waveringly south.
“He must be more than a hundred leagues from here,” Glandurg said weakly.
“We aren’t going to fly after him, are we?” Thorfin asked with a dangerous
edge to his voice. The other dwarves muttered in agreement.
“No. There is no need for that. He will return soon enough. Meanwhile we
will scout around us and wait.”
Bal-Simba was waiting for them at the crest of the dune. Outlined against
the sky with sea breezes whipping the edges of his leopard-skin loincloth
the big wizard was a most impressive sight. Wiz, who was a little chilly
in spite of his traveling cloak, wondered how he managed to keep warm.
He heard their breathless report gravely and without comment. “We will
have the thing taken back to the Capital for study,” he told them. “Unless
you think it is unsafe?”
“No reason to think that, Lord,” Wiz said. “Although since we don’t even
know where it came from I can’t guarantee anything.”
Bal-Simba pursed his lips. “I think we may have a clue as to that. I have
been talking to Weinrich and the other villagers. They say there has been
a change in the weather recently.”
“The weather?” Wiz said blankly.
“Folk who live by the sea are always sensitive to the weather. This far
south on the Freshened Sea the pattern of wind and weather is constant,
year to year.”
“Village folk are usually wise in the ways of the immediate surroundings,”
Moira agreed. “But you say a change?”
“A fog bank about a day’s sail to the east. A fog that does not lift and
does not move. A place where a sailor can get lost because neither compass
nor magic works properly.”
“And they think this thing came out of the fog?” Wiz asked.
“It seems to have come from that direction.”
“Lord, if I were you I’d search the hell out of that fog bank.”
“That is already in train, Sparrow,” Bal-Simba said.
Dragon Leader looked over his formation again and then turned his eyes
back to the sea below. Two days ago his entire wing of almost fifty
dragons had been brought together from their scattered patrol bases and
sent hurrying south to Oak Island. Yesterday had been spent frantically
setting up a makeshift base among the fisherfolk and putting out the first
hasty patrols to try to define the edges of this strangeness.
Now Dragon Leader was taking his flight into the heart of this new thing.
Every rider and dragon was at the peak of alertness. He could tell from
the way they were flying that none of them liked it at all.
Even the formation reflected that. Instead of putting his dragons in line
abreast or an echelon to cover the maximum territory, he had his first
element above and behind his main formation for top cover. The rest of the
patrol was pretty much line abreast, but they were closer together than
normal so they could support each other quickly in case of trouble.
Every man and woman in the patrol understood the significance of that.
This was a fighting formation, not a scouting one. Dragon Leader was going
into this strange place loaded for bear.
Dragon Leader and his troopers were used to flying into the unknown. In a
world where maps were components of spells rather than guides to terrain,
he had often struck out over uncharted territory. He was used to magic as
well. Save for the death spells on their iron arrows and a few odds and
ends, dragon cavalry did not use magic. But they dealt with it constantly
and most of them had faced it on more than one occasion.
Not that they had seen any magic here. So far he had seen nothing but
sun-dappled sea and the occasional wheeling sea bird. Just what they
should have seen, in other words.
But it wasn’t right. There was something odd about this stretch of ocean,
something that made his eyes hurt to look at it and made him queasy the
deeper the patrol penetrated. It was like trying to look at two things at
once, he decided. Two pictures that were almost but not exactly alike.