Fires hissed in protest and clouds of steam rose about the lake. Hot droplets splattered back from the force of the breath, nipping at Oliver and Luthien, who could only close their eyes and hold on.

It went on for what seemed like minutes, Balthazar's unending breath drawing Brind'Amour's powers out to their limits. When Luthien dared to peek out, it seemed to him as though the watery wall was inevitably thinning. Then it fell flat suddenly, and Luthien thought he was surely doomed.

But ended, too, was the dragon's breath, and Luthien could hardly see the ma.s.sive wyrm through the cloud of thick steam. He heard splashing, though, as Balthazar steadily advanced.

"What are you doing to my rope?" he heard Oliver gasp. He looked at the halfling, then followed Oliver's incredulous gaze to the water and the loose end of the rope. Luthien's eyes widened as well when he saw the spectacle: Brind'Amour had somehow transformed that end of the rope into a living serpent, which was now swimming toward the far bank and the wizard.

The water then churned under the companions-they had almost forgotten about the turtle!

The snake/rope crawled onto the sh.o.r.e and, following Brind'Amour's frantic directions, looped itself about a rock and began to tighten, pulling the companions up at an angle away from the water and the turtle.

Oliver looked back and nearly fainted dead away, staring into the evil and angry eyes of the dragon not more than a dozen feet away. The halfling tried to speak, but got his lips all tied together, and instead began tapping Luthien frantically on the shoulder.

"h.e.l.lO, THIEF AND LIAR," Balthazar said calmly. Luthien didn't have to look back to know that he was about to become lunch.

The dragon jerked suddenly; there came a huge splash from below. Oliver looked down as Balthazar looked down-to see the snapping maw of the turtle tightly clamped on the dragon's great leg.

The rope was taut, then, and Luthien began half crawling, half sliding toward the far sh.o.r.e.

Hot water splashed over the companions as the behemoths battled in the lake. The dragon roared and breathed forth and a new cloud of steam joined the first, and the agonized shriek of the startled and wounded turtle cut the air. Luthien finally let go of the rope altogether as they neared the sh.o.r.e and dropped onto the beach, Oliver still clutched tightly to his back and neck.

"Run on!" Brind'Amour prodded them. The wizard understood that the turtle would not last long against the likes of Balthazar. He looked back to the lake one final time, sent forth another black-crackling bolt of energy, and ran after Luthien. Then he produced a magical light, for Oliver had left the still-burning torch on the far bank.

The three had barely exited the chamber, climbing back into the corridor strewn with broken stalagmites, when they heard Balthazar splash ash.o.r.e, calling out, "THIEVES!" and "LIARS!"

Now the landscape favored the wyrm, with the three companions having to scramble over and around the tumbled blocks. Luthien finally spotted the fist-sized swirl of blue glowing energy, but he heard the dragon right behind them and did not think he had any chance of making it.

Brind'Amour, chanting wildly, grabbed the young man's shoulder suddenly-Oliver's, as well-and all three took off from the ground, flying, speeding for the wall.

Balthazar roared and loosed another line of flames. Oliver screamed and covered his head, thinking that he would smash into the stone. The lights of the tunnel expanded, as if to catch them, and the dragon's breath was licking again at their backsides as they entered the wizard's tunnel.

Chapter 12.

TALES FROM BETTER DAYS.

Small wisps of smoke rose from their clothes as they tumbled back into the wizard's cave, all three in one ball. Brind'Amour, showing surprising agility, extracted himself first and rose laughing.

"Old Balthazar will be steaming about that one for a hundred years!" the wizard roared.

Luthien eyed him, stone-faced, his stern gaze diminishing the wizard's howls to a coughing chuckle.

"Young Bedwyr," Brind'Amour scolded. "Really, you must learn to laugh when the adventure is at its end. Laugh because you are alive, my boy! Laugh because you stole an item from a dragon's h.o.a.rd ..."

"More than one," Oliver corrected, producing several gemstones from his seemingly bottomless pockets.

"All the more reason to laugh!" Brind'Amour cried. Oliver began juggling three of the stones, admiring their glitters in the flickering torchlight, and Brind'Amour raised his fist in a salute to the halfling.

Luthien did not crack the slightest hint of a smile. "Balthazar?" he asked.

"Balthazar?" Brind'Amour echoed.

"You called the dragon Balthazar," Luthien explained. "How did you know?"

Brind'Amour seemed uneasy for just a moment, as though he had been caught in a trap. "Why, I watched you through my crystal ball, of course," the wizard replied so suddenly and exuberantly that Luthien knew he was lying. "The dragon named himself-to Oliver, of course."

"He did," Oliver remarked to an obviously unconvinced Luthien.

"You knew the name before the dragon declared it," Luthien pressed grimly. He heard a clinking sound as Oliver stopped his juggling, one gem falling to the stone floor. And Brind'Amour stopped his chuckling, as well, in the blink of an eye. The atmosphere that only a moment ago seemed to Oliver and the wizard to be a victory celebration now loomed thick with tension. It almost appeared to Oliver that Luthien would strike out at Brind'Amour. "Your tale of a cyclopian king was a lie."

Brind'Amour gave a strained smile. "Dear young Luthien Bedwyr," he began solemnly, "if I had told you that a dragon awaited you at the other end of the magical tunnel, would you have gone through?"

"Very good point," Oliver conceded. He looked up at Luthien, hoping that his friend would just let the whole thing go at that.

"We could have been killed," Luthien said evenly. "And you sent us in there, expecting us to die."

Brind'Amour shrugged, seeming unimpressed by that statement. The wizard's casual att.i.tude only spurred Luthien on. A barely perceptible growl escaped the young Bedwyr's lips; his fists were clenched tightly at his sides.

"Luthien," Oliver whispered, trying to bring him back to a rational level. "Luthien."

"Am I to apologize?" Brind'Amour spat suddenly, incredulously, and his unexpected verbal offensive set Luthien back on his heels. "Are you so selfish?"

Now Luthien's face screwed up with confusion, not having any idea of what the wizard might be talking about.

"And do you believe that I would have allowed the two of you to walk into such danger unless there was a very good reason?" Brind'Amour went on, snapping his fingers in the air in front of Luthien's face.

"And your 'very good reason' justifies the lie and is worth the price of our lives?" Luthien snapped back.

"Yes!" Brind'Amour a.s.sured him in no uncertain terms. "There are more important things in the world than your safety, dear boy."

Luthien started to react with typical anger, but he caught a faraway look in Brind'Amour's blue eyes that held his response in check.

"Do you not believe that I grieve every day for those men who went in search of my staff before you and did not return?" the wizard asked somberly. A great wash of pity came over Luthien, as if somehow the gravity of the wizard's words had already touched his sensibilities. He looked at Oliver for support, honestly wondering if he had been caught by some sort of enchantment, but the halfling appeared similarly overwhelmed, similarly caught up in the wizard's emotions.

"Do you know from where a wizard gains his power?" the man asked, and Brind'Amour suddenly seemed very old to the companions. Old and weary.

"His staff?" Oliver answered, a perfectly reasonable a.s.sumption given the task he and Luthien had just completed.

"No, no," Brind'Amour replied. "A staff is merely a focus for the power, a tool that allows a wizard to concentrate his energies. But those energies," he went on, rubbing his thumb across his fingertips in front of his face as though he could feel the mysterious powers within his hand. "Do you know where they come from?"

Luthien and Oliver exchanged questioning expressions, neither having any answers.

"From the universe!" Brind'Amour cried abruptly, powerfully, moving both of the friends back a step. "From the fires of the sun and the energy of a thunderstorm. From the heavenly bodies, from the heavens themselves!"

"You sound more like a priest," Oliver remarked dryly, but his sarcasm was met with unexpected excitement.

"Exactly!" Brind'Amour replied. "Priests. That is what the ancient brotherhood of wizards considered themselves. The word 'wizard' means no more than 'wise man,' and it is a wise man indeed who can fathom the complete realities of the universe, the physical and the spiritual, for the two are not so far apart. Many priests do not understand the physical. Many of our recent inventors have no sense of the spiritual. But a wizard..." His voice trailed away, and his blue eyes sparkled with pride and that faraway look. "A wizard knows both, my boys, and always keeps both in mind. There are spiritual consequences to every physical act, and the physical being has no choice except to follow the course of the soul.

"Who do you think built the great cathedrals?" Brind'Amour asked, referring to the eight ma.s.sive structures that dotted the islands of Avonsea. Six were in Avon, the largest in Carlisle and a similar one in Princetown. The Isle Baranduine, to the west, had only one, and Eriador had one located in Montfort. Luthien had never been into Montfort, but he had pa.s.sed by the city along the foothills of the Iron Cross. From that perspective, all the buildings of Montfort (and many were large and impressive), and even the one castle of the city, seemed to be dollhouses of children under the long shadows of the towering spires and huge stone b.u.t.tresses of the ma.s.sive cathedral. It was called simply the Ministry, and it was one of the greatest sources of pride for the people of Eriador. Every family, even those of the islands, had an ancestor who had worked on the Ministry, and that heritage inspired Luthien to respond now through gritted teeth: "The people built them," he answered grimly, as if daring Brind'Amour to argue.

The wizard nodded eagerly.

"In Gascony, too," Oliver promptly put in, not wanting his homeland to be left out of any achievement. The halfling had been to Montfort, though, and he knew that the cathedrals of Gascony, though grand, could not approach the splendor of those on the islands. The Ministry had taken the halfling's breath away, and by all accounts, at least three of the cathedrals south of the Iron Cross were even larger.

Brind'Amour acknowledged the halfling's claims with a nod, then looked back at Luthien. "But who designed them?" he asked. "And who oversaw the work, supervising the many hardy and selfless people? Surely you do not believe that simple farmers and fishermen, n.o.ble though they might be, could have designed the flying b.u.t.tresses and great windows of the cathedrals!"

Luthien took no offense at the wizard's words, in full agreement with the logic. "They were an inspiration," he explained, "from G.o.d. Given to his priests-"

"No!" The sharpness of the wizard's tone stopped the young man abruptly. "They were an inspiration of the spirit, from G.o.d," Brind'Amour conceded. "But it was the brotherhood of wizards who designed them, not the priests who later, with our profound blessings, inhabited them." The wizard paused and sighed deeply before continuing.

"We were so powerful then," he went on, his tone clearly a lament. "It was not so long after Bruce MacDonald had led the rout of the cyclopians, you see. Our faith was strong, our course straight. Even when the great army of Gascony invaded, we held that course. It saw us through the occupation and eventually forced the Gascons back to their own land."

Brind'Amour looked straight at Oliver, not judging the halfling but simply explaining. "Your people could not break our faith in ourselves and in G.o.d."

"I was told that we had other business to the south," Oliver replied, "and could not keep so many soldiers in Avonsea."

"Your people had no heart to remain in Avonsea," Brind'Amour said calmly. "There was no point, no gain to Gascony. They could never take Eriador, that much was conceded, and with the disarray in the north ... Well, let us just agree that your king was having little fun in holding the reins about the spirited Avonsea Islands."

Oliver nodded his concession to the point.

"It is ironic indeed that the greatest canker began to grow during the peace that ensued after the Gascons departed," Brind'Amour said, turning his attention back to Luthien. The young Bedwyr got the distinct feeling that this history lesson was almost exclusively for his benefit.

"Perhaps we were bored," the wizard remarked with a chuckle, "or perhaps the lure of the greater powers prodded us on too far. Wizards had always used minor creatures of the lower planes-bane midges and the lesser demons-as servants, calling on them, with their knowledge of other planes of existence, to find answers to those questions we could not discern from within our earthly mantles. Until that time not so long ago, though, our true powers came from the pure energies: fires and lightning, the cold winds of the northern glaciers and the strength of an ocean swell. But then some in the brotherhood, including our present king, Greensparrow"-he spat the name with obvious disdain-"forged evil pacts with demons of great power. It took many decades for their newfound and ill-gotten powers to come to true fruition, but gradually they drove the goodly wizards, like myself, from their ranks." He ended with a sigh and looked down, seeming thoroughly defeated.

Luthien stared long and hard at Brind'Amour, his thoughts whirling down many newly opened avenues. Nothing Brind'Amour had said to him, up until the last couple of sentences, had gone against the precepts he had been taught as a child, the basis for his entire perception of the world. The news that wizards, not priests, had inspired the great cathedrals, was only a minor point. But what Brind'Amour had just said rocked the young man profoundly. Brind'Amour had just accused Luthien's king, the man to whom his father owed fealty, of severe crimes-terrible crimes!

Luthien wanted to lash out at the wizard, punch the lying old man in the face. But he held steady and quiet. He felt Oliver's stare upon him and guessed that the halfling understood his turmoil, but he did not return the look. He could not, at that moment.

"My greatest lament," Brind'Amour said softly-and truly, he seemed sincere, "is that the magnificent cathedrals of Avonsea, the dominant structures of every large city in the land, have become so perverted, have become the houses of Greensparrow's eight dukes, the newest generation of perverted wizards. Even the Ministry, which I, Brind'Amour, as a young man, helped to design."

"How old are you?" Oliver asked, but the wizard seemed not to hear.

"Once they stood as a tribute to man's spirituality and faith, a place of holy celebration," the wizard went on, still eyeing Luthien directly. The weight of his tones dissipated the budding rage in Luthien, forced him to hear the man out. "Now they are no more than gathering places where the tax rolls might be called."

The last statement stung, for it rang of truth. Luthien's father had been called to Montfort on several occasions, and he had spoken of walking into the Ministry not to pray or celebrate G.o.d but to explain a discrepancy in the t.i.the sent to Duke Morkney from Bedwydrin.

"But let that not be your concern," Brind'Amour said, his cheery tone obviously forced, "neither of you!"

The way Brind'Amour made the a.s.sertion made Luthien wince. The proud young man had a strange feeling that what Brind'Amour had just told him would make a profound difference in his life, would change the very way he looked at the world. What scared Luthien was that he wasn't yet sure what that meant.

"And you both have earned your freedom from my ... interference and have earned my friendship, whatever that may be worth." The cloud of pained memories had flown clear of the wizard's face. A wistful look came into his eye as he took a moment to fully regard Luthien.

"That cape fits you well," the wizard remarked.

"I found it in the dragon cave," Luthien started to explain, but he stopped, catching the mischievous twinkle in the wizard's blue eyes and remembering the circ.u.mstances under which he had come upon the leather sack. "You put it there," he accused.

"I meant to give it to you after you returned with my staff," Brind'Amour admitted. "I would have hated to lose those items-the cape and the folding bow-to Balthazar, as well! But you see, I held faith in you, in both of you, and I thought you might be able to make use of them where you were."

Oliver cleared his throat loudly, interrupting the conversation and drawing looks from both men. "If you could drop us such toys, then why did you not just get us out of there?" the halfling demanded of Brind'Amour. "I had your staff already-it would have been so much easier."

The wizard looked at Luthien but didn't find much support there, for Oliver's line of reasoning had obviously set off some doubts in the young man's mind. "The enchantment was not potent enough," Brind'Amour stammered, trying to figure out how he might begin to explain. "And I didn't know where you were, exactly, and what you might soon be facing."

"Shooting blind?" Oliver asked both incredulously and suspiciously. "Then your aim, it was not so bad."

Brind'Amour began waving his hands, as if to indicate that the companions simply did not understand. "Of course I was able to locate you with a simple spell, though I didn't know where that was, if you understand what I mean. And then to get the items to you was another spell, a fairly simple transference, but certainly no open gate like the one that got you to the lair and got you back from the lair. No, no."

Oliver and Luthien looked at each other, and after a moment, Oliver gave a shrug. Brind'Amour's explanation was acceptable.

"And what of that strange arrow?" Luthien asked, getting back to the original conversation.

"Harmless, really," Brind'Amour said with a chuckle. "I didn't even intend to put it there-it was merely lying beside the belt quiver and just got caught up in the spell! Those types of arrows are called 'fireworks' and were used for celebrations in the happier days before Greensparrow. I must say, you were very resourceful in putting it to such valuable use."

"I was lucky," Luthien corrected. "I had no idea of what the arrow might do."

"Never underestimate the value of luck," Brind'Amour replied. "Was it anything more than luck that brought you to Oliver in his time of need? If not for that chance happening, would the halfling be alive?"

"I had my rapier blade," Oliver protested, drawing out the weapon and holding it directly in front of his face, its side against his wide nose.

Brind'Amour looked at him skeptically and began to chuckle.

"Oh, you have so wounded me!" Oliver cried.

"No, but the merchant's cyclopians surely would have!" the wizard replied with a hearty laugh, and Oliver, after a moment's thought, nodded and replaced his weapon in its sheath, trying futilely to hide his own chuckles.

Brind'Amour's demeanor changed again, suddenly, as he looked at Luthien. "Do not openly wear that cape," he said seriously.

Luthien looked at the shimmering, crimson material cascading down from his broad shoulders. What was the man talking about? he wondered. He wondered, too, what use a cape would be if it could not be worn.

"It belonged to a thief of some renown," Brind'Amour explained. "The bow, too, was his, and those folding bows are outlawed in Avon, since they are the weapons of underground bands, threats to the throne."

Luthien looked at the cape and the bow and continued to ponder the value of such items. Were these gifts Brind'Amour had given to him, or burdens?

"Just keep them away and keep them safe," Brind'Amour said, as if reading Luthien's thoughts. "You might find a use for them, and then again, you might not. Consider them, then, trinkets to spur your memories of your encounter with a dragon. Few in all the world can claim to have seen such a beast, for those that have are likely dead. And that encounter, too, must remain a secret," Brind'Amour said almost as an afterthought, though he seemed deadly serious.

Luthien nearly choked on the request and turned his continuing incredulous look upon Oliver. The halfling put a finger over his pursed lips, though, and shot Luthien a sly wink. The young Bedwyr got the message that worldly Oliver understood this better than he and would explain it to him later.

They said nothing more about the dragon, the gifts, or even about Brind'Amour's history lesson for the rest of that evening. Again, the wizard set a fabulous table before the companions and offered them another comfortable night on the soft beds, which they eagerly accepted.

Brind'Amour came to Oliver later that night, woke him and motioned for him to exit the room. "Watch over him," the wizard explained to the sleepy-eyed halfling.

"You expect great things from Luthien Bedwyr," Oliver reasoned.

"I fear for him," Brind'Amour replied, dodging the question. "Just two weeks ago, he fought friendly jousts in the secure arena of his father's protective home. Now he has become an outlaw, a thief and a warrior..."