"My lights?" Pol said.
"With whom did you serve your apprenticeship--and when did you undergo initiation?" the other demanded.
Pol smiled.
"I grew up far from here," he replied, "in a place where things are not done that way,"
"Ah, you are a Madwand! Preserve us from Madwands! Still... You are not totally disorganized--and anyone with that mark--" He nodded again at Pol's right arm "--must possess an instinct for the Art. Interesting ... So why do you travel to Belken?"
"To learn... some things."
The old sorcerer chuckled.
"And I go for self-indulgence," he said. "Call me Ibal, and accompany me. It will be good to have someone strange to talk with. Your man is not a brother of the Art?"
"No, and Mouseglove is not really my man--he is my companion."
"Mouseglove, did you say? I seem to have heard that name before. Something to do with jewels, perhaps?"
"I am not a jeweler," Mouseglove replied hastily.
"No matter. Tomorrow I will tell you some things that may be of interest to you, Detson. But it is still over half a league to the place where I intend to camp. Let us move on. Upward! Forward!"
The servants raised the litter and moved ahead with it. Pol and Mouseglove took up positions behind it and followed.
That night they camped amid the ruins of what might once have been a small amphitheatre. Pol lay troubled for a long while, in fear of the dreams that might come to him. He still had not spoken of these, for in daytime the things of sleep seemed far away, but when the stillness descended and the fire dwindled the deeper places of shadow seemed filled with faces, as if some ghostly audience capable of seeing beyond the cowl of sleep had come together here to watch his journey into the place of baleful lights and screaming winds and cruelty. He shuddered and listened for a long time, his eyes darting. He knew of no magic to affect the content of his dreams. And he wondered again as to their significance, partly with the mind of one whose culture would have seen them in psychopathological terms, partly with the freshly tuned awareness that in this place another explanation could as readily apply. Then his thoughts began to drift, back to the encounter with the sorcerer who had tried to kill him at Rondoval. The dreams had begun almost immediately after that, and he wondered whether there could be a connection. Had the other laid a spell upon him before he had died, to trouble his sleep thereafter? His mind moved away, lulled by the steady creaking of insects in the distant wood. He wondered what Mark would have done. Looked for some drug to block it all out, perhaps. His mind drifted again....
The movement. Now a familiar thing. The fear was gone. There was only anticipation within the rapid and disjointed series of images by which he moved. There was the Gate, and...
It stopped. Everything stopped. He was frozen before the image of the partly opened Gate. It was fading, insubstantial, going away, and there was a hand upon his shoulder. He wanted to cry out, but only for a moment.
"It's all right now," came a whisper, and the hand left him.
Pol tried to turn his head, to sit up. He found that he could not stir. A large man, his face more than half-hidden in the shadow of his cowl, was rising from a kneeling position beside him, passing through his field of vision. Pol thought that he glimpsed part of a pale moustache and--impossibly--a shining, capped tooth.
"Then why can't I move?" he whispered through clenched teeth.
"It was far easier for me to lay a general spell upon this entire camp than to be selective about it. Then I needed but arouse you and leave the others unconscious. The paralysis is, unfortunately, a part of it."
Pol suspected that this was a lie but saw no way to test it.
"I saw that your sleep was troubled. I decided to grant you some relief."
"How can you see that a man's sleep is troubled?"
"I am something of a specialist in that matter which confronts you."
"That being...?"
"Did your dream not involve a large door?"
Pol was silent for a moment. Then, "Yes," he said. "It did. How could you know this unless you induced it yourself?"
"I did not cause your dream. I did not even come here for purposes of releasing you from it."
"What, then?"
"You journey to Belken."
"You seem to know everything. ..."
"Do not be impertinent. As our interests may be conjoined, I am trying to help you. I understand more than you do about some of the forces which are influencing you. You make a serious mistake, wandering about the world announcing yourself at this point in your career. Now, I have just taken great pains to remove the memory of your name and origin from the minds of Ibal and everyone in his party. In the morning, he will only recall you as a Madwand traveling to Belken. Even your appearance will be a confusion to him. If he should ask your name again, have another one ready, and use it in Belken, also. Rondoval still has its enemies."
"I gathered something of this with the attempt on my life."
"When was this? Where?"
"A little over a week ago. Back home."
"I was not aware of this. Then it has begun. You should be safe for a time, if you remain incognito. I am going to rinse your hair with a chemical I have here, to conceal that white streak. It is too distinctive. And then we must hide your dragonmark."
"How?"
"A relatively simple matter. How do you see manifestations of the Powers when you are working a spell?"
Pol felt moisture upon his scalp.
"Usually as colored strands--threads, strings, cords."
"Interesting. Very well, then. You can imagine me as wrapping your forearm with flesh-colored strands--so closely as to entirely mask the mark. It will in no way interfere with your workings. When you wish to uncover it you need but go through an unwrapping ritual."
Pol felt his arm taken, raised.
"Who are you?" he asked. "How do you know all these things?"
"I am the sorcerer who should never have been, and mine is a peculiar link with your House."
"We are related?"
"No. Not even friends."
"Then why are you helping me?"
"I feel that your continued existence may serve me. There. Your arm is nicely disguised."
"If you really wish to protect me from something, you might do well to tell me somewhat about it."
"I do not deem that the most fitting course of action. First, nothing may happen to you, in which case I would have exposed you to information I'd rather not. Second, ignorance on your part may actually benefit me."
"Mister, someone's already gotten my number. I don't like the notion of being suddenly engaged in another sorcerous duel."
"Oh, they're all right if you win. That was the nature of the assassination attempt?"
"Yes."
"Well, you're still intact."
"Just barely."
"Good enough, my boy. Keeps you alert. Now, perhaps we'd best coarsen your features a bit and lighten your eyes a trifle. Shall we have a wart beside your nose? No? An interesting scar on your cheek then? Yes, that should do it...."
"And you won't give me your name?"
"It would mean nothing to you, but your knowledge of it might trouble me later."
Pol willed the dragonmark to life, hoping his disguised arm would mask this from the other's second sight. The man voiced no reaction as the throbbing began. Pol sent the force up and down his right arm, freeing it from the paralysis. Then his neck. He had to be able to turn his head a bit... Best to leave the rest as it was for the moment. Catalepsy, he knew, is hard to fake.
The hands continued to move over his face. The other's face remained out of his field of vision. Pol summoned a tough, gray strand and felt its ghostly presence across his fingertips.
"Now they'll all think you've been to Heidelberg. ..."
"What," Pol asked him, "did you say?"
"An obscure reference," the other offered quickly. "A really good sorcerer has knowledge of places beyond this place, you know--"
Pol let the energy pulse through him, breaking the paralysis entirely. He rolled onto his side and directed a flash movement of the gray strand. It snaked upward and snared the man's wrists. As he tightened it, he began to rise.