more direct help, although with part of his mind he knew, knew better than almost anyone else in the world, that though Ardneh had once lived, he had now been dead for almost two thousand years. Sir Andrew knew it well. And yet…
And this mystery regarding Ardneh called to mind another, that had long troubled Sir Andrew and that none of his studies had ever been able to solve: If Ardneh was dead, why were all the world's other gods and goddesses alive? The common opinion was that all of them had been living since the creation of the world, or thereabouts, and that of course Ardneh was still alive with all the others. But Sir Andrew had the gravest doubts that the common opinion was correct.
He tended instead to trust certain historical writings, that spoke in matter-of-fact terms of Ardneh's existence and his death, but did not so much as mention Vulcan, Hermes, Aphrodite, Mars, or any of the rest with the sole exception of the Beast-Lord Draffut. And Draffut was not assigned the importance of Ardneh, or of their evil opponent Orcus, Lord of Demons.
And whatever Sir Andrew might think of gods, he had no doubts at all about the reality of demons.
At some time in his long years of study and deep thought, a horrible suspicion had been born, deep in his mind: That the entities that who now called themselves gods, were recognized by humanity as gods, and who claimed to rule the world — whenever they bothered to take an interest in it — that these beings were in fact demons who had survived from the era of Ardneh and of Orcus. But there were, comfortingly, important difficulties with that theory too.
After all Sir Andrew's study of the gods, all he could say about them with absolute certainty was very little: That most of them were real, here and now, and very powerful. The swords were testimony enough to the real power of Vulcan.
Yoldi was a fine magician, and a brave one. But there were limits to the ability of any magician to reach and control the ultimate powers of reality.
Why in the names of all the gods and demons did the universe have to be such a complicated, confused, and contrary place? Sir Andrew thought now, not for the first time, that if he had been put in charge of the design, he would have done things differently.
Sir Andrew had opened his eyes for a while, closed them again, and was trying to decide whether he was really praying to Ardneh now or not, when he heard his name called from below. Looking down, he saw that one man had stepped aside from the continued trickle of traffic approaching the castle, and was now standing just below Sir Andrew on the shoulder of the road. The man was in his late youth or early middle age, rather slight of build, and with a traveled look about him. He wore a large sword, belted on with what looked like rope or twine, that immediately drew Sir Andrew's attention.
The man had to speak again before Sir Andrew recognized the dragon-hunter, Nestor. 'Sir Andrew? I bring you greetings from the Beast-Lord, Draffut.'
Chapter 17
Even traveling almost without pause, at the best speed made possible by his enormous strides, it had taken Draffut a day and a half to get from the temple island near the middle of the Great Swamp east as far as the high plains. And night was falling again before he reached the region in Duke Fraktin's domain where the upward slope of land began to grow pronounced. The volcanic fires that had lighted the eastern sky when seen from hundreds of kilometers away were at this close range truly spectacular.
Almost immediately upon leaving the swamp behind, Draffut had begun to encounter refugees from the eruption. These were mainly folk from Duke Fraktin's high villages, where a mass evacuation had obviously started. The villagers were fleeing their homes and land in groups, as families, as individuals, moving anywhere downslope, most of them lost now in unfamiliar territory. Some of these people, passing Draffut at a little distance, shouted to him word of what they considered Vulcan's wrath — as if Draffut should not be able to see for himself the flaming sky ahead.
Draffut was not sure whether these folk were trying to warn him, to plead for his intercession with the gods, or both. 'I will speak to Vulcan about it,' he said, when he said anything at all in answer. Carefully he avoided stepping on any of the people. For the most part of course they said nothing to him. They were astonished and terrified to see him, and in their panic would sometimes have run right under his feet, or would have driven their livestock or their farm-carts into him. Draffut made his way considerately around them all, and went on east and up.
He had no such need to be careful with the small units of Duke Fraktin's army that he encountered along the way, some of them even before he had entered the Duke's domain. Whether mounted or afoot, these always scattered in flight before Draffut's advance, as if they took it for granted that he would be their deadly enemy. Draffut could not help thinking back to the time when soldiers had cheered him and looked to him for help. But that had been many ages and wars ago, and halfway around the world from here.
In a lifetime that had spanned more than fifty thousand years, Draffut had often enough seen swarms of human refugees, and even burning skies like these. But seldom before had he felt the earth quiver beneath his feet as it was quivering now.
When he got in among the barren foothills he continued climbing without pause. Now the rumbling towers of fire loomed almost above his head, and fine ash drifted continuously down around him. He thought that there were forces here that could destroy him, that he was no longer immune to death, as he might once have been. His own powers, absorbed over ages, were fading as slowly as they had been gained, but they were fading. Yet he could feel little personal fear. By his nature, Draffut could not help but be absorbed in larger things than that.
The shuddering, burning agony of the mountains against the darkening sky brought back more old memories to Draffut. One of these recollections was very old indeed, of another mountain, upon another continent, that once had split to spill the Lake of Life… that had been in the days of Ardneh's greatest power. Ardneh, whom Draffut had never really known at all, despite the current human version of the history of the world. It hardly mattered now, for now Ardneh was long dead…
The question to be answered now was, where had these new creatures of power sprung from, these upstart entities calling themselves gods? Ardneh in his days of greatest strength had never claimed to be a god, nor had the evil Orcus. Indeed, it seemed to Draffut looking back that for thousands of years the very word god had been almost forgotten among humanity.
If he tried to peer back too far into his own past, he reached an epoch where all memory faded, blurring into disconnected scenes and meaningless impressions. He knew that these were remnant of a time when his intelligence, brain, and body had been very different from what they were now. But certainly Draffut's memory of the past few thousand years was sharp and clear. He could recall very well the days when Ardneh and Orcus had fought each other. And in those days, not one of these currently boasting, sword-making upstarts who called themselves gods and goddesses had walked the earth. They bore names from the remote past of human myth, but who were they? By what right did they plan for themselves games that involved for humanity the horror of wars? Draffut could no longer delay finding out.
He had climbed only a little way up the first slopes of the real mountain when he found his way blocked by a slow stream of lava, three or four meters wide. The air above the lava writhed with heat. And in the night and the hellglow on the far side of the molten stream, visible amid swirling fumes and boiling air, there stood a two-legged figure far too large to be human, even if a human could have stood there and lived. The figure was roughly the same size as Draffut himself, and it was regarding Draffut, and waiting silently.
In the raging heat he could see nothing of the figure clearly but its presence. He stopped, and called a salutation to it, using an ancient tongue that either Ardneh or Orcus would have understood at once. There was no reply.
Now Draffut summoned up what he could of his old powers, concentrating them in his right hand. Then he bent down and thrust that hand into the sluggish, crusting, seething stream of lava. Without allowing himself to be burned, he scooped up a dripping handful of the molten rock. With another exertion of his will he gave the handful of magma temporary life, so that what had been dead rock quickened and soared aloft in the hot, rising air, making a small silent explosion of living things exquisite as butterflies.
