The Oathbound Wizard

CHAPTER 5 A Rare and Surly Monster

The sun was almost directly overhead, and those apples had been a long time ago. Matt was beginning to feel weak again and was getting into a pretty nasty mood. Once again, he thought of cursing his misfortune, and the Powers that had enforced it on him—even if it had been his own dumb fault for making a vow he hadn't meant—but he caught himself with the words on the tip of his tongue. He didn't quite dare let them out.

And didn't need to, for that matter. He frowned, listening to a distant sound that suddenly became audible, then died away again. He could have sworn that had been the sound of someone using foul language...

No. Not "sworn." Not again. Ever. Not without thinking it over very carefully first.

But what was that sound? Of course, it could have been the wind; he could hear it moaning in the crevices of the pass ahead.

Then he frowned, tilting his head to one side and listening more closely. That was no wind, that was a creature—and it was moaning as much in anger as in pain. Matt stepped forward carefully, moving quietly, ready to jump off the path at a moment's notice.

The voice rose again, and Matt froze. He couldn't make out the words, but the tone was definitely angry and outraged. Then the voice slackened off into growling again, and Matt began stalking.

There was nothing in sight, but the trail angled sharply at a big rock a little way ahead, and the moaning was growing louder. Matt sidled up to the rock and, very quickly, ducked out for a peek.

The moan blasted into a roar, and Matt ducked back in a panic, sure he had been seen.

But the roar was followed by words. Matt frowned; he couldn't quite understand them, though they seemed to be in the hybrid language of Merovence that he understood as well as English. He concentrated, trying to allow for accent—and it clicked; he was just able to make out the words.

"That motherless monster of a sorcerer who set this hellish trap! I'll bite him into twenty pieces! I'll pluck him naked! I'll drop him from a mountaintop!"

Whoever it was, it certainly didn't sound like a courtier. Matt stepped out from hiding and stalked forward carefully—if it was a soul in distress, of course he wanted to help. Though come to think of it, that voice didn't exactly sound human.

The words did, though—it ranted on through a series of curses that would have done credit to the most creative sailor ever to work his way down to the brig. Matt stepped around another outcrop and saw—a very singular creature. In fact, he doubted there could be two of them, and if there were, the other one certainly didn't have a huge boulder holding it down by its wing.

The other wing was beating furiously as the beast tried to pull away. They were eagle's wings, though on the grand scale—a thirty-foot wingspan, at least. But it had the head, neck, and tail of a dragon, and its body was that of a huge lion.

Matt couldn't help himself. "What in the name of heaven are you?"

The beast turned his way with a surly growl. "A dracogriff, of course!" it answered. "What're you?"

"A wizard," Matt said automatically, then leaped for cover as the monster lunged at him with a huge roar.

"Thought you were gonna sneak up on me, huh?" it bawled from somewhere on the other side of the boulder Matt had ducked behind. "Thought you were gonna drug me and drain me, huh? Couldn't get any nestlings' blood, so you thought you'd settle for one as young as you could get, huh?"

"No!" Matt ducked up long enough to shout the syllable. He dropped down again and called out, "You've got the wrong wizard!"

"Wrong wizard? They're all wrong wizards! How could there ever be a right one?"

"Look," Matt said, trying for patience, "you've got the definitions reversed. Wizards are good guys—their power comes from research and right living. The sorcerers are the ones who get their power from evil."

"The Devil you say!"

"That's right. Only I don't—I swear by the saints. And I'm trying to break the habit."

"I'll bet. And you didn't make this rock fall on me while I was sleeping, to make sure I'd still be here when you caught up, huh?"

"That's right—I didn't."

"Sure you didn't! Just like you haven't been chasing me all across Merovence and through these mountains for the last four years!"

"No, now that you mention it. I spent the last three at the queen's castle."

"Oh, yeah? Then how'd you just happen to be coming this way right when I was anchored down, huh?"

"Well..." Matt swallowed. "You remember that `swearing by the saints' I told you about?"

"Yeah..." The monster was beginning to sound puzzled.

"I, uh, kinda got carried away the last time I did it."

"Carried away where?"

"To Ibile. I mean, I swore to kick the king of Ibile off his throne, or die trying."

There was a sudden and total silence. Then the other side of the boulder erupted into a coughing, cawing sound. It was a minute before Matt realized it was laughter.

Scowling, he stepped around the boulder. "All right, it's not funny!"

"Not to you, maybe! But from here? It's a hoot and a holler! Eeee!" The monster blinked away tears. "Boy, you sure wanna die young!"

"Yeah." Matt swallowed heavily. "I, uh, wasn't thinking too clearly."

"I'll say you weren't! Didn't it kinda sink in that the saints wouldn't let you off?"

"Well, not at the time..."

"Not much of a wizard, are you?"

That stung. Matt drew himself up to his full height. "I'll have you know I'm the Lord Wizard of Merovence!"

"No fooling?" The dracogriff stared, impressed. "Hey, if you're so high and mighty, how come you made a dumb mistake like that?"

"Reflexes," Matt mumbled, deflating. "I didn't grow up here, see. I was born in another universe."

"Universe?" The dracogriff frowned. "How can there be more than one?"

"Search me." Matt spread his hands. "I only know that there is. I grew up there, where we don't quite believe in religion as strongly as you do."

"Believe?" The dracogriff reared its head back, eyeing Matt strangely. "What's to believe? There's a good One, and a bad one, and they each give off magic power. Everybody knows that."

"I know." Matt sighed. "It's like saying you `believe' that when you throw something up in the air, sooner or later, it'll come down again."

"Yeah." The dracogriff growled, looking uncomfortable for some reason. "Or like saying you `believe' in the wind—or in ghosts."

"Right. Anyway, I started trying to translate a booby-trapped poem..."

" `Booby trapped'?" The dracogriff frowned

"Yeah—it was a spell in disguise. But we don't believe in spells, either..."

"Kinda dumb, aren't you?"

Matt flushed. "You could put it a little more delicately. Anyway, when I managed to translate the poem well enough to recite it, I looked up and found myself in the middle of Bordestang."

The dracogriff just stared. Then its mouth lolled open, and it began to make the noise again.

"Please." Matt held up a hand, looking pained. "I feel dumb enough as it is."

"Awright, awright," the dracogriff grunted, throttling down its amusement. "So how'd you turn out to be such a big-shot wizard, if you didn't believe in magic?"

"Maybe that's why. Because I wasn't raised with it, see, I could look at it from the outside—and I had to try to figure out how it worked."

"So you could dope it out better than any of the locals." The dracogriff nodded. "That's so stupid, it almost makes sense."

Matt eyed the boulder. "You might say you're not in any position to throw stones."

The monster's good humor vanished on the instant. "Oh, shut up," it growled, turning to glare at the rock. "A guy's got to sleep some time, don't he?"

"Yeah, sure he does. You're just lucky it didn't hit you on the head."

"Not lucky at all," the dracogriff growled. "He wants my blood fresh when he gets it." Suddenly, it lunged at its own wing, jaws gaping.

"Stop!" Matt shouted.

The dracogriff jolted to a halt, wincing. "Not so loud..."

"Eschew such behavior!"

"That's what I'm doing!" The monster opened its jaws again.

"But you can't," Matt cried in a panic. "How will you fly on just one wing?"

"Better a hiker than a corpse," the dracogriff grunted.

"Why not just push it off?"

"What do you think I've been trying to do all morning?" it growled.

"Maybe you just can't get a good angle." Matt came over to the beast's trapped wing. "Here, let me try."

"No way!" the monster bellowed. "It was one of you guys who got me into this fix in the first place! Let you near me? You'd just put a whammy on me that'd make me turn belly-up! Stay back there, buster!"

"But I just want to help..."

"Yeah, help me into an early grave! Got a thing about blood, don't you? By the bucketful, sure! Come within five feet of me, and you're lunch, boyo!"

"Now, wait a minute." Matt took a step forward. "I don't mean any harm. Probably your enemies are my enemies."

"Or you're one of 'em! Get gone!" The dracogriff bared its teeth and lunged. Matt leaped back—and the dracogriff slammed out against the weight on its wing with a bellow of pain. "Now look what you did!"

"Absolutely nothing." Matt frowned around the monster's head at the rock. "It didn't budge an inch, with your full weight against it. Funny..."

"Oh, yeah! It's a bundle o' laughs!"

"No, no." Matt waved the sarcasm away with irritation. "I mean the boulder itself. It's only a foot-thick chunk of granite; and it's more or less spherical. It ought to have at least started to roll."

"Well, it didn't."

Matt looked up, eyes widening. "Did you say it was a sorcerer who was hunting you?"

"It wasn't the little boy who looks after the sheep, bucko."

"It's enchanted!"

"Great," the dracogriff snorted. "Just great. You finally got the idea. Give the big-shot wizard a crest for his coat of arms."

Matt scowled. "I told you this stuff didn't come naturally to me. Okay, so it's magic. Now let me see what I can do."

The dracogriff stared. "What're you talking about?"

"Getting that boulder off your wing," Matt said impatiently.

"With a spell?" the dracogriff bawled. "A fumble-fingered filigree like you would probably take off the whole wing!"

Matt held up a palm. "A little patience, please."

"Patience, my tail fin! You just get the hell away from my wing, y' hear me?"

"I hear you." Matt's eyes never left the boulder. "I've got your measure, too."

"Measure, nothing! You just get outa here!" When Matt didn't respond, the dracogriff screamed, "Out! I said now! I won't take any favors from your kind! I don't want anything to do with you! Just get outa here, you hear me?"

"No way," Matt muttered. "I think I see how to do it."

"Get out, or I'll gnaw you out!" the dracogriff raged. "I, won't owe you!"

"Well, it's your life—but that doesn't mean I have to let you throw it away."

"It's not your lookout!" the dracogriff bawled, and lunged at Matt, jaws gaping.

The wizard leaped back, and the dracogriff jolted up short against the tether of its own wing again. It roared with pain, and Matt said calmly, "You see? One way or another, it's got to come off."

"The rock?" the dracogriff howled. "Or the wing?"

"Well, I was thinking of the rock—but you seemed pretty willing to take off the wing just a few minutes ago."

"That would have been my doing," the griff growled. "Get your greedy eyes offa me!"

But Matt frowned down at the boulder, pacing around the monster so he could see the rock from all sides—and carefully staying out of range. So he didn't see the faint glint of hope that came into the dracogriff's eye.

"I've got the spell," he said slowly, "but I'm reluctant to use it."

"Then don't," the dracogriff grunted. "Just get outa here and leave me alone."

"Not so fast. I don't want to use the spell because as soon as the rock's off your wing, you might charge out and chew me up."

The dracogriff snorted. "Not a bad idea. Better get while the getting's good."

"Well, I wasn't asking for anything major—just a solemn promise that you wouldn't try to hurt me."

The dracogriff narrowed his eyes. "How come you don't want an oath?"

"I'm allergic to oaths just now," Matt answered. "Also, I've seen too many people break their most solemn vows—especially the ones they make at the altar. If you won't keep a promise, you won't keep a vow."

"Funny place you come from," the monster growled. "How can a guy break an oath? You do whatever it wants you to."

Matt just stared at him for a moment. Then he said, "Interesting point."

He turned back to the superheavy rock. "I don't suppose there's any way to get you to cooperate, then, is there?"

"Help you get me? No way, bucko!"

"That's what I was afraid of." Matt sighed. "Okay, I guess we have to go on faith." He didn't say in what.

The dracogriff tracked him with its gaze. "Whaddaya think you're doing?"

"Just having a look." Matt began pacing around the dracogriff's pinioned wing, just out of biting range. Satisfied, he nodded, stepped back, raised his hands, and chanted,

And it did—but very slowly. At first, the rock barely quivered. Matt frowned and recited the verse again, more slowly, concentrating so fiercely on the boulder that everything else seemed to grow dim. He felt the gathering of forces that always accompanied a spell—but they seemed lesser now, weaker, compared to the huge inertia that he felt all about him. He focused his mind on moving that rock, reciting the verse even more slowly—and the boulder tipped, ever so slightly, to the left, then rocked back down a little faster, then up to the right, then back down. Back and forth it rocked, harder and harder, until finally, as Matt intoned "roll" again, it poised, was still for a moment, then tipped on over and rolled, slowly at first, but gathering speed, right off the dracogriff's wing.

"At last!" the monster cried, its wing slamming up with a whoosh. "It's free—just from chanting a verse! Awright, I'll admit it—you really are a wizard!"

Matt relaxed, perspiring. "Nice to hear. For a minute, I had my doubts."

The dracogriff stared. "You didn't know you were a wizard?"

"No, I knew that, all right. It was just much harder to make that spell work than it should have been." And even harder than it had been two days ago at the village. Matt wondered about that.

The dracogriff shrugged. "Maybe it's just because...What's the matter?"

Matt was staring after the rock, appalled. "The rock! It's still rolling!"

"So what? It'll stop."

"No it won't—'cause I didn't tell it to."

"So let it roll." The dracogriff gazed up proudly at its wing. "I don't think anything's broken."

"No, but it will be! That runaway rolling boulder could hurt somebody!"

"Oh, don't be such a gloomy Gus," the dracogriff huffed. "Who could it hurt?"

"Anybody it runs into—it's building up a lot of momentum! And we're in the mountains—it could start an avalanche!"

The boulder rolled over the lip of the pass and out of sight.

"Well, stop it. You're a wizard."

"I took too long thinking up the spell! I could stop it now, but it's out of sight." Matt took off running, tripped on a cobble, and fell flat on his face.

"Hey, there! Easy, easy, little guy!" the dracogriff called. "You can't go running around on a rocky road!"

"But I've got to catch up!" Matt scrambled to his feet and winced at a bruise in his thigh. "If it starts an avalanche, it could wipe out a whole village!" And he limped away.

"Awright, awright!" the dracogriff exploded. "Enough is enough!" He caught up to Matt in two leaps and swerved to cut him off. "Here—left foot on my knee, right foot up and over."

Matt skidded to a halt. "What're you talking about?"

"A ride of course! Boy, for a wizard, you really are slow. Up on my back! You'll never catch that boulder on foot!"

"It's not your problem..."

"It was my wing it was on, it was me you made the spell for! Up on the back, bucko! You don't think I'm going to settle for owing you, do you?"

"You don't owe me anything," Matt snapped.

"No, just my freedom and my life! Don't you tell me that's "nothing'! Now climb aboard!"

Matt eyed the lion back warily, thinking that what had happened to she who rode the tiger might also very well happen to he who was lionized—but there wasn't really much choice. "All right, and thanks." He stepped up on the dracogriff's knee and swung his bruised leg over its back with a wince. "But this settles our account."

"The hell it does," the dracogriff snorted. "Hold tight, bucko."

"Like a leech," Matt promised.

"I hate flying," the dracogriff grumbled, but its huge wings beat once, twice, and they were airborne.

"I know what you mean." Matt's stomach was trying to stay behind on the ground. "I'd rather take the train, myself."

"Don't think for a second that you're gonna train me!"

"Wouldn't think of it." Matt looked down and swallowed heavily against a rising stomach. "Uh—long way, isn't it?"

"Only to the bottom of the mountain—and the lump you want is just a hundred feet under us."

"Just" a hundred feet still looked like an awfully long way to Matt. He tried to remember that he had ridden dragon-back before, but it wasn't much reassurance. "Circle lower, will you? I need to stay near it."

"Awright, but don't blame me if I run into a downdraft." The dracogriff spiraled down.

Matt saw the rock bouncing and skipping from ledge to ledge. A huge boulder stood smack in its path, and Matt could have sworn his rock would smash itself to flinders on its big cousin—but it bounced off with scarcely a chip and went rolling merrily on its way. "Can't anything stop it?"

"Course not," the dracogriff huffed. "It's enchanted."

He was right, of course. Matt's spell had told it to roll, but hadn't said anything about stopping..

And it was heading right toward a huge slab, a virtual menhir, that was leaning at an angle so steep it couldn't possibly hold itself up! "Go around!" Matt shouted.

He said it carefully, and with great concentration. But the focusing of his attention seemed to come a little more easily this time—and, slowly but obediently, the rock swerved in a half circle, around the menhir, over the edge of the shelf it perched on, and plunged on down the slope.

"You can make it mind!" the dracogriff cried in amazement.

"Yeah," Matt muttered, "as long as I say the verse in time."

"Just tell it to stop, why don'cha?"

"Good idea." And Matt intoned,

The concentration was almost automatic—but Matt could feel himself weakening. Why was magic requiring so much more effort, all of a sudden?

The boulder jerked to a stop so suddenly that it had Matt wondering about inertia.

"I can't believe it!" The dracogriff dipped low, circling just over the stone—and sheered off with a yelp of surprise. "Hey! It's hot!"

"Of course!" Matt cried. "That's what happened to all that kinetic energy! It converted to heat!"

The boulder was glowing a dull red.

"Hot enough to make an updraft," the dracogriff grumbled. "Next time warn a guy, okay?"

"Sorry. I didn't realize—I've never done this spell before."

"Look, could you stop making it up as you go along?"

"Not for a while yet." Matt sighed. "I haven't worked out a spell for every occasion."

"Lord High Amateur," the dracogriff grunted. "Hey, can I get down now? Heights make me nervous."

"Oh, yeah, sure! But not right here, okay? It'd be a rough haul back up."

"Funny man," the dracogriff snorted as it banked and started climbing. "Just for the record, I need at least a hundred feet to take off or land—unless I wanna come straight down, and that's not too healthy."

"I believe you." Matt frowned, trying to decide whether or not to be indelicate, but curiosity won out, as it usually did. "Say, uh—doesn't flying come naturally to you?"

"A lot more naturally than magic comes to you." But the dracogriff's voice had an edge to it. "I mean, climbing trees comes easy to you overgrown monkeys—but does that mean you like it?"

"Yes, most of us..."

"Spare me the news about the ones who don't," the beast answered. "At least you're part of a "kind'!"

Matt sensed sensitive territory and tried to be careful. "Oh, come on! There have to be others of your species!"

"It ain't a species, whatever that is!" The dracogriff could vent a little anger over Matt's attitude, which helped. "We're crossbreeds!"

And getting crosser, Matt noticed. "There've got to be some others of your kind."

"If there are, I haven't met 'em!"

Well, that explained a lot.

"Dracogriffs don't come from mommy dracogriffs and daddy dracogriffs," the beast explained with sullen resentment. "Little dracogriffs happen when some tin-horned, back-stabbing, motherless, son-of-a-worm of a dragon, with more lust than conscience, finds a female griffin alone during her season—and it does happen, 'cause there're a lot more female griffins than males."

"Female griffins find dragons attractive?"

"Bucko, during her season, a lady griffin would find a stone slab attractive, if it were male—the poor little things are so frantic they'll go after anything. It's enough to make you wonder if Mother Nature knows what it's like to be female!"

"There're some females of my species who wonder about that, too. But doesn't the lady griffin try to fight off the dragon?"

"Maybe. What good can it do? A griffin has about as much chance against a dragon as a minnow has against a shark Result? Me—whether she liked it or not."

"So that's where you get the lion body and the eagle wings?"

The dracogriff nodded "The head and tail I get from my sire, may he shed his skin every hour. And if I ever meet him, I just might do it for him!"

"Meet him?" Matt frowned. "He didn't stick around?"

"Why should he? He'd gotten what he wanted No, up and away he went—you don't think he'd bring a griffin girl home to Mama, do you? Oh, no, good enough for fun, that's how dragons see 'em—but forever? No way! Those arrogant, high-and-mighty, holier-than-thou hypocrites!"

Matt found himself trying to remember that his dragon friend Stegoman was really a very nice guy—had saved his life a few times, in fact—but he didn't think it would be politic to mention that just now. "But your mother stood by you?"

"A saint! She was a saint! Yeah, she stood by me, even though she had to spend her life in exile from her own kind—they thought I was an abomination. Said she didn't mind, though—I made it all worthwhile for her. No, she raised me out in the wild wood. Couldn't live on a mountaintop—the griffins have staked out all the ones the dragons didn't."

"Sounds kind of lonely..."

"You bet it was! Soon as I was grown, I dreamed up an excuse to go wandering, so she could go back to live with the other griffins. I'll look for her when I get back that way though."

"No, no! I meant lonely for you!"

The dracogriff shrugged, almost unseating Matt. "You don't miss what you never had. I got to hang out around your kind, a little—woodcutters and foresters and such. Their hatchlings had fun playing with me, till they got big enough so they thought it was kid stuff."

"That's where you learned to speak our language?"

"From the forest kids? Yeah, that's where." The dracogriff sounded surprised. "How'd you guess?"

"Oh, just something about your accent." Matt didn't want to be more specific while he was still riding, and fifty feet up—getting thrown from the saddle could be pretty serious, especially since he didn't have a saddle.

The thought reminded him that he could be considerably more comfortable someplace else—almost anyplace else, in fact. "Uh, I see we're back to the top of the pass now."

"Yeah. Where'd you say you wanted to go?"

"Down! Look, it's been very good of you to give me a lift, but I really don't want to put you out any further."

"Look, bucko, I told you—I won't be owing to anybody."

"You don't owe me! You just paid me back!"

"For my life? Don't be a donkey! It's gonna take a lot more than one ride to make up for it. Now where'd you say you wanted to go?"

"Hey, look, really..."

"Much as I hate it, I could stay up here all day," the dracogriff said, with a note of menace. "You got a love affair with hiking?"

"No, riding is faster," Matt said with a sigh. "All right, and thanks—I'd be delighted to travel with you."

"That's better." The dracogriff angled downward.

"Uh—where'd you say you were going?"

"I didn't. Where're you going?"

"Into Ibile."

The dive leveled off into a glide very abruptly. Then, after a few seconds, the dragon head said, "You were serious about that quest stuff, huh?"

"Unfortunately—" Matt sighed. "—I was. Still want to go through with it?"

"Yeah." The dracogriff nodded. "If you're game, I'm game."

"Only if that sorcerer catches you."

"Won't do him much good, now," the dracogriff said, grinning. "I'm traveling with the Lord Wizard!"

Why, Matt wondered, did he have the feeling he had just been conned?