THE SEEKER
IN THE FORTRESS
by
Manly Wade Wellman
Tromboll the wizard had set his fortress in what had been a small, jagged crater, rather like an ornate stopper in the crumpled neck of a wineskin. Up to it on all sides came the tumbled, clotted lips of the cone. Above and within them it lodged, a sheaf of round towers with, on the tallest, a fluttering banner of red, purple and black. At the lower center, where the fitted gray rocks of the walls fused with the jumbled gray rocks of the crater, stood a mighty double door of black metal. Slits in the towers seemed ready to rain point-blanked missiles, smoking floods of boiling oil. In the distance rose greater heights, none close enough to command the fortress. On the slope below the door, Prince Feothro of Deribana stood among his captains and councillors and shrugged inside his elegant armor. The plain behind him was thronged with his horsemen and footmen, his heavy engines of war. But just then he could not think of how to use them.
“What is there to do?” he almost whined into the gilded face-bars of his helmet and, as though in answer, a mighty voice boomed from a speaking trumpet on the battlement.
“Greetings, Prince, and shortly farewell. Do you give your princely pledge to a parley?”
“It is given,” called back Feothro.
. . .
