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." "Hah."The wizard looked at Amintor severely."I know more than I have told you, but at the moment I am not at liberty to share my knowledge.I would remind you, however, that as between the two of us, I am the senior partner.Let it suffice for you that I am satisfied.""You are the senior partner," agreed Amintor meekly."And if you are satisfied with our arrangements with this one who is called the Master, I should be foolish to proclaim myself discontented.""Exactly." Burslem, grimly satisfied at having made his point, sat back in his saddle.In his mind's eye he could see himself hauling Shieldbreaker out of its scabbard and riding away, letting those who wanted to stop him try it, washing his hands of the whole business.But he wasn't sure what such a move would accomplish for him, except that it would certainly make enemies of two very accomplished wizards.And, there was the worm.How fast could it move? If Burslem sent it after him, perhaps it would catch him and gobble him up, along with his two Swords and his riding-beast to add a little body to the snack.Amintor rode on in silence.Since his first meeting with Burslem, he had been confident of his ability to manage the magician.But the mysterious Master added new dimensions.An ancient foe of Ardneh, still alive? Amintor did not believe all that he had just been told.But the complications were growing.He was getting in deeper, but this wasn't the time to break away.It would have to be sometime when the worm was distant, if he decided to break away at all.Under the edge of his new turban he could feel his forehead sweating.CHAPTER 21ZOLTAN sat his load beast, looking down on something totally unexpected, in the shape of a mighty cruciform scarring of the earth.He had come to a place where the trail of the great worm intersected itself.There was no other way to read the sign, no doubt that that was what had happened.It was plain also that the new segment of the trail was much fresher than the old one; the loop that the worm had traveled before returning to this spot must have been a lengthy one.Nor was there any difficulty in telling in which direction the new trail led.He moved first to scout out the area surrounding the intersection.Running parallel with the new trail, at a distance of about a hundred meters from it, was another broad obvious track, this one instantly recognizable if still surprising.It had been left by what Zoltan took to be an entire army-certainly many more riders than were in the Tasavaltan patrols whose signs he had observed much earlier.Nor was the army Tasavaltan.Here and there a clear hoof print, showing the form of an iron shoe, indicated that very clearly.And a few bits of equipment, worn or broken and cast aside, offered confirmation of this conclusion.They were headed in the same direction as the great worm in its most recent passage, and certain signs indicated they had passed through here at about the same time.Were they hunting the creature? Or might it have been hunting them? Zoltan's imagination, when he beheld that scoured-out track, could create the image of a monster whose proper prey was armies.He shuddered a little, despite himself, and regardless of the fact that Dragonslicer hung at his side.All he could do was continue what he had started, the job of following the monster's trail; if there was an enemy army ahead of him as well, he would just have to do his best to avoid it.He moved now with a new urgency and a new alertness, for neither monstrous creature nor enemy army could now be much more than a day ahead of him, and might be considerably less.The signs in both cases were unmistakable.And both army and worm were headed east, in the general direction of Page 100ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlTasavalta.Praying for some kind of guidance, Zoltan forged on.Ben and the small column of the command that had been entrusted to him were moving in the same direction, toward Sarykam and home.Ben was not praying for guidance, but muttering oaths under his breath as he listened uncomfortably to the blind Princeling's babble from inside the nearby litter.Today the mad crooning and muttering was almost continuous.At least the child did not sound as if he were suffering.Crazy, maybe, but not in pain.Partly with the goal of avoiding that sound for a time, partly out of general impatience, Ben spoke a word to the cavalry officer, who was now his second in command, and then cantered on ahead of the column, taking a turn at scouting.A few minutes later, while trying to discover the best way through a large outcropping of rocks, he was distracted by a sudden jumping of the land beneath his feet.It felt to him like an earthquake, or the sudden manifestation of an elemental.In another moment Ben was confronted by the bizarre figure of a small wizard wearing a strange robe covered with symbols of obscure meaning.This apparition, crouched among the jumbled rocks, waved to Ben and shouted at him: "Go and find Prince Mark! Hurry! Prince Mark is in trouble and he needs your help."Ben turned his mount around.The image he was looking at was obviously just that and not an ordinary human being.He judged that the only way to deal intelligently with it was to get magical assistance.As soon as he had turned his mount, the ground beneath the hooves of the riding-beast shifted back again, so he was left facing the same way as before.The strange magician-figure, in front of him again, cried out: "Don't run away, Ben! Listen to me!""I have my orders," Ben managed to get out, and tried once more to turn his steed.But he had to listen to more shouted pleadings before he was allowed to leave.When Zoltan saw that the fresh trail he was now following was bringing him back to the river-or some river-once again, his spirits rose as before.He was looking forward to possibly encountering the mermaid again.The trail was going upstream now, along what looked like the same river he had followed downstream only a few days earlier.He wondered if something out of the ordinary could be happening to the geography of the land through which he traveled.At least it did make sense that the dragon should need the river, as the maid had told him.Here was another indication, a place where the beast had obviously tried to submerge itself, to wallow in the stream, though the channel here must actually be smaller than the diameter of its own body.Both banks and the vegetation on them were spattered and coated with dried mud for many meters, and a small pool had been scraped and scoured into a pond.The thrown-out mud looked dry.But when Zoltan probed at a thick clot of it with his fingers, the center was still moist.Certainly not very many hours could have gone by since the creature passed here.The Sword at Zoltan's side remained quiet as he crumbled the dried mud between his fingers.He had no more idea now than when he had left the farm, of where his uncle Mark might be.The idea was beginning to grow on Zoltan that he might be the one who had to wield the Sword of Heroes when the time came.He could neither accept the idea nor reject it.It was just there, like a boulder in his mind.Doggedly he stayed with the trail until nightfall, doing his best to overtake the thing that had made it.A few hours before sunset he came to a place where at last the parallel trail of the human riders diverged from that of the dragon.And here the mounted Page 101ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlforce had split into two unequal groups, which had then ridden off in different directions.Now there were three diverging trails.Zoltan stayed with that of the great worm.After dark he once more made his fireless camp beside the stream [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]