"Anyway," said Nestor, "that sword of yours didn't look like it needed a lot of work." He was studying the stream as he spoke, and it was impossible to tell from his voice what he was thinking. Stepping carefully now from one stone to another, he worked his way out near the middle of the stream, where he positioned his net in a strong flow of water, catching the wooden frame on rocks so it would be held in place. He straightened up, stretching his back, still seeming to study the water's flow. "Didn't you say that your uncle was going to work on it?"

Mark hesitated, finally got out a few lame words.

Nestor did not seem to be paying very close attention to what he said this time. "Or, maybe you've given some thought to selling your sword at the fair. That would be a good time and place, if you mean to sell it. Honest business dealings are more likely under Sir Andrew's eye than elsewhere. There might even be one or two people there who could buy such a thing."

"I wouldn't know how to sell it. And anyway, I wouldn't want to. It was my father's." All of that was the truth, which made it a relief to say.

"A sword like that, I suppose it must have some special powers, as well as being beautiful to look at." Nestor was still gazing at the stream.

Mark was silent.

Nestor at last looked at him directly. "Would you get it now? Bring it here, and let me have a look at it?"

Mark could think of no decent way to refuse. He turned away wordlessly and trudged back to the wagon. He could grab his sword when he got there and run away again; but sooner or later he was going to have to trust someone.

He found Ben and Barbara engaged in what looked like a tricky business. They had removed the dragon's cage from the wagon and were cleaning the cage while its occupant shrilled at them and tried to claw and bite them. They looked at Mark curiously when he climbed into the wagon, and again when he emerged with his wrapped sword in hand. But they said nothing to him.

Darkness was thickening in the grove when Mark brought the sword back to Nestor, who was sitting on a rock beside thestream and appeared to be lost in meditation. But the wiry man roused quickly enough, took the sword on his lap and undid its wrappings carefully. There was still enough light for a fairly close inspection. Nestor sighted along the edge of the blade, and then tried it with a leaf. Brushed lightly along the upright edge, the leaf fell away in two neat halves.

With one finger Nestor traced the subtle pattern on the hilt.

Then, acting as if he had reached a decision, he let Mark hold the sword for a moment and got to his feet. Lifting his net from the water, he peered into the ma.s.s of small, struggling creatures it had captured. The net held, thought Mark, a surprising weight of swimming and crawling things; perhaps the magical symbols round the rim really were effective.

Nestor plunged his hand into the ma.s.s, pulled out one wriggling thing, and let the rest sag back into the water. "Baby dragon," he said, holding up a fistful of feebly squirming gray for Mark's inspection. There were no wings, and the creature was vastly smaller than the one back in the cage. "You find 'em in a lot of the streams hereabouts. There s a million, ten million, hatched for every one that ever grows big enough to need hunting:'

Then he surprised Mark by taking Townsaver back again.

Nestor held the blade extended horizontally, flat side up, and on that small plain of metal he set the hatchling dragon. Freed of his grip, it hissed an infinitesimal challenge, and lashed a tiny tail. Nestor rotated the blade, slowly turning it edge-side up; somehow the creature continued to cling on. Its scales, though no bigger than a baby's fingernails and paper-thin, could protect it from that cutting edge. It hissed again as the sword completed a half-rotation, once more giving the dragon a flat s.p.a.ce to rest upon.

Nestor contemplated this result for a moment, as if it were not at all what he had been expecting. Then with a small flick of his wrist he dashed the tiny creature to the ground; and in the next moment he killed it precisely with the sword, letting the weight of the weapon fall behind the point. Nestor handled the sword, thought Mark, as if it had been in his hand for years.

"One less to grow up," said Nestor, turning his thoughtful gaze toward Mark. With the sword point still down in the soil at his feet, he leaned the hilt back to Mark, giving the sword back. "First dragon this sword has ever killed, do you suppose?"

"I suppose," said Mark, not knowing what the question was supposed to mean. He began wrapping the weapon up again.

"Your father didn't hunt them, then. What did he do with this sword? Use. it in battle?"

"I . . . " Suddenly Mark couldn't keep from talking, saying something to someone about it. "My brother did, once. He was killed:'

"Ali. Sorry. Not long ago, I guess? Then the sword, when he used it, didn't . . . didn't work very well for him?"

"Oh, it worked." Mark had to struggle against an unexpected new pressure of tears. "It worked, like no other sword has ever worked. It chopped up men and even warbeasts-but it couldn't save my brother from being chopped up too:"

Nestor waited a little. Then he said: "You were trying to use it today yourself. But-after I got there at least-nothing muchseemed to be happening."

"I couldn't feel any power in it. I don't know why.". At some point the thought had occurred to Mark that the limitation on the sword's magic might be connected with its name. But he didn't want to go into that just now. He didn't want to go into anything.

"Never mind," said Nestor. "We can talk about it later. But this design on the handle. Did your father, brother, anyone, ever tell you what it was supposed to mean?"

None of your business, thought Mark. He said: "No sir."

"Just call me Nestor. Einar, when we reach Sir Andrew's . . .

well, I don't suppose I have to caution you to keep this sword a secret, until you know just what you want to do with it."

"No sir."

"Good. You carry it, I'll bring the net."

Back at the wagon, they sorted out not only a catch of frogs for dragon-food, but a few fish to augment the dinner of beans, bread, and dried fruit that Barbara was preparing. It turned out that Ben was roasting some large potatoes under the fire as well, and for the first time in days Mark could eat his fill.

After dinner, when the immediate housekeeping ch.o.r.es had been taken care of, Ben got out his lute and sang again. Both Nestor and Barbara, for some reason, chose this time to make their personal trips into the woods.

"Hard day tomorrow," Nestor announced when he returned. And, indeed, everyone was yawning. The captive dragon had already been put back inside the wagon, and the dragon-hunter retired there now. Barbara shortly followed, after looking at Mark's boots and vowing that she would soon mend or replace them for him. After throwing out a quant.i.ty of bedding, and emerging once more to make sure that Mark had got his share of it, she went in again and closed the flap.

The rainclouds that had threatened earlier had largely blown away, and now some stars were visible. Ben and Mark bedded down in the open, on long gra.s.s at a small distance from the dying fire. Wrapped in the extra blanket Barbara had given him, Mark was more comfortable than he'd been since leaving home.

He was better fed, also, And very drowsy. His sword was safe in the wagon, and in a way he enjoyed being free of its constant presence at his side. Yet sleep would not come at once.

He heard Ben stirring wakefully.

"Ben?"

"Yah. "

"Your master really hunts dragons? For a living?"

"Oh yes, he's very good at it. That's what our sign painted on the wagon means. Everyone in the parts of the country where there are dragons knows what a sign like this means. This isn't really dragon country here. Just a few little ones in the streams:"

"I thought that the only people who hunted dragons were..."

"Castle folk? I think Nestor was a knight once, but he don't talk about it. Just the way he acts sometimes. Some highborn people hunt 'em, and others just pretend to. And both kinds hire professionals like Nestor when they have to, to hunt or to help out. There's a lot of tricks to hunting dragons:' Ben sounded fairly confident that he knew what the tricks were.

"And you help him," Mark prodded."Yeah. In two hunts now. Last hunt, we were able to catch that little one alive, as well as killing the big one we started after.

Both times I stood by with the crossbow, but I didn't do much shooting. Nestor killed 'em both. Neither of them were very big dragons, but they were in the legged phase, of course. Bigger than loadbeasts. You know?"

"Yeah, I guess:" What Mark knew, or thought he knew, about dragons was all from stories. After hatching, dragons swam or crawled around on rudimentary legs for about a year, like the one Nestor had netted, while large birds, big fish, and small land predators took a heavy toll of them. The ones that survived gradually ceased to spend a lot of time in the water, grew wings of effective size, and started flying. They continued as airborne predators until they were maybe four or five years old, by which time they'd grown considerably bigger than domestic fowl. A little more growth, and they supposedly became too big to fly.

Once their wings were no longer used, they withered away.

The dragons resumed an existence as bellycrawling, almost snakelike creatures-so far their legs hadn't kept up with the growth of the rest of their bodies-though of course they too were on a larger scale than before. In this, called the snake phase, they were compet.i.tors of the largest true snakes for food and habitat.

When they were ready for the next phase-Mark wasn't sure how many years that took-dragons grew legs, or enlarged their legs, rather in the manner of enormous tadpoles. This legged phase was, from the human .point of view, the really dangerous period of a dragon's life. Now, as omnivores of ever-growing size and appet.i.te, they stalked their chosen territory, usually marshland or with marsh nearby. They ravaged crops and cattle, even carrying off an occasional man, woman, or child. Mark could vaguely remember hear- ing of one more phase after the legged one, in which the beasts after outgrowing any possible strengthening of their legs became what were called great worms, and again led a largely aquatic life. But of this final phase, Mark was even less sure than of the rest.

"Sure," he added, not wanting to seem ignorant.

"Yeah," Ben yawned. "And both times, Nestor followed the dragon into a thicket, and killed it with his sword." Ben sounded as if he were impressed despite himself. "Did your father hunt dragons too?"

"No," said Mark, wondering why everyone should think so. "Why?"

"I dunno," said Ben. "Just that, now that I think about it, your sword looks a whole lot like the one that Nestor uses."

CHAPTER 6.

Putting aside an arras of blue and white, and signal- ling his blue-robed wizard to follow him, Duke Fraktin entered a concealed and windowless chamber of his castle, a room well guarded by strong magic. An eerie Old World light, steadier than any flame, came alive as the men entered, shed by flat panels of a strange material hanging on the walls. The light fell brightlyon the rear wall of the chamber, which was almost entirely taken up by a large map. Painstakingly drawn in several colors, and lettered with many names, this map depicted the entire continent of which the Duke's domain was no more than a tenth part. Some areas of the map were largely blank, but most of it was firmly drawn, showing both the lines of physical features and the tints of political control. Behind those trusted contours and colors lay decades of aerial reconnaisance by generations of flying creatures, some reptiles, some birds, others hard to cla.s.sify by species, but all half-intelligent.

On one of the side walls, near the map, there hung a mask of dark, tooled leather, with a cowled jacket on a peg beside it.

But Duke Fraktin's present concern was not with any of these things. Instead he stopped in front of a large table, on which rested a carved wooden chest, itself the size of a small coffin. He signalled to his wizard that he wished this chest to be opened.

Accordingly the wizard laid both hands upon its lid, whereupon there rose from the chest a faint humming, buzzing sound, as of innumerable insects. In response to this sound the wizard muttered words. Apparently it was now necessary to wait a little, for the conversation between the two men went on with the chest still unopened, the magician's hands still resting quietly on it.

"Then does Your Grace still believe that these attackers were common bandits? Such do not commonly include warbeasts in their armament."

"No," agreed the Duke gently. He was looking at the map now, without really paying it much attention. "Nor do they commonly attempt to kidnap any of my relatives."

"Then it would seem, sire, that they were not simply bandits."

"That had occurred to me."

"Agents, perhaps, of the Grand Duke?"

"Basil bears me no love, I'm sure of that. And of course he too may have learned of the existence of the swords, and he may be trying now to gather them all into his own hands, even as I would have them all in mine . . . hah, Blue-Robes, how I wish I knew how many all across the continent are playing the same game. I presume your latest divinations still indicate that the magic blades at least are not scattered all around the earth?"

"The swords are all still on this continent, Your Grace. I am quite positive of that. But as to exactly where, in whose possession... "

The Duke's darkening mood sounded in his voice. "Yes, exactly. And there's no telling how many know of them by now.

Bah. Kings and princes, queens and bandits, priests, scoundrels and adventurers of every stripe . . . bah, what a fine mess."

"At least Your Grace has had a chance to get in on the game.

You were not left in ignorance that it is taking place."

"Game, is it?" The Duke snorted. "You know I have small tolerance for games. But I must play, or be swallowed up, when others gain the power of the swords. And you need not remind me any more that I have your skill at divination to thank for myawareness of the game, late as it comes; I've thanked you for that already. G.o.ds, I wonder whose men those were. The Margrave's, you suppose? They didn't even seem to know or care about the sword, at least according to the descriptions of events we have."

The wizard, his hands stroking the carven lid of the wooden chest, coughed. It was a sound as delicate and diplomatic as the Duke's habitual sigh. "I think not the Margrave's, sire. Perhaps they could have been agents of the Queen of Yambu?"

The Duke, nagged by irritation on top of worry, flared up sullenly, then recovered. "Have I not told you never to speak of that . . . but never mind. You are right, we must consider Yambu also, I suppose. But I do not think it was her . . . no, I do not think so."

"Perhaps not . . . then we must face the possibility, Your Grace, that they were agents of the Dark King himself. I did find it odd that a mere miller should have mentioned that august name."

* . "I would say that this one-armed Jord is not your ordinary miller. But then, the commons in general are not nearly so ignorant of their rulers and their rulers' affairs as those rulers generally suppose."

"Just so, sire." The wizard nodded soothingly. "We have then primarily to consider Grand Duke Basil, Queen Yambu-and Vilkata himself. While remembering, as Your Grace so wisely points out, that there are still other possibilities."

"Yes." But now the Duke's attention was straying, drawn by a thought connected with the huge map. His gaze had lifted to the map, and had come to rest at an unmarked spot near the eastern limit of his own domain and of the continent itself, right at the inland foot of the coastal range that was labeled as the Ludus Mountains. Right about there, somewhere, ought to be the high village-what had the woman named it? Treefall, that was it-from which the G.o.d had conscripted his human helpers, keeping them for a night and a day of labor, death, and mutilation. It now struck Duke Fraktin as absurd that the village where such an enigmatic and almost incredible event had taken place should not even be marked on his map.

The woman had asked him . . . no, she had as much as told him that he, the Duke, had been there, and had fathered a b.a.s.t.a.r.d on her there, the night after Jord's maiming, in one of those hill country funeral rites. The Duke knew something about those.

A bold story indeed for any woman to make up out of nothing. Still, the fact was that the Duke could remember nothing like that happening, and he had, as a rule, a good memory. A better memory, he thought, for women than for most things. Of course he couldn't recall everything from thirteen years ago. Exactly what had he been doing at that time- ?.

The insect-buzzing sound had died away. The wizard pushed up the lid of the huge box. Both men stared at the fine sword that was reveled inside, nesting in a lining of rare and fantastically beautiful blue fur. The sword had not been brought to the Duke in any such sumptuous container as this; in fact it had arrived, wrapped for concealment, in thesecond-best cloak of a Red Temple courtesan.

The clear light from the Old World wall panels glinted softly on mirror steel. Beneath the surface of the blade, the Duke's eye seemed to be able to trace a beautiful, finely mottled pattern that went centimeters deep into the metal, though the blade was nowhere a full centimeter thick.

Putting both hands on the hilt, the Duke lifted the sword gently from the magical protection of the chest. "Are they ready out on the terrace?" he asked, without taking his eyes from the blade itself.

"They have so indicated, Your Grace."

Now the Duke, holding the sword raised before him as if in ritual, led the way out of the blind room behind the arras, across.

a larger chamber, and through another doorway, whose curtains were stirred by an outdoor breeze. The terrace on which he emerged was open to the air, and yet it was a secret place. The view was cut off on all sides by stone walls, and by high hedges planted near at hand. On the stone pavement under the gray sky, several soldiers in blue and white were waiting, and with them one other man, a prisoner. The prisoner, a middle-aged, well- muscled man, wore only a loincloth and was not bound in any way. Yet he was sweating profusely and kept looking about him in all directions, as if he expected his doom to spring out at him at any moment.

The Duke trusted his wizard to hold the sword briefly, while he himself quickly slipped a mail shirt on over his head, and put on a light helm. Then he took back the sword, and stood holding it like the experienced swordsman that he was.

The Duke gestured toward the prisoner. "Arm him, and step back:"

Most of the soldiers, weapons ready, retreated a step or two. One tossed a long knife, unsheathed, at the prisoner's feet.

"What is this?" the man demanded, his voice cracking.

"Come fight me," said the Duke. "Or refuse, and die more slowly. It is all one to me:'

The man hesitated a moment longer, then picked up the knife.

The Duke walked forward to the attack. The pris- oner did what he could to defend himself, which, given the disparity in arms and armor, was not much.

When it was over, a minute later, the Duke wiped the long blade clean himself, and with a gesture dismissed his troops, who bore away with them the prisoner's body.

"I felt no power in it, Blue-Robes. It killed, but any sharp blade would have killed as well. If its power is not activated by being carried into a fight, then how can it be ordered, how controlled? And what does it do?"

The wizard signed humbly that he did not know.

The Duke bore the cleaned blade back into the concealed room behind the arras, and replaced it in the magically protective chest. Still his hand lingered on the black hilt, tracing with one finger the thin white lines of decoration. "Something like a castle wall onhis sword, the fellow said."

"So he did, Your Grace."

"But here I see no castle wall. Here there s nothing more or less than what we've seen in the pattern since that woman brought me the sword a month ago. This shows a pair of dice:"

"Indeed it does, Your Grace:"