weekly or monthly spans.
He wondered, as he made his way to the familiar niche, whether the one he sought would indeed be resting there. He might be anywhere in the world, his absence necessitating Mouseglove's rousing another--a thought he did not relish. Having been trapped for twenty years in the same version of the sleep spell as Moonbird, he had developed a peculiar link--a thing even verging on friendliness--with the giant dragon. With any of the others, he would have to attempt a complicated explanation, possibly beginning with his own identity. No, he did not like that thought at all.
As he came near to the place where Moonbird normally rested he grazed his shoulder against an unremembered rocky prominence.
Mouseglove! It has been long!
He stumbled back. It was a shoulder of dragon rather than a shoulder of stone against which he had brushed. He recovered almost immediately and moved to lay his hands upon the beast.
"Yes, I am back," he replied. "There is trouble. We need your help."
The great bulk shifted beneath his hands, causing them to slide along the hard, smooth scales. Moonbird began to rise.
What is it? he asked.
"We must go to Anvil Mountain, find Pol's scepter, take it to him."
He cast it into the fiery hole. He told me this.
"He told me, also--"
But I have been back, and the fires have died. All is gray rock now. I do not know how far I could dig in it. Get tools.
Mouseglove thought for a moment.
"There is a room off the main courtyard," he said, sending along the image. "I will return and look over the tools there. Meet me in the yard."
It will be faster for me to take you there.
"Well ..."
Mount!
Mouseglove scrambled onto his back. Minutes later, they were gliding through the darkness.