The traveler gave his hand a hard-eyed stare, keeping his own palms deliberately on his staff, then lifted his hard glittering gaze to meet Matt's—and something flickered there. “You are welcome. Surely we of the road must aid one another.”
“Surely we must.” Matt lowered his hand, turned away— and lashed out a sweeping ankle-high kick.
It caught the traveler by surprise. He fell with a raging sound somewhere between a hiss and a roar—then froze, staring up the bright length of Matt's sword blade, feeling its tip poke his throat. “This is rude thanks for my courtesy.”
“If it was courtesy. Stegoman! Help!”
Wings cupping thunder, the dragon was beside him, bellowing, “What moves?”
“Nothing, and I want to keep it that way. Hold him down, will you?”
At that the stranger writhed, trying to squirm away from the blade, but a huge claw descended, pressing into his chest. “Keep still,” Stegoman rumbled, “for I have but to shift my weight, and you will be pinned to this road.”
The traveler froze. Matt flicked his sword-point, untying the belt and opening the stranger's robe.
“Another of my kind!” Stegoman hissed, but the traveler hissed back and a forked tongue flicked out.
Matt saw a lean, sinuous body covered with iridescent scales. It had two arms and two legs, but nonetheless seemed more reptilian than mammalian, possibly because it had no genitalia. A bright circle winked on its chest, a medallion held around the creature's neck by a leather thong.
“You're as much snake as man,” Matt said. “Who sent you here?”
“Monkeys chatter,” the traveler hissed, “but they mean little.”
Matt whipped his sword in a half-circle ending with the point at the creature's throat. “Snakes mean treachery. If you don't want an early molt, you'd better tell me your mission.”
“Only warm-blooded fools would think molting a threat.”
“Don't be too sure you can grow a new skin,” Matt cautioned. “Who told you about this girl I mentioned?”
“You did, blind fool!”
“Enough of this game,” Stegoman rumbled. “He will tell you nothing but more insults. Let me lean on him.”
The stranger only hissed defiance.
“I think we might induce him to cooperate,” Matt said, and chanted,
He didn't think Lowell would mind his patching verses from separate poems—after all, they dealt with the same topic.
“Now,” he said, “who sent you?”
The traveler's lip writhed with scorn as it opened its lips— then its eyes went wide with shock as its tongue moved without its control and its voice said, “Kala Nag has sent me.”
“What mission did she give you?”
This time the traveler clamped his jaws shut, his throat and face swelling with the effort of holding the answer in—but it burst out in hissing: “I am sent to stop the soul of destiny who could be her only serious impediment to conquering Prester John and his realm.”
“An ambitious goal.” Mart's eyes narrowed. “Why does she wish to conquer him?”
Again the struggle, again the bursting answer. “Because Prester John alone prevents her conquest of the rest of the world.”
“She isn't modest in her expectations, our Kala Nag,” Matt said. “Am I the soul of destiny? Is that why you tried to stop me?”
“Nay. You could aid the destined one, but you yourself are not.”
Matt frowned, trying to puzzle out the cryptic comments, but sure they were true, and all the snakeman knew. “How will you know this soul of destiny?”
“There will be two traveling together,” the snakeman answered, as though the words were torn from him. “For the aid you might give them, you must be stopped.”
“Two?” Matt demanded. “Is one the woman of whom I told you?”
“Yes!” the snake screamed in torture.
“And the other?”
“The other is also young, is—” Then its hissing tore into a scream as its whole body burst into flames. An instant later it went limp, clearly dead, as inert as a log, though the blaze continued, consuming robe and skin.
Matt drew a shaky breath. “Well, that's one way to stop somebody from talking.”
“A most gruesome way,” Stegoman said, his voice hard, “though quick, at least.”
“Yeah, the pain didn't last long at all. Still, if this is how Kala Nag rewards the followers who fail her, she must be as cold-blooded as her name.”
“You know its meaning, then?” Stegoman asked.
“From a story I read when I was a kid,” Matt said. “It means 'Black Snake.'”
“At least now we know what we seek,” Stegoman said.
“Yeah.” Matt turned away from the impromptu pyre and climbed backup to Stegoman's shoulders. “Somehow I doubt we'll find Balkis in that third valley to the south, Stegoman, and I'm very wary of landing there—but we'd better have a look, just to make sure.”
“It should not take long,” the dragon agreed, “and I am eager to be back in the clean air.”
“Cool air, too.” Matt wiped a hand across his brow. “How could that snakeman stand the heat?”
“He has cold blood, as do I,” Stegoman reported, “though I think he would have sought the shade in an hour or so anyway.”
“Yeah, this furnace sun would fry a stoker,” Matt said. “Let's seek a bit of breeze, shall we?”
When night came, the giant sandfish did not slacken its speed, and Balkis asked, “How many more oases before the northern edge of the desert?”
“I have watched two pass us and fail astern,” Panyat said, “so I calculate that only one remains.”
Anthony gave a start, then looked about him at the empty sands. “The more fool I! I was so enwrapped in talk that I never noticed.”
“Nor should you have,” Panyat said, “for you did not know their distances. The last oasis was three days' journey from the edge of the desert, but this sandfish is going quickly now, very quickly. I think we might do well to stay as long as it travels northward.”
“A good thought.” But Balkis frowned. “I begin to thirst”
Before Panyat could answer, the fish began to turn. Balkis gave a yelp of surprise, thrown backward by the curve. Anthony tightened his hold on the dorsal fin and seized her wrist. Panyat went tumbling over her, though, and disappeared into the night with a cry of alarm.
“To him, quickly!” Balkis cried, and leaped off the sandfish. Anthony followed her, then ran to catch up as she sped back to the Pytanian.
“I am well, I am well!” Panyat protested, sitting up and brushing off sand. “My apologies, my friends—my clumsiness has lost us our steed.”
“I think that it is well for us.” Anthony pointed back along their trail.
Looking, Panyat and Balkis saw the great dorsal fin curving away, turning southwest, running back into the barren dunes.
“Why would it go back so suddenly?” Balkis asked, wide-eyed.
“It feeds upon the lesser sandfish.” Panyat blanched at the thought. “That must be why it was coming north across the waste—because it had exhausted the shoals in the south, and fortunate we were to catch what we could before it came. Now, though, it has eaten all it can find here, for we have come too close to the northern edge of the desert for the small fish to swim. The giant must go west to find fresh prey.”
“But if that is so,” Balkis said, “our crossing is nearly done!”