Pyreforge, meanwhile, was setting up the chessmen. Stile carried the Flute with him into the depth of the crevice. Now he knew the origin of the hot wind and demonic odor from this crevasse. The Worm lurked below! He had never fought a real dragon before, as the Lady had mentioned, and was not entirely sanguine about this one. The closest approach to a dragon he had made was the one in the Black Demesnes, actually formed from a line, and when balked it had unraveled literally into its component string. The Worm surely would not do that! Adept-quality magic should prevail—but still, if anything went wrong—
Well, he should have the advantage of surprise. The Worm would assume Stile was another item of tribute, a victim to be consumed. He should be able to get quite close before the monster realized what it was up against. That would give him time to survey the situation. Pyreforge had assured him that the Flute would facilitate his magic, yet he had also said that magic alone would not suffice; that suggested that the Flute was not quite as powerful a charm as the Mound Folk wished to believe.
Now they were well below the ledge they had hurdled before. Neysa picked her way carefully as the path nar-rowed, and Stile kept the Flute assembled and handy. For him it should serve double duty—both to protect his ability to do magic, and to summon the magic itself, since he needed music for his spells. He would have been in trouble if he had needed to play two different instruments simul-taneously for those purposes! He was rehearsing those spells in his mind now—one to abate fire, another to shield him from biting, another to make him invisible. But mainly he needed one to eradicate the Worm, one way or another. Could the creature be banished to Hell? Here in this magic frame, there really was a Hell. He had accidentally sent Neysa there once; that had led to a lot of trouble. Which meant that that option was out, now; Neysa would not go for it. He was extremely wary of antagonizing his unicorn friend; unicorns were devastatingly stubborn once they made an issue of something.
Not Hell, then. How about a size change? Convert the giant Worm into a midget worm, harmless. Maybe in three more centuries it would grow back into a giant, but by then it should be far away—if some hungry bird hadn’t snapped it up in the interim. What would be a suitable spell? Monstrous Worm, be small as a germ. Hardly great art, he lamented as usual, but for the purpose of magic it only needed to rhyme and have appropriate meter. What kind of magic would be wrought by superior verse? Some day he would have to experiment with genuine poetry, instead of doggerel, and see what happened. Now the path leveled out. A large, round tunnel took off to the side—the bore of the Worm. A hot drift of air came from it. The Worm could not be far distant.
Stile hesitated. He leaned down to whisper into Neysa’s left ear, which rotated obligingly to receive his words. “If we march blithely into the Worm’s lair, methinks we’ll be slightly cooked,” he said. “Yet if we do not, the monster may become suspicious. I would like to lure it out to a location convenient for me, so that at least I can survey it before emerging to engage it—yet how can I bring it to me without engaging it?”
Neysa blew a short, positive note. Realizing that she had a notion, Stile dismounted.
She shimmered into girl-form, a petite, lovely, naked, semi-elven lass. “Tribute,” she murmured, making a gesture of innocence and helplessness.
Stile was delighted and appalled. “Thou’rt the perfect lure,” he said. “Thou fittest the part precisely. But I dare not risk thy getting caught by the monster.” She shimmered again and became a firefly. The insect circled him once, then converted back to girl-form. “That’s so,” Stile agreed. “I keep forgetting thy third form. Thou canst escape, if thou art not burned.”
“Fireproof,” she said.
“Thy firefly form is fireproof? Wonderful!” Neysa was a treasure of ever-new facets.
Stile reflected for a moment, then plotted their course. “I prefer to have some space to battle the Worm, even though I expect to banish it with a spell. One must always be prepared for the unexpected. So do thou lure it out to the crevice, then get thee swiftly to safety. If I destroy it not, and suffer death, do thou fly up to Elder Pyreforge and the Lady and tell them I have failed. I will hurl the Flute out to the crevice if I can, that it be not lost.” This sounded bold and brave, but Stile felt somewhat weak in the knees; he had not had much experience in this sort of thing. He really did not expect to be in serious danger of demise, otherwise he would have been terrified. He was just covering the extreme eventuality.
