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us—be the same if they were intermingled with your own space-time? And how would
your
space-time suffer?”
    â€œDistinctly a point,” the bard admitted. “Save that we may not have the self-sacrificing temperament to rush forth to save our world. What I remember of it, which seems to grow less by the second, oddly enough, does not now awake in me great ardor to fight for it.”
    â€œFight for yourself then,” snapped the wizard. “In the end, with most men, it comes to self-preservation. You are committed anyway to action under the geas.” He arose, his robe swirling about him.
    â€œJust who stands against us, save this mysterious menace?” For the first time Milo dropped his role of onlooker. The instincts that were a part of the man he had now become were awake. Know the strength of your opposition, as well as the referee might allow, that was the rule of the game. It might be that this wizard was the referee. But Milo had a growing suspicion that the opposition more likely played that role. “What of Chaos?”
    Hystaspes frowned. “I do not know. Save it is my belief thatthey may also be aware of what is happening. There are adepts enough on the Dark Road to have picked up as much as if not more than I know now.”
    â€œWhat of the players?” Yevele wanted to know. “Are there dark players also?”
    A very faint shadow showed for an instant on the wizard’s face. Then he spoke, so slowly that the words might have been forceably dragged from his lips one by one.
    â€œI do not know. Nor have I been able to discover any such.”
    â€œWhich does not mean,” Wymarc remarked, “that they do not exist. A pleasant prospect. All you can give us is some slight assurance that we
may
learn to control the roll of these”—he shook his hand a little so that the dice trembled on their gimbals but did not move—“to our advantage.”
    â€œIt is wrong!” Naile’s deep voice rang out. “You have laid a geas on us, wizard. Therefore give us what assistance you can—by the rule of Law, which you purport to follow, that is our right to claim!”
    For a moment Hystaspes glared back at the berserker as if the other’s defiant speech offered insult. Visibly he mastered a first, temper-born response.
    â€œI cannot tell you much, berserker. But, yes, what I have learned is at your service now.” He arose and went to one of the tables on which were piled helter-skelter the ancient books and scrolls. Among these he made a quick search until he located a strip of parchment perhaps a yard long that he flipped open, to drop upon the floor before their half-circle of stools. It was clearly a sketchy map, as Milo began to recognize by that queer mixture of two memories to which he privately wondered if he would ever become accustomed.
    To the north lay the Grand Duchy of Urnst, for Greyhawk was clearly marked nearly at the edge of the sheet to his right. Beyond that swelled the Great Kingdom of Blackmoor. To the left, or west, were mountains scattered in broken chains, dividing smaller kingdoms one from the other. Rivers, fed by tributaries, formed boundaries for many of these. This cluster of nations ended in such unknown territories as the Dry Steppes which only the Nomad Raiders of Lar dared venture out upon (the few watering places therein being hereditary possessions of those clans). Farther south was that awesome Sea of Dust from which it was said no expedition, no matter how well equipped, had ever returned, though there were legends concerning its lost and buried ships and the treasures that still might exist within their petrified cargo holds.
    The map brought them all edging forward. Leaning over the parchment, Milo sensed that perhaps some of this company recognized the faded lines, could identify features that to him were but names, but that existed for them in the grafted-on memories of those they had