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not a pit. He sighed and threw the cloak over his shoulders again, remembering the Hebrews in the desert, and the manna--how they were to take only as much as they needed for a day. Apparently, he was only supposed to take enough for one meal. The Lord would provide, it seemed. He set off again, resigned to his fate. But he did feel much better.

CHAPTER 5
    A Rare and Surly Monster

The sun was almost directly overhead, and those apples had been a long time ago. Matt was beginning to feel weak again and was getting into a pretty nasty mood. Once again, he thought of cursing his misfortune, and the Powers that had enforced it on him--even if it had been his own dumb fault for making a vow he hadn't meant--but he caught himself with the words on the tip of his tongue. He didn't quite dare let them out.
    And didn't need to, for that matter. He frowned, listening to a distant sound that suddenly became audible, then died away again. He could have sworn that had been the sound of someone using foul language...
    No. Not "sworn." Not again. Ever. Not without thinking it over very carefully first.
    But what was that sound? Of course, it could have been the wind; he could hear it moaning in the crevices of the pass ahead.
    Then he frowned, tilting his head to one side and listening more closely. That was no wind, that was a creature--and it was moaning as much in anger as in pain. Matt stepped forward carefully, moving quietly, ready to jump off the path at a moment's notice.
    The voice rose again, and Matt froze. He couldn't make out the words, but the tone was definitely angry and outraged. Then the voice slackened off into growling again, and Matt began stalking.
    There was nothing in sight, but the trail angled sharply at a big rock a little way ahead, and the moaning was growing louder. Matt sidled up to the rock and, very quickly, ducked out for a peek.
    The moan blasted into a roar, and Matt ducked back in a panic, sure he had been seen.
    But the roar was followed by words. Matt frowned; he couldn't quite understand them, though they seemed to be in the hybrid language of Merovence that he understood as well as English. He concentrated, trying to allow for accent--and it clicked; he was just able to make out the words.
    "That motherless monster of a sorcerer who set this hellish trap! I'll bite him into twenty pieces! I'll pluck him naked! I'll drop him from a mountaintop!" Whoever it was, it certainly didn't sound like a courtier. Matt stepped out from hiding and stalked forward carefully--if it was a soul in distress, of course he wanted to help. Though come to think of it, that voice didn't exactly sound human.
    The words did, though--it ranted on through a series of curses that would have done credit to the most creative sailor ever to work his way down to the brig. Matt stepped around another outcrop and saw--a very singular creature. In fact, he doubted there could be two of them, and if there were, the other one certainly didn't have a huge boulder holding it down by its wing. The other wing was beating furiously as the beast tried to pull away. They were eagle's wings, though on the grand scale--a thirty-foot wingspan, at least. But it had the head, neck, and tail of a dragon, and its body was that of a huge lion.
    Matt couldn't help himself. "What in the name of heaven are you?" The beast turned his way with a surly growl. "A dracogriff, of course!" it answered. "What're you?"
    "A wizard," Matt said automatically, then leaped for cover as the monster lunged at him with a huge roar.
    "Thought you were gonna sneak up on me, huh?" it bawled from somewhere on the other side of the boulder Matt had ducked behind. "Thought you were gonna drug me and drain me, huh? Couldn't get any nestlings' blood, so you thought you'd settle for one as young as you could get, huh?"
    "No!" Matt ducked up long enough to shout the syllable. He dropped down again and called out, "You've got the wrong wizard!"
    "Wrong wizard? They're all wrong