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to fmd him than this. Has to be. We're wearing ourselves
out before we even get where we're going. How the hell
can we win our kids back if we're too tired to fight him?"
She looked away, and her shoulders sagged. "But I guess
I'm too tired to think. I haven't come up with anything
that could work."
Danyl pulled her against him and stared past her, into the
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endless fog-shrouded gloom. While he watched, a hulking
rock plinth heaved itself up out of the quaggy ground a few
feet away, towered upward unbl its top vanished, stories
above him, in the gray haze, then sank into the ground again.
MINERVA WAKES
243
Nothing of it remained. It earned out the entire cycle in
utter silence.
"She's right," Birkwelch said softly "Wandering around in
his murk like this, you're playing hi.s game. You might wan-
der forever without finding him, following your little
compass the way you are."
Mmerva pushed herself away from Darryls chest and
looked at the dragon, surprise evident on her face "How can
that be?"
Birkwelch sat cautiously on the shifting ground and blew
a short, blue-white blast of fire into the air Even he looked
tired and cranky and disgusted, Darryl noticed. "I don't
imagine the Unweaver's home, or fortress, or whatever he-
occupies, has any fixed location within this place- I suspect
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his place is wandering around in this goddamned soup, and
we're chasing after it." The dragon sprawled on his belly in
a graceless flop, and snorted.
"Why didn't you say something, if that's what you
thought?" Minerva snapped.
"Lady, I figured if you could have done something about
it, you would have. And you just said you couldn't think of
anything to do so my hitching would have been pretty
pointless, wouldn't it?" The dragon closed his eyes, and
dozed.
Darryl noted with alarm that the insf--mt the dragun
drifted off to sleep, his color bleached from blue to gray, and
he began to sink into the muck.
"Birkwelch!" he and Minerva yelled at the same time.
The dragon's eyes flew open, and lie heaved himself
upright. Some of his color came back. The tips of his wings
and the tip of his tail looked hazy for an instant, then solidi-
fied. His head snapped from side to side, looking for danger.
When he didn't see anything, he stared at Darryl. "I wanted
to take a nap. Just a little nap. Couldn't let me have a few
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minutes of peace, could you?"
He glared at the two of them.
"Look at yourself," Darryl whispered. "You nearly
disappeared."
The dragon stretched out one taioned foreleg and gaped
244 HoUy Lisle
in horror at the gunmetal gray color it had become. "Shit!"
he whispered. "This place started to unweave me." The
dragon shivered violently and stared into the gloom around
him with horrified eyes.
Darryl said, "I might have an idea of how to get ourselves
to the Unweaver's door. Minerva, you have a pencil and
paper in that paintbox?"
"I have some paper." She pulled out the sketchpad she'd
created for herself before she discovered her paints worked
on air. "And a pencil or two in the duffel, I think."
She shuffled through the contents of the duffel bag and
came up with the required pencil.
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Darryl held the sketchpad in his hands, noting the ordi-
nariness of the rust-red Bienfang cover and the
extraordinary glow that emanated from the edges of the pa-
per beneath it Radioactive art pad, he thought, and gingerly
opened the cover.
White light streamed off the first blank page and
burned a tunnel upward through the gloom. "Wow!"
Darryl flipped the cover shut as fast as he could, afraid
something in that murk might notice. "What the hell kind
of paper is that?"
"Urn " Minerva managed half a grin. "Haven't the faint-
est. I wanted something that wouldn't run out. I would
assume that's it."
Darryl crossed his ankles and dropped to the ground; he
rested
Out he scratched, but though he pressed ham on the
surface of the paper, no letters appeared. He traced the
shapes of the letters again, and swore. 'This pencil doesn't
write."
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Minerva and Birkwelch pointed at the air in front of
them. Glowing letters burned there with the same
brilliant, cool white as the "paper" on which they had been
written.
Out Out, Darryl read
"Damned spot?" Minerva asked.
"Er no. Not what I was going to say."
"Thought not," the dragon muttered-
MINERVA WAKES
245
"Well, I guess it does work after all." Darry] put pencO to
paper again, and wrote:
Out of the mist, born from the formless ground, a road
arose. It was carved of a single piece of stone, raised high
above the murk beautiful, indestructible, and unsink-
able. It glowed with a radiance that burned away the
sullen fogs and unending gloom. And it led straight to
the Unweaver in his lair.
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"Yes!" Minerva said.
Birkwelch, too, seemed impressed. "Nice piece of rock,
fella. I wouldn't have thought you had anything that pretty
in your imagination."
The road was raised like an ancient Roman aqueduct,
delicate arches holding up a span of stone strung over them like
glowingwhite ribbon. "Really," the dragon continued, "I don't
think I've ever seen such a pretty piece of engineering work."
"Thanks," Darryl said. He was pretty impressed, too.
"Only two problems that I see," Birkwelch added. "First,
you didn't make any way to get up there."
Danyl sighed "Yeah. I'll have to fix that. What was the
second problem?"
"The Unweaver knows for sure now that at least one of
you is here."
Danyl and Minerva exchanged glances. 'That's very bad,
isn't it?" Minerva asked.
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Birkwelch said, "You'd think so, wouldn't you?"
I hate dragons, Darryl thought.
He focused on his paper, and wrote another line;
A ramp curved up from the ground at Darryl'sfeet to
the road high overhead.
Darryl pictured the curving beauty of die white stone
ramp; the elegant, simple bellied sweep of upreaching path.
His words burned themselves into the sly; his thoughts
transformed to solid form: the ramp, seamless and perfect,
lay before him.
246 Holly Lisle
The dragon, with a sly grin, spread his win^ and flew up
to Ae road above. From overhead, he called down, "Hurry
up already."
Minerva turned to Darryl. "Gets on your nerves a bit,
doesn't he?"
"You haven't even heard him sing. Of course, it would be
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worse if there were hundreds just like him."
Minvera frowned. "I was meaning to talk to you about
that "
"Later." Danyl sprinted up the ramp. The last thing he
felt like hearing about was the Great Dragon Fiasco, and his
failure to be a brilliant magician.
The day brightened, and Darryl's mood lifted. The bridge
shed enough light to banish the gloom around it, but the
fogs and clouds were blowing away, too.
The dragon cocked an eye heavenward and said, "So
much for our cover."
"Shut up, Birkwelch." Mmerva reached the top of the
ramp and looked down the road in both directions. She
smiled suddenly. "Hey, look! A city." She pointed to her right
and consulted her compass. "Yesss! That's the way!"
It wasn't far. The place looked to Darryl like an exercise
in ugly a city that had not so much survived floods, fam-
ines, and fires as one which had gone down beneath their
weight.. . while still retaining upright walls.
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"What a dump," the dragon muttered.
Darryl found himself agreeing.
At his side, Minerva whispered, "Oh, no!"
"What?" He looked at her with alarm.
"Murp's gone."
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