Waters of Death

A sliver of silver flashed in the wizard's hand, the gleam of a polished steel blade in the sun's morning rays. Lorennion's wrist flicked, drawing the blade across the unconscious man's throat. The Huata's life-blood flowed into the fountain's untainted waters.

BLOOD FOUNTAIN

Contents

map of Raellymn
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23

An Ace Fantasy Book /published by arrangement with the authors

PRINTING HISTORY

Ace Fantasy edition/November 1985

All rights reserved. Copyright © 1985 by Robert E. Vardeman and Geo. W. Proctor

Cover art by Luis Royo

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

200 Madison Avenue. New York, New York 10016.

ISBN: 0-441-06778-6

To Lana for fifteen years of magic —Geo. W. Proctor

For Kathy & Charlie (and maybe Fred & Lucy, too) —R.E.V.

map of Raellymn

chapter 1

Goran One-Eye's vision blurred; his head spun dizzily. For an instant the world about the Challing went insane. Colors swirled, pinwheeling madly. The cobalt blue of the sky ran streaming downward to explode against the erupting greens and browns of forest and earth. Brilliant, jagged streaks of orange and yellow flashed across all as the campfire's licking tongues of flame leaped sideways to melt into the whirlwind kaleidoscope.

"Noooooo!" A single word of frustration came from the red-bearded giant's lips, sounding somewhere between a piteous plea and a feral growl.

The changeling wiped an island-sized palm over his good right eye. He heaved a sigh of relief when he stared about again. The world righted itself in that one blinking of his jade eye. The deep blues of evening returned to their place in the heavens. The greens once more resided in the needle-fur cloaks of the wood's evergreens. The earth-hued tans and browns were again underfoot where they belonged, and the campfire's flickering flames receded to small fiery fingers rather than wildly licking tongues.

"Nyuria's scorched arse!" Goran cursed the demon who tended the fires in the lowest level of Peyneeha, which men called Hell. "May Roan-Jafar's soul be burnt black and crispy for treacherously drawing me from my beloved realm of Gohwohn to this ball of dung! No man, let alone a Challing, should be forced to endure the chains that bind me!"

The vexing bond that railed the titan so was the human flesh in which he was ensorcelled. For Goran, known as One-Eye, was not man, but a Challing, a creature nine parts spirit for each physical. More than five years ago he had been drawn from the realm of Gohwohn into Raemllyn by the mage Roan-Jafar. The wizard died for his insidious act, gullet opened from ear to ear by Goran's own dirk, but not before he had bound the changeling to the body of a man.

While this drew his profanities, Goran's spinning blur of vision was the true source of his roiled brain. Five times this day his good eye had gone aspin, jumbling his mind in a reeling tumble of space and color.

" 'Tis the effects of Masur-Kell's potion. Damnable stuff, that—unpredictable!" Goran lied to himself as he dressed a rabbit to be spitted above the fire.

The potion he and his fellow thief Davin Anane had secured from the Letician wizard Masur-Kell was a capricious blend of magicks, to be certain. Brewed to weaken Roan-Jafar's binding spell, it had returned a portion of Goran's magical abilities. Though likely as not those powers controlled him as often as he wielded them.

No, he admitted. There be magicks aplay, but they come not from me nor Masur-Kell's handiwork. He sensed a random weave of undirected forces ebbing and flowing in the air. Try as he had during the long trek that day, he could not define or locate the source of those elusive magicks.

"Damn you, son of Anane," he muttered as he turned the rabbit above the flame. "Were it not for your obsession with that blonde-tressed wench, I might now be basking before a roaring hearth in an inn in Garoda. Or soothing my throat with mulled wine in Parrn. Instead, I shiver here in the middle of nowhere while the Goddess Minima's winter winds cut me to the very bone!"

Garoda, Parrn, Degoolah—wistful visions of Upper Raemllyn's cities floated through Goran's mind. Qatirn, Jyn, Bistonia...

"Nay, not Bistonia! Never Bistonia. Black Qar take Bistonia!" Goran shook his head and spat.

Bistonia had given birth to this dreadful misadventure that brought him and Davin so far from Raemllyn's cities and the wealth and women for which he had developed almost human tastes. In Bistonia a gambling mishap had left him the prisoner of that city's emperor of thieves. In exchange for the Challing's life, Davin Anane was duped into kidnapping the hapless young beauty Lijena Farleigh.

That Lijena was subsequently sold into slavery to Masur-Kell should have been of no concern to Davin, Goran thought— it wasn't to him! But Davin was enamored of the wench's beauty, and to assuage his guilt, had freed the frosty-haired woman from her chains.

Only to bind her with a yoke of magic! Goran grunted, testing the rabbit with the tip of his knife.

The magic had been contained in an innocent-looking white powder within a golden box stolen from Masur-Kell's home. Lijena had accidently inhaled the dust and was now possessed of a demon* that drove her....

Goran glanced about him. The Gods of Raemllyn might know where he was camped, but he didn't! He doubted whether Davin did either. Neither Jyotian thief nor changeling had been this far north or west in Raemllyn's great wilderness.

A'bre, by the gods, that is the city we should be searching for! Goran nodded his silent approval. In the legendary city of A'bre he would be restored to his natural form, or so said the mage Masur-Kell.

However, Davin had to go chasing Lijena and the demon bound to her body and soul. Goran grumbled another curse. So they had encountered Lord Berenicis the Blackheart, former ruler of Davin's homeland of Jyotis and the thief's longstanding enemy. **

"Berenicis took the wench off our hands! Let us be done with this senseless chase and return to warmer climes, Davin!" Goran called out to his friend, who traipsed somewhere through the wood in search of his own rabbit.

When no answer came, Goran One-Eye spat again. In truth, the Challing realized that Davin's solitary venture in the forest was not for some plump hare. It was nothing more than an excuse to scour the surrounding wilderness for any trace of the Jyotian's precious Lijena.

Not that he's likely to see hide nor hair of the skinny wench again! Goran's sole good eye scanned the woods, noting only his and Davin's mounts securely hobbled away from the clearing beneath a barren oak and a rich stand of green wintergrass. Bah! Why should I care if Davin seeks privacy to wear a fool's cap?

Goran shook his shaggy head. And of what concern were Berenicis and his search for the magic-endowed sheath of the Sword of Kwerin Bloodhawk, Raemllyn's first High King?

* Swords of Raemllyn Book One: To Demons Bound ** Swords of Raemllyn Book Two: A Yoke of Magic

Especially when the quest led directly to the doorstep of Lorennion, the most feared mage in Upper and Lower Raemllyn. Only fools went looking for such trouble!

"Let the Blackheart find the sheath himself. He found Kwerin's sword—if indeed the blade he showed us was the mythical weapon!" Goran gave a dubious snort. "What I need is a stout ax to complement the sword I now carry. An ax with good weight to it so that..."

Goran's words faded. Again colors rushed at his single good eye in an insane blur. He groaned while his head spun to match the tempo of a swirling spectrum gone mad. He rubbed a fist at his jade and gold-flecked orb with no results. A sky and earth turned liquid streamed together in dizzy maelstrom.

"By Raemllyn's gods!" Goran roared. His head jerked from side to side in an attempt to shake off the forces that robbed his vision. "What powers weave here?"

Then it was gone. As quickly as he had been beset by the spinning blur, it abated. The massive Challing in man's form drew a steadying breath. It's passed; like a door that opened and closed. I can see a...

He blinked, again, again. Something was wrong. The world was in its correct place once more, but somehow shifted as though his perspective were changed.

A twig snapped with a dry pop behind the Challing.

"It's about time you returned, friend Davin. I thought may haps you would go hungry this eve." Goran turned to greet his friend. "My little hare... Davin!"

"You miserable, lying, misbegotten mongrel!" Davin Anane stood five strides from his fellow thief. His lips were set in a taut, white line; his eyes narrowed. "Demon-spawn! Prepare to die!"

His right hand dropped to the hilt of a long-sword slung at his waist. The blade slid easily from a well-traveled scabbard with a soft metallic hiss, then rose menacingly. Shafts of light from a sun resting just above the horizon dazzled off the steel in blood-red fingers pointing directly at Goran One-Eye's chest.

"Davin, what is..." Goran gasped in horror. The words were his, but not the voice. The tone, the uncharacteristic high pitch, belonged to a woman. "Nyuria be damned!"

The Challing's eye rolled down and went saucer wide when he stared at himself. Breasts the size of pillows pushed from his—her—chest and strained to escape shirt and fur coat. His arms! They were lost inside the coat's sleeves. He/she could feel them; no longer were they tree trunks of muscle and sinew, but flabby, fat things. And his legs! Short they were, stubby and equally as blubbery as her/his arms.

Now she understood the subtle shifting of perspective. She was no longer Goran—but Glylina, the changeling's female persona! She had changed shapes, taken on feminine form. She had been transformed from a barrel-chested giant into an overweight, middle-aged matron.

"Davin, I realize it would be easy to find offense with such a body. But aren't you overreacting? Masur-Kell's potion..." Glylina swallowed the remainder of her words and backstepped as Davin strode forward.

And nearly tripped over Goran's overly long breeches! Panic assailed her brain as she hiked up the waist of trousers sizes too big for even her abundantly fat hips and scurried away from that honed sword tip. Five short steps she took, until she backed into the trunk of a pine.

Still Davin advanced. Bathed in the setting sun's light, his eyes glowed a demonic red. His sword, in a two-handed grip, swung back in preparation for a killing stroke.

Glylina's right hand dropped to her plump waist and found not her own blade, but fold upon fold of a monstrously large fur jacket. With a frustrating sob of desperation, she ducked and scuttled to the side.

Davin's blade whistled through the air and bit solidly into the tree, sending fragrant pine chips flying. With a curse, the swarthy, raven-haired thief placed a foot to trunk and tugged to free the lodged sword.

"You know how it is with me, sometimes I have no control over the shape I take!" Glylina pleaded, trying to disentangle her hand from the coat sleeve and find the hilt of her own blade. If the Sitala, Raemllyn's Gods of Fate, had chosen this moment for her to assume a female form, why hadn't they given her the shape of an Amazon?

"I curse Masur-Kell for giving you the potion that restored this power to you," Davin snarled. He wrenched his sword free and spun to follow the stumbling Challing.

"Davin, listen!" Glylina shouted. "I can explain!"

"You'll not live so long." Davin spat his contempt. "I warned you it would be your life you'd pay if you ever assumed Lijena's form again. I now intend to exact that price!" Davin's long-sword rose, ready to strike.

Davin's rage refused to be confined by words. Logic fled his brain the instant he had seen his friend's barrel-chested, red-bearded, gigantic body subtly shifting into that of the woman he had followed across half of Raemllyn. Once Goran had duped him with such a shape change and attempted to seduce him. Never again!

"Davin, I..." Glylina gasped, as her companion's words penetrated the panic cloaking her mind. "Lijena? But I'm not wearing Lijena's form. I look like some old matron who's dined all her life on dumplings and honey pastries! Davin, there are magicks aweave here. Magicks that..."

The blurred vision, the feeling that a door had opened and closed, the pieces of a dark puzzle began to shift in Glylina's mind—then went careening off in all directions as she ducked again.

Knuckles burning white from the strain of his grip, Davin swung. The sword sang through the air to sever a strand of the frosty blond hair from the changeling's head. It floated feather-gently to the ground.

"Feel it, Davin! Feel it!" Glylina pleaded with the sudden realization that she stood no chance against Davin's blade while locked in this rotund body. "I feel it. Magicks swirl about us like a great maelstrom. You see, but your vision is false, friend Davin. I have not taken Lijena's form!"

"Do not call me friend." Sweat beaded Davin's brow, running down into his eyes. He shook his head and blinked to remove the burning saline.

Glylina's soft, female shape shimmered as though a veil lifted from it. Gone were the wasp-waist, the slender legs, and firm, high breasts; replacing them, a squatty woman with pendulous paps like flaccid melons and thin straw-colored hair that hung from her head in greasy strands.

Davin hefted the sword, then hesitated. In another heartbeat he witnessed the now familiar shifting of muscle and bone, and Goran One-Eye stood before him, witch-fire aflame in the Challing's single eye.

"Davin, listen to me. We are near a source of great magicks." That green fire in Goran's glowing orb danced outward in a lance.

Davin went rigid! The light shafted through his wrist; sword tumbled from his grip and fell to the ground. He tried to move, but every muscle in his body refused to answer his screaming brain.

"Open your mind, my friend." Goran focused the witch-fire on Davin's face, bathing his head in a soft glow. "Feel the forces aplay here."

Davin blinked. He did feel something like an invisible stream flowing about him. A stream that now receded.

"Magicks," Davin muttered, recognizing the weakening bonds of some unknown spell. His hands, then the rest of his body, trembled. "Goran, I wanted to kill you. I would have killed you!"

"Aye, and came close to it." The witch-fire dimmed in Goran's eye. A thick hand probed his head to find a spot thinned by Davin's sword. "Of course, had I been able to free my own sword, you would not have stood a chance. After all, you are but a human and I a Challing."

"How?" Davin Anane frowned at his friend, still uncertain what magicks had possessed him, had filled his eyes with a vision of lost Lijena. "How did it happen?"

Goran shrugged and pursed his lips. "I've sensed it all day, but have been unable to locate the source. It's gone now."

"Gone?" Davin arched an eyebrow.

"I feel nothing," Goran said. "This last time it felt like the opening and closing of a door, as though the very fabric of this world had been rent, opening itself to a flood of undirected power. Then it sealed itself. Now, nothing. Not even the slightest tingling."

Davin shivered, aware of the stillness that covered the countryside about them. Magicks! By the gods, how he hated them. The honest feel of tempered steel was much more to his liking. That was something a man could understand.

"I thought you were hunting?" Goran glanced about him. "Where's the rabbits you..."

His words were drowned in a hideous cry—a sound that was at once the roar of a giant feline and the squawk of a bird of prey.

Goran's head jerked up, his gaze lifting to the sky. "Has madness possessed this world? Davin, it's a keedehn! By Yehseen's pike, I did see it before!"

Davin followed the thrust of Goran's pointing finger. At first, his eyes refused to focus on the writhing, shifting shape sinuously flying overhead. Then he could not escape the horrible reality of the bat-winged, twin-tailed monstrosity. Davin leaped to the side and scooped his blade from the ground.

"More than a sword will be needed to kill that," whispered Goran, his tone almost reverent. "In my land of Gohwohn, they were common enough, but not since being stranded in Raemllyn have I seen one... except that night at the Inn of the Golden Tricorn when Berenicis and his Huata cohorts made off with Lijena. But I thought I was drunk then."

"What is it?" asked Davin. "The Upper Dragons were all slain a thousand years ago. Never have I seen this beast's like."

"I told you, a keedehn, the most ferocious fighter—killer!— in all Gohwohn." Goran sidled toward the campfire as though seeking the safety of the low flames.

Davin stared at his companion. Never had he seen fear on the Challing's face. Now there was no denying it, a fact that sent an icy floe coursing up his spine.

Davin asked. "Is this keedehn the cause of the magicks?"

"Nay!" Goran's head moved from side to side, although his eyes never left the dragon. "The door opening and closing! If I was drawn to this misbegotten land through a rent in the fabrics of existence separating our realms, why can't it? And when it enters Raemllyn, who knows what other magicks leak around it?"

"A new rent?" asked Davin.

"Immense powers are loose in this kingdom," said Goran. "I did not lie when I said I had no control over my last shape-shift. The change was triggered by something bigger, something that allowed the keedehn to slip into Raemllyn."

"And this rent, how..."

From the woods came the panicked neighs of their mounts. Goran's head jerked around. The two horses no longer buried their noses in the lush wintergrass, but pranced awkwardly about, their eyes wide with fear. Had it not been for the stout leather throngs hobbling their forelegs, they would have bolted and been lost in the forest by now.

"Qar take you! Enough questions." Goran's gaze darted to Davin. "There'll be time for answers later. Now, get back into the trees before that damnable creature sees us!"

Davin nodded and took a step toward his friend, then froze as that grotesque cry once more shattered the evening's silence. His head twisted about. Goran's warning came too late. The winged dragon, escaped from another plane of existence, plummeted downward, its great recurved claws spread wide to snare its prey!

chapter 2

"They are so weak, aren't they?" Adiah blinked his transparent inner eyelids and glanced at Kaulah. "Pitiful."

"Do you feel sympathy for them, then?" Kaulah's golden eyes turned to Adiah's delicately boned face and studied it for any sign that might betray weakness.

Kaulah held nothing but utter contempt for the weaklings who inhabited this realm they called Raemllyn. They were but slaves perfectly suited for the needs of the Narain. However, at times he worried about his companion, fearing Adiah concealed unwonted kindness to inferior species. Such behavior was not acceptable for one chosen to rule. If Adiah harbored this weakness, it was Kaulah's duty to expose and eliminate it. The same duty rested with Adiah if he should discover a flaw within Kaulah. Survival of the Narain was imperative. Nothing else was of consequence.

Adiah haughtily folded arms across his chest. "I feel no sympathy at all."

Arching the gold-feathered wings on his shoulders, he peered down from his seven foot height to the stocky human eagerly scrubbing the opal floor. A smile of amusement touched the Narain's thin lips, but he restrained himself from putting one slender, sandaled foot on the slave's head and shoving him backward into the soapy wash.

Kaulah displayed no such restraint. He kicked out and sent Varaza sprawling amid the suds.

The Huata leader's face clouded with anger. For an instant the urge to fly from the floor and answer the indignity with battering fists and a boot of his own possessed him.

"Continue your chores," Kaulah said coldly, then spun, sending gossamer green robes swirling about his ethereal body as he strode away.

With those simple words, the rage dissipated in Varaza's breast. On hands and knees, the once proud leader of a nomadic Huata band gazed after his masters with unashamed adulation in his eyes. How could he have considered violence against the benevolent Narain? He would work all the harder to make up for the small time he had wasted.

A frown darkened the man's face when he dipped his scrub brush into a wooden pail filled with soap and water. Images flittered across his mind. For a moment he saw himself the leader of five, colorful Huata wagons. At his side the Jyotian Lord Berenicis with the Sword of Kwerin Bloodhawk in his hand, the weapon given him by Prince Felrad to...

Deep creases furrowed Varaza's brow. He couldn't remember the purpose of that mythical blade. Only that Berenicis was to locate the sword's long-lost sheath, which would restore the power to steel, giving it the life it had contained when wielded by Raemllyn's first High King ten thousand generations ago.

And there was a woman—a Lijena. Possessed of a demon she was. Berenicis had kidnapped her from an inn so that she might lead the Huata band to a wizard. Varaza smiled as the cottony clouds about his brain parted.

"Varaza! You forget your duties!"

The man's head sheepishly lifted to Adiah, who stood at the end of the arched hallway with Kaulah at his side. The Narains' golden eyes held his for what seemed an eternity. Then Varaza's head drooped and he returned to his scrubbing. The half-formed memories that had so plagued his mind but seconds before completely vanished. To please the beautiful Narain was the only thought he harbored now.

Adiah and Kaulah casually glided across the opal-inlaid floors of the Palace of Mapalah, their sandals whispering with each step. Every movement made by the two Narain leaders was studied, precise, perfect. Slender of build, both seven feet tall and with long, flowing, curled hair of spun gold reaching halfway down their backs, they looked like gods.

In Mapalah, they were more than gods.

Hands tucked into the folds of his sea-green robe, Adiah stopped and allowed a dozen small Narain to hurry on their way to class. The children, hardly taller than human children of the same age, did not chatter among themselves. Their somber expressions reflected their duty and honor of being the future rulers of all Raemllyn. Kaulah watched the small-winged children silently file into a study room.

"Gaylyah lectures this day. Would you listen?" Kaulah lifted thin eyebrows the same hue as his tresses.

"Yes. We have nothing else to occupy us until the zenith.

Gaylyah is new to his role. We should observe and see if he is fit to teach our children," Adiah answered with a tilt of his head toward the room the children had disappeared into. "The children's progress is imperative."

Kaulah looked sharply at his fellow ruler. An amused smile lifted the corners of his mouth. He detected gentleness in Adiah's tone when he spoke of the children. That would have to be watched closely.

Adiah fought down the anger that seethed within him. He was not soft or weak. He did not lack authority simply because he saw the future of all the Narain in this lecture room and responded to it.

They slipped into the room where the children stood in neat ranks before the dais. Gaylyah towered above all the others. Of the tall Narain, Gaylyah was the tallest by half a head. His golden eyes burned with an intensity that demanded his pupils learn quickly and accept their destiny.

Adiah approved.

"You," snapped Gaylyah, finger pointing to one of the children. "What of the Narain's arrival in this world? Tell me of it!"

"Yes, Master," spoke up a small voice. "We came to Raemllyn five years ago with the magicks unleashed by High King Bedrich's death. No one knows what spells were used by the usurper Zarek Yannis, but they ripped us from our world and abandoned us in this one."

"You." Gaylyah singled out another student. "What is our destiny?"

"To rule Raemllyn! We will burst forth from the forests of Agda, leave behind our splendid Mapalah, and subjugate all of Raemllyn."

"How? Why?"

The class chanted in unison to this. "The Narain are superior in all ways. We are gods to these pathetic worms. It is our destiny to rule!"

"Good," said Adiah to Kaulah. "He teaches them well."

"There will be even more soon," said Kaulah. "From the one hundred brought to this world, we have doubled our number. Soon, soon, we will be numerous enough."

Adiah spoke up. "Master Gaylyah, a small tour of Mapalah might be instructive for this class. We have taken new slaves. Let the children see those they will govern."

"An excellent suggestion, Master Adiah. Attend, younglings. Adiah and Kaulah will show you those brash enough to intrude on our magnificent Mapalah."

The children solemnly followed Adiah and Kaulah as they retraced their steps through the palace, past Varaza diligently laboring to clean already spotless opalescent floors, and out into a courtyard. As the sunlight struck the Narain leaders' robes, they changed from soft pastels to a more vibrant glowing, an aurora of ever-changing hues that marked them as special. The folded wings at their backs took on new highlights and shone with a purity that sent thrills of pride through even the most cynical of the Narain.

To the humans gathered about in the carefully tended gardens, they looked upon gods. Their new gods.

Lijena Farleigh dropped to her knees and bowed until her head touched the dirt. Even then, she hardly dared to move for fear of offending.

"See?" asked Adiah of the children. "They acknowledge our superiority so easily."

His wings unfolded and slowly beat against the warm air. He rose until he hovered ten feet above Lijena.

The woman's eyes lifted to track the flight of this godlike being. She caught her breath. A halo of light shimmered about the tall, leanly muscled body, the down-feathered wings powerfully beating, the wind-tossed golden hair that rivaled her own hair in lustrous beauty, and the large golden eyes that locked with her own aquamarine ones.

Lijena subserviently pulled her gaze from the ethereal Narain and looked to the palace beyond. Never had she even dreamed of such splendor. Towers of unsurpassed delicacy rose at each corner of Mapalah, defying gravity and making a mockery of the finest efforts of human architects. Precious stones shone brilliantly everywhere she looked—the windows, the arched doorways, the very walls. And past this magnificent edifice rose the even taller trees of the Forest of Agda.

Agda.

Lijena frowned at the memory of that name. She had ridden for weeks with Varaza and... and Berenicis. Berenicis. The name came to her as if only a dream, yet she knew the man existed. The Huata band led by Varaza had given succor to Berenicis in his quest. Lijena remembered that.

Of her own quest, of her own demon-ridden ride to the north and west, she retained only the vaguest of memories. Obedience to the Narain supplanted all else.

"Take that one, for instance," the airborne Narain leader said. "She is rather plain in appearance, though no doubt considered comely by the barbarians."

"The ugly one doesn't have any wings," muttered one of the children. Fledgling wings flapped behind the child as she stretched her pinions. "Is she deformed?"

"All are deformed. Another example of how they are inferior to us," Kaulah spoke now. "Note how easily they are swayed."

He gestured and Lijena instantly prostrated herself. Indignation at this flared only briefly within her—and a faint stirring reminded her of other meddlings deep inside her mind. She closed her eyes. Memories of the times before the Narain fled her, leaving only blind obedience to her new gods.

"These will be your playthings," Gaylyah said proudly. "You and you, take them and practice now."

Two of the children stepped forward. Lijena's head nodded even lower. From the corner of an eye she saw a man—Berenicis, a name whispered in her mind. The man eagerly tended Narain gardens, digging and weeding. All with his bare hands!

She edged aside the gauzy veils surrounding her thoughts. Berenicis had kidnapped her from the Inn of the Golden Tricorn, had used the demon within her body like a hound to lead him across Raemllyn toward the mage Lorennion, who possessed the sheath to the Sword of Kwerin.

Then came the Narain. The merest thought of her worshipped masters evaporated the memories. Of what use were disturbing thoughts when she had been given so much? She had but one reason for her existence now, to serve the Narain, to repay all they gave her.

A down-winged youngling stepped before the woman. Without question, Lijena Farleigh kissed the hem of the child's robe. Nor did she bat an eye as she strove to fulfill each and every act required of her. To serve the Narain was the heart of joy.

Valora's pitch-black eyes stared at the guard captain, pinning him to the spot like a needle holds a specimen. She shook her trim shoulders and sent tiny ripples through the black silk robe she wore pulled loosely around her.

"Beautiful. A goddess come to earth." The man whispered with no attempt to conceal the admiration in his voice or gaze.

She wanted to spit in this pig's face, but instead crossed to him and lightly kissed his lips. Like some carnival acrobat, she walked a tightrope. For the moment she still had need of the captain of Zarek Yannis' palace guard. One day the man would outlive his usefulness. Then he would pay dearly for the intimacies he exacted in return for the information he provided.

Before the officer's arm could encircle her waist, she stepped back. In an imitation of mounting arousal, she drew in a deep breath. The carefully designed action parted the front of the robe so that it tantalizingly dipped between the opulent mounds of her breasts.

Like the eyes of an obedient hound, the captain's gaze caressed the creamy expanse of unveiled flesh. Valora couldn't hide her smug smile. This one was no challenge; she controlled him too easily.

"I have the information you requested," he said eagerly. "The Faceless Ones ride to Lorennion's keep at Yannis' command."

"Fool!" The mage made no effort to contain her impatience. "I know that already. What do the Faceless seek? Why has Zarek Yannis sent his most potent weapon to the miserable woods of Agda?"

Valora drew another breath. The outlines of her erect nipples were easily discernable beneath the thin silk.

The captain licked dried lips. "There are rumors that Prince Felrad has recovered Kwerin Bloodhawk's sword."

"Rumors," scoffed Valora.

"Truth. The Prince is engaged against Yannis' troops to the south but Lord Berenicis is free to travel to the north."

"Berenicis of Jyotis?" Valora frowned. She knew little of Berenicis the Blackheart's reign over the province of Jyotis, but it had been bloody. In that, Berenicis and Zarek Yannis were as one, but Berenicis had thought to depose Yannis from the Velvet Throne and for that indiscretion he had been driven from his home and palace.

The sorceress tried to piece together the tantalizing hints she received. Felrad was ineffectual in his attempts to regain the Velvet Throne Yannis had so easily usurped. Yet if the Sword of Kwerin Bloodhawk did exist, it posed a threat to Yannis' rule. For it was with that legendary blade Kwerin had first defeated the demonic horsemen, the Faceless Ones. The same hell riders Yannis had unleashed on Raemllyn once again.

"Felrad trusts Berenicis with such a quest?" she asked, openly startled.

"The Prince does," said the guard captain. "The Sword of Kwerin is in Berenicis' possession, but he still seeks something more."

"Which Lorennion has?" Valora guessed. She read the disappointment on the captain's face. He had wanted to offer up this tidbit of knowledge for her consumption. He was such a fool.

"There is more," the guardsman continued. He licked his lips again. His eyes kept straying to the opened front of Valora's black robe and the white flesh behind it. "Berenicis' journey was interrupted in Agda."

"Why?"

"Alas, my lovely Valora, that is something I have not yet discovered. But with proper... incentive, all things are possible."

He moved to her, strong arms circling her waist and drawing her to him. The captain bent down, lips crushing into Valora's. An action that smudged her black lip gloss, but he neither noticed nor cared.

While the captain lost himself in growing desire, Valora's mind drifted to other more important matters, to new worlds to conquer. Even as she responded to the man's overtures, she decided his usefulness was nearing an end. Then she would take her pleasure from this impudent man—in his long hours of suffering on the torturer's block.

Control of the feared hell riders would give her the power she desired. But how to wrest the Faceless Ones from Zarek Yannis? This would not be as easily done as usurping the power of her mentor, Payat'Morve, who had served Yannis' court sorcerer before her.

She would have to tread lightly. Yannis was not the fool Payat'Morve had believed. Nor was he without magicks of his own. After all, the usurper had brought the Faceless Ones and their flaming-hoofed steeds to Raemllyn. Carefully, ever so carefully, she must appear to serve Yannis until she had it within her power to defeat him.

The captain's hands opened her robe and slid it from her milky shoulders. A tingle of excitement coursed through Valora's body. The mage to Yannis' court did not repress the unexpected desires that awakened. Instead she abandoned herself totally to her physical senses now. The captain would be of use at least one more time.

chapter 3

"Down!"

The booming sound of Goran's voice penetrated Davin Anane's brain, wrenching his gaze from the winged death that plummeted from the sky. His head jerked around to stare at the changeling with uncertainty.

No befuddlement muddled Goran One-Eye's expression. With startling alacrity, the Challing launched himself forward in a wide-armed, flying tackle. Full weight he slammed into the Jyotian thief's midriff.

"Ooooft!" Air rushed from Davin's lungs under the meaty impact. Beneath Goran's massive bulk, he tumbled to the ground with arms and legs flailing.

A black shadow descended from the heavens to blot out the golden-reds of sunset. The screaming rush of wind against leathery wings engulfed all sound, even the pounding of Davin's heart. Above that came the clash of great recurved talons, grinding as they snapped closed, deprived of the prey they sought. Then came the labored flapping of batlike wings, when the keedehn lifted.

Dazed, the last son of the House of Anane stared at the ascending dragon soaring above the treetops. Its sinuous, serpentine body shifted; wings extended. Twin tails swished behind as the creature from another dimension banked in a tight circle.

"To the wood!" Goran scrambled to his feet. His arm snaked out, a beefy paw clamping to the front of his friend's fur coat and yanking Davin from the ground as though he were some child's rag doll. "Get out of this clearing. The trees will rob it of a winged attack. Run!"

Davin offered no protest, but darted to the forest canopy, sword still clenched in his hand. When he turned, Goran was a stride behind, his own blade free of its sheath.

Overhead the Gohwohnese dragon descended for a second time. In an ever-decreasing spiral it glided on leathery, brown reptilian wings twenty-five feet from tip to tip. Those wings, mottled with splotches of green, supported a torso fully as massive as that of a plow horse.

The resemblance to a horse ended with its size. The keedehn was serpentine, with its dual tails thrice the length of its body. Two thick legs protruded beneath its rounded belly, stout appendages that might have belonged to an eagle, had that bird been magically transformed to five times its normal size. Each of those legs ended in a taloned foot, three great claws and one wicked curved spur. Covering all were row upon row of overlapping iridescent scales.

Like the triangular head of a giant viper was its head. Yet, that head did not end in a blunt snout but in a birdlike beak, with an added horror—the beak was serrated!

Reigning above that monstrous beak sat two green eyes with slitted pupils. These orbs held Davin mesmerized as the keedehn alighted in the clearing and craned its serpent's neck toward the two freebooters. More than bestial fury dwelled in those eyes. From their green deep reflected intelligence!

With a final stretching flap, the dragon folded membranous wings to its side. It lifted a clawed foot and awkwardly took a tentative step toward the human and Challing it had chosen for an evening meal.

"Goran, your terror from Gohwohn is overrated! On the ground it flounders! It waddles!" Davin laughed as he watched the massive dragon cock its head from side to side, eyeing the adventurers.

"We'll take it from both sides. Divide its attack between us." No mirth lightened Goran's voice. In a crouch with sword leveled against attack, he edged away from Davin. His single good eye never left the scaled creature. "Pray to your gods, my friend. Pray they send you strength."

"Strength? Why not just turn our backs and stroll away? Even at a leisurely pace, we can outdistance this cumbersome—"

Before Davin could finish his sentence, the keedehn extended its two tails and sailed across the clearing with a litheness that belied the awkward pumping of its waddlelike strides. With liquid grace and a blur of speed, the dragon struck like a viper intent on sinking its fangs into a victim.

Goran's blade, aflash in the onset, leapt upward, clanging as it deflected that snapping beak.

Davin had but the blink of an eye to backstep when the serpentine neck twisted and the triangular head darted at him. The serrated edges of that gaping beak clamped closed on empty air, a mere hairbreadth separating the Jyotians from a death that would have left his body neatly severed in twain.

The beak wrenched wide again. This time, it was met by Davin's blade. Steel rang out as the sword bounced harmlessly off those horny jaws. Arm aquiver with the shock of that vibrating impact, the lanky thief spun, grasped hilt with both hands, and struck solidly at the dragon's thick neck.

And barely managed to dodge that snapping beak when his sword rebounded from the scale armor shielding the monster's flesh.

"Perhaps you are ready to take that leisurely stroll now!" taunted Goran. Then, with somberness: "Hold its attention. I'll slay this dragon-spawn with a back attack!"

Davin found no difficulty in engaging the keedehn; the horror from another realm had set its mind upon a tasty human appetizer before it delighted its palate with a main course of Challing.

Davin swung his sword in a whistling figure eight, maintaining a curtain of punishing steel between himself and the reptile. While it held the hissing keedehn at bay, the blade was useless against the creature's damnable armor. Each time he landed a blow, the edge skittered harmlessly across the iridescent scales.

Nor did Goran's flank assault prove more successful. Davin might have fully occupied that constantly snapping beak, but the Challing faced the dragon's twin tails, which whipped and writhed. One blow from either would mean certain death beneath crushing weight.

"Yehseen!" Davin called on the father of Raemllyn's gods.

The hooked tip of the keedehn's beak penetrated the swirl of his blade and snagged the sleeve of his fur coat. The dragon's head twisted; the sleeve's stitching held, just long enough to rob the thief of his footing and send him tumbling head over heels to the ground.

Davin rolled to his feet, sword rising to meet a renewed attack. Something warm and wet trickled down his left arm. The dragon had opened more than his furs with its lucky strike. Davin admitted he lied to himself about luck as he used the flat of his blade to beat back that gaping beak. The wound was minor, but others would soon follow, others causing growing weakness and eventual death.

An ear-splitting warcry filled the air, momentarily freezing Davin—and the keedehn.

From behind, Goran One-Eye hurled his giant's body over the lashing tails to land astride the monster's broad back. Digging the toes of his boots between the dragon's scales, the Challing swung his longsword, and with all his might drove the blade downward.

The blow landed directly atop the keedehn's spine. The armored hide prevented the blade from biting deep, but the force of that impact staggered the reptile.

Batwings fluttered on either side of its body as the dragon struggled to maintain its balance. At the juncture of one wing, Davin struck. His sword blade sliced through tendon and muscle, sending crimson ichor spraying outward in a blinding fountain.

The reptile howled pain and anger, its horny beak savaging at its human attacker.

The Jyotian dropped below the death-strike and braced the pommel of his blade in the soil. The keedehn lunged, intent on at last sinking beak into human flesh. The momentum of that heavy strike carried the serpentine body forward. Impaling itself on tempered steel, agony tore from the dragon's throat, billowing to the sky. And still it fought, lashing with tail and beak.

Maintaining his precarious seat astride the winged beast rode Goran One-Eye, witch-fire aflame in his single orb. The Challing's sword jerked high again, and fell. The keen edge sought and found the exact spot where the dragon's triangular head united with its thick neck. Goran yowled as the shock of the blow reverberated up the sword and into his shoulders.

The keedehn's head swiveled about and squarely confronted its changeling assailant.

Freed from attack, but with sword firmly embedded in the reptile's breast, Davin drew the only weapon left to him—his dagger—and leaped upward. His left arm encircled the monster's beak in a viselike hold, twisting the head toward the evening sky. His right arm thrusted, driving the point of the slender dagger into an unblinking green eye—and the brain cavity behind the vulnerable orb.

Even this did not end the creature's tenacious life!

That honor belonged to Goran One-Eye and his longsword. Two-handed, Goran swung his blade and caught the keedehn squarely across the throat. Like a madman he fought, his sword rising and falling until the chore begun at the back of the dragon's neck was completed.

When the keedehn's head at last flew from its body, the Challing leaped away from the spasmodically writhing torso. Chest heaving, and clothing drenched in dragon's blood, he turned to Davin for a moment, then stared back at the slain creature, watching until the last quiver passed from its lifeless bulk.

"A keedehn! I killed a keedehn!" Goran's victory cry rang through the evening stillness. "No Challing has ever single-handedly slain such a dragon. Yet I did it!"

"I wouldn't call it single-handed," Davin sputtered in protest to his friend's braggardly claim. "There were two of us!"

"But only one Challing," Goran One-Eye retorted. "You're a puny human. You hardly counted for spit in the heat of the fray! And all you had was one tiny little dirk."

Davin Anane started to reply angrily, then saw the grin breaking across Goran's face. The Jyotian smiled sheepishly, realizing how easily he had accepted his friend's bait, then laughed. "Nobody'd believe I killed it with a dagger, would they?"

"Believe you killed this ferocious beast with a dagger? Most would not believe such a creature exists!" Goran roared his mirth.

A laugh that abruptly ended as the red-bearded giant wrinkled his nose and sniffed the air. "Do you smell something burning?"

Goran spun around. Where his spitted hare had cooked above a flickering campfire, now lay a heap of sputtering coals. The largest coal distinctly resembled a roasted rabbit transformed to charcoal. The plowed ground about the heap told the story. The keedehn's serpentine tail had swept away half the small fire and tumbled the Challing's wooden spit, and rabbit, into the remaining embers.

"My rabbit! I've burnt my dinner!" Goran's laments echoed through the woods. "And my stomach is agrowl. Dragon slaying leaves a Challing ravenous!"

"Everything leaves you ravenous." Davin shrugged with a glance at the smoldering rabbit.

"I wonder," Goran mused, turning to the slain keedehn, "if dragon is a fit dish?"

"I would think so." Davin rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Any beast that has grown so plump from dining on such marvelous creatures as Challings surely has the richest of flavors. An epicurean delight, I would think."

"Dined on Challings... that would mean... if I ate..." The color drained from Goran's face as he realized what Davin suggested. "I... would be... no better than... than a cannibal. Ohhh..."

Goran clamped a hand over his mouth and clutched at his stomach with the other as he staggered into the woods, looking like a man who had every intention of being sick.

No sympathy furrowed Davin's brow. He only laughed. Since they had first joined company, he had been the butt of a thousand Challing jibes and pranks. This time, this one time, he repaid his friend in part.

Walking to the campfire, Davin lifted the spitted rabbit from the flames. Burnt it might be, but a burnt dinner was better than no dinner at all.

"It makes a striking ornament, don't you agree?" Goran One-Eye shifted in the saddle, and between forefinger and thumb dangled a pendant hung about his neck on a leather cord.

"Disgusting is closer to the truth." Davin pursed his lips and rolled his eyes to emphasize his disgust while he rubbed a hand at a kink in his neck.

The stiffness gradually gave way beneath massaging fingertips. The nagging ache gone, the Jyotian noticed myriad protesting muscles in his body. There was little wonder. Since slaying the keedehn they had been constantly on the trail, swinging back and forth in the vain hope of finding some small trace of Lijena. The past six weeks had been trying for Davin, with just enough spoor to keep him moving cropping up when hope ran the lowest. But now...

"I find it very manly. Women will certainly flock to see it more closely. Believe me, Davin, I know what I'm saying."

Davin's eyes rolled to Goran. These were hardly the words he expected from the red-bearded giant. Outwardly, the Challing kept his male body, but the tenor of his voice and the texture of the words rang all too feminine.

"A reptile's jewels strung in a pendant around your fat neck hardly seems an aphrodisiac," Davin grunted.

"I think it is," said a voice more Glylina's than Goran's.

Davin sighed and shook his head. Coping with the Challing's odd switches between sexes stretched the limits of their friendship. Tolerating Goran when he had been stuck in his male form had often been a full-time occupation.

Davin shifted his weight on an increasingly hard saddle. Seeking a means to free the changeling from his prison of flesh was a full-time occupation, Davin reflected. Since Goran had saved his life in Lower Raemllyn, he had sworn to aid the Challing in finding the means to break the spell that bound him to human form. That oath would have taken them in search of the fabled city of A'bre had it not been for Lijena.

chapter 4

Lijena. Memory of the woman rose in Davin's mind and stirred his loins. Frosty blonde hair, lovely blue eyes, a figure surpassing any other in Raemllyn—and Davin Anane had seen many, both clothed and otherwise. Without his meddling, she would not have suffered the demon that now possessed her, nor would she have become entangled in Berenicis' quest for the mage Lorennion and the sheath to the Sword of Kwerin Bloodhawk.

Lorennion also possessed the mysterious Blood Fountain!

Even the sound of those words struck Davin as ominous. Blood Fountain. He had overheard Lijena utter them to a trio of the Faceless Ones—the mere mention had driven the demons away. His own encounter with the Faceless Ones had been more intimate and less easily avoided, yet he had outrun them. With a bit of luck, true, but he had accounted well of himself as they trailed him, their snouts to the ground sniffling his spoor. Even now, knowing he had eluded those demons once conjured by the almost mythical wizard Nnamdi and vanquished by the combination of Kwerin Bloodhawk and his sorcerer Edan, did not lessen the icy chill their memory evoked.

"Those were days of wonder," Davin said softly, imagining Raemllyn when such heroes as Kwerin strode the earth.

"Aye, that they were," spoke up Goran, pulling Davin from his reverie. "Remember the nights we spent with those tavern wenches? The buxom twins? What were their names? Never mind, I have no need to keep them separate, even if one did steal my eye."

"What are you going on about?" Davin's brow furrowed in confusion. "What twins? What tavern?"

"What eye?" mimicked Goran. "You have a most fluid memory. You remember only what is convenient for you, not what is exciting. Aye, those two wenches were exciting. That and more."

"What about your eye?" Davin tried to swallow the words before they left the tip of his tongue. Too late! He realized he had invited still another fabrication concerning Goran's missing eye.

"I was bedded with the pair—I thought you were there, Davin, but perhaps you had passed out from too much ale. You do that, you know. Bad habit. You miss so much of what life has to offer."

"Such as the twins?"

"Left all the more for me, and my appetite barely proved enough for the pair of them. Natural blondes, they were, and with flesh on their bones. Not like this skinny wench we chase after." Goran touched his eye patch and shifted it from side to side. "The left-handed one. I think she is the one who took my eye."

"You were too busy with the right-handed one to notice?"

"Of course."

Davin snorted. "There is no way you wouldn't have noticed someone gouging out your eye, no matter how addled your brain was with a woman, right-handed or not."

"Who said anything about gouging it out? I refer to my glass eye, not my natural one."

"What glass eye?" demanded Davin, exasperated. He had traveled with Goran for five years and this was the first he'd heard of the glass eye, but he guessed it wouldn't be the last now that the subject had arisen.

"The one I bought with my winnings in Meakham, naturally."

Davin said nothing. He thought it best to let this story run its course without encouragement, not that Goran needed any.

"A small bout in the fighting pits and a judicious bet or two made me rich. I had fashioned the finest of glass eyes—but a special feature made this one unique."

"What else?" Davin commented dryly.

"It had a small plug in the back that allowed me to store precious items within. I had filled it with drenn jewels, the finest in all Meakham. In all the province!"

"Let me guess. While the right-handed twin occupied you, the left-handed one slapped you on the back of the head and knocked it from your thick skull." Davin suggested a quick conclusion to the tale.

Goran would have no part of it. "Nothing of the sort. Like any gentleman would before joining two such lovely young ladies, I took it out and placed it in a glass of water beside the bed—while I tumbled the wench."

"The left-handed one reached in and stole your eye?" In spite of himself, Davin found more of interest in the story than he'd thought there would be. Not that he believed a word of it.

"Nothing so crude. She drank from the tumbler, and only when we were finished, did I notice that the eye had vanished.

I think she swallowed it, but at the time it did not occur to me. If it had, I would have waited around, and not just pass the time, mind you. But I believed them when they claimed to have seen a street urchin scampering along the rooftops outside their window. I made haste and chased... phantoms."

"Why haven't you had another glass orb made?"

"What? And attract bad luck like before? I know an ill omen when I see it!"

"Bad luck? You're like a lodestone when it comes to—"

Davin's words were cut short by a terrible cracking sound, like the snap of dried limb sheared from a tree during a storm. In the next heartbeat, his mount dropped to its knees, sending him sailing through the air.

Tucked in a tight ball, the heir to the House of Anane hit the ground, his shoulders taking the impact, and managed an inept roll. The wind knocked from his lungs, he lay flat on his back staring up at the cloud-dotted sky spinning overhead and wondering if Black Qar had come for him. In the distance he heard Goran's cursing and the frightened neighing of a horse.

A snapping as horrible as the first penetrated the Jyotian's dazed mind.

Abruptly Davin sat up, eyes wide. Goran, who knelt on the ground, released the unmoving head of the horse Davin had ridden but moments before. The animal lay deadly still, its neck grotesquely twisted.

"It was suffering, my friend." There was a genuine sadness in the Challing's jade eye. "It stepped in a hole and broke its leg. I couldn't let it suffer."

"Good thing I'm still in one piece. I'd hate to have you do that to me." Davin diverted his eyes from the gruesome reminder of Goran's inhuman strength. Soberly, Davin added, "Thank you. It would have pained me to put the beast out of its misery. We had traveled many leagues together."

"We'll not travel many more with the two of us astride one mount." Goran reached down and helped Davin to his feet.

"Weysh lies near. The town will provide fresh horses for both of us as well as ample opportunity to rest before we continue after Lijena." Davin answered as he stood and brushed off the seat of his breeches.

"Weysh? A town? I thought you had not traveled these parts ere now?" Goran lifted a bushy eyebrow.

"Not by land. But twice by sea I have come to walk the streets of Weysh."

Both of the Challing's eyebrows arched now. "The sea?"

"Aye. It offered the most expedient escape from Jyotis when Berenicis' men were after my head," Davin explained. "I served on the decks of a merchant ship for a year. That was before I met the Huata, and they demonstrated how a man might make a living relieving the rich of their burden of wealth."

"Which we'll have to do once we reach this Weysh." Goran shook an empty pouch dangling from his belt. "The last of my Jurkian winnings went for the purchase of our coats and horses."

Goran glanced around, saw his own mount grazing nearby, and hastened to retrieve him. "But as to Lijena, can we not abandon this fruitless chase and go in search of A'bre? How long has it been since we had any sign of her? A week? Longer? What makes you think we'll ever track her down?"

"Her demon takes her to Lorennion. And the mage's keep is rumored to be north of the Agda woods," Davin replied with steadfast determination.

"Agda." There was more than a hint of distaste in the Challing's tone. "I have heard ill of that forest. I have no more desire to travel its byways than I do for tangling with another sorcerer. The last one provided only trouble for us."

"Trouble, yes, but also a return of your own magicks."

"Masur-Kell brought them back, but without control," said Goran. "The promise of A'bre is enough, though, to give me hope of surmounting this. Aye, to return to Gohwohn. Now that's a noble quest. Not like looking for an anemic wench who's tried to kill you on three separate occasions."

"Four," corrected Davin. "And it's not Lijena's fault. We rid her of the demon, then we scout for A'bre. Who cares if it is only a legend? There must be some truth to its existence."

"Why is it I don't feel any better hearing you say all this?" Goran pointed to his horse and said, "You ride for a while. Compared to my bulk, the horse will think you little more than a bug crouching in the saddle."

"That's what I like so about you, my friend," said Davin. "You have such a way of complimenting a person."

"It comes from spending too much time on the trail with the likes of you."

To that Davin said nothing. He settled down gingerly and reined the horse toward Weysh.

Wind blew in from the harbor carrying with it not only cold, salty air but the nose-wrinkling stench of fish and sewage flushed from the city into the Bay of Yper. Davin Anane shivered and pulled his cloak tighter around his body. Like Goran One-Eye he longed to be free of the wilderness and once more embrace the comforts and hospitality of Raemllyn's cities. A dingy, gray northern coastal town, Weysh appeared neither comfortable or hospitable.

"We are supposed to find ample delights in this dung hole?" Goran muttered from the saddle.

"It's been some years since I last visited Weysh. I had forgotten what a dreary place it is. Besides, I mentioned nothing of delights, only ample rest." Davin's gaze traced over the buildings to each side of the street they walked.

All were wooden, a fact not the least bit surprising when he considered the bountiful forest surrounding the town. However, he did wish Weysh's residents would apply a coat of paint to the naked, weathered logs. Such lackluster was decidedly depressing.

"Rest, delights, pleasures—are they not one and the same! Little of any we'll be getting in this dismal hamlet!" Goran glared down the muddy street that stretched before them. "The wenches here reek of fish rather than perfumed oils, I'll wager!"

Davin said nothing more. He wanted only to find lodging, new mounts, perhaps a few coins to weigh down his purse, and then to be away from Weysh.

"Ho! What is this? A silken purse hidden in a sow's ear?" Goran grinned widely as his gaze darted down a broad avenue that led right from the street they traveled. He reined the horse toward his find. "Now this looks like a prosperous avenue just ripe for two possessed of light fingers."

Avenue was the correct word. The cobblestone street was wide enough to accommodate three coaches. Nor was it populated by abysmal log huts and houses, but buildings—some rising three stories—constructed of granite from Agda's mountains.

Davin smiled and followed his companion. He knew from past experience that the Challing could size up a potential victim in an instant, choosing the one with the most gold bists in his pouch and dismissing those poseurs pretending wealth.

"And there is a likely spot for us to spend the evening, too." Goran glanced down at his fellow thief. "The Inn of the Broken Beam. Many sailors coming and going, sailors long a'sea and heavy in the purse as a result."

"Expensive place," muttered Davin. "They might ask for a few coins in advance. They know how easily sailors can slip away without paying."

"Do we look like sailors? They'll know us for good, solid, land-traveling citizens. There will be no problem."

As always, Goran's overly optimistic appraisal forced Davin to improvise. He promised the innkeeper twice the usual rate for one night—when the rest of their caravan arrived. The tale he spun of brigands being fended off and the need to find the city guard lulled any suspicions the man might have harbored. Davin had to admit he and Goran looked the part of prosperous, waylaid merchants. Their clothes were dirty and tattered but of good quality when purchased.

"Just like old times," exulted Goran as soon as the innkeeper closed the door to their tiny room. "City life! There's always something happening."

"Don't go looking for a game of chance," cautioned Davin, knowing his friend's particular affinity for the gaming tables. "Remember what happened last time? You found yourself Velden's prisoner and I had to ransom you from him using Lijena."

"But I won!" cried Goran. "I won and won and won. In that lay my problem. A bit more judicious loss on my part, not quite so much gold weighing me down as I left, and Velden would have ignored me."

Davin knew this was untrue. He said, "We need a quick profit for your visit to Weysh. What do you think it will be? A bit of cutpursing on the streets? Some of the citizens looked burdened with wealth."

"Too much so. They use bodyguards overmuch for my taste. I say, let the fat merchants go wandering in the streets, taking their guards with them, mind you, and we go through their empty homes."

Davin nodded agreement. He felt too weary to argue, even if he hadn't already come to the same conclusion. He lay down on the bed and in seconds drifted to a dreamless sleep. Only when the sun dipped below the horizon and the streets began filling with nightlife did he stir. By then, Goran had done the scouting and found all they needed.

"A fine place, it is," said the red-bearded giant. "A jewel merchant's house, laden with every gem you can imagine. Rumors abound that the man has just returned from his yearly buying trip to Kavindra and points farther south. Ah, this is one ripe fruit waiting to be savored, Davin. You will love it. I know you will."

"And horses?"

"Within a short distance of the house. We have but to inspect the merchant's wares, then select the finest of steeds. I swear to you there is one that rivals even the legendary stud Lukiahn for strength and endurance. I lay claim to this stallion, but you can choose from any of a dozen other worthy animals."

"We can rob the jewel merchant and get the horses and be on our way within an hour?"

"Why hurry? We can stay the night at this fine inn. And perhaps find a wench to while away the long, dark hours. If you agree, there might even be a small dice game running by the time we finish our work."

"No!" Davin's tone left no doubt he was unalterably opposed to gambling, especially when it concerned the Challing.

"Just a suggestion," Goran said insincerely. "There will be no reason to hurry, I assure you. This one is easy!"

"They all seem so, until the small items we overlooked come to dog our steps."

"The merchant is a doddering old womanizer. It will take him hours just to remember what to do with a wench," Goran assured his friend. "We will have the entire house to ourselves—the house and its contents."

Davin knew Goran exaggerated, as he always did. But the Challing never considered a theft unless he truly believed they would succeed. It might be close, it would definitely be dangerous, but Goran was no one's fool. He wanted to enjoy the fruits of their audacity.

The pair dressed in dark cloaks Goran had stolen earlier from a merchant's stall, then they silently descended the stairs and left the Inn of the Broken Beam through the back door. Less than fifteen minutes passed before they stood at the jewel merchant's house. Davin insisted on circling the home three times before stopping beside the window Goran had chosen for their entry.

"Empty," the Challing said as he peered into the dark house. "And the jewels are waiting, just begging for us to take them. More than either of us can carry off in a night's work!"

Davin touched a finger to his lips to silence his friend. Listening intently, he heard nothing but city sounds and the settling of the house. No one walked about inside. He nodded to the Challing.

Immediately Goran set about opening the window separating them from the treasures within. Muscles rippled as the red-maned titan heaved. A death-cry of sundered wood screamed out its violation when the sash finally gave way beneath the Challing's inhuman strength.

Davin's head jerked around, searching the night, expecting to find a troop of city guards barreling down on them. No sound reached his ears. He released an overly held breath in a deep sigh. His nerves were keyed up; he had been on the trail too long and his skills at thievery had rusted.

As Goran hefted the window, Davin slipped over the sill and into the house. Soft carpeting beneath his feet muffled any random sounds he made. His gaze made a quick circuit of the room.

They had entered a study dominated by a massive, gleamingly polished chiin wood desk. An array of papers and scrolls atop the desk and the lock drawers beneath promised a wealth of information about the gem merchant's business habits, information Davin would have paid a princely sum to obtain had he intended to remain in Weysh. Tonight only a pouch of jewels and a quick escape interested him. He motioned Goran toward a doorway leading into an adjoining room.

Side by side the two thieves entered a large sleeping chamber. To the left was a sumptuous bed and on the right stood a head-high chest with locked drawers.

"The old geezer knows how to sleep. Too bad the bed isn't used for more than that," chuckled Goran.

Davin's attention focused on the chest and its intricate locks. Brute force would avail them little. If they had the proper equipment, they might break into the locked box. He decided stealth provided a better means of removing the chest's contents.

"Do you have to do that?" complained Goran.

"Not even you can open these locks, even with a smithy's hammer," Davin whispered as he dug a hand into a pouch strung from his belt. "It's made from the finest ironwood I have ever seen. Our gem merchant paid a fortune for this chest."

"A fortune to hold a fortune," said Goran, bouncing on the bed. "Be quick about it. As comfortable as this mattress is, I am lonely without a companion."

Pulling a slender wire and a minute steel hook from the pouch, Davin busied himself with the first of the locks. A thrust and a twist to the left, and it opened. He smiled, then bit at his lower lip as he worked the hook and wire into the second obstacle barring him from the riches awaiting inside. A full twenty minutes he labored on ten locks, each successive one more difficult than its predecessor, before the final lock snicked open and the drawers pulled out of the chest.

Davin's eyes went wide and round. An appreciative grin spread on his face as his gaze caressed the uncovered wealth. "Goran, I am sorry I doubted you. These are finer than any gems I have seen. A High King's booty, indeed."

Davin scooped a handful of gems from top drawer and let them dribble through his fingers into his leather pouch. "Were we in Jyn or Garoda, we would—"

Davin froze. Footsteps came from the study.

"Goran the—"

He never completed the warning. The bedroom door swung open; harsh light cascaded in the bed chamber's dimness. Standing outlined by a lamp in the study was a sturdy man, sword drawn. Behind him, a scantily clad woman clung to his shoulder.

"Thieves!" she shrieked. "Stop them, Parvan. Stop them!"

"No man's ever robbed Parvan Weeselik. These two will not be the first!" the man roared.

"You're Parvan Weeselik?" Awe and surprise filled Goran's tone as he sat straight up on the bed. His head turned to Davin. "I was told he was an old man!"

"Black Qar take your souls!" The merchant lunged at Goran.

Weeselik may have been a jewel merchant but he was also a first rate swordsman. Goran would have died on the end of his blade had he not leaped from the bed. Even then he did not escape the merchant's thrust. That needle-boned tip grazed Goran's chest and left a wide rent in both cloth and flesh.

Another might have cried in pain, or retreated to gain a moment to gather his senses, not the Challing. Goran One-Eye swept the stolen cape from his shoulder and ensnared Weeselik's sword. With a sudden jerk, he wrenched it from the man's grasp.

With their sole opponent so ably engaged, Davin's hands returned to the drawer. While Goran ducked and dodged a flurry of angry fists, Davin stuffed his pouch so that the seams threat-ened to split. There were more drawers and more jewels, but common sense prevailed over greed.

"Away," he called to Goran as he lifted a chair and sent it hurling through a window.

"The city guard," panted Weeselik, grappling with Goran. "Go for the guard!"

The woman looked from her lover to Davin, then turned and fled.

Davin knew better than to pursue her. The sight of an armed man chasing a half-naked woman through Weysh streets would be riveted in too many minds. Better to hope that the room's light was too dim for her to get a good view of his features. Even as the thought fluttered across his brain, Davin knew that Jajhana, the Goddess of Chance, favored their adversaries. Weeselik would be able to identify Goran, no matter what.

Unless he died here and now.

Davin's arm snaked out; his hand closed around the neck of a vase set atop a small table beside the bed. Hefting it high, he brought it down atop the gem merchant's head. Weeselik staggered, then collapsed, stunned by the blow.

Goran and Davin exchanged glances, both knowing how stupid it would be to allow a witness to live. But then they were cutpurses and not cutthroats. Neither had the heart to slay an unconscious man.

"We can be out of Weysh before he recovers," said Goran. "There's no need to kill him."

"Let's hope we can purchase those horses without any delay," Davin answered.

The pair crowded through the broken window and landed on their feet.

"Which way?" asked Davin.

"To jail," Goran muttered.

"Wha—" Davin turned and faced the street. Standing in a neat semicircle about them were a full dozen city guardsmen, all with pikes leveled at the pair of thieves.

"You take the six on the right and I'll take the six on the left," Goran One-Eye whispered. Green sparks of witch-fire blazed in his good eye.

Davin's expression remained unchanged, lips drawn taut and eyes narrowed to slits as he glared at the advancing Weysh guard with their wicked-looking pikes. He forced himself to remain motionless. The slightest movement of his sword hilt would have Goran and him spitted on those lances like kelii hens ready for the hearth.

"No sense of adventure!" The flame-haired giant snorted and shrugged, obviously disappointed that his friend felt the odds too great for a good fight. "Mayhaps you prefer this."

"Mercy! Please don't kill us!" Terror shrilled in the Challing's voice as he threw his arms high above his head and danced nervously from foot to foot. "Mercy, please! We surrender! You have us at your mercy! Spare us, please! Mercy!"

Whether Goran's actions stemmed from contempt or a quickly thought ruse, Davin didn't know. They did draw the complete attention of twelve pairs of Weysh eyes. That was the opening Davin sought.

He darted straight ahead, ducked under the tip of one pike, gripped the shaft, and heaved with every ounce of strength bundled in his slim frame. The guardsman tried to counter with force. Surprised and caught off balance, he stumbled and slammed heavily into three of his companions, sending two sprawling to the ground.

The momentary chaos provided a wide enough opening for both Davin and Goran to surge through. But the Challing, witch-fire now flaming in his right eye, refused to be denied a small taste of battle.

Having eluded a pike thrust at his broad chest, he now held a guardsman by collar and pants' seat. A bull-like roar tore from his throat, and he slung the soldier through the air with

chapter 5

the ease an ordinary man might toss about a sack of grain.

Six pikes dipped to avoid accidently impaling the airborne man. In the next instant six of the weaponsmen went down, their cries of alarm drowning the Challing's laughter as he ran down a dark alley at the heels of his fellow thief.

"Where?" Goran asked upon reaching Davin's side. "Where do we go now that everything's come apart on us?"

"Easy!" Davin spat his friend's earlier appraisal of the theft between clenched teeth. "Easy because the jewel merchant is a doddering old man!"

"Maybe there's another Parvan the jeweler," Goran suggested with the heart of innocence in his voice. "How was I to know?"

"Up!" Davin pointed to a low-slung store roof ahead. He had neither the time nor the inclination to argue the improbable odds that two Parvan Weeseliks dwelled in a town as small as Weysh.

Without breaking stride, the son of Jyotis leaped, caught a gutter above, and hauled himself up until he lay belly down on the flat roof. Goran's jump and subsequent attaining of the aerial perch was accomplished amid loud grunts interspersed with curses that profaned every deity in Raemllyn's pantheon of gods. The red-haired Challing abruptly fell silent when the sounds of pursuit echoed through Weysh's night-shrouded streets.

"They'll find us eventually. The gem merchant isn't the sort to allow us to simply walk out of the city with these." Davin patted the pouch holding the precious stones he'd successfully purloined.

"The stables are there, perhaps a half a mile away." Goran inclined his head to the north. "We can still escape. Trade a few stones for the horses and be off before anyone notices."

Davin pursed his lips, pondering their chances of reaching the stable. While he felt they could make it to the horses, it was their escape from the northern coastal town that worried him. Soon the whole city guard would be alerted of the theft. Those not seeking the pair who so embarrassingly eluded twelve of their number would be guarding the few roads leading away from Weysh.

Davin pushed to his knees and peered about the town while his mind sorted through the possibilities; none looked good. A twinkle of lights came from the east. The hint, a cautious hint, of a smile lifted the corners of the thief's mouth.

"To the bay," he said as he swung to the alley below.

"A boat?" Goran dropped heavily to the cobblestones. "I don't care for water."

"I've noticed. It's hard not to. You grow more fragrant each passing day." Quickly, silently, the heir to the House of Anane led them weaving from alley to alley.

"I prefer horses," the Challing continued his protest. "If anything happens, you can always walk."

"But I thought Challings could walk on water?" As much as the Jyotian disliked it, the harbor provided the best chance for slipping away from Weysh while still wearing their skins.

The clank of armor and the tramp of booted feet sent the pair scurrying to another rooftop until a troop of city guards passed below them. Davin and Goran then dropped back to the ground and hastened toward the now visible flickering of harbor lights. At least Davin did, and then backtracked to find the Challing peering between a half-opened shutter.

"Goran, this is no time for such things." Davin was unable to contain his exasperation.

"But it is such a fine display. Look at his skill." The changeling grinned and winked at his companion. "By Nyuria's ten tongues, this man's an expert! Look at how the wench responds!"

One quick glimpse at the sleeping chamber beyond the open shutter and Davin realized that the fiery-bearded gargantuan would be content to stand and watch for hours—or however long the man in the room lasted with the comely and apparently double-jointed brunette in bed with him.

"Davin, you fail to appreciate such fine..." It was Glylina's voice that reached the Jyotian's ears.

Davin jerked about. Gone was the muscular warrior-thief Goran One-Eye. Before the adventurer stood the comely brunette he had just seen so thoroughly occupied within the bed chamber, although her nakedness was now swallowed in Goran's overly large furs and silks. Goran's eye patch hung about her neck, and she stared at the thief with two good eyes.

"Davin, I had no control." Glylina's slender hands tugged and tucked the clothing about her to accommodate her sudden diminutive size. "I promised you I'd not do this. Not in your sight. But I could not control the transformation."

"Sailors... ships..." A broad smile slid over Davin's face.

"Davin?" Glylina arched a thinly plucked eyebrow. "What are you thinking?"

Davin reached out and grasped her very warm and very feminine hand. "Come!"

He didn't have time to explain. Instead he pulled the lithe Challing after him as he ran toward the harbor lights. For once, Goran's shape-shifting might be put to good use!

"Davin, what's going on? What do you have in mind?" Glylina questioned once more when Davin halted in the shadow of crates stacked high for loading onto waiting ships.

He didn't answer, but scanned the Weysh harbor before him. Fifty yards to the right he saw a long wooden pier stretching out into the Bay of Yper. Sailing ships and boats lined each side of the pier, but his attention centered on an equipment hut seated at the end.

Torches and braziers were aflame along the waterfront. All he had to do was take a torch and reach that hut and he was certain he could guarantee their escape from Weysh.

The problem lay in making his way to the equipment hut unseen. A group of ten sailors stood on shore, warming themselves around a fire near the front of the long pier.

"Those sailors," Davin glanced at Glylina, "attract their attention. Keep them occupied so that I can slip behind them."

"How?" Glylina's eyes went round.

"I don't know! I don't care! Use that brilliant Challing mind to come up with something. Strip if you have to! Then meet me back here," Davin answered.

"Strip?" An amused smile lifted full, red lips. "Meet you back here? When?"

"You'll know, Gor... Glylina. Now go!" Davin urged.

With a nod the Challing demurely walked from the shadows and approached the men. She had riveted their attention before she crossed half the distance to the fire, which she strolled casually by, stopping only when one of the men whistled suggestively. Then Glylina turned, smiling with obvious delight, to locate the whistle's owner. Ten men turned their backs to the rest of the world.

Allowing himself time for an appreciative smile, Davin hastened from his hiding place, snatched a torch from the wall of a warehouse, and darted cat-silent down the pier. Halfway to the hut he spied a bucket of pitch used for sealing ship hulls. Lifting the bucket, he poured out a small puddle, then streamed a black trail all the way to the hut's entrance.

A quick check of the shack's interior assured Davin its only occupants were coils of rope and fishnets in need of repair. To these he touched the torch. Watching the flames for a moment, he turned and leisurely retraced his steps down the pier. When he finally glanced over his shoulder, the hut leaped with flames and a tongue of blue and yellow fire licked along the trail of tar. Half the pier was ablaze.

"Fire!" Davin screamed out in his best imitation of panic. He ran toward the circle of men engrossed in a Challing who tantilizingly bared her charms. "Fire! Fire!"

All eyes left Glylina and focused on the tongues of flames that danced from pier to sky. In a heartbeat, the men were running. The clanging of a fire alarm rang through the night. From the cabins of ships and boats, men streamed in answer to the call.

"The boats! Save the boats!" a man called out. "Sever the moorings and set them adrift!"

Davin drew his sword and hacked at a thick line securing a fishing vessel to the pier. Another alarm clanged out its warning of imminent danger. The harbor was aswarm now, as Weysh awoke from a sleepy winter's night to combat the flames that threatened the livelihood of the whole town.

In the confusion, Davin easily wove back to the crate-lined alley where Glylina waited.

"Did you have to set the whole fleet afire?" Glylina stared with horror at the leaping flames. "If it's discovered we were responsible, we'll be flayed alive then impaled!"

"It looks worse than it is." Davin explained that only a hut and pier burned. "They'll have the blaze under control before it reaches the ships—but not before all of Weysh comes in answer to those alarms. An opportune time for two thieves to quietly slip away in the night, wouldn't you say?"

"Most opportune," Glylina agreed with a pleased smile. "But on horseback, please! I've walked enough for twenty since we began this insane chase across Raemllyn."

"My thoughts exactly. Lead the way to this stable of yours." Davin waved an arm before him.

While Weysh rushed to fight a harbor fire, the two thieves found the abandoned stable and secured mounts and tack without Davin ever opening his pouch of gems. A smithy's shop, also abandoned by its owner who had answered the fire alarm, provided Glylina with the battle ax Goran had longed for.

"Now if some alert citizen doesn't notice a shapely wench with an ax strapped at her waist, we should be all right," Davin said as he reined a sleek black gelding through the Weysh streets.

"Shapely? Did you say shapely, Davin?" Glylina's head slowly turned to her companion. Long, dark eyelashes batted coyly. "Do you find my present shape attractive, Davin?"

"I find you very comely, Gly... Damn your hide, Goran!" Davin's heels dug into the gelding's flanks as he rode northward out of Weysh. "I'll have none of it! Never! Not with you!"

"But Davin, I've told you before I am a Challing, neither male or female. If the form I assume pleases you, why shouldn't we share the delights that are open to—"

"Never!" Davin railed. "You are Goran One-Eye, my companion in arms! I have no taste for the bed of other men!"

"But I'm not a man," Glylina protested. "What man has breasts as full and ripe as these, or hips so invitingly rounded?"

"No!" Davin shouted violently. His head gave a firm shake of denial. The determination was as much for himself as for his shapely companion. For in truth, he was finding it easier to accept the Challing's transformations with each new form Glylina-Goran took. "Change yourself back to Goran, Glylina. Do it now!"

"No," she answered simply and lightly. "I find this body pleasing and have decided to keep it for a while. If you find it uncomfortable to be so close to one so willing, then that is your problem Davin Anane, not mine."

"Bitch!" hissed through Davin's gritted teeth.

"You admit I am female!" Glylina laughed with delight as they rode into the night toward Agda.

chapter 6

Davin gingerly probed fingertips into the gray ash. He smiled; warmth remained from the embers he had spread within the shallow pit last night. Deeper he wiggled his fingers into the soot, found a thin layer of clay beneath, and scooped it away. Next he edged aside a neat coat of green pine needles and found the curved ash sapling he had carefully set between rocks at the bottom of the pit.

The thief's smile widened as he lifted the bowed wood from dirt and ash. The wood held its shape. To be certain, the sapling wasn't a properly cured bow, but it would suffice, as would the five arrows he pulled from the bottom of the pit. The flint heads he had shaped the past three nights were crude, yet deadly.

"Don't like this place," Glylina complained loudly as she stomped out of the forest with an armload of firewood. "The feel of these woods... seethes all around me. At times I feel as though I can reach out and grasp it in a hand."

"Your mood will lighten when your stomach's full." Davin held up his makeshift bow and arrows when she ducked beneath the lean-to and dropped her burden into the ash-filled pit.

"And when we forsake this cold for warmer climes—like A'bre! It's snowing again." To emphasize her words, she shook a cascading mane of nut-brown hair, creating a small snowstorm within the shelter. She then noticed Davin's handiwork. "You don't believe those sticks are going to help fill our bellies, do you?"

Davin winced and bit his tongue to hold back the curses that demanded to be unleashed. For a week he had endured the Challing's latest persona, his nerves grating raw with each passing second of that week. Glylina's less than subtle sexual overtures, taunts, and advances he had steadfastly denied with gritted teeth and more than one frigid bath in Agda's streams.

It was her voice, however, that set him on edge. It whined, nagged, and demanded. More than mere physical was this newest of the changeling's transformations. The Challing now possessed the emotions and temperament of a woman who had been pampered throughout her life. As to Goran, Davin found no hint of his longtime companion in this woman who now shared his life—neither in voice nor action.

She expects—expects!—me to care for her every need. It's as though she is incapable of doing more than lifting her little finger! Davin sucked at his teeth in disgust, uncertain whether the changes he noticed were real or were a Challing offensive devised to wear down his defenses until he gave in and shared Glylina's bed.

A temptation that grew stronger each day, he realized. Although whenever he looked at Glylina, he saw Goran One-Eye's image superimposed over the beauty of her face. Yet, he admitted that last eve he'd found it difficult to recall which had been Goran's good eye. Right or left?

"A toy bow and toy arrows. Davin, you can't expect those to serve any purpose." Glylina glared down at him with hands placed firmly on her hips.

"There's only one way to find out if the gods favor us." The Jyotian reached into a pocket and withdrew a carefully cured length of rabbit gut, the remnants of their last meal— three days ago.

"Even if those do work, you'll never get close enough to the animals in this accursed forest. Haven't you noticed how skittish they are? One whispered footstep and they go running off as though Black Qar's own demons are after them!" Glylina whined on, "And the animals, have you ever seen such an odd assortment of creatures? Like that bird in the morda tree over there. When did you last see such brilliant plumage on a bird this far north?"

Davin glanced where she pointed and returned to stringing his bow, unwilling to admit the truth in her words. Agda's creatures were strange; many he had never seen the likes of before.

"I saw rez tracks by the stream last night. Perhaps they will return for water this morning." Davin gave the bow a tentative twang.

A pleased grin spread across his face when the gut held. There might not be enough strength in the weapon to bring down Upper Raemllyn's small forest deer, but he wanted at least one shot at a rez before searching out rabbits and squirrels. Rising in a crouch, he ducked beneath the shelter's roof of pine limbs and stepped outside.

"You're not going to leave me here, are you?" Glylina stomped a foot behind him.

"I thought you might want to rest an hour or five after your arduous task of gathering firewood!" He could not contain his sarcasm when he turned back to the Challing.

Davin's eyes popped open, and his jaw sagged. He managed to mumble. "And who is this?"

"Her name? Who knows? But she lives forever in my mind and heart." The voice was soft, lilting, unlike the Glylina who had mocked his efforts a moment ago.

But then this was not the woman he had traveled with for a week. A vision of innocence stood before him, a lass who had seen no more than eighteen summers with hair bright and golden as the sun. Languidly, she slicked her lips with a moist pink tongue.

"Do you find this form more attractive, Davin? More to your liking?" Glylina asked, her words reaching forth to gently stroke and sensuously caress.

"She's pretty enough." Davin purposely spoke of her as though she wasn't standing there looking so ready and willing. He diverted his gaze and started toward the brook with Glylina trotting to his side. "Where did you meet her? Or is this a creation of your imagination?"

"She was my first, upon coming to this plane of existence from Gohwohn. And this was my next."

Davin glanced at the Challing. Golden hair floated, liquid in the light falling snow. The hue deepened to a brassy chestnut, the texture even more silky. Glylina's features shifted and a heart-shaped face gazed at him through intelligent, dancing eyes alight with impudent merriment.

"So lovely. Nesha was her name. Note how well-fleshed she is." Slender hands smoothed Glylina's furs over flaring hips and ample posterior. "I forget what happened to her. But Roxxna was next. Totally unlike Nesha."

As Glylina-Nesha-Roxxna spoke, another face and body developed. Davin felt as if he watched history coming back to haunt him. Some of the faces he remembered, some he had shared with Goran One-Eye. He drew a deep breath and watched the Challing as she subtly changed into still another of Goran's myriad lovers. What would a cavalcade of his own past be like? He wasn't certain he wanted to know.

"Surely, you remember me, Davin," taunted a gravelly voice Davin straggled to recognize. "In Cahri... Arra of the soft skin?" the alluring, raven-tressed woman supplied.

"Game will be stirring," Davin answered, doing his best to ignore the memories of past intimacies haunting him.

"Such a waste," Glylina said with a sigh. "I have lived among you humans for five of Raemllyn's years and still you are beyond my understanding. And you least of all! Are we not friends? Have we not shared all the pleasures and dangers that have come our way? Why not share this most delightful of adventures?"

"Because you are Goran One-Eye," Davin answered.

"I am Goran, but I am Glylina, too! Were I a human female, you would not struggle with your conscience so." There was anger in Glylina's voice, and hurt. "You'd have tupped me the first time I batted my eyelashes in your direction."

"Perhaps, but I won't be used. It's a game with you, Goran-Glylina. What purpose would there be to it? Nothing, no more than a challenge to be overcome. Another face to add to your gallery of shapes."

"Ho!" Now bitterness touched her voice. "Not only a conscience has my friend suddenly developed, but also a deep moral streak! Mayhaps he should speak of challenges and conquests to the countless wenches he has seduced and bedded in every city, town, and hamlet he has set foot in."

A rootless rage churned within Davin's breast, and he pivoted from the Challing. Was that anger rootless? Or did Glylina's discordant accusations strike closer to home than he wanted to admit.

"No, Davin, son of Anane, 'tis not the morals of a monk you possess or even guilt. You simply deny me because I am a Challing rather than a pitiful human." Glylina's voice deepened, tone and texture transforming. " 'TIS a dark fault I've discovered dwelling in your breast that I never expected existed ere now. Something we both need ponder."

Davin glanced back at his companion. Glylina's flesh shifted; her features blurred and quavered. Her slender, supple body swelled, heightened, solidified. Where Glylina stood a blink of an eye before now towered Goran, who dug an eye patch from his coat and slipped it over his head to cover the dark socket that once held a left eye.

"By Yehseen's potent staff, you're back in your usual body!" Relief suffused the Jyotian.

"Of what use is Glylina? She parades Raemllyn's most pleasing beauties before you, and you... you do nothing! I think the months that have passed since we departed the Inn of the Golden Tricorn has left you an old man, all dried and shriveled!" Goran's voice was still an octave too high. "Besides, my stomach growls, and if I left its feeding to you, I would waste away to nothing in another day or two."

Neither the massive giant nor he were in danger of wasting in the next few days, but it would be good to silence their stomachs' noisy protests, Davin agreed while he nocked an arrow and continued toward the stream. Droppings and other telltale debris littered the narrow path through the forest underbrush. When the brook's gurgling reached his ear, Davin slowed his pace. He found a clump of jhain holly near the bank and crouched behind it.

"No rez leaves a track this large." Goran pointed to bifurcated hoofprints beside the stream. "You never were much of a woodsman, or archer. I wonder what kind of creature—"

Davin held up a hand to silence his friend. The rustling of dried leaves and brush came from the right. The thief edged back the bowstring, holding it taut but not fully drawn; this way there'd be no mistake with a mis-nocked arrow.

The rez, twice the size of any such animal Davin had ever seen, timidly stepped from behind three pine saplings. Its moist nose lifted and delicately tested the air as it turned its head from side to side. The spiral-horned animal could be a ferocious fighter if trapped but it preferred flight to fight. A quick sideways toss of that gentle-looking head was capable of disemboweling a man foolish enough to get that close.

"Breakfast!" whispered Goran, his gaze transfixed on the forest deer in anticipation.

Davin's own attention homed on the rez. Hesitantly the buck picked its way toward the brook, nose aquiver and brown eyes wide. The thief's brow furrowed. Those soft, liquid eyes were fixed on treetops rather than ground. Even the largest eagle would not dare an attack on rez the size of a colt.

The rez's odd behavior was forgotten when its head dropped to the water. Davin rose slowly, quietly. In a smooth motion he pulled back the bowstring and loosed his arrow. Not straight and true, but with a wobble the shaft whistled through the air and slammed into the rez's shoulder inches from the neck, where Davin had aimed.

The rez bolted. Long and graceful, its legs stretched out as it bounded across the stream. The buck stumbled when it landed on the other side, almost going to its knees. Then with a snort, it righted itself and scrambled into the woods.

"By Nyuria's sooty jewels! There goes our breakfast! Now we have to track it down!" Goran roared with a punctuating glare at his friend before running after the wounded animal.

Davin wasted no time joining the Challing. The rez was wounded, suffering. He had to finish what he had so sloppily started.

"Blood," Goran nodded to the splotches of crimson on the ground. "You sorely wounded it with that toy of yours."

"There wasn't time to make a decent bow. Just curing the wood takes months or even a year, if done properly," Davin answered. "I made do with what was available."

"It's a poor hunter who blames his weapon." The deep bass of Goran's tone was returning with each passing moment, as was his superior air. "Ah, look, more blood. With any luck, the beast may bleed to death instead of dying of old age."

"You have much better control over your magicks now," said Davin. "Can you change into something other than a human form?"

"Like a rez? Want me to seduce our young buck?" Goran's face turned red and his hands shook with exertion, but the gargantuan form of a red-bearded warrior remained. He sheepishly glanced at the Jyotian and shrugged. "I seem to have overextended myself this morning."

Cursing his friend's parental relationship to a female pletha snake, Davin followed the spoor of blood deeper into Agda's forest. The trail led to a clearing in which the rez lay with legs tucked beneath its dappled body. The creature's head dipped groundward, horns at waist level.

"It can't fight in that position," said Goran. "Want me to break its neck?"

"Let me try another arrow. The way it whips those horns around means it's still got some life left in it. No sense risking injury with a wounded rez."

Davin circled until he had a clear shot at the animal's side. From a few yards distance, he released an arrow that wobbled and then buried itself fully in the fez's chest. The rez jerked upright, snorted foam and blood, then sank forward, its horns buried in the loam.

"Good shot," said Goran. "I always knew you would make a fine bowman if you found the proper range for your skill. How far was it? Ten feet?"

"Let's eat. I'll listen to your prattle after we've filled our bellies." Davin started forward, then froze.

From overhead came the heavy flapping of wings. The memory of the keedehn jerked his head upward.

"What are they?" Goran craned his neck to stare at the four creatures who hovered above the treetops—and them. "Never have I seen their like before."

No keedehn these, although Davin knew not whether they be demon or beast. Their forms were mockeries of the human body, thin and frail with a swollen head atop that mismatched torso. The deep gray of charcoal were their naked bodies, with broad, leathery wings of lighter hue beating from their shoulders. Nor did those bodies betray a hint of hair except bristling scalplocks that stood at the center of their bald skulls like a cockscomb.

Davin nocked a third arrow and sent it aloft, then a fourth when the winged creatures easily eluded the first shaft. The second shot, however, found its mark, biting into a leathery gray wing.

The aerial monster screeched in pain and reached over with slender-fingered, tiny hands and plucked the offending arrow from its wing, even as it fluttered to the ground. It stood on hind legs, shoulders forward to balance and support the long span of its wings. Even bent so awkwardly, it rose inches above Davin's own six-foot height.

While the thief nocked his last arrow, the demon-thing screeched, baring long yellowed fangs adrip with spittle. Davin released that final shaft and sent it singing directly toward the creature's chest.

With disdain, the demon snatched the arrow in midflight, snapped the twig and cast it aside. Its yellow eyes narrowed as it shrieked feral rage.

"The other three descend!" the Challing warned. "They're after the rez."

"Let them take it." Davin cautiously backed away from the monster who had plucked an arrow from the air while in flight. "We're no match."

His hand closed around the hilt of his sword but he left the longblade sheathed, watching as the three landed, scooped up the rez, and launched themselves back into the air.

Goran's voice was filled with awe when he spoke. "The rez must weigh as much as I do and yet they are carrying it off. What are these creatures?"

"They're nothing I've ever seen before. Or heard of, for that—"

Davin wrenched his sword free from scabbard when the remaining leathery demon shrieked and leaped forward. The blade went unbloodied. The gray-skinned monster only launched itself into the air to rejoin its companions. Enraged cries filling the sky, the demons carried off the rez and vanished over the treetops to the east.

"I knew the Forest of Agda held nothing good," said Goran. "We've just had our breakfast stolen."

"One good thing came of the encounter," said Davin. "The winged demons let us live." Somehow, this didn't strike him as being all that hopeful a sign.

He turned to Goran. "Come help me find my arrows, then we'll search for something less likely to appeal to the tastes of demons... a rabbit or a squirrel perhaps."

chapter 7

"They make such boring slaves." Kaulah fanned golden-feathered wings to balance himself. "They put up no resistance and their minds are so easily... influenced."

No hint of emotion disturbing his ethereal beauty, Adiah looked at his fellow Narain master. "It is said that you enjoy more of them than their minds."

A well-formed eyebrow arched and an amused smirk twisted Kaulah's thin lips. He said nothing.

"Fraternizing with lower life forms only diminishes our purpose." Unrest suffused Adiah when his fellow failed to answer. "We come to conquer, not breed with them."

"Yet why deny the immediate?" Kaulah's smirk abruptly faded, replaced by an emotionless mask. He tilted his golden-tressed head to a female slave busily chopping scallions. "However, you are probably correct. Take that one, for instance, the one called Lijena, she works well as a scullery maid but is less than adequate in pursuits of more sophistication and gentility."

Although Lijena heard her name, she dared not lift her gaze from the green onions. The Narain had not summoned her. Her delicate hand tightened around the handle of the knife she held.

—Kill them! Kill them now! Flee northward to Lorennion!

The voice in her skull was no more than a haunting whisper when once it had raged with a demonic fury. But that whisper was enough to guide her through the swirling fog befuddling her mind—enough to unveil the truth.

Diligently she continued her menial task, head lowered and eyes averted to conceal the hatred that smoldered in her breast. How she yearned to unleash that bridled loathing and drive the knife into a Narain heart! Kaulah's fetid heart in particular. The unspeakable things he had required of her, the humiliation she had endured to satisfy—

—Kill them! Now! Kill them and flee!

In time she would do just that, she thought, suppressing a smile that attempted to climb to her lips. Once she had cringed at the sound of that voice; now she thanked the gods for its persistence. It and it alone had opened her eyes, snapped her free of the Narain's mental bondage and allowed her to regain a semblance of her own individuality. Whenever the mental coercion mounted, she listened to the demon within her... remembered the nights with Kaulah.

In spite of herself, Lijena smiled. Kaulah did not sleep in the bed of an earthbound man. No being with wings sprouting so prominently could. She had not enjoyed dangling from the rods and harnesses the Narain used for sleeping. For that discomfort, she had extracted a small bit of vengeance.

Lijena tucked the small kitchen knife into the concealing folds of her tattered skirt. She had used the blade on Kaulah's sleeping harness. One night when the golden-haired, winged monster thrashed about overmuch, a strap would break and send him crashing to the palace's jeweled floor. Hopefully with the snap of his thin, perfect neck.

It was little enough in way of revenge but it was all that lay open to her—for now.

"So easily influenced," Kaulah repeated as the pair of bird-like—godlike—creatures turned and walked from the scullery, wings aflutter behind them.

Lijena scraped and chopped the scallions into a bowl while her mind savored schemes of poison spread atop a tempting slice of meat or a tuber or vegetable. The vengeance was merely a daydream; the Narain used slaves to sample the morsels brought to their tables.

"It is not possible. You are somehow free of their influence, at least for a time." The weary voice of the cook came from Lijena's side. "Be wary. If I have noticed, they will also see."

Lijena's aquamarine eyes went wide. Hastily she lowered them, feigning the dull, mind-clouded state induced by the Narain. "We can escape from Mapalah!"

"No. No one can escape the Narain palace, especially me." He snorted.

"Does freedom so frighten you?"

He shook his head. "It is what I have considered for five long years. I was among the first to be enslaved. They swooped down from above on their golden wings. We thought them divine beings." He shuddered. "Even after all this time I find it impossible to think on those raids and not hate them all the more."

"Would you aid me in escaping? In trying to free the others?" Lijena's enthusiasm rose with the realization that another had in part shed his mental chains. If one, then there could be others. "We can organize a rebellion. Overthrow them!"

"No!" The negation came too sharply for Lijena to dismiss it out of hand as being cowardice on the old man's part.

"Why not? Do you like being their slave?"

"My family would suffer... more than they have already." Tears welled up in the man's rheumy eyes. "I cannot risk it."

"So you prefer servitude to freedom, no matter what the risk?" Lijena's anger fired her blood; a flush rose to her cheeks.

The cook stared at her as if she were some sort of curiosity. "What is it within you that prevents the Narain from subjugating you? There must be a potent force inside that overwhelms even their magicks."

She could not tell him of Lorennion's demon, how it had broken the Narain spells, "Life has been treacherous for me, of late. I have killed to gain my freedom, I have lost a lover who sold me into slavery, I have escaped from a mage who wanted me for little more than the Narain do, and I have come through it all."

At the Inn of the Golden Tricorn, Yorioma Faine had shown her a few elementary spells to escape from the demon dwelling in her mind. Once free of the Narain, she would employ them. Until that freedom, she needed the demon to battle the Narain's mental commands.

"Then you'll not aid me?" she asked.

"Nay, but I'll not be hindering ye either," the old cook answered. "If you must persist with this foolishness, seek the slave called Berenicis. Like you, he has shed the Narain's power. I know; I have seen it in his eyes."

Berenicis! Lijena's mind reeled. The dethroned Jyotian ruler was responsible for her enslavement! He had kidnapped her from the Inn of the Golden Tricorn and used the demon possessing her like a hound to guide him to Lorennion's keep. Of all the men within Mapalah, why did it have to be Berenicis?

Lijena drew a breath through clenched teeth to steel herself. If she had to seek out Berenicis' help, she would. Once free of Mapalah and the Narain, she would deal with the swine— or let the demon do so.

Valora stiffened when she heard Zarek Yannis' honeyed words. Every time sweetness softened his tone, it meant only misery for her. Valora pulled her black silk, floor-length robes closer about her trim body and wondered if she had been caught in some petty intrigue—and how she would alibi her way out.

"As you know," Yannis said, lounging back on the throne, legs thrust out and a cup of wine indolently held in one hand, "the Faceless Ones are my most potent weapon. They must be used at the proper moment, in the proper fashion."

Valora kept silent. There were undercurrents here she did not understand. She cursed her love-besotted guard captain for not keeping her better informed. He had outlived his usefulness to her, anyway. Already Valora had found another, more ambitious and capable officer to replace him.

"Magicks have been on the wane since the time of Kwerin Bloodhawk and his pet sorcerer Edan."

"That is so, my lord," she replied. Her ebony eyes betrayed nothing.

"When I contrived to resurrect the Faceless, many considered this to be the height of... blasphemy. Actually, it was simple enough for a man of my ability."

Valora was uncertain whether he bragged or lied. Other than summoning the hell riders from their dark realm, the usurper had never displayed the slightest hint of magicks. Had he employed a mage to reanimate the Faceless Ones? Surely not her predecessor? No, she was certain of that. Valora had pored over Payat'Morve's tomes and found nothing to indicate that the mage controlled the vast powers required.

"The magicks may have faded, but there is a new stirring. Felrad seeks the sheath for Kwerin's sword," Yannis continued.

"It is so rumored, my lord."

"It is fact!" he snapped. "Payat used my Faceless Ones to seek it out and he failed. He thought I knew nothing of his backstabbing mission. If he had succeeded in obtaining the sword and sheath, he would have deposed me." Zarek Yannis settled back, took a deep drink, then smiled insincerely. "You would never do such a thing, would you, my dear?"

"My lord knows full well my loyalty to the throne—and its occupant." Valora held her anger in check when Yannis laughed derisively. He did know the extent of her loyalty and only taunted her. "How may I be of service?"

Zarek Yannis studied her for a moment, then set down the wine goblet with a hollow clank. Valora felt a presence behind her. She turned and saw one of the Faceless, hot red eyes burning from a dark oval where a human would have features.

A taloned finger pointed toward her and the spade-tail flicked about nervously.

"She is the one," said Yannis.

The Faceless One advanced. Valora prepared to die with a curse on her lips.

chapter 8

Lijena eased a moth-eaten blanket back, slid from her cot, and glanced about the dim-lit female quarters. Her head cocked from side to side, listening. The sounds of sleep, gentle breathing, snores, and an occasional cough, came from the women around her.

Ignoring the racing of her heart, she picked her way through the maze of cots to a single wooden door without lock on the opposite side of the chamber and slipped into the main corridors of the Narain's magnificent Palace of Mapalah. Her bare feet made no sound on the opal floor when she turned toward the wing of Mapalah housing Berenicis and the captured Huata.

Halfway to her destination, she heard the susurration of feathers against feathers. Heart threatening to explode from her chest, she ducked into a night-shadow-darkened doorway and pressed her back flat against rich chiin wood. A door ten strides down the corridor opened; the warm, yellow glow of oil lamps harshly sliced into the blackness.

Two of the Narain emerged, wings touching ceaselessly and expressions of satisfaction on their faces of perfect beauty, closing the door behind them. Holding her breath, she watched them pass. Lost in mutual admiration and throaty cooing sounds, they passed, neither noticing the woman who did her best to melt into the grain of an unyielding door.

An overly held breath escaped Lijena's trembling lips. She tucked a hand into her tattered dress and withdrew one of the two kitchen knives hidden there—just in case. She then pushed from the recessed doorway to hasten down the arched corridor to an even wider passage that led to the left.

Windows inset high in Mapalah's walls allowed the silver light of Raemllyn's two moons to spill into this corridor known as the Hall of Birth. A tapestry hung on the north wall drew her gaze. How many countless times had she passed through this very hall since her captivity in Mapalah began? Yet this was the first time she actually saw the woven work of art.

The pictorial history in silken thread told of the Narain advent into Raemllyn. At the center of the gargantuan hanging was woven a blue sky torn by a jagged rent through which came a radiant line of Narain on wings of gold.

Lijena frowned as recognition penetrated her mind: They were shifted into this world from another.

Beneath the aerial procession of godlike beings scrambled waves of creatures who appeared escaped from the bowels of Hell itself! Saucer-eyed things with spidery bodies. Grotesque, twisted monsters with heads and torsos of men and women, trailing tails of gigantic serpents. Horned entities with black scales covering squat bodies from head to cloven hoof.

She gasped. There amid the unholy horde rode nightmares out of Raemllyn's own half-forgotten past, the Faceless Ones! Brandishing swords of crystallized flame they came astride mounts with hooves aflame.

The Narain, the Faceless, the multitude of demonic creatures—the ugly pieces fell into place. An uncontrollable shudder edged along Lijena's spine. It was rumored the usurper Zarek Yannis had unleashed the hell riders on Raemllyn once again. Now she knew it for truth. But more than the Faceless had come through Yannis' rent between the dimensions. He had released myriad demons to plague the world—including the Narain!

She traced along the tapestry, and saw the Narain in the Forest of Agda, the establishment of Mapalah, the gradual addition of slaves to do the menial labor. It was all here in the wondrously woven thread, and more. But she wasted time. She had no idea how long it might be before some alert Narain found her missing from the slave quarters—or Kaulah came desiring another night of amusement.

Lijena reluctantly abandoned the wall and all the information it held, again trotting toward Mapalah's far wing. She reached the male quarters without incident, wondering at the lack of guards posted. She smiled ruefully at the thought she might be the only human not under total mind control, in spite of the cook's assurance Berenicis had also freed himself. The others slept when they were told, ate when ordered, performed like Spring Fair beasts at their trainers' command.

Opening the door, Lijena peered into the dimness. Gradually her eyes accustomed themselves to the murky gloom. She saw Varaza and several others of the Huata nomad band snoring softly. She entered and tried to awaken them. None stirred.

They slept as if drugged—drugged by Narain mental commands.

Here, too, she found the Jyotian lord Berenicis stretched on his back atop a straw pallet thrown in a corner. Certain the cook had lied and her desperate mission was in vain, she crossed the room to the man. Kneeling at his side she whispered, "Lord Berenicis."

"No need for such caution, my lovely." Berenicis' cold, gray eyes opened. "None of these louts will hear you. They're deep under the Narain spells. As for me, the lice in this dung hole rob me of even a decent night's rest."

"You... you aren't mind-clouded like the others?" In spite of Berenicis' aloof tone, Lijena feared to believe there was hope.

"Of course not. Only the weaker minds succumb to such intrusions. I am of sterner stuff, and, I see, so are you."

"You make it sound as if you doubted that." Lijena harbored no doubt. Even slavehood had not erased the man's haughty pride.

"One can only surmise." Berenicis sat up and winced, picked a scurrying louse from his chest and crushed it between thumb and forefinger. "But our minds must travel the same path— escape—otherwise, you would not have sought me out. Have you a scheme to be free of Mapalah?"

"I thought... hoped..." she sputtered, frustrated by the bastard's air of superiority. Then with contempt, "Haven't you one?"

"Of course I do, child. It requires daring—and two people. Even a warrior of my exalted ability cannot escape the Narain Circle alone."

"I have weapons." Lijena extracted a second kitchen knife from her dress.

How easily she had stolen them from beneath her masters' noses. The mind-clouding worked against the Narain, also. None of them considered it possible for a slave to steal, unless so ordered. In that weakness would lay their downfall.

"How nice," Berenicis said dryly. "With those we might be able to prick our fingers. We need weapons."

"These were the best I could do. They don't leave swords and bows about for me to filch."

"I wondered about that. You were quickly enough separated from the rest of us." A sly expression crossed Berenicis' pale face.

—Kill him! Drive the blade into his wormy heart!

Lijena's hand tightened around one of the knives. For once the demon's desires and her own coincided. To drive the tiny blade straight into his aptly named blackheart would provide the utmost satisfaction. She supressed the urge; she needed his clear mind now.

"Swine, I came here seeking to escape, not to listen to your insults!"

"Oh? The demon within still drives you to Lorennion?"

The sorcerer's name sent a river of cold coursing down Lijena's spine. There was so much she didn't understand, and the mage Lorennion was a portion of it.

"We must escape the Narain," Lijena said firmly. "Your plan?"

"Swords. Bow and arrows. We need both, and they may be had in their armory." Berenicis' gaze moved to the chamber's door. "The corridors of Mapalah are empty now. We can break in, steal what we need, and be at the edge of the Circle before dawn. That is the dangerous part—escaping the Circle."

"What is this Circle?"

"A magical barrier. Its nature eludes me, but I believe that two people might traverse it. One enters and is frozen by intense pain—the one remaining behind must push the first through. The process is reversed, the one on the outside pulling the other past the agony of the barrier."

"I can endure anything to regain my freedom. I have, before."

The grimness in her voice drew the Jyotian lord's eye back to her. "Let us put aside any differences of opinion. We are forced into alliance. Is that so dreadful?"

It was, but she had no alternative. Lijena nodded her acceptance, then rose when he pushed from the straw mat and followed him from the chamber.

"Down there. The armory is kept locked, but not to prevent theft by slaves. I believe that the Narain masters want to keep the weapons from their younglings' hands." Berenicis tilted his head to the left.

"They fear rebellion?"

"Who can say?" Berenicis replied.

Lijena noted how softly the man walked. Even on booted feet, his step came as silent as a cat's. They reached the door to the armory, and Berenicis dropped to his knees before it, as if offering prayer.

"The lock is not complex, just stubborn."

"You've tried it before?" Lijena bit her tongue. While she had dangled helplessly from rods and harness, Kaulah's plaything, Berenicis had come this path many times before, scouting, studying, probing for weaknesses.

"Let me try one of your knives." Berenicis took the slenderbladed knife, thrust it into the lock and began digging about.

Lijena heard tiny clickings as tumblers slipped aside. Then the door swung inward on well-oiled hinges. She glanced up and down the hallway to assure herself they were still alone.

More than an armory lay within. They had broken into the Narain vaults. Strewn about carelessly were chests filled with golden bists, jewels of every description, chains of the purest silver, and bags laden with fragrant herbs worth a thousand times their weight in gold in Raemllyn's cities.

"Their storeroom," she said, "is filled with their ill-gotten gains. How many of our rank have they killed or enslaved to amass such a fortune?"

"Thousands, from the look of it," said Berenicis.

Lijena looked at him sharply. His tone hinted at admiration for any group that could accomplish such perfidy and death.

Lijena hefted a short bow and found a quiver of arrows. She tested the pull—a bit stiff, but if she found a target, that would not deter her.

"Here is the one I seek!" Berenicis hefted the blade of Kwerin Bloodhawk. It had been stripped of its oilcloth and had been sheathed in a plain wood scabbard. Berenicis belted it around his middle, then began stuffing jewels into his pockets until they bulged.

"You steal from them?" asked Lijena. "Why? It will only slow you down."

"They weigh little. If I survive this mad venture, I'll have the wealth needed to regain my throne. And if not..." Berenicis shrugged.

Scraping sounds!

Lijena swirled about. There in the doorway stood a Narain youngling, staring on in disbelief as the two slaves plundered their masters' treasures.

—Kill!

Lijena reacted rather than thought. Nocking an arrow, she drew and loosened it in one smooth movement.

The shaft flew straight and true. With a solid thud, it embedded itself to the fletching in the young Narain's narrow chest.

The fledgling stared down at the butt end of the arrow protruding from his body. His mouth jerked open to emit a cry more bird than human before he crumpled facedown amid the Narain wealth.

"Qar take him!" Berenicis cursed. "Come, we must be gone quickly. Surely they heard its cry. The whole palace will be awake. And these damnable creatures dote on their children so."

Child? A pang of guilt suffused her. She had never considered the young monsters as—

"Come!" Berenicis grasped her wrist and dragged her from the armory. "To the Circle! It's now or never. They will never allow us a second chance, not after you have slain one of their children."

Inwardly Lijena cringed again at the word "children." She shook away the false remorse. A youngling it might have been, but not a child! The Narain spawn were demons drawn to this world from another realm. Their own tapestry had revealed that.

"Faster!" Berenicis urged as he shouldered open a palace door. "They'll be on us before we reach the gardens!"

The pair burst forth from the halls of Mapalah and stumbled to a halt, arms protectively thrown across their faces.

An adult Narain hovered outside, wings beating at their heads. Unspoken communication flowed between Lijena and Berenicis. He drew the legendary blade strapped about his waist and dodged to the right. The movement drew the Narain's attention; Lijena slipped left, fitted an arrow and fired. The shaft caught the golden-haired being in one wing.

Slipping, atilt in midair, the Narain ceased its attack on Berenicis—a mistake. The creature fluttered down within reach of his sword. Perhaps for the first time in a millenium, the Sword of Kwerin Bloodhawk savored blood.

The Narain jerked spastically, an ear-piercing shriek ringing out before all life fled.

"Run!" cried Berenicis as he darted for the magic-born Circle enclosing the Narain palace grounds. "That one's alerted the entire flock of the Qar-cursed birds for certain."

Lijena sprinted across the well-tended gardens. Behind her came the heavy beat of wings. Nocking another arrow, she spun, looked up and fired. The shaft sank into the chest of the Narain. She didn't wait to watch the godlike creature tumble from the air, turned and ran after Berenicis.

"How far?" she gasped out.

"Don't know. Some distance farther. Keep running. Need two to get through the magical barrier."

The flapping of feathered wings against the night came from over her shoulder once more. Lijena fitted another shaft and swirled. The dew-soaked grass robbed her bare feet of balance. Bow and arrow flying from her grasp, she went down. She but glimpsed the descending horde of golden-winged Narain before they were upon her, pinning arms and legs to the ground.

Sobs of rage and frustration choked her throat as she struggled vainly against the viselike hands that held her. She was once more their prisoner and slave.

chapter 9

Davin Anane carefully chose his footing as he made his way through the forest of Agda. Methodically, he avoided twigs and piles of snow-frosted leaves. The effort was worth the goal—a rez buck contentedly grazing in a small clearing ahead.

Davin drew back, sighted, and let the arrow fly. Like all his others, this arrow wobbled as it sailed to its target. The flint-tipped shaft did not kill cleanly, but it struck deeply enough to drop the spiral-horned animal to its knees.

Goran One-Eye roared and rushed out, ax in hand. The rez, wide-eyed with fear, struggled to rise. Too late! Goran gripped the ax in both hands, swung with all the power bundled in his immense body, and felled the forest deer with a single stroke.

"At last!" Davin trotted beside his friend. "I was beginning to think that we were going to starve in the midst of a forest bounding with game."

"I was getting tired of the boiled leaves you insisted we eat," Goran grumbled as he cleaned the ax's edge on winter-brown grass.

"Kept the sides of our bellies from rubbing together!" Davin answered. He didn't care for Goran's appraisal of the plants he'd been finding. While they weren't the most tasty, they were certainly nourishing, as nourishing as a rabbit or a squirrel would have been had the furry creatures not proven too skittish for the two hunters.

Little wonder to their fear with those gray-winged demons about, Davin realized. His gaze returned to the slain rez. But now we've a real meal!

Goran scanned the sky, a growl reverberating deep in his throat. Davin's eyes turned upward. His heart almost stopped when he saw the objects of the Challing's anger.

"More of Nyuria's accursed, overgrown stable flies," rumbled Goran. He shook a clenched fist at the sky. "By the sacred winds of Gohwohn, no! No, do you hear me! You not be tasting this beast. It's mine, damn your gray hides and flapping wings! Mine!"

Goran hefted his war ax above his head and twirled it as if it were nothing more than a twig. While he raged, Davin worked. Hasty knife cuts sliced away both haunches and some side meat. Davin had no time to properly dress down the rez and didn't care. Those gray dots grew larger with each pound of his temples.

"Goran, forget them! I have enough meat. Come on!"

"I'll knock them on their gray arses. They'll never steal meat from me again!" the Challing roared.

"Goran!"

Davin dragged the meat toward the shelter of the overhanging tree limbs. The Challing waved his ax a few more times, then retreated. By the time the aerial demons landed, talons ripping at the rez, Davin and Goran were securely beyond their range.

"It pains me, it truly does," Goran grumbled. "They do nothing for their meal, yet they dine well. We kill, they eat. No!"

"Goran, calm down." Davin grabbed a handful of fur coat and yanked the changeling around. "Let it be. We have enough. There's no need to anger the demons."

"They anger me!"

"Let's eat, then discuss it." Davin kept one eye over a shoulder. He saw the winged demons lift, carrying the rez's carcass. But only when they disappeared in the distance did he start a fire and roast the succulent meat. By the time they'd finished off an entire haunch, Davin leaned back and picked at his teeth, eyeing the remaining hulk of meat. He considered placing it on the fire, then decided against it. He was well enough sated and didn't want to get too loggy.

"At last, a real meal," said Goran. The Challing, too, was happy. "You did yourself proud, even if we did let the best parts get away with those winged monsters."

"What do you suppose they are?" Furrows ran across the thief's forehead. "Are they something from Gohwohn?"

"Nothing like I've seen before, with one eye or two. They are much too substantial to come from my plane of existence." Goran held out a brawny arm. Subtle changes shifted flesh, making it more slender, less hairy, more feminine.

Davin swallowed a comment about the keedehn they had slain being as "substantial" as any of Raemllyn's denizens. "These demons do seem bound to their form." Davin watched with fascination as Goran's hand returned.

"Where do they go, I wonder," the Challing mused. "There are certainly enough of them. Might a nest be nearby? By Nyuria's navel, that must be it! I'd like to finish off a few of them."

"We've other matters to occupy our time," Davin said. "We still haven't picked up Lijena's trail."

"The Huata band has vanished from the face of this mud ball. Perhaps some rent in the fabric of space opened and sucked them through, just as I was drawn onto this misbegotten world."

"Lijena," Davin stated, ignoring his friend's suggestion.

"Always Lijena!" Goran shook his shaggy head. "This demon ride of hers takes her into more trouble than we can cope with. Mages like Lorennion value their privacy all too highly. Besides, the wench is too skinny for my tastes."

"You've mentioned that." Davin grimaced. A week had passed since they last sighted a rut left in the soft earth by one of the Huata wagons. "I wish we knew more of this Lorennion and the Blood Fountain. What is it about it that can terrorize a trio of the Faceless Ones and set them fleeing like cravens?"

"Your Lijena did utter the name, and they did flee," admitted Goran.

"Not Lijena, the demon possessing her," corrected Davin. "They fled when she mentioned the Blood Fountain. What potent device is it that Lorennion has that makes them cower?"

His only answer was a loud snoring. Goran lay fast asleep, gorged on rez meat.

Davin nodded glumly, pulled his cloak around his own broad shoulders, and leaned back. His eyelids drooped, and within minutes he, too, slept, to dream of red burning eyes, the Faceless Ones, and leather-skinned flying demons.

Valora rode in the center of a ring of Faceless Ones. A full dozen of them had ridden from Kavindra at Zarek Yannis' behest. The woman stirred uneasily in her saddle, wincing. Even her most potent healing spells failed to relieve the discomfort of buttocks and thighs.

Valora had learned why the Faceless were also known as hell riders. From the isthmus between Upper and Lower Raemllyn, they had ridden day and night, stopping only to allow her brief meals and a few hours of sleep.

Although there was earth beneath her mount when they rode, she was certain it was but an illusion. Now and then, from the corner of an eye, she glimpsed mists about her; whether clouds, or the ether between reality and nightmare, eluded her. But the Faceless Ones did not travel as mere men. The Forest of Agda lay but a day or two ahead, an overland journey that required months for merchant caravans.

Hardly a minute passed without the mage imagining some new and more terrible torture to wreak on Yannis for this indignity. She was a sorceress, not a common soldier.

She glanced at the hell creatures about her, remembering her sole question the first day of their journey—"Are you unable to speak?"

"No," a hollow, soulless voice had answered.

For a full week the Faceless had not spoken again, neither to one another nor to her. Valora was uncertain whether she should be displeased by this or give thanks to the gods. The stories—myths—she had heard as a child all seemed to be nothing short of the truth. The Faceless were indefatigable, they required scant food to survive and had senses more acute than any human's.

She jostled from side to side in the punishing saddle; needles of pain shot through legs and posterior. Cursing beneath her breath, she tried to sort through all she had learned of the Faceless. Was it in her power to control them? If Zarek Yannis managed it, why not she?

The demons never revealed their faces; they might not have any, she knew. The burning red eyes were inhuman, and no other feature showed. Skeletal hands held a power surpassing any human's; their endurance matched that of any hundred strong men. But what spell resurrected them, what spell bound them to servitude?

Valora sourly remembered that day a week earlier in Yannis' throne room. He had stretched out on the Velvet Throne and summoned the Faceless One. Valora had believed her life was to end there and then, that all her plottings against Yannis had been discovered. Even now she wasn't certain this journey wasn't the High King's warped way of removing her. Far from her sources of information, she posed no threat to the usurper of the throne, and none would know if she died.

Still, what Yannis had told her in the throne room made sense, after a fashion.

"You, my darling Valora," Zarek Yannis had said, "must do what Payat'Morve failed to do. Discover Lorennion's secret. Find the source of his power. We must have it. And we will!"

"Blood Fountain," had said the Faceless One. "From this comes his power. Immortality!"

"Lorennion is rumored to be immortal. He has been a force in Raemllyn for many years, but I doubt the claims." Valora had shaken her head. Claims of immortality were common among wizards and held no truth.

"They are true," said Yannis. "Lorennion is clever. A name change here and there, now and then..." He idly waved his hand, showing how simple it would be. "His passion for privacy aids him. Who can say that Lorennion is not the same person as, oh, Tolleok or even Nnamdi?"

"Impossible. Nnamdi was defeated by Kwerin Bloodhawk and his mage Edan at—"

Valora's sentence was cut off sharply when the Faceless One jerked back and hissed loudly at the mere mention of Edan.

"With a mage of Lorennion's power, anything is possible," said Yannis.

Valora was not misled by the ruler's seeming nonchalance. His body, for all its lounging posture, was tensed like a steel spring. This mission meant a great deal to Yannis, more than he openly admitted. And that drew Valora's attention.

"Payat failed to discover Lorennion's secrets," she said-"What makes you think you can succeed now?"

"There are more of the Faceless Ones at my command now— at your command, my dear. I am entrusting a platoon of them to your direct command."

The story unraveled and Valora found herself on the trail north to Lorennion's hidden keep in the Forest of Agda. Zarek Yannis' generous gift of a dozen Faceless to command proved something less. As they rode, six of the hell riders had gone off on other missions, leaving only the six surrounding her. At times, Valora wasn't sure if they were hers to command or they were there to make certain she obeyed Yannis.

The Forest of Agda lay another two-day bone-jarring ride away. And hidden away in the forest stood Lorennion's keep. Valora settled her mind and worked on various avenues, both magical and otherwise, to use on the mage.

The dark-haired woman smiled. She would succeed where Payat'Morve had failed. Not only would she learn all that Lorennion held dearest and most secret, she would slay the sorcerer and go on to rival—surpass—Nnamdi, the ancient mage responsible for originally animating the Faceless. Her name would echo down the corridors of history!

chapter 10

"Hell-spawn! Nyuria's lackeys!"

Davin Anane stirred as his friend's grumblings intruded on the restful oblivion of sleep. Opening a bleary eye, he saw the red-maned giant warming his backside at a small campfire while he glared at the treetops.

"Is this some new Challing rite? To rise each morning before the sun is fully risen and curse its bright face?" Davin rubbed the sleep from his eyes and pushed to his elbows.

Goran One-Eye jabbed a finger at the sky. "There! Four... no... seven more of those winged sharks!"

The changeling pointed between the winterbare limbs of a morda tree to a vee of the winged demons passing overhead. The Jyotian thief watched the flight until he lost the dark forms in the fiery orb of the new day's sun.

"Better in the sky than here, trying to steal away the last of our rez." Davin rose and bundled his sleeping furs.

"Is there no curiosity left in you, Davin?" Goran looked at his friend with disdain. "Are you so smitten with that boney wench that all else in the world passes you by? Think of it! We might be the first to track down a gray-skinned, leathery flying demon with an appetite matching even mine! The heroic songs minstrels will weave of two so courageous!"

"Impossible! No creature walking—or flying—in Raemllyn has an appetite equal to yours!"

In truth, Davin did not disagree with the Challing. On the other hand, curiosity was said to have killed the cat. He didn't want the same to be repeated about cat thieves, one in particular—himself. While the gray-winged demons did weigh heavily in his mind, he was perfectly willing to let them be as long as they did the same to him. With the mage Lorennion waiting at the end of their journey, it seemed ridiculous to go chasing demons through Agda's forest.

"Speaking of appetites, shall we share the rest of the rez for breakfast?" Goran lifted bushy evebrows hopefully.

"We'll save the meat for midday and this evening, unless you'd like leaf soup tonight," Davin said while he saddled and bridled his gelding.

"Bah!" Goran slipped a foot into a stirrup and rose to the back of his stolen Weysh stallion. "Better to silently endure the agonies of starvation than to sup on weeds again!"

Davin smiled when he mounted. Goran would endure his "starvation" until midday, of that he was certain. He was just as sure the Challing's stoic belt-notching would not be silent.

Goran cocked his head to the east and scratched at his matted red beard. "Do we follow those winged brigands?"

"Only by coincidence," Davin answered, reining his mount toward the dawn. "The last wagon tracks we saw led eastward."

For once Goran didn't argue, but nudged his horse's flanks with his heels, urging the stallion beside Davin. "When Yehseen molded this portion of Raemllyn, he must have been amid a fight with his wife. Have you ever seen terrain more desolate?"

Davin closed his mind to the Challing. Even for one firstborn and last survivor of the House of Anane who had been raised in the bustle of the city-state Jyotis, Agda held myriad awe-invoking wonders.

No mere wood, Agda's forest appeared to be the mother of all forests to the Jyotian. Here grew pines, morda, chiin, firs, oaks, and the great blue wood trees with their purple-hued hardwood so highly prized by the shipbuilders of Raemllyn. He admitted to himself that were he inclined to be a merchant, he could build a fortune here exporting timber to the rest of Raemllyn's provinces.

Reigning above the dense forest were the mountains. No, he said to himself, these were more than mountains. They strained from the earth like gigantic teeth of stone that rose ever upward to bite at the sky. Ragged crags they were with frosty caps of ice and snow. Had it not been for the wide-stretching valleys that opened between these monarchs of Agda, Goran and he would have had little use for their mounts. Of more value would have been the picks and ropes of mountain climbers.

It's in this untamed wilderness Lorennion has erected his keep, Davin reflected, fully aware than an ordinary man—or woman—could never hope to find a mage who wanted to remain hidden in this wild land.

Then Lijena was not ordinary. Even were she not possessed by a demon that drove her toward Lorennion's keep, she would still be the most extraordinary woman Davin had ever met. The simple thought of the golden-haired beauty stirred a befuddling storm of emotions in the Jyotian's breast.

Love? Davin was unwilling to accept the confusing feelings as love. In Leticia, the Huata leader Tymon had said Lijena and his fates were interwined. Perhaps it was the gods themselves who manipulated his life, who sent him chasing halfway across Raemllyn after a woman who swore his death.

The Sitala offered no explanation of the fates they wove, but their divine, spellbinding fingers seemed to have dipped into the life of a simple thief. How else could he explain his encounter with his most hated enemy, Berenicis the Blackheart, after all these years, and so far from their homeland of Jyotis?

Or finding himself involved in the struggle between Prince Felrad, High King Bedrich's true heir to the Velvet Throne, and the usurper Zarek Yannis? Since Yannis' treacherous murder of Bedrich at the Battle of Kressia, Davin had carefully maintained a distance from all things political. Now he was unwittingly involved in the quest for the Sword of Kwerin Bloodhawk—a weapon that could return Felrad to Kavindra in glory, or secure the Velvet Throne for Zarek Yannis for once and for all.

"Davin!"

Goran's paw of a hand rudely shook the thief's shoulder. Davin looked at his friend and blinked with uncertainty.

"Ah, that's better. You were like a man asleep with his eyes wide!" Goran grunted. "Probably haven't heard a word I've said all morning!"

All morning? Davin glanced through winter-barren boughs to see the sun at its zenith.

"I said it's time we gave our mounts a rest... and consider a portion of the rez for ourselves," Goran continued.

Davin's gaze shifted to his friend, then back to the sun, unable to accept that the whole morning had passed with him lost in thought—fled in a few heartbeats. "Goran, do you sense anything?"

"No more than I've felt since we entered this accursed wood. Except, of course, the torturous cries of my belly. Do we eat, or don't we?"

Edging aside his rootless disquiet, Davin grinned. "We eat!"

"The gods are merciful!" Goran's own toothy grin of ap-proval stretched from one ear to the other. "All this riding makes me famished."

"Thinking about riding makes you famished." Davin reined his bay beneath a needle-cloaked pine and dismounted.

While Goran hobbled the mounts in a stand of winter grass, the Jyotian busied himself with building a fire and spitting half the remaining rez haunch above the flames. Soon the savory aroma of roasting meat wafted in the air. Goran settled by the fire, his single good eye affixed to the meat.

"Is there a feast more—"

The flap of leathery wings came from above.

The Challing's head jerked up, while his right hand grasped the haft of his ax. Tension flowed from his taut body when the vee of five gray demons passed to the east.

"More of the monsters. The sixth such flight I've seen this morning." Goran shook his head as he followed their eastward course. "They're as thick as fleas on an alley mongrel."

"Only five this time and..." Davin's voice trailed off. He turned and snapped a quick look at his friend.

Goran, too, wore an expression of disbelief.

"Yes, friend Davin, I saw it, too. Or rather, I didn't see it. One moment, they were aloft, the next, poof! They vanished from midsky."

"They didn't land." Davin gave voice to his thoughts. "They were too high in the air for that. They just... disappeared."

"They passed above that low-slung rise, then... then vanished! You'll not sway me this time, Davin. The rise is no more than an hour's ride away. We travel that way!" Goran pointed to the east. "After we've eaten, of course."

Davin nodded and sliced the Challing a grease-dripping chunk of rez, then the same for himself. By the time they licked the last juices from their fingers, the pair of adventurers had seen three additional flights of the gray demons vanish into nothingness beyond the eastern rise. Neither man nor Challing spoke as they remounted and reined toward the bluff; both constantly watched the sky.

"More." Goran squinted into the sun with his good eye when they crested the rocky hill. "At least three."

Davin watched the creatures fly overhead then soar above the secluded valley that stretched for leagues before him. Halfway across the wooded terrain, the winged demons winked out of existence. One moment they glided through the air; in the next instant only the blue sky remained.

"Some quirk of the rising air?" Davin straggled to find logic in the illogical.

"I can see the far side of the valley. They disappeared into nothingness." Goran pointed down a forty-five degree incline to the foot of the bluff. "There's something else of interest."

Davin's heart tripled its pace when he sighted the brightly painted wagons below the rise. "The Huata! Lijena!"

"Wagons—but no Huata," Goran answered. "No one stirs in the camp."

Davin said nothing. Instead he reined the black gelding toward the valley floor.

"Davin! Wait! The rocks..."

The thief didn't hear the rest of his companion's warning; he was too busy trying to keep his seat in the saddle. The gelding's hooves scrambled to find solid ground. There was nothing but loose stone and earth, and a steep incline meant for mountain goats rather than horses.

Hands clenched in mane and thighs and calves gripping the horse's sides, Davin jerked back and forth, struggling to maintain a precarious balance. Only when the gelding stopped its panicked fight, settled haunches to loam and stretched forelegs stiffly before it, did the Jyotian release his breath in a burst of relief. The horse slid down the incline and stumbled to all fours when it finally reached the bottom.

Stroking the gelding's neck to soothe him, Davin glanced up to where Goran still sat on the crest. He gritted his teeth. The Challing was doubled over in the saddle; his laughter echoing across the valley.

"Can you manage better, oaf?" Davin called out.

"Of course! Am I not a Challing?" Goran sputtered between peals of booming mirth. He pointed to the right. "I'll ride the ridge until I find a way down meant for man and beast."

"But that could take hours!" Davin scanned the long bluff. Its face was rock and stone for as far as he could see.

"Aye! But my neck will still be intact," Goran answered as he reined the stallion to the side.

"Yehseen's pox!" Davin cursed after the changeling. He then eased the gelding's head toward the Huata wagons.

"Nothing! No one!" Goran stepped from the fourth empty wagon and walked to the last.

"I have heard of ships found sailing on the high seas without crews. Never caravan wagons." Davin rested a hand on his sword hilt while he watched the Challing perform the search he had completed hours ago, and with the same results—nothing. His gaze shifted over the ringed wagons, their gaudy colors muted in the dusk.

"There's no sign of struggle. Varaza would fight Black Qar himself before simply abandoning his wagons." Goran opened a small wooden chest he found in the Huata leader's wagon. The Challing tugged at his beard then dipped a hand into the box. "For the first time, I feel almost guilty about lightening the Huata's load."

His hand came out of the chest with a fistful of gold bists which he deposited in an empty pouch hung on his belt. "Almost!"

Davin shook his head at the Challing's display of greed. "It's as though the band was camped here... going about their separate tasks one moment, and in the next, they vanished. There's food and drink on the tables. And there by the remnants of a fire is Ruggo's smithy tools. You can see where he was shoeing a horse."

"Evil swept through here taking Varaza and the rest with it." Goran exited the wagon and surveyed the abandoned campsite. He then looked to the center of the valley. "The gray demons?"

"No signs of a fight," Davin reminded his friend with a shake of his head. "Even their horses have vanished. No spoor left around the camp, either."

"Davin, look!" Goran thrust a finger to the sky.

Davin's gaze sighted along that pointing finger. Aloft, four demons appeared from nowhere.

"Lorennion?" Davin's brow furrowed when he glanced at the Challing. "Have we found the mage's keep?"

"He certainly controls magicks potent enough to rip the Huata from their wagons," Goran said, continuing to stare at the winged creatures. "And your Lijena, too."

"Stop calling her my Lijena!"

"My pardon," Goran said without a trace of sincerity in his voice. "But the fact remains that it was she who rode so desperately for Lorennion. Could not her demon have spoken to the mage and brought forth such as this?"

Goran swept an arm toward the empty wagons.

Davin watched the four gray, winged demons disappear over the rim of the valley on their unknown mission. He didn't answer Goran. What the Challing said was all too likely.

"If harm has befallen Varaza's band, Berenicis also has felt its sting," said Goran. "No mage would keep his like around, especially with him snuffling about for the sheath to Kwerin Bloodhawk's sword."

"Do not underestimate the Blackheart," said Davin. "He has a way of surviving the worst of disasters."

If harm had befallen the Huata, Bistonia's fair daughter... Davin pushed aside a vision of the frosty-haired Lijena that shifted before his mind's eye. Speculating on the demon-possessed woman's fate would not locate her or the Huata band.

"Do we camp here tonight?" Goran tilted his head toward the setting sun.

"Near, but not among the wagons. Whatever took Varaza and the rest might come back."

Davin chose a small clearing beside a narrow stream a hundred yards from the Huata campsite. By the time Goran unsaddled and tethered their mounts, the thief had the last of their rez spitted above a low fire.

"Lorennion," Davin pondered aloud while he spread sleeping furs near the blaze. "It must be Lorennion. He is the most accomplished of all mages. No one else has the power to..." He glanced at the empty wagons.

"There are others." Goran settled on his own furs and sliced a portion of the meal for Davin and himself. "The Faceless Ones ride once more. And do not forget the magicks needed to pull me into this miserable world from my wondrous Gohwohn. Someone—Zarek Yannis or an ally—has garnered some of the magicks that once ruled Raemllyn."

In two bites the Challing stripped a rez bone clean, then tossed it over his shoulder. The bone landed near a lightning-seared tree twenty feet away.

"You said you enjoyed being here, the sensation, the human feelings."

"True, I do. But the world is awful. Imagine one with abilities such as mine being captive among a people who are locked in only one shape. How dreary." Goran cut himself another chunk of meat and downed it as quickly as the first. The clean bone landed beside its companion.

Davin lifted an eyebrow. The Challing was one of the cleverest trackers he had ever met; when camped, Goran left no clues for potential pursuers. Now the Challing gulped down a third portion of rez and pointedly tossed another bone near the tree.

Glancing at the blackened tree, the son of Jyotis studied the area. At first he saw nothing. Then one of the charred branches moved slightly. He straightened, stretched as if tired, and brought his hand nearer his sword.

"About that time," Davin said. "It's been a hard day."

"That it has," said Goran, wiping his fingers in the dirt, then scrapping the dirt off with the edge of his dagger. The way he bounced the weapon told of his readiness to throw it at any target Davin flushed.

With a smooth movement the Jyotian adventurer came to his feet, sword ready. Davin's sharp eyes caught the shadow of the retreating spy.

"One of the winged demons," he said. "Come on. We've got to catch it before he can report back to Lorennion."

"Take your bow and arrows," said Goran. "If it gets aloft, a sword will avail us naught."

Davin scooped up the primitive bow and arrows, sheathed his sword and hastily followed Goran into the depths of the forest. Occasional broken twigs and crushed leaves pointed the way; the demon might fly well but aground it moved clumsily.

The red-bearded giant cautioned him to silence. They advanced toward a tree-ringed dale through which the leathery creature hobbled.

"One wing's broken."

"And," said Goran, "the left leg drags slightly. Little wonder it was so easy following. He's a Qar-damned cripple."

Davin took a deep breath, nocked an arrow and stepped out to drop the demon before he got another ten yards. Just as he pulled back, the demon vanished.

"Goran?" he asked. "Did he duck behind a bush? It's dark, but the center of the clearing is lit well enough by Kea."

Davin looked up at Raemllyn's nearest moon, which had risen shortly after sunset and provided a wan illumination.

"Relax, friend Davin. Our hobbling demon vanished, just as the others did higher up." Goran's stubby finger pointed to the night sky. "I think this is where we have seen them coming and going so mysteriously."

"Do you sense any magic?" asked Davin. "Is this how Lorennion hides his keep?"

"Magicks?" asked Goran. "Why bother me with such a question? I am no mage."

Davin looked more closely and saw no hint of witch-fire sparking in the Challing's good eye. While this was no accurate indicator of magic or magic use, it often blazed when spells were aplay.

But where had the demon gone? How had it vanished so completely?

"Davin, no." A meaty hand kept the Jyotian from advancing. "There is magic of some kind here. There must be. Would you tangle with all the gray demons we've seen, armed with only sword and green wood bow?"

"Lijena might be their prisoner. The Huata."

"Perhaps. But can we rescue her by blundering through that clearing? Where do they disappear to? What if those are ordinary humans and passing the barrier causes their change into leathery, winged creatures?"

"Such a thing is possible?"

"Who would have thought Lijena could have become demon-ridden by inhaling a pinch of snuff? When dealing with mages and their magicks, anything is possible."

"What are we to do?" Davin strained to follow the demon, to find Lijena even if it meant confronting Lorennion and a thousand of the winged demons.

"The clearing will not vanish on us overnight. Let's return to camp and discuss this further. Morning will, perhaps, give us a clearer idea of what to do."

Davin Anane looked over his shoulder as they melted silently back into the forest. The image of the demon blinking out of existence haunted him all night long—and the promise of meeting Lorennion only fueled the Jyotian's nightmares.

chapter 11

The teasing aroma of cooking food wafted in Davin's nostrils, drawing him from a restless sleep. He opened leadened eyelids and blinked unappreciatively at a golden-fingered dawn which appeared too cheerful for the early hour.

"I'd thought Ansisian had sunk you forever beneath the waves of sleep." Goran squatted at a small campfire, stirring a smoke-blackened pot.

"Nothing of the sort. In truth, I slept little," Davin replied. "I have come to a conclusion about the clearing."

"Aye, I thought as much. Which is why I prepared this rez bone soup with a few tubers to give it substance." Goran ladled two wooden bowls of the broth and passed one to Davin.

Davin blew across the bowl to clear away the steam before taking a tentative sip. The flavor was thin, but its warmth held the icy winter morning at bay. He nodded his approval then said, "We're dealing with magicks beyond our ken. If this is Lorennion's keep, then Lijena is inside."

"Inside what? I see nothing but a barrier which swallows up winged demons." The changeling cocked a bushy eyebrow high.

"One of us has to enter."

"I was afraid you'd say something stupid like that!" Goran slurped loudly from his own bowl to punctuate his distrust of his friend's scheme.

"I'll go," said Davin.

"Of course you will. It's your wench you think is held captive beyond that magical barrier, my impetuous friend."

Davin nearly choked on a second swallow of soup. He had expected some small protest from Goran, a token plea to be first through the barrier. But again, as always, the Challing's mind did not follow the course he'd believed it might. "Impetuous?"

"What else could you call one so reckless as to confront the leading mage of our time and himself not be the least versed in magicks?"

"I know something of the art," Davin said defensively. He lied; he had no like of magicks or sorcerous ways and gave them wide berth whenever possible.

"You know Lorennion's name—now. That is the total of your magical lore!" Goran gulped down the remainder of the broth. "Let us be off. I am anxious to see you perform this heroic deed."

With a shrug Davin finished his bowl, gathered sword and bow and arrows, and waved an arm for the Challing to lead the way. Goran did so without question. They trooped back through the forest until they reached the edge of the clearing, where both held back, peering at the cloudless sky.

From out of nowhere came a trio of hideously formed demons. The creatures swarmed about, dipping, surging, and soaring on the upper air currents before disappearing back into nothingness.

"Still the same," said Goran.

"I'm aware of that," Davin said testily.

His palms sweated and his breath came faster than usual. All he had to do was walk forward, pass through the magical barrier and rescue Lijena. If she were even beyond the barrier, and if he had the skill and daring to defeat whatever lay beyond.

If, if, if...

"How long should I wait?" asked Goran. "Before I follow you in?"

"Don't follow me at all. If I can't rescue Lijena, then there's no reason for both of us going down to defeat."

"How noble." Goran's lips curled in a sarcastic ripple.

Davin offered no reply, but nocked an arrow in the pathetic bow, stuck the remaining arrows into his belt, pulled thong off the cross-guard on his sword, then started forward.

Halfway across the clearing the Jyotian glanced over a shoulder at Goran. The Challing stood hidden under a tree. If Davin hadn't known where his friend stood, he wouldn't have been able to pick him out. Davin turned back to face the middle of the clearing and ran hard into a leathery gray chest.

Startled, he leaped back, feet slipping out from under him in the morning frost. In a less than heroic response to danger, he fell to his rump.

The winged demon's reaction scarcely held any of the ferocity displayed by the creatures that had previously attacked the two adventurers. It jerked in surprise and shrieked like some frightened bird.

One glimpse of those saliva-dripping, yellow fangs and Davin reacted. He yanked back his bow string and let the shaft fly.

At so close a range it was impossible to miss. The arrow embedded itself halfway into the demon's chest. The creature's shriek trebled while it stumbled back, taloned fingers clawing at the arrow.

Davin jumped to his feet and lunged at the hell spawn. Grasping the impaling shaft with both hands, the Jyotian twisted and turned and plunged it deeper into the tough body.

Talons weakly raked at Davin's shoulders, trying to tear him away from the death grip he had on the shaft. Davin held. The demon then spun and—

Pain!

Ten thousand white-hot lances seared on the thief's body. A brand of agony plunged to the center of his brain and sizzled there. Davin's mouth wrenched wide, but his scream refused to dislodge itself from a convulsing throat.

Goran stood picking his teeth while he watched Davin walk across the empty meadow. Empty one moment, then the Jyotian slammed head-on into a gray demon that hadn't been there the instant before.

While Davin sent his shaft into the monster's chest, Goran freed battle-ax from waist sling and rushed toward the fray. The slim Jyotian launched himself at the creature—then they vanished from sight.

Goran One-Eye skidded to a halt; his jade-hued eye narrowed as he peered at the again empty dale. Through the barrier locked in combat! Goran drew a steadying breath. This was worse than expected. The damnable hell-spawn hadn't waited for Davin to enter but dragged him through the wall of magicks.

"Do I follow him?" he muttered his thoughts aloud. "Or do I wait? What can I do to help him now? He had the demon well on the road to Peyneeha and Black Qar's embrace."

Goran paced to and fro before squatting on his haunches, eye fixed on the spot where his fellow thief had vanished.

"He fights well, even if he is small," said Goran, trying to convince himself that all was well, that there was no reason for the guilt he felt. "We planned it this way. We did. He told me not to follow!"

He sat and watched patiently—for two heartbeats. Then he was on his feet again, ax still clutched in a massive hand. Adjusting his eye patch, the Challing strode to the spot where Davin had been swallowed by the barrier.

He came to the crushed grass left by Davin's fall and the scuffle with the demon, traced the footsteps forward. The last of these imprints was sliced in twain; the heel was obvious and the toe nonexistent.

Goran knelt to reach down and run thick fingers along the outline. A tingling went up and down his arm as he felt—but did not see—the toe of the print.

"The barrier," he said. "An odd feeling it has to it, too."

He thrust out his arm and watched it disappear in the air. An electric tension jerked the muscles of the arm about. A perplexing sensation, but not the least bit unpleasant for the Challing. With another steadying breath, he stood and boldly took two steps forward.

A shimmery curtain enfolded him. He felt twistings deep within his mind and the odd jerkings of his muscles. Goran rocked back and fell free of the barrier. The world remained unchanged, as did he.

"Peculiar." He scratched his beard then lifted the ax and probed the air with its double-bladed head. Glinting steel vanished into nothingness. "How extensive is this?"

Leaving the ax head within the barrier of magicks, he used it as a guide to trace the extent of the unseen curtain while he walked within the clearing.

A circle it is, the Challing pondered when he once again returned to the spot of Davin's encounter with the demon. A full thousand strides through its center if it be an inch.

He combed fingers through a mane of red and stared at the ground. The half footprint taunted him. He had ascertained the extent of the barrier—it was a circular curtain virtually filling the clearing—and he knew from earlier observation that it reached upward into the sky. The sudden comings and goings of winged demons proved as much.

"Davin, what have you got yourself into this time?"

Goran hefted the ax, battle ready, and stepped forward, determined to pass beyond the curtain of magicks. The shimmer confused his sight for an instant and his muscles twitched and jerked—then he stood on the far side of the barrier.

Pain dissolved into... paradise!

Davin fell to his knees, a befitting posture for man who gazed upon the gods for the first time. The Jyotian's eyes lifted to stare upon two seven-foot deities. Delicate auric feathers graced their wings and the flowing locks that cascaded down their backs to settle in a misty cloud between those radiant feathers. The faces were neither male nor female—but they were beautiful. Never had Davin Anane gazed upon such soul-searing beauty.

"Welcome to Mapalah," came a voice like an Aeolian harp. The words did more than carry a message; they caressed, soothed, comforted.

Davin looked behind him, to call Goran to join him in paradise, but the Challing no longer stood behind him. Nor could the clearing or Agda's forests and mountains be seen. A faint shimmer was discernible, but beyond was more of... paradise.

"Another of them, Adiah?" The second voice chimed like silver bells. "Why do they all choose this morning to rebel? What is wrong with our geases?"

"Nothing is wrong, not in this one's case, Kaulah. He blundered inside the Circle."

"How?"

"Poor Gaylyah is quite dead. He had gone out to spy on humans seen moving about. I think this one slew him."

"Destroy the slave immediately. Him and the other two, the ones who tried to escape. They killed four of our precious number," Kaulah said, voice devoid of emotion.

"But their conditioning held, Kaulah," protested the godlike Adiah.

Davin wanted to kiss the hem of the white linen robes. He abased himself instead, head touching the ground. He rejoiced at such fortune bestowed on a mere mortal.

"A strange comment, considering their rebellion. They were instructed not to flee, yet they tried. Worst of all, they killed four of our brothers and sisters."

"Kaulah," the one said with seemingly infinite patience, as befitting a god, "their conditioning was partially successful. I would say Gaylyah failed to entirely indoctrinate them. He has paid for his oversight."

Davin wept when he noticed the golden being stretched out on the ground, a silver arrow protruding from its chest. He had killed a god; what perfidy!

"This one is well on its way to obeying totally. The others will, also. With the faithful Atters left behind when we were drawn into this realm, we need more slaves than before to carry on our work," said Adiah. "Let us not waste the slaves."

"They have shown that the conditioning failed!" raged Kaulah.

"I questioned them. They saw only... Mapalah."

Davin's eyes turned to the magnificence of the palace, the walls inset with precious stones, the golden roof on the multi-storied structure. Not even the High Kings of Raemllyn in Kavindra dwelled in such opulence. This was a residence befitting gods. Pride welled in his chest. He would find penance here for his murder of a god. In the most demeaning of tasks he could wash the blood from his hands.

"Kill them all. This one included," Kaulah answered.

"Destroy the slaves—destroy your perversity?"

"I will summon the other masters. There will be a vote on this, Adiah. You will not win."

"Are you so sure, Kaulah? You have been taking on more authority than given you. There are no exceptional benefits accorded your position, yet you have taken such liberties. Yes, let us vote. It is time to elect a grandmaster. And that will be me!"

Davin's confusion mounted. Gods arguing in such an unseemly fashion? How could it be? There were things mere mortals could never comprehend and this must be one of them.

"Please, master," he begged, actually kissing the being's feet, "let me atone for my deeds. Let me serve you in whatever way I can."

"You shall, oh, yes," Adiah said softly, "you shall serve me well, my savage slave."

"Great Father Yehseen, how could you be so cruel?" Goran whispered his horror.

Beyond the magical barrier loomed a single gigantic tree, branches protruding like skeletal arms. From each of these limbs dangled a half score of the gray demons, asleep like bats with heads hung downward. But it was not this or the filth on the ground beneath their perches that awoke the nausea in Goran's stomach.

It was the humans who made his stomach rebel. Men and women performed odious tasks, idiotic smiles on their faces. They might have been serving some High King in his palace for all their delight.

And Davin? Goran sighted his companion complacently trudging through ankle deep excrement, dutifully trailing after one of the winged monsters. A gaze of adulation beamed in the Jyotian's face.

Magicks woven within magicks! There's no other explanation! Anger railed through the fiery bearded giant. Spells that entrap the human mind—but leave a Challing's untouched!

He swung the ax high over his head, prepared to wreak havoc on these creatures from Hell, then paused. How could one man—even a Challing—hope to slaughter hundreds of the winged demons? He and Davin might do it, but he alone? Never!

Goran lowered his ax, his eyes cautiously scanning the squalor about him. Half buried under a pile of the muck he saw weapons taken from the humans. He recognized Davin's sword, and the sword Berenicis Blackheart had carried—the Sword of Kwerin Bloodhawk.

"So the Huata—and Lijena—are prisoners of these monsters, eh? Davin, you poor fool, you were right that she was held here, but this cannot be Lorennion's keep. No mage lives in such filth!"

Goran pressed close to the bole of the huge tree, suddenly aware of his vulnerability; sweat beaded his brow. No human noticed him; all were unsupervised. The magicks binding them were as potent as the demon within Lijena's breast.

A woman, humming softly and contentedly to herself, strolled beneath the branches of sleeping demons. Goran reached out and touched her shoulder. The woman shrugged off his hand and kept on her way, without glancing in his direction.

The Challing shook his head. There was nothing to do here, not at this moment. He needed time to think, to piece together all he saw. His palms itching to lash out, he contained his rage and backstepped to the magical barrier.

With a last glance to Davin Anane, Goran One-Eye vanished into the shimmering curtain. Again his body tingled and muscles twitched as magicks bathed him. And within his mind... something he could not define. It was though he were—aroused! A vitality he had not experienced since being drawn to Raemllyn coursed through his veins.

He emerged on the far side of the barrier, feeling like a youngling Challing asoar on Gohwohn's winds. A smile touched his lips. The barrier, the exhilaration—he was a lodestone to the magicks; he absorbed their power like a sponge.

Goran turned and stared at—the far side of the clearing. The barely discernible shimmer showed him where the barrier began but, even knowing of its existence, he saw nothing of the giant tree or the hundreds of gray, winged demons dangling from its limbs.

"A plan! By the gods, I need a—"

It came to him! His smile transformed to wide grin as he held out a hand, watching the shiftings of his flesh, the subtle darkening of tones.

"Friend Davin, soon enough you'll be free." Goran chuckled now. "And do not think I will ever let you forget this. You, walking through knee-deep shit and enjoying it!"

chapter 12

Goran shivered as the winter's night ran icy hands over his nakedness. He tried to ignore the biting cold by keeping eyes—he possessed two in this form—on the center of the moonlit clearing, watching for demons that might fly out of the invisible circle of magic. In hands ill-suited for one with the bloodlust singing in his brain, he grasped his war ax, its edges honed razor sharp during the afternoon.

He stopped just short of the demons' barrier. His muscles twitched and jerked. This close to the curtain he could feel his body drinking in the forces aplay here. He glanced down at himself, wishing for a looking glass to assure himself the shape held.

Hands, arms, feet, legs, and chest remained unchanged. Drawing a heaving breath, he took two quick steps and entered the shield of magicks. Again came the mind itching and the twisting sensation deep within every muscle. Goran shook like a wet dog and felt power building within his awkward body.

'Tis better than Masur-Kell's potion! He grinned from ear to ugly ear. His powers increased—he relished the intoxication of the moment—and all without a bitter fluid to drink.

Then he was through, facing the demons' tree roost, a black silhouette against the night's darkness. Goran discerned a demon hanging here and there, dim shadows within shadows. He shook his head and breathed through his mouth to escape the stench rising from the piles of excrement that threatened to gag him.

Now to find Davin. His head turned from side to side, scanning the magic circle's interior.

"Where do you go?" A hollow, inhuman voice came from beside him.

Energies surged within the Challing. His heart pounded; taloned fingers almost dropped the ax's wooden shaft. For Goran One-Eye no longer wore human form. His scheme for freeing his Jyotian companion hinged on the disguising shape he had chosen—a gray, leathery, winged body that equaled the one he turned to face.

"Who are you to ask such an impertinent question? You do not recognize me? Me!" Goran's voice, high and scratchy, was a perfect, rasping imitation of the sentry who challenged him.

"M-master, pardon me," the winged horror stuttered. "I did not know you were on patrol. I th-thought you were in council with the other masters."

The creature's head tilted to the tree, scalplock bristling. In the distance, among the tree's branches, came the impassioned sounds of argument.

"The slaves," Goran continued in as imperious a manner he could muster with such a high-pitched voice. "I would count the slaves and verify their number."

"Of course, master. The caution is understandable after the unpleasantness this morning." The creature nodded an oversized head toward several shabby, wooden huts surrounding the tree's base. "Th-they are in the lowest levels, except for Kaulah's personal slave, the yellow-haired one called Lijena."

Goran rose up to his full height and felt wings moving behind him. The sensation amused him greatly, but he had no time to experiment with the appendages and see if flight was possible. He used the wings for emphasis—it seemed natural. And it made the demon sentry cower.

"I meant nothing by that, master."

Goran heaved a sigh. What was it about Lijena that caused so many males to lust after her? She was scrawny, vile of temper, and if that weren't enough, a demon rode about inside her brain!

"Take me to the slave quarters."

"I am on patrol. I cannot leave my post. You know that." A note of suspicion crept into the demon's words.

"You disobey me openly?"

"I must." The demon rose from his abasing position on his knees, his wings rucked securely behind him now.

Goran recognized a fighting pose when he saw it. The demon never noticed the sharp-bladed battle-ax that bit at its scrawny neck. Head leaped from torso in a bloody spray before a single outcry could be raised. Goran placed one heavy foot at the center of the demon's chest until the death throes had passed. He felt neither triumph nor sorrow at slaying this creature. It had been necessary—no more, no less.

Turning, the demon-cloaked Challing carefully picked his way through the piles of dung on the ground. The height of the heaps of offal indicated favored positions in the branches above, he surmised. The weapons he had seen earlier had not been disturbed, still laying twenty strides from the massive bole. Goran strolled to the arsenal. Slinging Davin's sword over his shoulder and gathering a good bow with straight arrows, and a pair of daggers, he went to find Davin.

The slaves' quarters, if they could be given such an exalted name, consisted of a line of crude huts of woven branches and twigs around the immense base of the tree. Goran ducked from one to the next until he found Davin asleep on a pile of leaves. He bent down and shook the Jyotian's shoulder. Davin stirred but did not awake.

"By Nyuria's slimy bowels, wake up, damn you!" Goran shook Davin so hard his head snapped back and forth like a rag doll.

"M-master?" Davin mumbled, still more asleep than awake. When his eyes opened, he jerked away, fear written in his every feature. "A demon!"

Goran frowned. "Goran One-Eye, you miserable lout! I've come to save your ungrateful hide!"

"Goran?" Davin muttered, then with offense in his tone. "Save me! But Mapalah is paradise!"

"You call this dung heap paradise? You've less a brain than I gave you credit for!" Goran shook his head in disgust.

"A nightmare," said Davin. "I am having a nightmare. I imagine a winged demon. You're not real."

"I only assumed the form of a demon. It's me, Goran. Remember the time we shared the wench in... never mind. This is taking too long." Goran concentrated and felt his shape altering, returning to its usual barrel-chested body.

"Goran?"

"Are you under some spell? Is that how the demons control you foolish humans so easily?" Goran's one good eye peered at his friend.

"Demons? But they're not demons, they're gods. Tall, taller than you, golden tressed, and winged! Their wings are made of the finest of feathered gold. And their eyes! They look into your soul and make you feel... wanted."

"They want you, all right," Goran said sourly. "They want your body for their menial chores. And from the stench about, you aren't doing too good a job."

"Why did you take the form of a demon?"

"I've never seen these golden gods you speak so highly of, but there are hundreds of the gray demons about. In the tree, in the air, in—"

"Tree?"

"Davin, you are truly ensorcelled." Goran quickly explained all that had transpired and how the winged demons had imprisoned him and the other humans within the magic circle.

When he described the tree and dung heaped about its base, Davin railed, "Mapalah is a palace, vaster and finer than the High King's palace in Kavindra."

"It's a tree," Goran said flatly.

"I remember more now," said Davin. "Things don't fit together properly. The way—"

"Take my word for it. If you want to rescue Lijena, we've got to get you out of here and away from their control."

"Lijena!" Davin's eyes flew wide.

"I knew that would break their geas." Goran snorted in disgust and pulled Davin to his feet. "Take your weapons. And shoot any demon you see—any golden god too."

"But paradise..." said Davin.

Goran watched his friend with concern, wondering if it were safe to trust him with weapons. He had no choice. For them to escape required some small cooperation on Davin's part.

"Out. Now. And I am taking the form of a demon. Do not attack me by mistake." Goran warned as his body shimmered and shifted, assuming the whipcord thinness of a winged demon.

He led Davin from the hut to the base of the tree. The sound of angry voices still came from overhead as the demons continued their heated council.

"Master!" Davin's cry of joy came from behind Goran.

The Challing spun and faced one of Davin's gods—a demon with yellow fangs bared as it hissed its rage. Goran's ax lashed out!

The razor-sharp blade caught the demon's upper arm, severing bone and artery cleanly. The keening of pain affected Davin more than Goran, but the Challing knew others would be drawn by it unless he silenced the demon quickly. A fist rammed straight for the fanged mouth. The crush of bone came from beneath that fist.

The demon's anguished cry faded to an awful wet gurgling as the creature stared wide-eyed at its attacker, then tittered before collapsing facedown amid the filth—dead or dying.

"You killed a master!" Davin choked with horror.

"This master is ordering you to follow me."

"But you're a winged monster," Davin said. A puzzled expression crossed his face, then decision hardened it. "You do not belong in Mapalah. You are an intruder! You killed a master. Die, monster!"

Davin Anane's sword slipped from its sheath and poised high over his head ready to split a demon's skull in twain.

chapter 13

Goran One-Eye's ax leaped high to meet Davin Anane's descending blade. Solidly the two weapons met, sending a bone-jarring shudder through the Challing in demon form.

The changeling muttered a curse as his ax head dipped to parry a side lash from the Jyotian's steel. Again the shock of sword slamming into ax reverberated through Goran's body.

Had he been in human form, he would have barely noted the clash of steel on steel, but this damnable demon's shape was weak and awkward. If he had hoped to overcome his ensorcelled friend by brute force, he now realized the futility of that course. He had to employ wile, cunning—and a touch of magic.

Davin's sword rebounded from the parry in an arcing semicircle. Once again his blade leaped above him, poised for a stroke that would split this leathery demon's skull. He blinked, hesitated.

A winged Peyneeha-spawn no longer stood before him. His eyes widened, body atremble as he stared on the shifting shape that flowed, altered, becoming... a god!

"Master!" he cried. "Forgive me!"

Goran smiled while he glanced down at himself. Naked as a newborn babe he remained, but his friend didn't seem to notice the lack of radiant robes. He spread wide his wings— golden-feathered wings that billowed majestically outward. The awe in Davin's gaze grew. Goran soared a full head taller than his companion, his eyes level with the gleaming edge of the thief's less than steady sword. Goran's long, slender fingers touched a delicately boned face so unlike his human-Goran one. This one was male, yet carried effeminate qualities similar to those used by female human-Glylina.

"Lay aside the sword, slave. Sheath it! How dare you assault one of my exalted position?" Goran said.

Davin frowned. Goran tried again, softening his pitch and chanting in a lilting sing-song. This time Davin obeyed in-stantly. Whatever spell permeated the interior of the magical barrier, it was not complete or exact. Davin still fought it, while, at the same time, succumbing to most of its insidious influence.

"Follow me." Goran spun, his golden feathered wings whipping outward.

He hastened to the edge of the barrier. There was not time to find his original entry point. All the Challing wanted to do was escape with Davin, and both their hides reasonably intact. He didn't know how long it would be before the two demons he'd slain were found. Not even gods would be able to hold back their demons' wrath then.

At the barrier Davin stopped, his face pale. "I cannot go farther. It is forbidden."

"Is it not also forbidden to disobey a master? I order you to come with me. Now!"

Davin was almost comical in his haste to obey. The Challing grinned while he watched his companion trot forward. Goran's amusement evaporated the instant Davin's lanky body contacted the curtain of spells. A scream of agony tore from the Jyotian's pain-twisted lips.

Goran acted! Springing forward, he slammed full weight into his friend, relying on his bulk to carry Davin through the shield of magicks.

Free of the circle, Davin dropped to hands and knees. His chest heaved; his body quivered. And when his head eventually lifted, he looked upon the familiar form of Goran One-Eye.

"Mapalah?" Davin's trembling lips slurred the name. "Where did it go?"

"The tree?" Goran asked.

"I saw no tree. A fabulous palace. Towering. Precious jewels. How I longed to pluck them from the walls and keep them for myself."

"Why didn't you?" asked Goran.

"I don't know. You don't steal from the gods," said Davin. Confusion reigned as he added, "The Narain weren't actually gods, were they?"

"The flying demons put you under a spell. They clouded your mind in such a way you thought them to look like this."

Goran's shape altered swiftly, the change easier now, again taking a seven-foot godlike form. He fluttered his wings a few times, then stopped. They wouldn't support a being this tall or heavy. He changed once more to a gray demon and flapped the tough wings. These felt more substantial, more capable of flight.

"They are the same?" asked Davin, stunned.

"The same," Goran assured him as he shifted back to his usual body. "There are others still trapped."

"Lijena!"

"Somewhere up in the tree." Goran inclined his head toward the magic circle.

"I must free her!" Davin tried to scramble to his feet.

"Hold!" One of Goran's meaty, red-haired hands grabbed Davin's shoulder, restraining him. "You cannot cross the barrier. They will ensorcel you. Your human mind is too easily controlled by their magicks."

"And you are immune to their spells?" Davin demanded, irked by the truth in the Challing's words.

"I do not think they are of Raemllyn. There is an other-worldliness to these Narain, as you call them. I believe that they, like myself, were pulled here through a rent in the fabric between worlds."

"What of Varaza and the others?"

"I saw many humans. No doubt the Huata are among them. And Berenicis."

Davin stared at Goran.

"I found the Sword of Kwerin Bloodhawk in the same pile as the other discarded human weapons. These demons care little for human history, it would seem."

Davin frowned. "Then they are not Lorennion's creatures. If he possesses the sheath Berenicis covets so clearly, the mage would not hesitate to snatch up the blade."

"Few men would hesitate to possess such a weapon," Goran said. "But at the moment that is not my concern."

"You have a plan?"

"I go back in, drag out what weapons I can, then go after the Huata band," Goran outlined.

"And I stay here doing nothing?" Davin didn't like the scheme. He had been used and was ready to make the treacherous Narain pay for their mistake with a taste of cold steel.

"For now there is nothing else you can do." Goran shrugged. Again his shape quavered liquidly, darkened in hue, and solidified as a winged demon. "If I'm not returned in minutes, flee this place. There will be nothing you can do to aid me."

"And find..." Davin saw the Challing vanish into nothingness. "... Lijena."

"Stop!" Valora shouted.

The Faceless One in the lead continued at a reckless pace, the sorceress's command going unheeded.

Valora tugged back on the reins and halted her mount. The horse's sides heaved and sweat-turned-to-lather covered its chest. Containing her anger, the mage to Zarek Yannis' court slid from saddle to ground and stared ahead at the line of trees marking the southernmost boundary of Agda.

The leader of the Faceless wheeled his fiery-hooved steed about. A shudder ran along the raven-tressed woman's spine; she summoned all her courage to keep from flinching and returned the stare of those twin beacons of burning red that glared at her. No hint of facial structure was visible beneath the hell rider's cowl, nor did the pale light of Raemllyn's two moons penetrate the hood's shadow.

What reaches to their soul? she wondered. The physical? Sexual? Tactile? Or did they even have souls to touch? Did nothing excite them? No, she shook her head. If she were to control the Faceless, she had to rely on magicks. Valora hugged her black cape around her shapely shoulders and softly chanted a mood-weaving spell.

Fire lashed through her brain, actinic in its searing flame. Whimpering, she sank to her knees under the impact. Her jet eyes rolled up to stare at the Faceless Ones' leader.

"Do not try that again," an empty, soulless voice told her from the inky depths of that cowled head.

Valora swallowed hard and struggled to her feet. She was young but not in the ways of magic. Payat'Morve had taught her well. Somehow, this hell rider had turned back her spell, reflecting it rather than defeating it with a counter.

"We must stop here," she said, gathering a semblance of composure about her still-trembling body. "I must study the magicks loosed in the forest. I do not understand them. I must be certain that I can cope with whatever we find before we continue."

"Zarek Yannis ordered us to Lorennion's keep. It lies another day's travel ahead."

"Do you not feel the magicks flaring?" she demanded. Anger rising, she shouted, "No, you can't. You are a nothing. Only a hollow shell animated by magic. If we blunder forth into those magicks without complete knowledge, we will fail."

A shiver of doubt worked along her spine, threatening to destroy her composure. In spite of all her studies, all she attempted to glean from her spies, she knew nothing of the Faceless Ones' true nature. The hooded demons might draw their sustenance from the threads of magic woven about Raemllyn. Only Yannis knew, and she was not certain the usurper possessed that knowledge.

"Then we fail attempting to complete our assigned mission," said the leader without a hint of emotion in his voice.

"I succeed. Always," she said coldly. Agda lay ahead, but Lorennion's keep was still a day or more away. She had not realized he had hidden so deep in this mountainous wilderness.

"We ride."

"We study, then we ride. You are under my command. Did not our King tell you this?"

"We are to take you to Lorennion."

Valora added a small spell of persuasiveness when next she spoke. This too, failed.

"We go to Lorennion, as ordered," Valora said. "I ask only for a brief time to prepare. I feel spells rising from the area ahead, spells of which I have no knowledge. Such potent works must be of Lorennion's doing."

"They are not," said the Faceless One. "His keep lies another day's ride to the north."

Wearily, Valora gave in and climbed back into the saddle. Her legs hardly moved and her entire body screamed in protest. The poor horse visibly sagged under her weight. But there was no denying the Faceless One. He had been ordered to ride. He rode. Nothing stopped him, not even balky mages.

Goran emerged from the barrier with a stunned Varaza in tow. The Huata leader's dazed expression slowly changed to one of understanding. He threw his arms toward the rosy glow of the predawn sky and cried.

"Take care of him," Goran told Davin. "There is still Lijena to find. The others are all out." The Challing glanced over to where Berenicis sat, the Sword of Kwerin resting across his knees. "How is he doing?"

"He recovered quickly. The spell they used only partially succeeded with the Blackheart," Davin answered.

"The Narain magicks must play on the human's trait of mercy. That would explain why Berenicis was immune."

"He still saw Mapalah as a palace and the Narain as radiant beings. But the compulsion they laid upon him—and Lijena— failed to hold completely."

"Illusions lingered, compulsions failed," mused Goran. "It might be easier getting Lijena out than I thought, if such is the case. As long as she won't obey without question when one of the Narain speak, we will be free in nothing flat."

"Best hurry," said Davin. "The sun rises soon and the demons will be stirring. None of those rescued know much of their schedule, but Narain are day creatures. When they discover their slaves gone..."

"I know. And there is more to discover than missing beasts of burden. I've killed some score of them on my trips." Goran lifted his ax, displaying its crimson-stained edges, then he turned back to the Narain's invisible shield.

"Hurry, Goran. Be careful, my friend," Davin said.

"I intend to be totally foolhardy and kick all of them in their leathery jewels, those having any." The Challing glanced over his shoulder and winked as his shape transformed to that of a winged Narain once again.

Goran shivered as if with the ague and emerged on the far side. Every transit of the barrier increased the powers flowing within him as he fed on the Narain magic. If only he could stay within this curtain of spells for a day or a week, he would soon regain his full Challing abilities, and then!

First, Davin's skinny blonde wench, Goran reminded himself of the task at hand, while his gaze rose to the giant blue-wood tree littered with dangling demons, some now stirring from their sleep.

He held no desire to ascend into the branches of Mapalah, but there was no other way. Wings unfurling, Goran tested them against the air. Insecure but determined, he launched himself forward, running a few steps before kicking powerfully.

For the first time since being drawn from his own realm of Gohwohn, the Challing lifted into the air. The strain of using unfamiliar muscles was physically draining, and his flight was erratic, but the sensation was exhilarating. Upward he sailed to gain the lowest limb, dinging to it with taloned feet, he settled down and stilled the beating of his leathery wings.

"Who are you?" A sleep befuddled demon pulled himself up from under his perch. "I do not remember seeing you before."

"Nor will you again!"

Whatever had betrayed him, Goran didn't care. His ax lashed out and caught the Narain squarely in its gut.

The cry of alarm the Challing expected didn't come. The creature simply clutched at its belly and stared in horror as it toppled from the limb. Wings attempted to grab air, to fly, and failed. With entrails streaming behind it, the demon plummeted to the ground and lay there, dead.

Assured the winged monster would not rise again, except in Black Qar's fire pits, Goran launched himself into the air. This time flight came easier, the sensations of powerful shoulder muscles pulling and releasing the wings familiar. He soared, relishing the feel of air gusting in his face. He had no idea where he flew, but he decided that aerial creatures like the Narain would consider high equivalent to status. Therefore, the top limbs of Mapalah would be reserved for the masters— and Kaulah.

It was there among the bluewood's highest branches he found Bistonia's daughter, on hands and knees toiling to clean excrement off an elevated platform. Goran's gorge rose as he alighted beside the blonde. These demons were more birdlike than he'd thought originally. Everywhere birdshit!

"Lijena," he said softly while his shape became that of a golden-winged god. "I have come for you."

"No, not another one of you!" the young woman's head rose, eyes filled with terror. She scuttled away, cowering against the trunk of the tree. "Kaulah abuses me. I'll not have another of you doing it, too!"

"I've come to free you."

"Escape?" She spoke the word as if it burned her tongue. "I... I tried that. With Berenicis. We didn't get too far. Only to the edge of the Circle."

"I will lead you to Berenicis... and Davin. He awaits you outside the Circle."

"Davin?"

The Challing shook his head. Not only was this wench skinny, but she had only questions when they needed to flee without delay.

"I will take you away from all this. Mapalah is a fraud. These are not golden-winged gods. They are filthy bird demons with a single talent for enslaving humans." Goran looked down at the piles of excrement on the ground below, then added,

"They have another talent, but it is of no importance."

"Who are you?" Lijena stood, filth caking her hands and legs.

"Goran, known as One-Eye. The one exchanged for your freedom when Velden kidnapped me."

"Davin is here?" Uncertainty clouded her features.

Another question! Goran held his impatience in check. The wench's mind was ensorcelled after all. "He and the others await outside the magical barrier. Now come along before this Kaulah or one of the others sees us."

"Kaulah?" Fear returned to Lijena's face. "We must... I want to be gone from this place. Please, I have to..."

"I am sure you do, slave," came Kaulah's cold tone above the leathery flap of wings. A Narain a foot taller than those Goran had seen landed on the platform. "I warned Adiah that your conditioning was faulty, that it was not Gaylyah's fault. Your mind is diseased and unable to properly accept instructions."

The Narain master turned to Goran. "Why do you aid her escape?" The winged demon's entire body shifted into defensive posture when he asked, "Who are you? You are not of Mapalah!"

Goran's answer was the whistle of steel singing through the air as he rushed forward, ax lashing out.

Kaulah shifted his weight and shuffled to the side, his left wing deflecting the ax stroke. Simultaneously, his arms snaked out to ensare the Challing in Narain form. Kaulah's talons raked over Goran's arm, gouging flesh and forcing him to drop the ax. The changeling used the only weapons left to him—fang and claw. He turned both on the Narain master. Wobbling on the brink of the aerial platform, they struggled for supremacy.

—Kill! Kill! Kill!

Lijena did not fight against Lorennion's demon raging in her mind. She hefted the battle-ax and clumsily swung the heavy weapon at Kaulah's exposed side. The honed edge nipped at gray hide, barely drawing a trickle of red, but the blow was enough to distract Kaulah. Goran slipped free of the Narain's hold, spun, and locked an arm across the master's throat.

"Die! Damn you, die!" Goran tightened his grip, cutting off the air flow to Kaulah's lungs.

Again Lijena struck. And again! And thrice more she hammered the ax blade into the Narain's chest. Flesh opened, bones cracked and snapped, blood fountained, and Kaulah died beneath the unleashed vengeance of a slave who at last shed the invisible yoke she wore.

"You didn't need to do that," said Goran, casting aside the corpse. "I was handling him."

"But I did. You will never know how I hated that thing."

"You see his true shape?" asked Goran.

"As he died, he changed from god to monster. But I always knew him for that. I just did not see with my eyes until now."

"Are you up to a bit of flying? That is the fastest way to the ground and out of Mapalah." Goran shifted back to a leathery gray form with wings capable of flight.

"You can fly?" asked Lijena, startled by the abrupt transition. "This isn't just some clever disguise?" She touched the leathery wings and felt life pulsing through them. She stepped back, eyes growing wider. "You aren't Goran. You... you're one of them!"

Goran blinked. He hadn't considered this. He and Davin had carefully protected the secret of his true nature for years. Now Lijena and the whole Huata band had seen his shape-changing abilities. A glib silver tongue would be required to explain away the inexplicable. "I have many talents. Davin will explain. Can you be any worse off with me than with them? Especially when they find you've killed one of their masters?"

He gave her no chance to reply. Sweeping an arm about her slim waist, he leaped from the platform. Wings heaved; muscles felt as though they shredded themselves with each laborious flap. Goran did not fly as much as he kept them from plummeting to the bottom of the tree out of control. Straining, the changeling brought them to a heavy landing in a pile of excrement.

"This will be their epitaph," he said, kicking away drying clods. "It is everywhere."

Lijena wrinkled her nose. "I have thought this was a fine palace? Qar take them all!"

"Black Qar no doubt will, but he'll come for us first if we don't hurry." Goran looked up. Two of the demons hovered above the lofty platform. "They'll see Kaulah's body!"

Lijena craned her neck and stared upward. A look of ecstasy crossed her face. "That is Adiah, beloved of all in Mapalah. He is so kind, so good. He is—"

Goran didn't wait to hear a full account of this Adiah's magnanimity. He had seen that same look on Davin's face the moment before the Jyotian had turned on him with bared blade.

The Challing swung from the hips, his bony fist striking Lijena squarely on the chin. Her head snapped back and her blue eyes gazed over before closing. Knees suddenly liquid, she sank toward the ground.

Goran, flesh rippling and shape altering, grabbed her and tossed her over a shoulder capable of supporting the weight of an unconscious woman—even one so skinny as Lijena Farleigh—the broad shoulder of the red-maned giant Goran One-Eye.

The body that had held him locked in human form for so many years was suited to the task, but it also attracted unwanted attention from above. A hue and cry went up, shrill keenings that rent the air.

One voice carried above all others. "Kaulah, our beloved Kaulah, is dead. I must assume grandmastership until this crime is punished. Harken to me, fellow Narain, follow me! Follow Adiah!"

Thunderclaps rolled across the meadow from the tree as the Narain answered the call and took to wing. Goran risked a glance over a shoulder. The sky was filled with a writhing cloud of gray bodies that swooped downward like preying eagles.

With every ounce of the inhuman strength he possessed, he ran for the shimmering curtain of magicks. And as surely as he knew that freedom waited on the other side of the barrier, he realized he would never reach that freedom before the first of those descending demons sank talons into his back.

chapter 14

Each flap of those leathery wings rolled through Goran One-Eye's brain. He was a Challing! To die with back exposed to foe, running like some craven coward, was a death without honor. What Challing—or man—desired to depart life so ignominiously!

A thousand schemes to evade the descending death burst full bloom amid that seething anger only to dissipate as rapidly as they were born. Even if he altered his shape to something as ferocious as a keedehn, it would only be a delaying tactic. The screaming Narain would blink in surprise, then fall on him with claw and fang.

Closer those damnable wings sounded.

Were it not for this skinny, dung-smelling wench, I would be through the barrier ere... Goran pushed aside the desperate thought that wedged into his mind. While he had no like for Lijena, he could not cast her aside and leave her to the Narain. He couldn't even do that to a high-bred mongrel like Berenicis. Well... mayhaps Berenicis.

Like the popping of a serpentine whip came a pair of wings just behind the Challing. One of the aerial demons maneuvered its grotesque body, readying for the kill.

Goran's ears perked, listening. The sharp cracking stopped. The Narain no longer flew. It either outstretched its wings in a glide or folded them to drop from the sky atop his back. Glide or plummet, Goran refused to let life end so easily. The flame-haired gargantuan skidded to a halt and ducked. A swishing shadow passed over his head and slammed into the ground two strides in front of him.

Cursing his stupidity at leaving the ax aloft on Kaulah's platform, Goran ran forward and savaged out with a bare foot. Heel connected with gray temple; the yellow-fanged demon shrieked, then rolled to its side twitching spasmodically.

Goran continued the desperate flight toward the barrier, his massive legs pumping with all the strength he could summon.

That shimmering curtain of magicks lay but seventy-five strides away now—perhaps twenty-five strides too far. He cursed Raemllyn's gods. He was so close he felt the spells that bound the shield playing among his muscles. To be this close and fail!

Feel! A grin spread across the one-eyed giant's face. I can feel the barrier!

Like a lodestone, a sponge, his changeling body absorbed the curtain's magicks. He soared with exhilaration as those tingling spells once again saturated every cell of his being. In his single, good eye the witch-fire flared, an inferno of fiery green flame.

"By Nyuria's arse, I've no need of steel!" Goran skidded to a halt once more, whipping about and staring up at the shrieking horde of flying demons. "Die, hell-spawn, die!"

A crackling like the discharge of searing lightning surrounded the Challing. He focused on a Narain at the forefront of the dark cloud of bodies. A shaft of glowing green light erupted from the Challing's blazing orb.

Straight and true as a master bowman's arrow lanced the beam of unleashed witch-fire, sinking into the yowling demon's bony chest. The Narain screamed in agony, its body twisting and writhing as it dropped from the air.

Goran did not waste time gloating on the monster's death throes. Instead, he turned his gaze to another of the hellish mockeries of human form. Witch-fire given a life of its own sizzled from the Challing's eye and struck a second demon, plummeting it to its death. Then a third and a fourth!

By the time that awesome shaft of magical light claimed a fifth victim, the Narain horde retreated. High they soared to escape the unexpected force that so easily claimed their companions.

"Cowards!" Goran raised a fist and shook it in defiance. "Come closer and meet me eye-to-eye! One or all of you filthy, stinking birds! Are ye afeared to face one, lone, unarmed Challing?"

How he ached to shed his human form and assume the body of a Narain. With a pair of wings he could lift on the air currents and challenge them in their own realm. What a battle it would be! One Challing against scores! How the minstrels would glorify such a—

Common sense pushed through the crimson cloud of blood-lust. His task was not to single-handedly defeat these creatures from another realm. He was supposed to rescue the unconscious woman who lay across his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

Goran turned and sprinted to the shimmering barrier. Head-on in a full run, he entered the curtain of magicks. On his shoulder, Lijena came to abrupt life, a scream of soul-rending agony ripping from her throat. A cry that diminished to piteous, whimpering sobs when the changeling burst through to the clearing and...

... stared on empty space. Davin, Berenicis, the Huata, the others he had brought from out of the circle were gone! Where? What treachery was this? Had the Blackheart overcome Davin and rallied the Huata to go in search of Lorennion?

The cracking, flapping of leather wings and the howling cries of the Narain came from behind the Challing as he ran toward the shelter of Agda's forest. He glanced over a shoulder to see the demon horde pouring through the barrier. Goran focused on one of the lower flying monsters and willed the witch-fire to life.

Nothing!

"Nyuria's ten tongues!" He wasted no time on a second attempt; he was too far from the magicks to feed on them. Safety, if it were to be found, lay within the wood.

"Goran!" Davin poked from behind a thick bramble of jhain holly directly ahead of the dialling. "Down, you oaf! Down!"

Goran didn't question the command. Spilling Lijena onto the brown winter's carpet of dead grass with him, the red-bearded titan dropped to the ground.

From the cover of Agda's forest stepped those Goran had freed from the Narain's insidious mind-bounds, each armed with bow or spear. On Davin's command those weapons lifted skyward. The Jyotian's raised arm fell. Arrows and spear whistled through the air. Some were clumsily cast, others flew straight and true. Enough found targets that a shrieking of rage went up throughout the fluttering Narain.

"Run, Goran. We'll cover you!"

Davin's voice had never sounded finer to the Challing. He scrambled to his feet and dragged Lijena to hers. Together they darted to their companions.

"They're vanishing!" came Varaza's pleased cry. "We've driven them away. Into nothing. If I had not seen it with my own eyes, I'd never have believed you, Davin."

"They did seem to vanish," said another of the Huata. "The Circle. The precious Circle the gods spoke of."

"No gods," corrected Davin. "For the first time you saw their true form. Did they look to be the golden-tressed, tall beings you worshipped?"

"They are nothing but filthy birds," Goran snorted. "And they'll be back. No master likes to lose his slaves."

"To the wagons." Davin waved the others deeper into the security of the forest.

For a moment his gaze fell on Lijena. The woman's frosty blond hair was caked with dung and her patrician face scratched and bruised. Bruises were also evident on her arms and legs, testimony of her mistreatment at the hands of the Narain.

They made their way through the heavy wood to the ringed Huata wagons. Varaza chortled when he saw his wagons still intact.

"I despaired at finding them, Davin," he confided. "But they are untouched. Not even a thief has tugged at the purse strings left unguarded."

Davin said nothing, knowing that one thief had weighted his purse with Huata gold. Though the fistful of coins Goran had filched was little enough payment for the service he had rendered.

"But our horses. What has become of them?" Varaza raised an eyebrow.

"They weren't within the Narain Circle," Goran answered. "Horses have a way of wandering if they are left without grooms."

"Then retrieving them will be easy." The Huata leader disappeared into his brightly colored wagon and returned with a small reed pipe. He began playing a lilting, haunting melody.

Davin started to mention that this was hardly the place or time for such frivolity, when he heard a distant neighing. Within ten minutes a half-dozen horses had returned and stood docilely around the wagons. Inside twenty, another four had come back to their owners.

"A neat trick."

"Only half of our stock returned, but they will be enough to pull the wagons," Varaza answered.

Davin looked to where Berenicis cleaned the Sword of Kwerin. "Do you still ride northward, taking him to Lorennion?"

Varaza diverted his gaze and stared at the ground. The Huata leader stripped off his rags and went toward the nearby stream to bathe in the icy waters. Davin and Goran trailed behind.

The three had cleaned off much of the Narain filth before Varaza spoke again,

"They call us dirty nomads. We bathe more than the city dwellers," he said. Dressed in clean clothes, Varaza leaned back against a tree trunk and said, "Do we have any choice? Prince Felrad needs that sword and Lord Berenicis is his emissary."

"You have already been through much more than you anticipated." Davin shrugged, unable to escape the feeling that there was more between his old friend Varaza and Berenicis than met the eye.

"None said this would be an easy route." The Huata leader sighed and shook his head. "One wagon will be used to transport our women and the others the Narain captured back to Weysh. But the men of my band will continue. With Lord Berenicis—and the blond wench."

Davin stiffened. He cared little what Berenicis did or didn't do, but Lijena was another matter.

"She is free of her demon?" Goran asked while he donned the furs he had discarded before entering the barrier.

"Who can say? On the trip to this point, there was scant indication of it, but the ordeal with the flying terrors might have driven it dormant. At any moment the demon within her might reassert itself. Or it might be gone for good."

Davin didn't have to ask the nomad leader where his opinion lay. His tone revealed that he thought Lorennion's demon still rested within Lijena.

"Demons! They come again!"

The shout echoed through the tiny glade and brought Davin, Goran, and Varaza running back to the Huata wagons as the camp loosed a barrage of arrows at a swooping cloud of Narain. The majority of shafts never reached their targets, although one archer skewered a gray demon in midflight. The creature cartwheeled from the sky, keening shrilly as it fell to its death.

"For the feel of a good ax!" Goran bemoaned as he slid sword free of scabbard.

"Just fight, damn you!" Davin's own sword leaped from its sheath and slashed upward to open the chest of a saliva-dripping demon intent on sinking its claws into human flesh.

Dodging the falling Narain, Davin edged closer to the wagon where Lijena sat, handing arrows to archers positioned to each side of her. His sword lashed out again, this time slicing through the leathery, gray wing of a snarling demon that alighted to his right. Before the creature's claws could strike, Varaza was there, spear thrusting solidly into the Narain's chest, piercing its unholy heart.

Then the Jyotian stood beside the woman he had chased across half of Raemllyn. And not a moment too soon. While Lijena fed arrows to the men at her sides, a monstrously large demon hurled down toward her vulnerably exposed back. Davin leaped, and interposed himself between Lijena and certain death. His sword point jerked up, honed tip impaling gray Narain flesh. The impact jarred the thief to the bone and wrenched his sword from his tight grasp a moment before he tumbled to the ground.

Chest aheave as he gasped for air, Davin yanked dirk from sheath, rolled, and pushed to his knees. The demon refused to relinquish its life in spite of the blade implanted in its scrawny body. It thrashed and writhed, taloned hands trying to dislodge the length of tempered steel.

Davin launched himself atop the struggling bestial creature. With one fluid motion he pressed the edge of his knife against the gray neck and raked. A dark mouth aflow with crimson opened from ear to ear across the Narain's throat. And it died.

Regaining his feet, Davin tugged his sword free of the corpse, then turned to Lijena. She sat on the wagon step, a blank expression on her face as she stared at him and the carnage he had wrought.

The demon? Davin grasped for an explanation for that emotionless gaze. She might be at a high tea for all the—

"Another flight of the hell creatures falls from the sky!" Varaza's chilling words came above the din of battle.

Steel weapons hacked and slashed at leathery hide as freed slaves met the onslaught of their former gods. Talons and barbed wingtips ripped wide faces and bellies. Blood flowed—demon and human!

Driving the tip of his sword between the shoulder blades of a Narain who dropped down on Goran's shoulders, the Jyotian yanked the blade free and sliced through the arm of another demon that snaked a clawed hand at his face.

From the corner of an eye he saw Lijena, now armed with sword. Whether guided by her own ability or that of the demon sharing her body, she fought with maniacal fury. Her blade flashed as it leaped beneath the arm of one Narain to open artery and vein. Then she spun, her sword arcing high to drive down into a scalplocked skull, splitting it in twain.

The touch of cold leather brushed the Jyotian's back. He swirled, sword leveled to deliver death. Instead he watched another of the hell-spawn crumple beneath Goran's slashing longsword. A hand grasped his shoulder. Again he pivoted. This time Lijena stood smiling at him.

"It's over," she said. "They've fled back to Mapalah. We won."

"We did?" He glanced about him. The cloud of winged demons had retreated from the sky; the winter sun once more shone bright. "We still stand!"

A grin running across his blood-splattered face, he grabbed her around the waist and swung her about in a celebration of the life still coursing through their veins. A joyous twirl that ended as he leaned forward, his mouth seeking hers.

She pulled away in confusion. Her brow furrowed and her features darkened.

"It's over," he said. "And your demon? Is it gone, too?"

"I don't know." Lijena had forgotten her own inner burden in the heat of battle. "I don't feel its presence. Not like before."

"Something good came out of slavery by those things." Davin's lips curled when he stared at the Narain strewn on the ground. Fully fifty of the winged demons, adult and fledging, lay dead.

Among those grotesque gray bodies were scattered more human forms than the Jyotian wanted to count.

chapter 15

The Huata band watched the lone wagon disappear westward into Agda's dense forest. Heads then turned to the north and the clearing containing the Narain Circle.

"The winged monsters may follow and attack the wagon," Goran One-Eye finally spoke.

"There was no other way." Varaza whipped a worried hand over his face. "The women were in danger here, and the men of Weysh were dying like flies. They were merchants, not fighters. Little help to us."

Davin Anane silently agreed. Fifteen men died in the battle with the Narain, ten of them Weysh men the creatures from another realm had captured from caravans that passed through the forest on their way to northern Faldin.

"How many of them are left?" This from lanky Ruggo, the Huata smithy. "While in Mapalah I never had any idea how many there were."

Davin glanced across the ring of wagons. Lijena sat with her back against a red-spoked wheel, staring at the ground. A bath in the nearby stream had removed the demons' dirt and filth from her body, but not the mental anguish of her enslavement. The Jyotian easily discerned the strain that tautened the beauty of her face.

Or does Lorennion's demon rise again to plague her? Lines of doubt creased Davin's forehead. As much as he desired to protect this woman he had so unwittingly wronged, he had agreed with Berenicis when the Blackheart had demanded Lijena remain with the Huata. Should the demon exert its powers again, Davin wanted to be near to aid her with the spells Yorioma Faine had taught her to suppress the demon's influence. In Weysh, she would be without a friend.

"A few hundred to begin with. No more. And many less now," Goran answered Ruggo's question. "All the while I rescued you foolish humans, I counted. Their ranks are sorely reduced. But not enough."

Davin turned to his friend. "What are you thinking, Goran?"

"Mapalah, as they call it, is a tree more dead than alive. Limbs like tinder. Dried Narain dung." An amused smile played over the Challing's lips. "A small spark would send the entire tree up in a blaze visible for a hundred miles."

"Dare you do it?" Varaza looked up at the bearded giant who towered over him.

"Dare we not?" Berenicis' sandy hair stirred in a light breeze. "There is no other escape from the Narain. I, for one, have no desire to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. I say, give this burly man the chance to burn Mapalah to embers."

The Jyotian lord's cold gray eyes narrowed as he stared at the one-eyed thief. "What did you mean by you foolish humans? Do you not count yourself among our ranks?"

Davin swallowed hard and talked fast. "Goran is more animal than human in many ways. He was raised by snow wolves in the wilds of Norgg after his parents were butchered by brigands. He was ten before he was discovered by a woodsman and introduced to civilized ways. He still thinks of himself as a wolf in times of bloodletting."

The Jyotian dared not look at his fellow thief, afraid his tale would crumble. "If you doubt his bestial ways, you should have the pleasure of dining with him. The oaf displays no trace of table manners. And Yehseen! The way he drinks! Enough to float a small navy."

The Huata chuckled while Davin made light of his companion's animalistic habits. Berenicis' eyes only narrowed more.

"And this bestial strain residing in your overly large friend explains his immunity to the Narain and their Circle?" The Blackheart's icy gaze shifted between the two thieves. "Also, what of the shape-changing? He appeared as both Narain god and demon when he rescued us from the Circle."

Davin was unprepared to explain away the Challing's transformations as readily as he had Goran's "human" slip of the tongue.

"This!" Goran, however, was. He extracted an empty vial from a pouch at his waist and tossed it to Berenicis. "A wizard's potion. In Leticia a Huata witch read my future and foretold of my need to alter my body. I purchased that vial from the mage Masur-Kell at great expense."

Goran winked his good eye at the men gathered around him. "Although I later recovered my loss and gained a handsome profit. I skillfully entered the sorcerer's home and relieved him of several pouches of gold bists."

Varaza and the other Huata's nods of approval bespoke of their acceptance of Goran's explanation. Berenicis appeared less impressed by the Challing's glib tongue.

"Shape-shifting spells and potions are highly prized by mages. I find it hard this Masur-Kell would readily be separated from such potent magicks—even for a king's ransom." The de-throned Jyotian ruler pinned the dialling with his gaze.

"I do not care what you think. Masur-Kell's potion is still strong in my veins." Goran shrugged. "If I am going to return to the Narain Circle, it must be done while the power is within me."

"Well spoken," muttered Varaza. "A true man acts, not chatters about it like a rodent." Louder, the Huata leader asked Goran, "What supplies do you need? I have pitch to make a good torch."

"Nay!" Goran shook his head. "A tinderbox that I can hide in the palm of a hand... and lamp oil in a wineskin."

"Ruggo, oil in a wineskin for our friend," Varaza ordered the smithy. "As to a tinderbox, I believe I have something that will serve you better."

Varaza grinned and rushed into his wagon. When he re-turned, he smiled at the Challing and winked. "I think you will find this bit of Huata magic better suited to your needs."

The short, dark man held up a hand and popped his middle finger and thumb. A brilliant burst of flame leaped from his fingers then flickered out.

"Fire paper!" Goran exclaimed.

"The finest, my friend. These sheets were prepared by Isas the Halt himself. There is none finer in all of Raemllyn." Varaza handed Goran five palm-sized squares of thin paper. "With a snap of your fingers, you'll have the flame you need for the oil."

Davin nodded his approval. The fire paper was a simple trick used by Huata witches and fortune tellers to impress their unwary customers. It ignited when rubbed by the pop of fingers or scrape of stone or wood. As to the contents of the potion used to soak the paper—the Huata did not reveal all their secrets to the Jyotian thief.

"Five ought to do me," said Goran while he accepted the wineskin Ruggo retrieved. "If this does not do the deed, nothing will."

Goran then looked at Davin. "Come with me to the Circle.

I'll have to bare myself to the world again and need someone to look after these furs. Don't want them going up in smoke."

Davin walked in silence beside the Challing while he returned to the clearing holding the Narain Circle. Goran then stood to one side, shucked off his clothing, and spread his arms wide. The change came with unusual rapidity now. Davin blinked and the familiar red-bearded form changed into a gray-skinned, winged demon. When Goran spoke, even the voice came out rasping and harsh.

"Wish me well on my flight. Jajhana smiles on me already. I feel it!"

"Luck is with you," Davin assured the Challing.

The demon-Goran took wing, wineskin clutched in one hand and fire paper palmed in the other. Quick, decisive wing beats carried the Challing upward and into the shimmering curtain of the magical barrier hiding Mapalah.

Davin watched as Goran winked out of existence, then realized the pressure in his chest stemmed from holding his breath. He exhaled harshly and crouched, fingering his sword hilt, and waited. And waited. That I had a Challing's ability for only a few mo—

Davin leaped to his feet. Tongues of flame were licking upward at the sky. The barrier hiding Mapalah wavered visibly now, allowing occasional glimpses of wood ablaze. Gradually the Circle failed, and Davin looked unencumbered on the gigantic tree reaching upward to touch the blue vault of the sky.

Fire consumed the base of the tree, the dung piles feeding the flames. Huge black, oily clouds billowed toward the sky. A triumphant cry tore from Davin's throat when he saw the upper limbs of the tree ignite. Falling from those aerial perches were balls of fire—Narain set ablaze.

Here and there, through the boiling smoke, Davin thought he discerned winged shapes soaring skyward to escape the furnace that once had been a palace. He shook his head; he couldn't be certain. He was sure of one lone winged demon that left the carnage and fluttered on broken wings toward him. The Jyotian rose, sword in hand, waiting.

The demon clumsily grounded and staggered forward, falling onto its knees. Flames had burned a goodly portion of the wings, and one hand was held in close to the body. Davin lifted his sword and advanced.

"Friend Davin," came the cracked voice. "Did I not do well?

The name of this Challing shall live forever on the lips of your singers."

"Your name will live forever on your own lips, if I know you," Davin said, sheathing his sword. "You love to boast. You'll be your own best admirer."

"Can I help it if I appreciate true heroism? Now help me up. These accursed wings are a liability to me."

The demon shape went liquid as the changeling once again assumed human form. He winced, a groan escaping his lips. The injured wings vanished, but angry red skin covered his back and his palm retained the nasty blisters acquired while in Narain form.

"I seem unable to cure certain afflictions. I'll need healing salve for these." Goran slipped into his breeches, but refused a shirt. Then he turned back to the inferno roaring behind him. "A sight like that, whether from one eye or two, is all anyone could ask for."

Two hundred-foot flames shot above the crown of the tree to make a beacon visible for miles. Mapalah died behind a fiery cloak more impressive than any illusion of palace given to the slaves.

"Let's return to the wagons," said Davin. "You've done enough for one day."

"While I wish I might claim a softer reward from some of the Huata woman," said Goran, "that might be reward enough— for now."

Davin glanced back to the pillar of flame when they entered the woods. He had seen demons in the smoke. In the distance a few gray dots vanished, fleeing from their ruined tree palace. Where there had been hundreds, now less than a dozen Narain survived.

Thusly end dreams of world conquest. Davin smiled. Might I one day deliver the same end to Zarek Yannis!

"My horse will die of exhaustion!" Valora protested. "And I need rest. I will rest."

"The horse has more strength than you can conceive," answered the Faceless One leading the small knot of riders.

A dozen had left Kavindra. Now only four rode, the others leaving on unknown missions along the way. Valora had asked about these strange assignments and had not been given an answer. The Faceless kept close counsel.

"I cannot ride longer without rest." Valora refused to be brushed aside.

"We stop at midnight."

"And start again at dawn. We've been following the same schedule since leaving. I am retiring. When we confront Lorennion, I must be rested or the mission will fail. Do you wish to return to Zarek Yannis and tell him that I was destroyed because you pushed me beyond my limits?"

"There is nothing Zarek Yannis can do to any of us, except send us back into oblivion."

"There is much that Lorennion can do, isn't there?" Valora asked.

The Faceless One did not visibly respond, but she felt an added tension in the air. Whatever powers Lorennion commanded, the Faceless feared them.

"I can protect you from Lorennion," she said, her voice softly seductive. On any human male—or female—this would have worked. On the hell rider, it had no effect at all.

"Lorennion is the strongest mage in all Raemllyn. His Blood Fountain flows this season."

"Would you like to control the Blood Fountain?" Valora asked.

"The Faceless want nothing."

"You want to serve, to be of use to Zarek Yannis." She cursed under her breath when this produced no comment. Valora hoped for some clue as to how the Faceless were controlled, how they were given new life after so many centuries.

"We ride. We rest at midnight."

"Look!" Valora pointed deeper into the Forest of Agda. Rising high into the air was a pillar of solid flame. Bits of cinder and ash rose with it to produce a black smoke that billowed and spread. "A forest fire?"

The Faceless turned burning red eyes in the direction of the fire. Valora heard liquid sniffing noises but saw no movement. Finally, the Faceless One stirred.

"Magicks die in that fire."

"What magicks? Lorennion's?" Valora demanded, her right eyebrow arching. Had she misjudged these hellish creatures? Were magicks at their command? Did those hooded, faceless heads conceal an inner eye that discerned the twines of magicks binding the world? "Tell me what you sense."

"Not Lorennion's. His keep lies farther to the north. Other magicks, of no concern to us."

"Any magic use is of concern!" snapped Valora. "Tell me about it."

"Mount. We ride."

Valora watched the column of intense orange flame leap higher and higher into the air, turning the sun dark with heavy smoke. Then the flames began to languish and the fire died down. Only the thick clouds of smoke gave mute testimony to the intense fire—and magicks—and eventually a soft, cool spring breeze dissipated even this reminder.

Valora heaved a sigh and mounted. All their animals had been run to the point of exhaustion by the hell riders' determination to reach Lorennion as quickly as possible. This singlemindedness only drove home how inhuman her unholy companions were.

The woman pulled her black cloak tightly about her body and trotted after the Faceless Ones. Lorennion's keep lies nestled in the forests ahead. She tried to compose herself for that meeting. It would not be an easy one.

chapter 16

—North. North to Lorennion's keep. Do it now!

The demon dwelling within flared. Lijena struggled against the surging power that lashed out to dominate her mind and body. She stuttered, tongue stumbling and lips aquiver as she repeated the spells she had learned from Yorioma Faine.

—Do you think I have not seen what you do? Once your mumblings might have worked. No longer! Not now, not this close to the one who summons you! You are mine!

"Please," Lijena pleaded.

She clutched the sides of her bunk as the wagon turned a sharp corner, although it was not the jostling motion of the Huata wagon as it climbed the rim of a valley that sent her world ampin. The demon reared, its full might searing through her brain.

—Lorennion awaits you. Go to him. Now!

Tears trickled down her cheeks as she clenched her aquamarine eyes closed against the whirling visual assault. There was no escape. Behind her eyelids burned a map, a fiery trail to lead her through the wilderness to the mage.

"No more. Please! No more!" she whimpered.

A hollow laugh rang through her head in answer to the plea. Her lithe body stiffened as the demon exerted its will. The light of intelligence winked out in her eyes and muscles no longer responded to her commands. Lijena, her essence, her soul, the part of her that made her her, retreated deeper and deeper until it cowered in a tiny corner of her brain.

The demon now dictated, and her enslaved body responded.

When the wagon rocked to a halt and the Huata made camp for the night, Lijena feigned sleep. She heard the door to the wagon open and sensed someone peering in to check on her.

—Davin!

—He traded you to Veldenfor his friend. He kidnapped you from your uncle. He is responsible for Nelek Kahl selling you into slavery. He is not your ally, he is your enemy!

"Enemy." The word, a whispered breath, clung to her lips like poisoned honey. "Davin is my enemy."

—Enemy.

When the door softly closed, Lijena rose and pulled on a softly padded dark coat with myriad hidden pockets. Varaza used the jacket for treks into Raemllyn's cities; by the time he returned to the caravan those pockets brimmed with illicitly obtained coins, jewels, and other valuables. Now all Lijena desired was concealment in the night and protection from the cold.

She walked on leaden feet to the wagon's door and peered out.

—Answer Lorennion's summons. Now!

She went. Dropping to the ground, she hugged the shadows to avoid the Huata campfires and the men gathered around the flames. Unnoticed, she slipped into the night-shrouded forest, wending her way along a game trail.

"The Lesser Rat." The canopy of boughs thinned overhead and she peered at the bright constellations, orienting herself. "The Armored Knight. North. That way is north."

Lijena tried to keep her feet from following the path chosen by the demon. She failed utterly.

—To Lorennion. Go. To the great mage!

One foot went in front of the other, slowly at first and then running; Lijena raced through the night to answer the summons that had driven her halfway across Raemllyn.

A league? Ten? A hundred? Lijena lost all concept of time and distance. The demon whipped her body. Muscles no longer at her command responded. When she was at last allowed to slow the maddening pace, the game path broadened into a rutted road suitable for small carts—a lane that ended with...

Lijena slowed, then stopped. Although she had never seen it before, she knew that the low-slung structure at the end of the ruts was Lorennion's keep!

No castle with towering turrets, crenelated battlements, and a soaring central keep worthy of kings lofted to the sky here. The wizard's keep was a simple one-story house, circular in shape, surrounding a central courtyard. There were no towers, no guards, no sentries posted to prevent unwanted visitors from disturbing the great mage as he worked. The stuccoed sides of the building were whitewashed and glass windows shone with the soft yellow light of glowing tallow candles. Lijena felt as if she had stumbled across some successful fanner's abode rather than that of a mage.

—To Lorennion! He awaits you.

Lijena started forward. Her feet crunched against the gravel of the front walkway. Try as she might, she found it impossible to stop her progress. She fought against lifting one hand, bending it into a fist, knocking loudly on the simple wooden portal, and failed. The rap of her knuckles boomed like thunder.

Hesitant, shuffling footsteps came from within. She heard awkward rumblings as though untrained hands were incapable of lifting a simple wooden latch from its niche. Then the door swung inward.

Lijena blinked against the light that rushed into the night. She blinked again and stared.

Inside, bathed by the yellow illumination from small glowing statues placed at strategic locations in the entryway, stood a wizened old man, hunched over and leaning heavily on an ornately carved cane. A frail, liver-spotted hand ran over a head that was more bald scalp than it was snow-white hair. He then sniffed and wiped his nose on the sleeve of food-stained white robes. Then, only then, did rheumy blue eyes roll up to peer at her.

"Can I help you?" His voice was as ancient as he appeared. A blush of embarrassment touched his thin cheeks, and he tugged the door wider. "Excuse my manners. Not often I get visitors here. Please come in. You must be freezing out there."

"Are you Lorennion?" she asked, some control returning as she stepped over the threshold, as though the demon relinquished control now that she had arrived at her destination.

Her gaze never left the bent old man, finding it difficult to believe this was the mage feared by Zarek Yannis. He looked like a doddering, gentle grandfather.

"Lorennion... yes! I am called Lorennion. Though not often. Rarely see anyone in these parts. A man forgets the sound of his own name." He shuffled closer, and poked at her coat with the tip of his cane. "Allow me to take that."

Lijena obeyed, for while his words were soft and gentle to her ear, they rang in her head like a command.

"My, my, I am indeed honored." He smiled a smile that would melt the coldest of hearts and waved a hand toward a blazing hearth. "Now tell why one so young and lovely has come to visit an old man like me?"

"Visit?" Lijena demanded, then sputtered as the demon tangled her tongue.

"Oh, have I offended you? My dear, I am sorry!" His head jerked up, startled, and genuine concern was in his voice. "You must forgive me. It is so seldom I see another, much less a woman as lovely as you. Do come with me. To my, uh—the words fade after so many years. What is it I mean?"

"Bedroom?" Lijena asked, her mind refusing to accept what her eyes saw.

"Oh, I am sorry. I forgot. Your trip. You are tired and want to sleep. I'm certain I must have a guest room somewhere. But later, later. No, I wanted to show you my—yes, my laboratory! That's the word I meant. Come this way." Lorennion shuffled off, leaning heavily on his cane.

The demon urged her after the wizened mage, trailing a few paces behind his bent figure. Abruptly he stopped, paused, looked first left, then right, and finally turned about to face her with sad, watery blue eyes.

"I—I forgot where my laboratory is. Don't go there much these days, you know. No call for magicks. No one remembers me, not after all this time." His head shook from side to side as he spoke.

"Your name lives in Raemllyn," Lijena said. The demon did not rebuke her or hold her tongue.

"Kind of you to say so. But my days are past, long past, I fear. Ah, yes, my dear, there is my laboratory. Great feats were accomplished here in my better days." He motioned her to an open door ten feet down the curving corridor.

Lijena looked about the dusty room. Glassware of various shapes and designs littered the work benches. Tiny fires burned here and there without any visible source of fuel. In one corner of the room rose a huge plant, its branches slowly undulating, its leaves dripping sap onto the floor to form a trap for unwary insects. While she watched in horrified fascination, one feathery tendril dropped from the base of the plant and snapped up a few incautious bugs.

"Here, look here. This was my triumph. My greatest achievement." Lorennion noted the focus of her gaze and shook his bald head. "No, pardon me, not that, not that. I meant something else. It's all so confusing these days. Not like the olden times when there was honor in the field, when troops fought valiantly and the High Kings were truly rulers. Not like they are today. All are made from dough these days. Punch them and their bellies fold in on themselves. No backbone, no substance. Not like in the days when—when... well, never mind."

"Am I held by your demon?" Lijena found the strength to sputter the words she had been trying to say since entering the mage's keep. "A demon brought me here, one that entered my body when I inhaled a white powder."

"A demon? Powder?" A blank expression dulled Lorennion's features. Then he smiled gleefully. "Ah, yes! One of the boxes I gave to... to... Masur-Kell, I believe his name was. An annoying upstart. But that was years ago, decades. Surely you can't mean—"

"Your demon?" Fear rose within her. Had she been driven this far for nothing? It was so difficult believing this doddering old fool could be a mage, much less touted as the most powerful sorcerer in all of Raemllyn.

"Yes, yes," he said impatiently. "It is my demon. I bind them and grind them up and put them in the powder. The only way to get people to visit me. You are happy you have come to see me, aren't you? I'm glad to see you, my dear. You are so pretty. Yes, yes, so pretty."

"Free me," Lijena said. Emotions fought to get out. The intensity of her need allowed her to break the demon's bondage for a moment and seize the old man's hand. She clung to it, holding it to her breast, and begged, "I will do anything to be freed of your demon. Please, please!"

"I had no idea you felt so strongly, my dear. But of course you would. Why else would one so young and appealing come to visit a senile old man, eh? How did I do it? The spell? The demon, yes, I remember the demon summoning and how I trapped it. And grinding it up to powder. All coming back. Yes, here, look."

He held up a vial containing a few drops of a bright blue fluid. "This is the releasing potion. I remember concocting it when I ground up the white powder. Wonderful spell. So few use that particular approach these days. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant."

Lorennion replaced the vial in a rack on the workbench and shuffled along, pointing out other potions and powders. Lijena tried to reach for the vial, to pull the stopper from its slender neck and down the few droplets inside. Her arms refused to move, and her feet carried her along behind the old man, away from the potion, away from hope of freedom.

"Gets so lonely out here in the forest. Peaceful, I wanted it to be peaceful, but... so lonely. I do have my ways of keeping track of what happens elsewhere around the kingdom. See? See this, my dear?"

Lorennion held a highly polished gold mirror in his withered hands. For a moment, Lijena saw only her own reflection. Then a corrosion formed, swirled, became something more than a green film on the golden surface. Figures stirred from sleep. A campfire blazed.

"Davin?" She blinked, recognizing the Jyotian thief.

"Ah, good, yes, you know the young man. A doughty warrior, that one. Look, look! The other one. Berenicis, called the Blackheart by his own people. What a rogue! That sword he carries. Ah, I remember it well. Used to belong to that, uh, that fellow with, well, you wouldn't be interested in that. But Berenicis is a fighter. As good as Davin? Perhaps we shall find out."

"The demon," pleaded Lijena. "I want to be free of it."

"I am sure, yes, my dear, sure of that. Oh, look at that one. He registers such an odd image in my scrying mirror. I wonder why that is. His shape is so different from the others. I must remember to examine him further, but that chest! In my day I sported a build similar. But not so large, mind you. He's a giant. Strong, quick, another fighter."

"What are they to you? Why do you spy on them?"

"And there, oh, that one's a sly one. Varaza is his name. The leader of the Huata band. Not as powerful as the others, but sharp, oh yes, very sharp. A thinker and a doer. A rare combination in such a man."

Lijena said nothing as she watched the sun rise within the mirror. Davin stirred, dressed, then walked to the wagon where she'd slept. The scene unfolded in pantomime. Davin searched the wagon and found her gone, went to Goran and shook the giant awake, and soon the entire camp sought her. Berenicis found her footprints in the soft dirt leading out into the forest.

"Oh, yes, look at them, my dear. They scurry about like little mice in my glass. And they are coming here. Little field mice running after the bait!" Lorennion chuckled like a child delighted by a new nameday toy.

Bait? What did he mean? Unless...

"I find it so difficult living alone out here in the forest. Now all these strong young men rush to my keep. How we shall entertain them! Oh, this is the best time I've had in years. This is so nice. And all because of you, my dear." The ancient mage reached out and gave her shoulder a grandfatherly pat.

"The demon... you... you didn't want me!" Something dark niggled at the back of her mind. "You want them!"

"Not true. I—well, of course I want you. One so pretty, what man, no matter his age, would not welcome a visitor such as you?" Lorennion appeared confused, then went on. "But those younglings. They are strong. Aye, and smart to boot! That Varaza, he's smart but he might not be strong enough. I must find out, oh yes, I must, I must."

"What are you going to do?"

"They did well against my Narain, that I'll give them."

"What!"

"The Narain were my creatures. I brought them to this plane of existence. How? Simple. I—well, the exact spells are complicated and I don't quite remember exactly how I did it, but I did. I did. They came from another world, and I built them Mapalah. Those younglings did well against the Narain. We will so enjoy one another's company when they arrive."

"What are you going to do with them—with me?"

Again befuddlement clouded the old man's face. "Why, my dear, I thought that was obvious. You were brought here so that they would follow."

"But why?"

Lorennion grinned. "For the test, what else? If they aren't within the boundaries of my keep, how can they be properly tested? I've kept you from that bed long enough. Go along now. I'm sure you can find the guest room by yourself."

The demon within rose again, forcing her to leave the mage while he stood gazing into his mirror, chuckling joyously to himself. She wound through the interior maze of rooms and found a small sleeping chamber with bed and clean sleeping silks prepared. The demon's influence slipped away and allowed Lijena to sink to the bed, weeping in frustration. So close was freedom, yet never had it felt so distant.

The screech preceeded the attack by seconds. The Faceless One riding in the lead stood up in his stirrups and whipped forth a long sword of crystallized flame. The blade snapped about and caught the descending winged demon squarely on the side of the head. Blood oozed forth and the Narain fluttered to the ground, keening as it went.

"What in the name of Black Qar is that?" demanded Valora.

She mouthed the protective spells to keep the winged horror at a distance. It scrambled to its feet and stared directly at her.

The world wavered for a moment as Valora experienced an extreme giddiness. The gray demon turned into a blond-tressed being, looking her straight in the eye, even though she still sat astride her weary mount.

"Slave," the Narain said in golden tones. "Do not allow them to harm me."

"Stop," Valora said, lifting her hand and staying a death stroke from one of the Faceless. "This one interests me. Zarek Yannis would know of its ilk."

"You will obey me and, in return, you shall know paradise. We will go to the new Mapalah. You will have the privilege of being the first to serve the Narain as we sweep outward to conquer all Raemllyn," the god continued.

"How would you conquer an entire continent?" Valora asked. Her eyes burned with ardor, admiration, fanatical glee.

"Come and we shall show you. Dismiss the others and come with me."

"This being wants me to accompany it to a place called Mapalah where we will build an army for the Narain to conquer all Raemllyn. What say you to this?" she asked the Faceless' leader.

"I will slay him!"

"Hold!" barked Valora. "You are not to harm him. Such fragile beauty is not to be sullied."

"Come," said the Narain, a beatific look spreading across its lovely face. "Hurry. We must not be late."

"Where is Mapalah?" Valora asked. She curled a leg around the saddle horn, bending slightly forward. The woman winced as the stiffness of her muscles tormented her.

"Ask no questions, slave."

"I will ask all the questions!"

The Narain screeched in pain when Valora idly motioned in its direction.

"I burn. Like old Mapalah, I burn alive!"

"Ah, we are getting somewhere," the woman said. Her heart beat faster. She had always enjoyed working for Payat'Morve in Yannis' Hall of Screams. Torture made her feel... alive. Valora believed that life lived without pain was life without meaning or direction.

She gave more direction to the Narain.

"My eyes explode!" the creature sobbed. "My ears fill with pressure."

"Who destroyed Mapalah?" she asked in dulcet tones. Valora almost wished that the creature would not speak. The Faceless had driven her overmuch, and she required some outlet for her frustration. While the hell riders seemed impervious to her most potent spells, this demon did not. It suffered. It suffered and she enjoyed every instant of it.

"They came from the south. They..."

Bit by bit Valora squeezed the story from the winged demon. Only when she was sure that no detail, however small, remained, did she release her spells. The Narain slumped to the ground.

"Kill it," said the Faceless leader.

"What say you, demon?" she asked of the Narain. "Do you desire death now?"

Hatred burned in its eyes.

"You become tedious. By your own statement, you stand convicted. You preyed on passing caravans, imprisoning humans for your own amusement, for your own evil purposes. While I am no judge, I am a special emissary of High King Zarek Yannis. In that capacity, I shall carry out sentence."

Another simple spell sent the Narain spinning on the ground, clutching at its wings, howling in pain. Valora smirked as the creature died slowly, in utter agony.

"Find me more," she ordered the Faceless Ones. "This amused me."

"We go to Lorennion's keep," said the hell rider.

"You grow wearisome, too," muttered Valora. Louder, she said, "To the mage's keep, then, but do keep a sharp lookout for more of these winged beasts."

For the first time in a week, Valora felt the power on her. She had been in control once again, and she relished the feeling.

chapter 17

"Gone! Of course she's gone! What else did you expect from such a wench?" Goran One-Eye's face twisted sourly as his fellow thief paced beside the campfire. "Bah! I save her worthless hide pitting myself against tremendous odds and at great personal risk. For what? So she can go traipsing off in the middle of the night like some wood nymph—"

"It's the demon," Davin interjected. "Lorennion's demon drives her once more."

"Does she choose a pleasant time? No, by Nyuria's scorched backside!" Goran tugged his furs about him, wincing as they rubbed the tender flesh of his back. "The silly woman picks the coldest day of the year. The Goddess Minima's breath blows as frigid as an iceberg!"

"Right he is there, Master Davin." This from Ruggo, the lanky Huata blacksmith, who nodded to a wooden water bucket beside him. "The stream is iced over this morn. My bucket glazed crystal ere I could fill it to water the horses."

Davin held no desire to listen to his companions prattle about the weather. His mind was on one thing—Lijena. He glanced about the empty Huata camp. "What's keeping Varaza and the others? Lijena's trail is fresh. We should have been on it an hour ago!"

"Patience, my brother. The sun just pokes its head into the sky. Your pet gorilla assured us Lijena left enough signs that even a child could follow her path." Lord Berenicis the Blackheart descended the steps of Varaza's wagon dressed in the splendor of silver sartha furs. Strapped about his waist in a simple wooden sheath was the Sword of Kwerin Bloodhawk.

"Gorilla? Bah! This from a mincing peacock!" Goran spat. "Were it not for the Huata hospitality we both share, I'd slit that aristocratic gullet of yours and—"

Berenicis' pale gray eyes narrowed, though a light chuckle came from his lips. "I'm certain you'd try. But I seriously doubt the outcome would be the one you envision."

Davin consciously stayed his swordarm, which edged toward his scabbarded blade. This blue-blooded swine had destroyed the House of Anane and driven the Jyotian from his homeland with a price on his head, branded as a murderer. One day the Blackheart would pay for his treacheries. But not this morn.

Turning to the Challing, Davin pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Mayhaps he is right, my friend. Lord Berenicis earned the title Blackheart. He is well versed in the ways of murder."

The sandy-haired, dethroned ruler of Jyotis laughed, his perfect white teeth glinting in the morning sun. "Ah, my brother, your wit is suited to the role most becoming you—court jester! Perhaps I may pardon your crimes when I am returned to Jyotis' throne just to see you scamper about in foolscap with bells adangle from collar and tail."

Davin's right hand dropped to his sword. "Speak not of me as your brother, or I'll be the one to slice that forked tongue from your mouth before Goran opens your throat!"

"Where is Varaza and the rest of band?" Goran interrupted before Berenicis could reply.

The Challing glanced at his friend. Like a boar he bristled, ready to sink tusks into the Blackheart. For more than once Goran realized that the seething hate Davin carried for Berenicis went deeper than the thief had ever revealed. As when he had first seen them together south of Yorioma Faine's Inn of the Golden Tricorn, Lord Berenicis purposely provoked Davin by calling him "brother."

Goran's gaze shifted between the two men. He could discern no resemblance between dethroned lord and thief except their slender physiques. Nay, these are not brothers. If there be one who is Davin's mirror-image it is the slaver Nelek Kahl. Never have I seen such an uncanny resemblance between two men. Though Kahl be Davin's elder by at least a decade.

"Varaza and the rest of the men construct a pen of branches for the horses," Ruggo answered the red-bearded thief. "He's afraid they'll wander off again while we search for the woman."

Berenicis lifted his handsome face to the sky. "They'd best hasten. Those clouds moving in from the west are low and dark—burdened with snow."

The Blackheart glanced at Ruggo. "Go and hurry them along. I don't want to lose the girl's trail in a storm. Not with Lorennion and Bloodhawk's sheath so close."

The Huata nodded, rose from beside the fire, and trotted into the woods.

"Lorennion and the sheath?" Davin stared at his former lord. "What of Lijena?"

"What of her? She was my guide to Lorennion and the sheath for this sword. With it all Raemllyn can again be free of tyr-anny," Berenicis answered, his tone cold, lacking emotion. "Do you not think one life or even several is a fair enough price to pay for liberty for an entire kingdom? Or are you so enamored of Zarek Yannis that you'd see Prince Felrad forever a fugi-tive?"

"Is it Felrad or yourself you fear will remain a fugitive?" Davin asked, his voice as cold as Berenicis'. "If I were our prince, I'd fear Kwerin Bloodhawk's blade would end up in my back had I entrusted its care to you."

The Jyotian lord's eyes shifted from side to side. "You and your lackey press me too closely, son of Anane. I had hoped we might place our petty bickerings behind us and join arms in the quest. But you are unchanged. Your heritage flows rich with Raemllyn's most royal blood, yet you remain an Anane mongrel."

Berenicis grasped the hilt at his side. "There are no Huata about now, whoreson. Have you the courage to follow me into the wood and back your insults with steel?"

A humorless smile uplifted the corners of Davin's mouth. Perhaps he had misjudged the day earlier. Soon his sword would run red with the Blackheart's blood and vengeance would be his to savor. "My pleasure, Berenicis! Select your spot and lay to!"

"Davin..." Goran protested.

"Whisper your prayers to the gods, Anane," Berenicis said with a pleased smile. "Today Dark Qar will embrace you to his bosom!"

"Berenicis..." Goran tried again and was ignored by both men as swords eased from sheaths with deadly whispered hisses.

"Slow, Anane—you'll die so very slowly." Berenicis' longsword lifted, its tip level for thrust or parry. "For all the years, for each and every insult I've endured, I'll carve my just payment from your flesh before my blade at last nips at your heart."

Davin answered with a lunge, sword driving toward the Blackheart's sartha fur-covered chest. And just as quickly he backstepped when Berenicis countered with a circular parry and a thrust of his own that combed the blade's point through Davin's furs.

Nor did the Jyotian lord's offense end there. The Sword of Kwerin Bloodhawk flashed in the morning sun when Berenicis whipped his wrist about. The blade arched high and—

A man's scream echoed through the Forest of Agda!

Jyotian lord and thief froze, weapons poised in midair. Their heads jerked around, seeking the source of the blood-chilling cry.

"Behind us! One of the Huata!" Goran ran toward Varaza and the other men.

Blood feud forgotten, Davin and Berenicis followed at his heels.

"By Yehseen's poxy nose, no!" A Huata battle-ax the Challing now carried slipped free of belt and came readily into his hand.

For a horrible instant the massive warrior hesitated as he stared at the terror that dropped from the forest before his path. Then, twirling the haft, he turned the blade sideways and struck out. It landed on the fallen Huata's head with a dull crunching sound. The nomad was long since dead; Goran's target was the blue-black insects that boiled over the corpse. Again and again his ax rose and fell, crushing scores of the swarming bugs with each blow.

"That was Gyrik!" Goran heaved when the last of the chitinous insects died beneath his hammering ax.

"Klyot beetles? These flesh-eaters are native to the Great Desert of Nayati." Davin knelt beside the bloody pulp that had once been a man. He lifted one of the crushed insects. "How came they this far from their—"

"Flee!" Varaza's warning rolled up the trail. "Beetles! The ground is alive with them! Gyrik, Phant, Terns—the filthy things took them!"

The three men looked up to see the Huata leader and his men running toward them. Even as their booted feet touched the loam, the soil churned and hundreds of black bodies pushed from the earth. Mandibles gaped wide and closed, anchoring themselves into the boot and leg of the Huata Zora.

"No!" Terror railed in the man's voice as he reached down to brush the insects aside.

That was his one and only mistake. He stumbled, tittered as he struggled to regain his lost balance, and fell facedown into the swarm of blue-black bodies. Then he had no face.

"So quickly," muttered Berenicis, eyes wide in horror as the beetles covered the fallen man, stripping flesh from bone while he watched.

"Has the world gone insane?" Horror also filled Davin's eyes as he sighted the army of klyots that rolled over the forest floor behind the Huata.

Thousands of the flesh-devouring beetles advanced. Like a wave of inky, churning oil they came with mandibles snapping hungrily.

"May Nyuria roast in his own fires! No ax will prevail against that swarm!" Goran tucked his weapon back into his belt and waved Varaza and his men forward. "A taste of the fire I gave the Narain is what they need!"

"Fire!" Davin slapped his friend on the shoulder. "Fire is what you ordered, and fire is what you'll get. The path to the wagons will be soaked with oil before you get Varaza back to the camp!"

Davin pivoted and sprinted toward the wagons with Lord Berenicis beside him. Lamp oil, pitch to repair the wagons roofs, even brandy they dragged from the Huata wagons and poured onto the ground leading into the camp. A full twenty strides of earth they saturated. By the time Goran and the nomads scrambled into camp, the two Jyotians stood ready with brands from the campfire in hand.

Still the mandible-clicking horde of insects came. Nary one of those dark chitinous bodies strayed from the path, but followed the men's footprints like hounds on the scent of game.

"Magicks! The accursed things are guided by spells!" Berenicis lifted the burning branch he held.

"Hold!" Davin shouted. "Wait until they're fully atop the death bed we've prepared for them!"

If the klyots sensed the oil and pitch in their path, they gave no outward sign. Onward they marched, three pairs of jointed legs scurrying forward to carry their two-inch bodies toward the flesh they sought. Whether magicks animated this army, Davin didn't know or care. Flame would soon turn the twenty-foot wave of insects to ash.

"Now!" Davin shouted when the beetle swarm was fully atop the soaked ground.

The two Jyotians flung their torches. Flame erupted, licking hungrily into the air.

The klyots still advanced.

"Yehseen! It can't be!" Davin's head moved from side to side in disbelief.

Although an inferno raged about them, the beetles still came, their shell-like bodies unaffected by the flames. Mandibles opened and closed; legs scrambled forward unhampered by the wall of fire.

"Back!" Davin waved Berenicis toward their companions while he backstepped, his eyes never leaving the crawling death that now pushed from the flames.

"How?" Ruggo's voice came from behind him. "No natural creature can walk through fire!"

The Huata blacksmith grasped the wooden bucket beside the still burning campfire and hurled it into the advancing army of beetles. It struck with a shower of icy water and the crunch of crushed insects. And still the klyots came.

"What now?" Varaza's voice was tight with panic. "We can't crush them beneath our heels like ants. How do we fight them?"

"We don't! We run," Goran answered. "And pray to Raemllyn's capricious gods that we can escape...."

"No!" Davin pointed to the crawling wave of beetles. "They can be defeated. Look! There! Where the water covered them."

Every eye of man and Challing stared at the klyots that had received Ruggo's unexpected bath. The beetles coated by the water no longer moved—their bodies were encased in a thin glaze of ice!

"Buckets!" Davin shouted. "Gather buckets and retreat to the stream!"

No one questioned the order.

"Good. Good. Good." Lorennion joyously clapped his liver-spotted hands as he stared into his scrying mirror.

On its surface he watched the Huata band's mad scramble to the stream, their panicked haste while they broke the ice covering the water and filled buckets. A wide, childlike grin beamed on his ancient face as the visitors to his realm met the flesh-rending klyots with bucketful after bucketful of icy water.

"Good. This is so good. Marvelous. Fire and ice. Fire and ice." He made no attempt to contain his glee when the last of the beetles was frozen solid in its tracks. "Fire and ice. How quickly they found the key! So quickly. Yes, so quickly. And only four were lost. Only four. That leaves..."

He squinted and leaned close to the mirror to count heads.

"Twenty-one... yes, twenty-one! A reason for celebration! I must have wine. Yes, wine."

A befuddled expression clouded his joy when he glanced about the dusty, cluttered room. He had wine, casks of wine. Of that he was certain. But where had he placed them? Where?

"Never mind, never mind." He shook his head when he turned back to the mirror. It would take time to remember and then go in search of the wine. He didn't want to miss a second of the adventure that unfolded before him.

chapter 18

Goran stopped, knelt, and pointed to tracks in the ground before him.

"See? She stopped and stared at the sky. Getting her bearings, I'll wager. The skinny wench knew her destination." The Challing turned his good eye to those behind him.

"You draw conclusions from thin air, One-Eye." Berenicis snorted in doubt. "She might have heard something in the forest and stopped."

"See how the heels here are deeper than when she walked along the forest trail? Her weight rocked back, but she didn't take a backward step, as if she were startled. From the direction of her footprints, she sought out north." Goran closed his one good eye, then smiled. "Yes, she looked for definite directions among the stars. The Lesser Rat would have been ascendant and the Armored Knight or the Pard might have given her the final determination."

"Pure supposition," scoffed Berenicis. He hugged his sartha coat closer about him. "Tracks will mean nothing within ten minutes if this snow keeps up. The ground will be blanketed."

Davin tilted his head back. Flat, slate-gray clouds blotted out the sun. From those clouds fell snowflakes the size of a man's thumb. Berenicis was right; Lijena's trail would soon be lost.

"Footprints aren't all she left behind." Goran stood and pointed to a bushy jhain. "See the twigs. They were broken when she passed. And there, a bit of Varaza's old coat snagged to that thorn. I'll not need footprints to follow her. As I said earlier, even a child could track Lijena."

Berenicis' hand tightened about the hilt of the legendary sword he wore. For an instant his lips tautened into a thin, white line, then he glanced away from the fire-bearded thief.

Goran sucked at his teeth in disgust, turned, and continued northward after the missing woman. Davin's attention remained on the Blackheart and the way the man's hand covetously rested on the pommel of the Sword of Kwerin Bloodhawk. Before this misadventure ended, the man and the blade had to be separated—either by stealth or steel. Davin preferred that the Blackheart force the latter.

While in itself the blade was but mere steel, legend held that when joined to its original sheath, magicks awoke—magicks given birth by the long-dead sorcerer Edan and used by Raemllyn's first High King to defeat the black wizard Nnamdi and his legions of Faceless Ones. Such power in Berenicis' hand would spell disaster for all of Raemllyn.

Better the sword is cast into the sea than to see Berenicis or Zarek Yannis wielding such might, Davin thought. Although Jyotis' fallen ruler had reassured him countless times that he only sought the sheath to return blade and scabbard to Prince Felrad, the sole surviving son of the House of Anane knew the lord for what he was—Blackheart. Once in his possession, only death would separate Berenicis from sword and sheath.

"She makes good time," observed Goran. "Note the length of her stride. We might be as much as a half day behind her."

"There's no need to overtake her, just find where she has gone. I suspect she has already reached her destination," Berenicis said. "Lorennion cannot be far off or the demon possessing Lijena would have forced her to steal a horse."

"Aye, I'd thought of that," Goran replied. "But even on foot a man, or a woman, can cover ten leagues in a night. To be sure, this terrain would slow them some, but not that much."

"Ten leagues?" Varaza shook his head. "We've come but three from the camp at the most. Would that we had the horses and wagons."

"Never follow her through this brush in a wagon," Goran answered. He glanced at the sky. "This snow's falling heavier now."

An understatement from the master of overstatement! Davin thought as he tightened his furs about him. Not only was the snow heavier, Minima, the Goddess of Winds, unleashed a minor gale. From the west it blew, lashing frozen air and snow about the band. Davin glanced at Goran; ice clung to the titan's beard and red mane. Unless the storm subsided or lessened its fury, the search for Lijena would have to be abandoned and shelter found. Dead men would be of no use to Bistonia's daughter.

"So much for your broken twigs and threads. Which way do we go now, lout?" Berenicis made no attempt to disguise his contempt when the forest abruptly opened into an immense dale at least half a league across.

"North," Goran half-growled his reply. "She traveled north from the moment she left camp. No reason to believe she would deviate."

If the wind had contained a bite while within the shelter of the forest, it now sliced through Davin's furs as he trudged through the ankle-deep snow carpeting the clearing. Nor did Minima's breath give any indication of subsiding. Like the howl of some giant snow wolf it yowled, echoing off Agda's ragged peaks.

"No good!" Varaza shouted over the screaming wind. "This is no good. Minima seeks to strip flesh from our bones. We can't go on in this."

Berenicis' head jerked around, and he glared at the short Huata leader.

To Davin's surprise, Varaza persisted. "Furs and boots are not enough, my lord. My fingers and toes grow numb. Of what good are frostbitten men against the mage Lorennion?"

Berenicis' gaze ran along the line of Huata. The granite harshness of his face softened as he nodded. "When we reach the forest on the far side, we'll find shelter."

Davin ducked under the roof of the slanting lean-to and sank to the ground beside Goran. The hastily constructed wall of pine limbs shook violently as the wind battered its furry face, but it held.

"I thought my fingers would freeze and break off before we reached the woods again." Goran held his palms over the warming flames of a small fire.

"Aye," was all Davin could find the strength to say. His mind lay elsewhere, with Lijena. If she were still in the forest when they found her, it would be beneath a deep snowbank, dead. Without fire and shelter she had little chance of survival.

"Ho! What is this?" Goran pointed toward the falling curtain of snow. "Only a fool would practice his staff at such a time!"

"What?" Davin blinked weary eyes and peered outside. "I see nothing! Wait!"

Ruggo stood thirty strides away. The oak staff clutched in his hands flailed at snowflakes.

"What in the depths of Peyneeha does he think he's—"

"Narain!" Goran leaped to his feet, bringing the lean-to down about Davin's shoulders and smothering the fire. His hand wrenched ax from belt while he ran toward the blacksmith.

"Qar take your ugly hide!" Davin brushed aside the tangle of pine limbs and stood. "I see no winged demon. Ruggo struggles with noth—"

Not a Narain, but a monstrous serpent with scales as white as the snow coiled about the Huata blacksmith! Davin pulled sword from sheath and chased after the Challing.

"Help him, dammit!" shouted Davin to the men sitting beneath their lean-tos.

None answered his call. All were too busy fending away the attacks of serpents that rose from the snowy blanket covering the forest floor. Gigantic they were—like the one that now reared before Davin.

He judged the distance separating him and the viper-headed serpent, took four quick steps and lunged. His blade slithered through the serpent. A spade-shaped head arched. Colorless eyes blinked soullessly. A long split tongue slithered forth mockingly. Davin slashed and hacked and found only empty air. Again and again, his blade whistled through the monster's body without harming scale or flesh.

To his left a man screamed. The Huata Mikk jerked rigid as the serpent he battled sank tusklike fangs into his chest. The man crumpled to the ground, blood trickling from his mouth. The thief's attention returned to his own gargantuan foe as the snake looped a coil about his chest.

Dropping his sword, Davin fought to pry the reptile loose with his bare hands. He heard Goran shouting for him to stop, yet he had to try! Steel availed him naught against the writhing serpent.

His palms and fingers found... nothing!

"Help me!" he cried out as the coil tightened. "The snake! Kill it!"

"Snake?" Varaza ran toward him, Berenicis a few paces behind with the Sword of Kwerin Bloodhawk in hand. "I see no—by the gods! A pard!"

The Huata leader's sword came from the sheath. He jerked the blade back, then—hesitated. "Nothing? It's gone!"

Snow-filled air was what Davin struggled against. His hands closed around nothing. The serpent dissolved, replaced by empty air.

"What is happening?" Berenicis demanded. "I saw nothing. What were you fighting?"

"An illusion," Davin answered, his head jerking about to see the whole camp warring against foes that existed only in their minds. "As is every man here!"

"We warmed ourselves by the fire when madness swept the camp." Varaza lifted an arm toward the men who brandished swords against the air or rolled in the snow, their hands fending away jaws that no man saw except themselves.

"I saw a snow serpent the length of twenty men...."

"Gorilla!" Goran roared in pain. He stood jerking from side to side, holding the storm in a bear hug. "Can't fight it. Too strong, even for meeeee!"

Davin saw nothing. The Challing fought thin air—and died by inches. His head jerked back to Varaza and Blackheart. "Yet you saw nothing?"

"Not until I ran from our shelter," Varaza answered. "Then I glimpsed a pard before it vanished into nothingness."

"Why? Why did you two see nothing when—" Davin swallowed his words when his gaze alighted on the sword in Berenicis' hand. "Kwerin's sword! It retains some of its power even without a sheath. It wards off the fabric of illusion!"

Grabbing the Jyotian lord's collar, Davin dragged him to Goran's side. The Challing immediately ceased his struggle.

"Wha...?" Confusion masked the massive warrior's face as he stared at his friend. "How?"

"Later!" Davin called while he hastened Berenicis from man to man, the Sword of Kwerin Bloodhawk dispelling the creatures of illusion they battled. One by one the Huata ceased their struggles and stared around blankly, as though unable to comprehend how monsters that robbed them of life one moment, dissipated into nothingness in the blinking of an eye.

"The mage?" The Jyotian thief heard one of the band mutter. "Magicks," said another. And a third, "Lorennion."

Davin had no doubt that the illusions flowed from spells woven by the sorcerer Lorennion. And the klyot beetles. How else came insects native to the Great Desert of Nayati to this northern wilderness?

Flesh-devouring insects and magicks that turn men against the very air they breathe, illusions that prey on the mind. Davin glanced at the fear-tautened faces of the men who huddled about Lord Berenicis and the sword he held. These eighteen men had—

Eighteen?

Davin's head twisted from side to side. There had been twenty-one in the band when they camped. Three of the Huata were missing.

Through the white curtain of falling snow he saw them lying on the ground, faces and bodies that had brimmed with life but moments ago now growing rigid as the frigid wind leeched away the warmth that once coursed through their veins. Lorennion had greeted them with illusion that bent and shaped the mind, a nothingness—but an oh-so-deadly nothing.

What other greetings does the mage have waiting for us? Davin closed his eyes to blot out the ghastly images of the fallen men. It didn't help; their frost-splotched faces remained in his mind's eye. As did the certainty that the band had not heard the last of the wizard Lorennion.

chapter 19

Goran reached out and gently lifted an ice-glazed thorn branch. Davin leaned close and squinted at the dark icicle dangling from the tip of the branch.

"There's a thread within." The thief looked at his massive companion.

"That there is, and it's from the coat your Lijena stole from our friend Varaza." The Challing nodded ahead of them. "There beneath that snow-cloaked pine limb you can see broken needles. The wench passed this way, still heading north. I'd wager that the demon possessing her..."

Goran's voice faltered. His shaggy head lifted, good eye narrowing as he stared to the right.

"Goran? What is it?" Davin glanced about, trying to find what held his friend's attention.

The changeling shook his head. "Nothing. It was nothing."

Davin studied the Challing's face. That "nothing" had momentarily drained the color from his cheeks. "Was it a snow-snake or a white-haired gorilla or mayhaps a Narain?"

"A keedehn," Goran mumbled, then turned to the Jyotian. "You saw it, too?"

"No," Davin replied as they turned back to the camp. "But Lorennion's illusions persist. Last night I saw a kelii twice the size of a man stalking among the trees. Ruggo glimpsed a gargantuan lizard with a spiked fin running along its spine. And Lian saw a boar as tall as you charging from the forest. Varaza also watched a—"

"All the men have continued to see the mage's illusions?" Goran's brow furrowed.

"Aye, now and then, shadowy things out of the corners of their eyes." Davin nodded, then looked up at the clear sky visible through the forest canopy. "They recognize them for what they are and ignore them. This morn while we broke fast I watched the drifts transform into another gigantic serpent and coil about Berenicis. It had half devoured him before it vanished."

Goran granted. "By Nyuria's impotent staff, 'tis a pity the serpent was without substance. No snake could choose a bigger rat!"

The Challing glanced about him and grunted again. "Whatever spells the mage weaves, they are potent—and subtle. I sense no more than I did the night we rode into this accursed forest."

"You feel nothing?" Davin saw no witch-fire aglow in Goran's jade and gold-flecked eye.

"Nothing. Although I now watch an ice-worm thrice the thickness of man undulating between the morda trees ahead of us," Goran answered.

Davin's gaze darted to the trees. He saw nothing. Lorennion still plays with our minds, the thief thought as they trudged through calf-high snow into the Huata camp.

"Did your mongrel find the trail, brother?" Berenicis called out from a campfire when he noticed their return.

"Her trail is no longer fresh," Goran replied. "But there is enough to follow. I have the feeling that we are near the end."

"Intuition?" asked Berenicis. "Or have you communed with your friends in the forest?"

"Friends?" asked Goran.

"The insects. You are hardly more than they, red-bearded carrier of pestilence and filth." Berenicis wrinkled his nose and turned away.

Goran's massive frame stiffened, then his hand eased toward his battle-ax. Davin gripped his shoulder and shook his head. The dialling grimaced before acquiescing with a nod.

To Berenicis, Davin said, "What is your purpose in this little game? There is nothing to gain if I allow him to crush your skull with his bare hands."

"How inventive."

"Lord Berenicis, you have my pact for safe passage and aid, but I will not allow you to abuse that privilege," said Varaza.

Davin studied the Blackheart. Yesterday and now today, Berenicis cast aside his earlier attempts to woo the thieves and openly sought to provoke them. Why? Did the former tyrant of Jyotis also feel they neared the end of their search? If so, he surely considered them obstacles between him and the sheath he sought.

Or is it more?

An icy sensation suffused the pit of Davin's stomach. Berenicis was testing his friend. The swine had glimpsed Goran's shape-altering tricks and suspected the muscular giant was more than he appeared.

Yesterday when the Blackheart had provoked Davin into drawing his longsword, it had been for the Challing's benefit. Berenicis was probing, trying to measure the powers and abilities of an unknown factor he suddenly found standing squarely amid his scheme to reunite Kwerin's sword and sheath.

"Sit down, Goran, and warm yourself by the fire." Davin edged his friend toward the Huata huddled around the blaze.

"Yes, yes," Berenicis cut in. "Be the good lap dog. Do as your master commands."

Varaza interposed himself between Goran and the Jyotian lord when the Challing leaped forward, island-sized hands outstretched for an aristocratic neck. Then Davin was there, pulling his friend back and pushing him down atop a chair-sized boulder safely away from Berenicis.

"He suspects the powers you possess," Davin whispered. "He seeks to provoke you into revealing yourself. Be wary!"

"Baiting will get him nothing," Goran answered softly, then grinned. "Except a split skull!"

"And you'll turn the Huata against us." Davin glared at his friend. "Be careful around Berenicis. He is a devious one."

Goran's sole eye shifted from Davin to the Jyotian lord. "Look at him, fools!"

Davin cringed. Goran wouldn't let it be. "Goran..."

The Challing continued. "This man is Lord Berenicis known as Blackheart. Under the guise of being Jyotis' ruler, he butchered men, women, and children. And you the noble Huata huddle about him like candle bugs drawn to flame. The Huata, the eternally free Huata! Bah! I spit on your freedom when you chain yourselves to a cur such as this!"

"Goran, you go too far." This from Varaza. "Lord Berenicis is also under the protection of Huata hospitality. If you..."

"Bugger Huata hospitality. Why protect a man who delivers you into the hands of the Narain so that you can be slaves amid their shit and stink? He uses you! You chose a worm to place rings in your noses. You die so he can gain the Sword of Kwerin Bloodhawk. Bah! I grow weary of such spineless men!" Goran's voice boomed, and he pointed behind Varaza. "The Blackheart is nothing! He can't protect you from the simple illusions Lorennion draws in the air such as that!"

Davin's head turned in the direction the Challing poked a finger, as did every other head in the camp, except for Berenicis, whose gray eyes glared at Goran. Davin shook his head. Goran's earlier mutterings now played on his mind. He saw a pale, milky translucent ice-worm crawling out of the forest toward the fire. Its body, thrice the width of a man, undulated while razor claw-tipped feet scurried beneath its bloated bulk. Unblinking yellow eyes returned the thief's stare as its round mouth opened to reveal spikelike teeth the length of a man's hand.

Varaza's hand crept to his side and closed about the hilt of his longsword and rested there a moment before hesitantly releasing it. The Jyotian thief watched the sluggish ice-worm ponderously heave half its body into the air. Stubby clawed legs raked the air, and that circular mouth gaped wider. That's what Davin saw; he had no idea what illusionary creature Lorennion's magicks awoke in the stout Huata leader's mind.

"Nooooo." Moaning doubt trembled from Varaza's lips. "Not an ice-worm. Father Yehseen, no."

Ice-worm? Davin frowned. Varaza sees the same creature I do? The son of Anane shoved to his feet and yelled, "Varaza, jump!"

Too late! The ice-worm dropped that dark maw neatly over the Huata leader's head like a living hood. Spike-teeth clamped closed. Then there was no more Varaza, only a headless corpse with blood showering the air from a ragged neck.

Before the tottering body that once belonged to his Huata friend toppled to the crimson-stained snow, Davin had sword in hand and ran toward an illusion that was all too real.

"This is no illusion. It lives!" Goran's cry brought the band to their feet, scrambling back from the fifteen-foot worm to free their own weapons.

Davin's blade struck first. Straight and true, he lunged for a watery, pale yellow eye. The honed tip of steel hit the unblinking orb. A ringing of crystal chimed through the air as the sword harmlessly skidded across the surface of the monster's eye. The Jyotian barely managed to regain his balance before he threw himself to the left to avoid five razor-sharp claws that whipped out in unison.

Goran attacked next. Hi's battle-ax sang when he swung the double-bladed weapon high into the air. It screamed as he placed every ounce of the strength contained in his massive body behind his blow. Down steel flashed, biting deeply into the pulpy flesh just behind the beast's bulbous head.

Such a blow would have severed a keedehn's head from its torso. The ice-worm gave no visible indication it even felt the slashing ax. Milky juices spurted from the open hide for an instant. The worm's flesh then closed—sucking battle-ax from Challing hands. The weapon disappeared beneath the ice-worm's skin, no more than a dark shadow within its translucent body.

"The thing's invincible!" Goran sputtered.

He backstepped to avoid the monster's snapping mouth when it savaged about. The changeling escaped death, but not a Huata who rushed forward with sword swinging. The cumbersome creature rolled, trapping the man and crushing him beneath its weight. Still another died when those deceptively stubby legs rippled, then lashed out to open face and chest.

"Move aside!" Berenicis shouldered to the front.

As the ice-worm's round mouth gaped, and the head slashed at another Huata, the Jyotian lord pulled forth the sorcery-endowed sword and swung it in a short arc. Again the monster's hide opened and milky fluids spurted. There was a sucking sound; the open flaps of flesh sealed themselves, leaving no trace of the wound.

Berenicis struck again, again—with the same results. All the while those daggerlike teeth tore into the side of yet another Huata, biting half through the man's body. A fourth died while he struggled to free his sword as it was sucked into the worm's body. The creature rolled again, muffling the Huata's death cry beneath its ponderous bulk.

"Steel aids us naught!" Goran cried to the Jyotian. "The fire, Davin! Roast the hell-spawn!"

Davin didn't question his friend, but grabbed a burning branch from the campfire and hurled it into the monster's face. The brand struck the round head, bounced off, and sizzled and sputtered in the snow. So did five other branches tossed by the Huata.

"Back, back!" Berenicis' voice rang out.

The retreat came too late for yet another of the band. While he scrambled on the snow-blanketed ground, the ice-worm lifted and dropped atop him. The circular mouth opened wide, wider, then closed, tearing off head and right shoulder. Without lifting a yellow eye to the others who hastened away, the monstrous head lowered to the spasmodically twitching body and contently dined on a breakfast of human flesh.

"No! By all the cruel gods, no!" Goran bellowed his fury.

Davin's head jerked toward the roar. One glimpse and he recognized the bloodlust that once more possessed the Challing. Goran's right eye glowed with green witch-fire. A beserk rage twisted his features and the muscles of his bull-neck stood out like corded steel.

Now Davin witnessed a change he had never seen while the Challing was lost in his lust for blood. Goran's body expanded, rippled beneath the furs covering him. Although the Jyotian could not see the transformation, he could imagine the shifting of flesh. The changeling's massive body swelled, new meat doubled already bulging muscles of his arms, chest, back, and legs.

"Goran, don't do it!" He had no idea what his friend intended, but it had to be foolhardy. The ice-worm cared not whether human or Challing became its next course.

Goran let out a bull-throated roar, but he did not charge. Instead his arms encircled the boulder his backside had rested on moments ago. His face went crimson from strain as he lifted solid granite—a boulder half his size—as though it were no more than an oversized rock to be cast into some stream. Then he charged!

With both hands he hoisted the boulder above his head while he ran toward the man-eating ice-worm. Three strides from that bulbous head with its now blood-stained mouth and unblinking yellow eyes, the Challing roared once more. Two strides from the gigantic translucent worm, Goran hurled the boulder.

There was no thud, just a sickening "squish" when the granite struck home. Milky juices and flesh squirted and oozed from beneath the boulder—the pulpy remnants of the monster's head. That fifteen-foot body thrashed and writhed violently like an earthworm on a fisherman's hook. Razored claws tore through the snow into the ground itself before the last death spasm passed from the worm's quaking body.

Davin paid little heed to the beast's final throes; he rushed to his friend, who stumbled away from the thrashing monster and collapsed in the snow.

"Goran! Goran!" Davin knelt beside the changeling. The titan's furs rippled as his body altered, assumed its merely massive proportions. "Are you all right?"

"Not this time... friend Davin. Made more muscles ... changes... inside...." Goran's voice was a weak whisper; his face lacked color. "... feel so... tired... strength... gone...."

The Challing's eye closed; his body heaved then slumped. Panic quaked with Davin's breast as he pressed an ear to his friend's chest. Unconscious—not dead! Whatever the Challing had done to his body, the shifting had not robbed him of life.

"He takes a nap at an odd time." Berenicis approached, as did the rest of the battle's survivors.

Davin's eyes coldly rolled up to stare at the former ruler of his home province. "Varaza is dead and with him the promise I made concerning your miserable hide. One more word and I shall have it! Here and now!"

"Davin, hold!" said Berenicis, backing away, hand on his sword hilt. "My dear brother! Don't do anything you'll regret."

Davin shook with ill-suppressed rage. "Would that we weren't brothers. It would make killing you all the easier. But blood ties will not save you, Berenicis. You have hounded me from my homeland on false murder charges, you have raped and plundered Jyotis, and now you insult a man who has performed the bravest act any of us are likely to see in our lifetimes."

"A man?" Berenicis said softly. "My brother Davin, did you call him a man?"

"He's more of a man than you, brother."

Berenicis laughed. "Your sense of humor hasn't left you, I see. Don't let your hot head get you into more trouble, though, Davin. We need one another, you and I. Neither of us will achieve our goal without the other."

Davin stopped his hand a fraction of an inch from the hilt of his sword. Like it or not, the Blackheart and he did need each other. Lorennion still awaited them.

"If—if— Goran and I continue with you," Davin answered, his words hissing between clenched teeth, "there will have to be some concessions, brother!"

Berenicis' eyes narrowed dangerously, but he nodded. "I'll listen and consider your demands."

Lorennion laughed and clapped his hands. "Fire, ice, air, and earth! Fire, ice, air, and earth! How marvelously they learned and responded. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. For visitors such as these I would wait decades!"

The wizened, old mage lifted his eyebrows as though trying to recall half-forgotten memories. Then he grinned. "But then, I have waited decades, haven't I? Waited and waited and waited. And no one came. Until now. Must not greet them this way. Must not. Proper I shall be, befitting men such as these."

The sorcerer paused; his head cocked toward the tiny voices that came from his scrying mirror. It was the thief called Davin who spoke and Berenicis conceded to his wishes. The Jyotian freebooter then gave the surviving Huata the choice of returning to their wagons or continuing the search for the missing woman. Only three of the nomads remained.

"Oh, that was good. So good. Perfect, in fact. All must come of their own free will or..." He couldn't remember why his visitors had to enter his portals by their own choice, but it was important. Of that he was certain.

Laying aside the golden mirror, Lorennion shuffled across his laboratory to a shelf cluttered with dust-caked vials and bottles. He wedged a shaking hand through the glass maze and pulled a clear flask from the rear of the shelf, brushed away cobwebs and dust, then held it to a light.

If tempests could dwell in teapots, then the mother of all hurricanes raged within the flask. The blue liquid inside bubbled and churned and erupted as though it struggled to escape the container.

Lorennion's childlike glee echoed through the laboratory while he uncorked the flask and drank.

"A fool, Davin Anane! You've lost whatever small portion of sense you had," Goran grumbled while he trudged wearily along at his friend's side. "Our horses, our supplies! The Huata you let return will rob us blind! Nothing but filthy sneak thieves these nomads, you know."

"Aye," Davin answered without protest. While Goran remained pale and his hands were still atremble, he had the strength to walk—and complain. Both were good indications of the Challing's recovery.

"Eye? Did I not tell you that it was the three daughters of the Huata leader Ordando who robbed me of my left eye? Plucked it from my head while I stared on, they did!" Goran grinned, his arms gesturing wildly.

Davin smiled. His companion was well on the road to recovery to so heartily throw himself into yet another tale of his mysterious lost eye, although Davin never learned how Ordando's seductive daughters managed the feat while Goran watched. His attention was drawn to the circular house that stood ahead of them, atop a gently swelling hill.

"Lorennion's keep?" asked Berenicis. "It hardly seems grand enough for a mage of his standing."

"It looks comfortable enough. And easily defended," said Davin. "While there are a few outer windows, I am sure they can be barred. The inner courtyard is protected on all sides by the house."

"Do we just walk up and ask if the mage is in?" asked Goran. "I am still not back to fighting trim. Another of his keep guards and it's Black Qar who'll be greeting us."

Berenicis fingered his sword, then pulled it fully from its plain wooden sheath. The entire length of the blade glowed softly.

Excited, Berenicis said, "The sheath for the sword is near. Look at how it responds. It senses wholeness!"

"Lijena," Davin said softly. The woman had to be here, now that Berenicis had verified this was, truly, Lorennion's keep.

"Standing here won't accomplish anything," said Goran. "Weak though I am, I shall confront the mage. The rest of you sneak about and see if you can't find the wench and the sheath. Then we'll be done with this place."

"We approach together," said Davin.

"Goran's idea is the better," said Berenicis. "Let him engage Lorennion, and we will steal what we need."

Davin snorted contemptuously at the notion. "A mage of his ability wouldn't notice that? What makes you believe he is not already aware of every move we make? A few simple ward spells would accomplish much more than simply alerting him to our approach."

Davin started up the gravel path leading to the front entrance and the five others hastened to his side. The Jyotian's eyes darted from side to side nervously, ready for some magical trap with every step. None came; they reached the front door without incident.

Heaving a sigh, he knocked. From inside came shuffling sounds, coupled with a light tap-tap-tap. The carved wooden door swung inward on well-oiled hinges and revealed a hunched old man nearing his hundredth summer and dressed in finely embroidered robes of the Nayati style. He leaned heavily on a cane.

"Welcome, Davin, Goran, Berenicis, and your Huata companions. You have done well getting this far. You are to be my honored guests. Oh, yes, I forgot. Do come in. My manners. There are so few visitors out here in Agda anymore. Come in, come in!"

Davin stood in the doorwav speechless.

From behind him, Berenicis blurted out. "You are Lorennion? This is your keep?"

"What? Oh, yes, damn rude of me not to introduce myself. Yes, of course, I'm Lorennion and this is my home. All mine, all mine. Excuse me. I see so few people out here. But I said that already. Don't just stand there, come in. I have a meal prepared for you." The old man waved them forward with a wrinkled hand.

Davin crossed the threshold first, certain that somehow, someplace they had made a wrong turn in their wild chase across Upper Raemllyn.

chapter 20

"You are Lorennion?" Berenicis, a master at masking his own emotions, was unable to conceal his surprise and confusion as he repeated his original question. Even the tight, slightly higher pitch to his voice revealed his distress.

"Yes," the mage answered hesitantly as though he were uncertain or required time to consider more than one possible reply to the simple question. Then with more conviction he continued, "Yes, of course I am. Who do you think I am? A Huata? Do I look like one of the nomads? No, of course I don't. A Narain? You came across those winged lovelies, did you not? No, I am not a Narain. That does not leave much for someone living out here in the forest, now does it?"

"I meant nothing by it, sire." Berenicis' tongue fumbled the words awkwardly.

While Davin Anane enjoyed the Blackheart's discomfort, he, too, was unable to shake his puzzlement. This was hardly the Lorennion he expected. Where was the mighty sorcerer feared throughout Upper and Lower Raemllyn? Where was the cruel, jealous tyrant who had destroyed Yorioma Faine's young lover in a pillar of flame with a mere flick of his wrist? This was but a decrepit old man who walked along the edge of the grave, his enfeebled legs threatening to topple him at any moment.

"Come along, come along. I've food laid out for you." The most feared and despised wizard of the realm hastened them deeper into his home with a gentle, grandfathery smile. "You must be tired out, after a long day of hiking through the woods. Thick woods, aren't they? The thickest in all Raemllyn, or so I'm told. You were wise not to bring along horses. Never make it this far on horseback. The last group barely passed the halfway point."

"Last group?" Goran's jade eye narrowed to a suspicious slant.

"Years ago. Many, many years ago. I get so lonely out here. So lonely."

The Challing glanced at Davin, who shrugged in confusion when a tear rolled down the old man's wrinkled cheek. A mage wept over being lonely? It made little sense.

Unless he's more than he seems, Davin thought. Yet... The Jyotian's mind stumbled as it sought to find the logic of such a befuddling performance. Why play out this charade at all, if Lorennion is the awesomely powerful mage of legend?

"Why do you stay here if it imposes such a hardship on you?" Suspicion crept into Berenicis' tone.

Davin studied his long-hated enemy. The Blackheart's initial shock dissipated and his guard went up once again. The man's head looked as if it had been fitted atop a well-oiled swivel. While they walked, it turned left and right, eyes missing nothing. Davin wondered if Berenicis actually saw anything of importance or if it was wasted effort on the Jyotian ruler's part.

As far as Davin could see, this was a simple household. The wide curving hall they walked down consisted of bare, white stuccoed walls, stone floor, and a naked beam ceiling. Here and there a sturdy wooden chair or bench stood shoved against the walls, but there was no other ornamentation—no paintings, no tapestries, no arcane symbols.

Most importantly, the young thief detected no magic. Lorennion's abode appeared lacking the most rudimentary magical contrivances. Unless the Jyotian considered the soft light permeating the hall that came from statues neatly placed in strategic locations. Other than this simple spell—if it were a spell at all—Davin felt none of the tingling often present where ward spells awaited the unwary.

"Do you have servants to help you?" Berenicis asked cautiously, obviously prying for information. "This rattling place is such a large house for an older gentleman to run all alone."

"Had. They left. Fools. I paid them well, too. But everything is improving. You came. Big, strong men like you came to me. Passed all my tests and arrived in plenty of time for dinner. I think you'll find it fitting for hungry men. You are hungry?"

Davin tensed at the word "tests." The Narain, the klyots, the deadly illusions, the ice-worm had been tests? Not guardians?

"Hungry enough to eat an entire rez," Goran said, appar-ently missing the mage's mention of tests. "Spiral horns and all!"

"Good, good." Lorennion beamed when his blue eyes shifted to the fiery-haired titan. "I enjoy a man with an appetite... in all things."

"He certainly has that," Berenicis replied with no attempt to hide his contempt. "Sometimes those appetites get out of hand."

"Not to worry here. We are quite alone..." Lorennion smiled.

Disquiet wiggled at the back of Davin's mind. There was something wrong with the way the ancient mage's lips lifted— something more than a smile was in his expression.

"... except for my charming hostess. I believe you know her, do you not, eh? Eh?" Lorennion extended an arm as they passed through a doorway.

Davin halted, his heart momentarily stopped in midbeat. "Lijena?"

Gone was the dirty, bruised slave Goran had rescued from the Narain Circle. Before him stood the beautiful young woman he had first seen riding through the Harnish wood. A radiant goddess come to earth.

His heart tripled its pace when those gem-bright aquamarine eyes lifted. She smiled and took a step toward him, the gleaming cascade of her frosty gold hair stirring like a morning mist. Misty, too, was the diaphanous gown she wore. Sea-green it was. Or was it the ocean itself that cloaked her supple body? Davin was uncertain. With each movement the fabric's hue subtly shifted like sunlight playing in a quiet grotto.

Lijena took his hand. Her smile widened. The warmth of those slender, delicate fingers assured the thief that she was indeed real and not a portion of a very pleasing dream.

Doubt wedged into his mind. The smile—was it hers and was it for him? Or was she still possessed by the wizard's demon? In that moment he realized that he longed for the former. Yet, Lijena had sworn his death, had attempted to fulfill that promise on four occasions. And while the gentle beauty of her face sang to his heart, her hand, now tightly squeezing his, struck a discordant note.

"Davin, I was afraid you wouldn't come." Her voice carried no trace of distress. "Lorennion is so lonely, and we feared his tests would turn you aside. But we can talk of that later. Come, a feast is waiting. I do hope you enjoy it."

Tests! The word echoed ominously in the Jyotian's brain.

"Yes, yes," cackled Lorennion, sidling up and forcing his way between the two. "She prepared it. Such a pleasure not to eat my own cooking. Not that I'm bad, mind you. Just that it palls on me after while. All alone here in Agda. So far from others."

"Are you all right?" Davin asked.

Lijena turned candid blue eyes to him and smiled. "I am fine... now that you are here."

"How touching," Berenicis said sarcastically. "She leads us through flesh-devouring beetles, magical illusions, and a murderous ice-worm, and she says she's glad we are here."

"Not we, Berenicis." Davin's eyes flashed with an angry, possessive light. "Me!"

"Those were tests, just tests," Lorennion interrupted. "You passed them all in the finest fashion. Impressed... yes, I am very impressed. Strong men, strong and hungry. Come along now and don't be difficult."

"Please," Lijena said. "I desire it, too."

They entered a large dining room. Before them lay a huge stained-wood table set with the finest of gold cutlery, the most exquisite of fragile ceramic plates, crystal goblets brimming with deep red wines, and a white and gray spider-silk tablecloth elegant enough to have graced the High King's table.

"Sumptuous," said Goran. "But where is the food? I have a hunger!"

Lorennion giggled at the Challing's enthusiasm, bobbing his head up and down. He hobbled forward, leaning heavily on the cane. He pointed with his free hand to one of the ornately carved wooden chairs.

"There, my one-eyed guest. Seat yourself. And tell me if there isn't enough food on your plate."

Goran sank down, a smile of relief on his face. Since he had undergone the radical shape changes, he had been drained, physically exhausted. To sit was a rare luxury. His smile transformed into astonishment.

"The food!" he cried. "It's everywhere!"

Davin frowned. Lijena took him by the arm and guided him to the chair at the end of the table. He stared down the length of the entire table to Lorennion at the far end. And as he sat, he found himself looking over a banquet adequate for a score, not just six men, a woman, and a doddering old fool.

Berenicis seated himself and looked to Lorennion for an explanation.

"A mere trick of the eye, nothing more. The food was here all the time. Just hidden away so you could not see it. If you had sniffed, it would have alerted you. Would, it would have." He cackled with delight at his little trick.

Davin said nothing. He had inhaled deeply. He had smelled Lijena's freshly washed hair, a coy trace of a perfume—or soap—the lemony polish used on the table and chairs, even the faint, unused odor of the padding on the chairs. There had been no scent of succulent rez or the yalt-fruit salad or the lavish display of vegetables steaming in their serving bowls. None of it had been there until Goran seated himself.

"Brandy. Do try the brandy," the mage urged.

Berenicis sipped appreciatively and nodded when he tasted the heady distillate. "Phorra brandy. It has been long since I've tasted its match. This is a very rare vintage, isn't it?"

"The rarest," said Lorennion. "Even rarer to find a man of discernment and taste out here in the forests. Rare. Damn rare. Excuse my language, my dear. I am so used to being alone, and now I have all these fine, strong men to share my table."

Davin sampled every dish cautiously. His acute sense of taste detected no undercurrent of telltale drugs or poisons. The food was simple enough for all its scarcity, and tasty.

"You said we had passed your tests. What did you mean? The deaths out in the forest were not merely for your amusement, were they?" Davin scrutinized the wizened sorcerer at the opposite end of the table.

"What my brother Jyotian means," Berenicis smoothly cut in, "is that we would hate to think the deaths of our Huata companions were in vain."

"Not useless deaths, no, none of that. All for a reason. I needed only the strongest to form the cadre to oppose the forces invading Raemllyn," Lorennion assured the fallen ruler with a shaky nod of his head. "It is such a pleasure to dine with heroes. True heroes, one and all!"

Davin asked, "What invasion?"

"There will be time for all that. Much later, yes, later. Eat, try more of the brandy. I have a keg of it in my cellars. Drain it. Enjoy it!"

Davin started to speak, to demand an answer, when he felt something moving against his leg. He turned and saw a coy smile on Lijena's lips. The taunting warmth eased up his leg, toying, tantalizing.

"Lijena, my dear," said Lorennion, "did you happen to fix the dessert I requested? The one I love so?"

"The pudding? Yes," she answered.

While her hands remained in plain sight, the warmth crept up Davin's leg. He leaned back and peered under the spider-silk tablecloth and saw her slender ankle rubbing back and forth. Her toes stroked over his leg, caressing and teasing.

He blinked when pudding abruptly appeared on the plate in front of him. His dark eyes fixed on Lorennion, but the mage said nothing about the magical appearance of the dessert. Nor did Davin ask. If the old man played the role of senility, he did so to the hilt, hiding behind mock forgetfulness when questions were asked. And if the senility were real, the results would be the same rambling reply that neatly evaded an answer.

When Goran finished a second portion of the plum pudding, Lorennion wobbled to his feet and lifted his brandy snifter. "A toast. To those who have survived my tests, I salute your courage and fighting prowess."

"To the greatest mage in all of Raemllyn," Berenicis replied, leaping to his feet.

Lorennion sampled his brandy with obvious gusto, and then placed it back on the table. He spilled a few precious drops on the tablecloth.

"Lijena, my dear, please show the gentlemen to their rooms. I am sure you will be quite comfortable in beds, for a change. Yes, I am sure. Good evening, good evening." With that final word, Lorennion wobbled off, his cane making light tapping sounds on the floor.

Davin cocked his head. The cadence came differently now, less pressure being put on the cane as the mage walked. Does he need it at all? Or is it but part of a ruse?

"This way, please." Lijena eased gracefully from the table.

She ushered them from the room and down a long corridor. A bend and another brought them to the rear of the house. She showed Ruggo and his two Huata companions a spacious room, Berenicis to his chamber, then Goran, and finally Davin.

"Rest tonight," she said demurely as the young thief stood in the doorway to the room.

Davin watched when she turned and walked down the hall to enter the room next to his. Her behavior was curious to say the least. First she had suggestively teased him at dinner, and now she acted as shy as a forest doe.

Sensing eyes on the back of his neck, Davin swung about. Berenicis' door slowly closed; the former Jyotian ruler had been spying on them.

With a frown, Davin entered his simple sleeping chamber and plopped down on the bed with several appropriate loud yawns. Blowing out a candle atop a small table beside the bed, he stretched out and closed his eyes.

And he waited, feigning sleep, listening. When he was certain no one else stirred, he slipped quietly from the bed and went to the door. The corridor outside was empty.

He smiled. While the others rested he intended to find out what the mage hid behind all those doors he had glimpsed on the way to the bed chambers. Any information he could glean might clear the confusion roiling his mind.

He took one step in the hallway, when a whisper came from behind him. "Davin!"

He turned. Lijena stood, framed by the dark wood of the doorway to her room. She wore only a thin, white robe spun of spider-silk held at the waist by a loose sash. More than mere hints of the summery body beneath were revealed by the fabric's open folds.

"Davin, Berenicis sleeps now. He will not know. Come. Come and join me." Lijena's arms opened to the Jyotian.

His nocturnal exploration of Lorennion's keep forgotten, Davin went to her, easing the door to the room closed as she led him to her bed.

"The magicks." Awe echoed in Valora's voice. "I feel the magicks rising like a column of dust in the middle of the Nayati desert. So powerful, so unstoppable!"

The Faceless One in the lead stopped and turned to the sorceress. "I feel it, also. Lorennion?"

"It must be. Such magicks being unleashed. What can it mean? I do not recognize these spells by their feel, their magical essence. What can he be doing?"

"We will reach Lorennion's keep by sunrise," said the Faceless leader. "You must retrieve what Zarek Yannis desires."

Valora pulled her black cloak tighter around her. "And what do you think that is?"

Sloping shoulders moved in what Valora took for a shrug. The hell rider neither knew nor cared what mission they were on. It had been ordered to deliver her to the mage's keep and it was doing so. Beyond that, what mattered to the faceless demon? Valora had spent the whole journey trying to find out and had failed at every turn.

"You will obey my every command when we confront Lorennion!" she demanded. "Anything less than total obedience will be in violation of King Zarek's wishes."

"We obey," came the quiet words, vibrant with energy.

Valora sucked in a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. She smiled. The ride had been worthwhile, after all. Four of the Faceless Ones to do my biding!

The Sword of Kwerin Bloodhawk would be reunited with its sheath—and she would be the new ruler of Raemllyn!

Davin Anane rolled over in bed and felt warm flesh under his arm. His eyes shot open. Lijena slept peacefully next to him, a gentle smile on her lips. Without waking her, he eased from beneath the bed covers and retrieved his clothing from the floor. He dressed quickly and started for the door when he heard the soft rustle of silk bedsheets.

"Davin?"

He glanced over his shoulder, then spun about. Terror contorted her face. A feverish light flickered wildly in her blue eyes. He had seen that haunted look before.

"The demon," he said, voice catching in his throat. He should have realized it controlled her last night.

"Lorennion commands it." Her lips trembled, quivered, then tears rolled down her cheeks. She shuddered and sobbed, "I am not free, and he refuses me. Oh, Davin, kill me! I cannot bear its presence any longer. Slay me, and let me be free of it in Black Qar's embrace!"

"Did the demon force you to..." He nodded to the sheets still rumpled from their lovemaking.

"Last night?" Her head lowered as though in shame. "Yes."

Davin stiffened. He should have known, should have realized that everything was too simple, too perfect. Twice now he had shared Lijena's bed only to find afterwards that it was demon and not the woman he loved who—

Loved? The thought reverberated in his head. He shoved away the muddled emotions churning in his breast. Now was not the time to sort through the feelings Lijena awoke in him.

"Lorennion will release you. He has to. I haven't followed you across all Upper Raemllyn to fail." He crossed the room and took her in his arms, his palms soothing over the velvet warmth of her back and shoulders.

"He has the remedy. He showed me the potion, but refused to let me drink it. It's in his laboratory. In... in a vial. A blue potion." Wracking sobs shook the woman. She buried her face in the hollow of his shoulder, clinging to him.

"It will be all right. I promise you that. You will be free of the demon." Gently he eased her back and tenderly kissed her tear-moistened eyelids. "Wait here. I'll get the potion. With or without Lorennion's permission."

Davin rose when scuffling noises from the central courtyard drew his attention to the room's single window. Outside, the first faint rays of dawn cast a pinkish hue over dark flagstones and statuary of Raemllyn's pantheon of gods, but revealed nothing more. The sound came again, closer now.

"What is it?" Lijena looked up at him.

The Jyotian thief pressed a finger to his lips as he moved to the window. Edging aside a lacy curtain, he peered out.

His right hand dropped to his sword hilt. It was Lorennion. The mage shuffled across the courtyard, his ancient form doubled over. Although it was not infirmity responsible for the wizard's twisted posture. He dragged a man—unconscious or dead, Davin couldn't tell—toward a fountain in the center of the courtyard.

Davin's temples pounded. The man stirred, his head rolling limply in the thief's direction. It was Ruggo the Huata smithy!

Davin stared on, watching the mage drag the blacksmith to the rim of the stone fountain that gently sprayed its clear waters into the dawn air.

Davin frowned. Lorennion's hair!

The mage's scalp was no longer bald, but covered in thick hair. Nor was it the white of snow; now it shone as salt-and-pepper, more youthful dark hair shot with gray streaks.

As Davin tried to open the window to rescue his nomad friend, the sorcerer heaved the helpless Ruggo over the rim of the fountain so that the Huata's head was under the water.

"No!" Horror rasped from the thief's throat.

A sliver of silver flashed in the wizard's hand, the gleam of a polished steel blade in the sun's morning rays. Lorennion's wrist flicked, drawing the blade across the unconscious man's throat. The Huata's lifeblood flowed into the fountain's untainted waters. The clear spray turned pink, then wine red as Lorennion straightened, his movements more agile than before, his steps away from the fountain strong and brisk.

In mute terror Davin Anane stared at the corpse still dangling over the edge of the stone fountain. Above the hapless Ruggo a red shower shot into the air, only to fall down into the bowl and be recirculated.

The gruesome pieces fell into their ghastly places one after another until Davin understood the horror he gazed upon—the Blood Fountain!

chapter 21

"Lijena!" Davin struggled to think although his mind reeled dizzily. "Get up and find Goran! Bring him back here. We haven't much time!"

Lijena's eyes, still watery with tears, stared at the Jyotian when she heard fear tighten his voice. "What is it? If it's for me, Davin, don't. All I want is to die!"

"You might get that wish—we all might, if we don't work fast."

He glanced back to the courtyard expecting to see Lorennion dragging another member of the party to his unholy fountain. Only Ruggo lay there, his corpse ghostly pale and unmoving beneath the showering spray of the Blood Fountain. "Get Goran! Tell him to wait here and wait until I return. Just wait and watch. He's to do nothing until I get back."

"Where are you going?" she asked as she threw back the bed covers and scrambled into her clothes.

"To find Lorennion's laboratory and get the potion." The thief stared at her. The demon still dwelled within the daughter of Bistonia, but at the moment he discerned no indication of its control. He whispered a prayer to Yehseen that it would remain dormant until the mage's potion freed her for once and for all. "Then we'll all leave. Now get moving, dammit!"

"I'm ready." She stood clothed in a man's breeches and blouse she had pulled from a closet.

Had the loose-fitting garments belonged to a long-forgotten traveler who had also passed Lorennion's tests? Davin wondered, not desiring to know the answer.

Together they moved to the door. The corridor was empty. Lijena hastened to Goran's room while Davin ran to the left on silent feet. He reached the first bend of the hallway, looked around, found it deserted, too, and ran to the front of the house, to the closed doors he had noticed last night.

He cursed his stupidity when he tried the brass handle of the first portal. He should have asked Lijena if she knew the laboratory's location. They had to be deep into Agda's forest before the wizard discovered they knew his dark secret.

The door opened. Davin entered and muttered another curse. The room was but a study with bookcase upon bookcase lining the walls. The Jyotian frowned as he read the titles marching along neatly kept shelves. The leather-bound volumes were nothing more than amusements, tomes filled with tall stories such as Goran relished telling. None contained the lore he sought—or the potion necessary to free Lijena from her demonic bondage.

Frustrated by the precious time he wasted, Davin tried the next room and the next and the next. All were neatly appointed and none had the look of a working mage's laboratory.

He stepped to the last of the doors, and reached for its brass handle. A tingling sensation shot through the length of his arm. Davin swallowed hard, his mouth suddenly dry. This was it; it had to be. He felt the magicks within. Ward spell? Or worse?

He forced his hand to close about the latch, to lift, to push inward. Every muscle in his trim body tingled now. He clenched his teeth until his jaw ached, fighting the urge to flee, to run like a craven. The very rational desire was born in the spell Lorennion had woven around this most private niche of his keep, Davin realized, which did nothing to lessen the effects.

Profaning the names of the five Sitala who had bound him to this task, he pushed inward harder. Each inch of the door's movement was ten times harder than the prior inch. Davin panted, his chest aheave from the effort by the time the door opened a mere six inches from its frame.

The seventh inch proved impossible. Throwing his full weight against the door gained but a shudder of wood. The tingling sensation altered drastically and now vibrated on muscles and Done. Nerve endings grated against each other. Then his arm went numb.

"No! I will not be denied!" Planting feet firmly on the stone floor, he used strong hips to shove his body into the door. Shoulder hurting, arms no longer able to grip the latch, Davin passed the limits of his strength.

The door didn't budge. The ward spell holding it proved more than he could overcome. Davin tried to squeeze past, but only succeeded in getting the briefest glimpse of the work benches, the reagents and strangely shaped glassware, the small notebooks and leather-bound grimoires—and a simple stoppered glass vial containing a cobalt-blue liquid sitting in on a table at the middle of Lorennion's laboratory.

Then the door slammed closed, throwing him to the center of the corridor.

He glared at the spell-woven obstacle while the numbness gradually passed and strength ebbed back into muscles. There was no way he could gain entry by himself. But he wasn't by himself! Nor was he without magicks! Davin smiled. If Goran could increase the size of his body, why couldn't he decrease it? The Challing could alter his shape until he was slim enough to slip into the laboratory and retrieve the bottle.

The ringing of steel on steel halted the adventurer before he lifted a booted foot toward Lijena's room. His head jerked about, seeking the din of battle. It came from behind him, toward the region of the dining room.

Goran! He didn't wait! Davin pivoted and ran, fearing his friend had come in search of him and encountered Lorennion.

The son of Anane skidded to an abrupt halt when he reached the entryway to the room. The dining room lay completely bare. Gone was the grand table and its fineries. However, Lorennion, a much younger Lorennion, did stand within, or crouched as the case was, with silver-bladed longsword in hand. Nor was it the Challing he menacingly circled, but Lord Berenicis Blackheart.

"We can negotiate," Berenicis urged, sidestepping quickly as Lorennion launched a neatly choreographed attack. The mage's sword tip barely missed Berenicis' upper arm.

"Why negotiate when I hold you in the palm of my hand," the sorcerer replied coolly. "All I need do is close my fingers and you die!" Lorennion lunged again, his blade deflected at the last possible moment.

Gone was the hesitant grandfather who greeted the band last night. In his stead stood a man of no more than fifty years with straight and proud shoulders. No longer did the mage stammer and stumble for his words. Now he acted decisively, thrusting as Berenicis' guard wavered. The dethroned Jyotian back-stepped to avoid a skewer of tempered steel.

Simultaneously, Lorennion's left hand jerked up, fingers splayed and palm held flat toward Berenicis. A miniature lightning bolt in crackling blue leaped from the center of the wizard's hand.

Davin's eyes widened in surprise. Berenicis' left hand countered, his fingers tracing a circle in the air. The bolt struck, sizzling as it dissipated against the invisible barrier of magicks.

The Jyotian lord's arm then snaked out. From his fingertips appeared a tiny red fireball no larger than a pebble. Lorennion's fingertips danced, evoking a counter spell. Berenicis' fireball winked into nothingness!

The blackhearted swine! Davin realized Berenicis had been busy since fleeing Jyotis with Zarek Yannis' henchmen on his tail. To be certain, he was no expert mage. His spells weak and far from deadly, the Jyotian lord wielded them with the confidence and ease of an adept of the second circle.

As they cautiously circled again, both men muttered. Davin sensed the tingling of churning magicks aswirl about the two, although he saw no more miniature bolts or fireballs. The deadliest incantations often had no visible results except for a victim. A tangle-foot spell, a veil of blindness, or the lotus of forgetfulness were all either needed to give him a momentary advantage over his opponent. Time enough to drive home the tip of his sword.

The simplistic conjurings Berenicis manipulated, Davin understood. A smattering of arcane knowledge his fellow Jyotian might possess, but he was no sorcerer. Yet why were Lorennion's spells so feeble, so easily deflected?

The Blood Fountain! It flashed within the thief's mind. Not only did its gory waters rejuvenate the wizard—but were the source of his powers! How many throats must Lorennion slit before his full strength returned? Surely more blood had to be drained into the fountain than poor Ruggo had supplied.

A green flame erupting from the mage's fingers drew Davin's attention back to the clash of swords. Berenicis ducked beneath the magic-born fire and lunged. Lorennion's sword dipped and brushed the blade aside. As good a swordsman as Berenicis was, he proved unable to best Lorennion. The two were equally matched, both in magicks and fighting ability. Had the wizard managed to open more of his visitors' gullets, Davin was certain the duel of steel and spell would have been heavily weighed in favor of the mage.

"Davin!" Berenicis' gray eyes sparked with the light of victory when they fell on the thief. "Aid me! He's killed the Huata to regain his youth. He intends to murder all of us!"

Davin didn't reply. He simply turned his back on the two and trotted toward Lijena's room. He owed Berenicis nothing. If Lorennion proved the mightier, then the mage saved him the trouble of having to kill the Blackheart himself. Should Berenicis stand victor, his triumph would be short-lived, Davin would gladly see to that. Meanwhile the pair would keep each other occupied while he freed Lijena of her demon and, hopefully, provide time for an escape.

Davin came to a sudden halt and blinked, perplexed. He thought he traced his steps through the curving corridor. Instead he found himself lost, standing amid a vast kitchen. For a man who lived alone, the extensive area appeared well used. Davin wondered if Lorennion fed armies from this kitchen—or if he fattened those he intended to kill by slitting their throats into the Blood Fountain. His stomach rumbled at the thought of the huge meal they had been served the night before. Lorennion did not want his victims dying of starvation.

Davin tried to picture the layout of the house. With a nod of decision he stepped to a door on the right that he hoped led to courtyard and to Lijena's window. He yanked the door open.

"Yehseen's pock-riddled staff! The mage's wine cellar," Davin muttered in disgust. Kegs of wine stood stacked three to a pile. "Truly enough to get an entire army drunk. Or just Goran."

He started to close the door and seek another exit when he caught sight of a faint outline of yellowish sunlight on the floor. Davin sprinted down a flight of stairs to the back of the musty room and pulled away a rotting canvas curtain. A window looked out onto the courtyard and the Blood Fountain.

Davin heaved a small crate through the window, protecting his face from flying splinters of glass, then followed the box through. He ran across the courtyard to the window where Goran kept watch. Tug and strain as he did, the Challing's immense strength was no avail against the window. Apparently no window in Lorennion's keep opened, at least by human hands.

Waving his companion away from the glass, the Jyotian repeated his performance, this time using a small statue outside Lijena's window. He climbed through and joined the woman and Goran.

"What kept you?" demanded the Challing. "Black Qar is loose and stalking this place. The mage opened the throats of Wasi and Slod while I watched!"

"The potion," gasped Davin, catching his breath. He glanced back to the Blood Fountain. Its waters sprayed crimson now. "The magical anodyne to free Lijena is in the sorcerer's laboratory, but I can't reach it. I'll need your help, Goran."

"Of course you need my help. You always need my help. That is my lot in life since being transported to this miserable world. In Gohwohn, did anyone ever bother me? No. We did what we wanted and never once was 'I need your help, Goran' spoken."

"Quit complaining." To Lijena, Davin said, "Gather your belongings. We can retrieve the potion and be on our way ere Lorennion and Berenicis finish their duel."

"There is nothing here that is mine," she answered while she moved to the door and opened it.

"The Blackheart fights Lorennion?" Goran's good eye widened in disbelief. "How fares the mage?"

"Less well than you might believe, and Berenicis casts spells obviously more adroit than an apprentice. But Lorennion is still weak."

Davin carefully eyed Lijena as they hastened down the hall. Still no outward sign of her demon. If it would just remain dormant for a few more minutes. When they reached Lorennion's laboratory, Davin quickly explained the problem.

Goran needed to hear no more. His eye rolled to Lijena and he shrugged. "She is bound to find out sooner or later. If we fail now, it won't matter who knows. Open the door, and I'll see if I can squeeze through."

Tingling coursed through Davin's body when he lifted the latch, dropped into a crouch, got his footing, then shoved with all his might. His feet shot out from under him on the slick floor. The door opened a fraction of an inch.

"I managed before. I did!" he exclaimed when he saw Goran's dubious expression. "I looked in and saw the potion on the table. Now I can't budge the door. Why?"

His answer stumbled down the hallway—Berenicis! The Jyotian lord clutched a hand to his throat. Blood trickled between his fingers.

"He almost had me. Got away, Qar take you!" Hate twisted in Berenicis' face.

"You've always said you could take care of yourself. I simply took you at your word." Davin gave an indifferent shrug.

"Caught me with a tangle-foot spell. My head hit the floor when I fell. Knocked me unconscious." Berenicis winced as Lijena lifted his hand to examine a red gash running across his royal Adam's apple. "Dragged me to the Blood Fountain and tried to cut my throat. Got away. Damn you, Anane, I got away!"

"It's only a scratch," Lijena pronounced coolly, disappointment in her tone. "The bleeding will stop eventually."

"Lorennion's undivided attention explains why the ward spell increased its strength," Davin said, glancing at Goran.

"Flee, Davin," Lijena said, her shoulders and head slumping. "There is no hope for me. Flee and save yourselves."

"How noble," Berenicis said sarcastically. "Sacrifice yourself, die heroically. Bah! We must kill Lorennion!"

"Didn't get the sheath for your fancy sword, eh?" Goran indolently leaned against a wall. "But I do agree. Letting Lorennion grow in power with each new drop of blood decanted into his fountain would be foolish."

"What did you say?" Davin demanded.

"That we—"

"Decant!" The Jyotian thief's mind raced, germinating the seed of an idea the Challing had planted. "Brilliant, my friend, brilliant! You just gave me the answer. Goran, this is no time to tarry. We've a task at hand!"

Davin turned to Lijena. "Stay here with Berenicis. If what I have in mind works, you'll know it in a few minutes. Don't delay. Get the potion and drink it."

He didn't wait for a reply, but grabbed Goran's arm and tugged him toward the kitchen and the storeroom just below. As they ran, Davin explained his insane scheme.

"A bold enough plan—if it works." Goran grimaced. "And if not..."

The Challing's words trailed off in a dubious silence, but he offered no protest when Davin opened the cellar door and pointed to the dusty casks below.

"Guess if this doesn't work, we can always drink ourselves into a stupor," Goran suggested as they took the steps two at a time. "Then, at least, we won't feel Lorennion's dirk as he slits our throats."

"Wait! I'll check to see if the way is clear," Davin cautioned as Goran hefted one of the kegs in his arms.

Going to the window he had smashed earlier, the thief peered at the courtyard. Cold fingers closed around his stomach and clenched. Lorennion, robes aflutter about him, strode across the flagstones with sure, determined steps.

The mage had changed drastically from the first time they had seen him. Standing tall now, muscles those of a young man in his prime, eyes sharp and clear, hair a jet black, this was a man powerful physically and, Davin didn't doubt for an instant, powerful magically also.

When the sorcerer disappeared into a door on the opposite side of the circular yard, Davin called out, "Now, Goran, now!"

The Challing carried out two kegs of wine, one under each arm. Davin followed with a third, barely able to manage it. He dropped it heavily onto the fountain rim and smashed the hilt of his sword into the wooden head. Wine spattered. Davin upended the keg and let the contents pour into the Blood Fountain. Goran did likewise with both of his.

"Is this enough?"

"Three more, just to be certain Jajhana brings us good fortune." Davin waved his one-eyed friend back to the cellar.

Another three kegs were emptied into the crimson water. Davin noted no change in the fountain's hue, but whatever mechanism pumped the flow into the air changed its tenor. The two adventurers exchanged glances. There was no way to tell if it held any meaning. They could only hope and pray to Raemllyn's gods.

"Back to Lijena," said Davin. "We've done all we can here."

They found Lijena within the open laboratory—bound and gagged on the floor, writhing and twisting like a maniac. One glimpse of the demonic light afire in her aquamarine eyes told the story. The demon had again risen and taken control of her body and mind. Whether or not the wine was responsible for the open door, Davin didn't know, nor did he intend to question their fortune.

"Where's Berenicis?" asked Goran. "He had to be the one to do this to her."

"It doesn't matter what's happened to the Blackheart, Qar take him." Davin, feeling only a small trace of the ward spell that once reverberated in this room, snatched the vial containing the potion from the table.

Goran loosened Lijena's gag. He then jerked away to keep her from sinking teeth deeply into his arm.

"You will die! I will kill you all!"

"Not until you drink this," Davin said as he pulled the cork from the vial.

Like a she-cat Lijena spat at him, doubling her struggle to shed the ropes binding arms and legs. Davin nodded to Goran who pinned her shoulders to the floor. The Jyotian then clamped thumb and forefinger on her nose, forced her mouth open, and poured every drop of the liquid down her gullet.

The two freebooters stood and stared down at the thrashing woman. Nothing happened!

Davin's expression bespoke puzzlement and despair. Goran laid a hand on his shoulder and squeezed comfortingly. "The demon is entrenched. Give the fluid time to work."

Work it did. The tenseness left Lijena's body, and she slumped to a pile on the floor. A few moments later, her eyes blinked to focus on the pair.

"Davin?" she asked. "Did it—am I free?"

"The demon might be trying to delude us into believing the potion worked. But that was the vial you described." Davin held up the empty vial.

Lijena looked at the glass and nodded. "That was the one. How do I know if I am rid of the demon?"

"We'll take the chance," Davin said, untying her bonds.

"Easy for you to say," Goran grumbled under his breath, rolling his eye toward his fellow thief. "You've gotten what you came for. Can we depart—with haste!"

"Berenicis," Davin said with a shake of his head. "He still seeks Bloodhawk's sheath."

"Davin, our lives are more important than any sword! We came for the wench. Isn't that enough?" Goran stared at his friend in frustration. "Don't tempt the gods!"

Davin cocked his head, listening. The clang of sword on sword rang in the courtyard. Ignoring the Challing's protests, he ran. "Berenicis has found Lorennion again!"

Through the curving corridor of the mage's keep, the Jyotian worked, trying each door he came to. Behind him Lijena and Goran followed, urging a hasty retreat. Counsel he would have gladly taken were it not for the sword and sheath. He couldn't leave, not when there was the slightest chance the legendary weapon might end up in the Blackheart's hands.

"Davin, you're just one man," Goran called. "The fate of Raemllyn isn't on your shoulders! No man is meant to bear that weight."

Yet that was the burden the son of Anane felt pressing down atop him. For once the series of misadventures that had set him on a course running from Bistonia to the Forest of Agda held a purpose clean and true. Lijena, her demon, the Huata, and Lorennion were of no importance; they were but pawns in a larger game the Sitala played. The key pieces were two

Jyotians—a treacherous, exiled ruler, and a man he had branded murderer. The gods had brought him here to steal the Sword of Kwerin Bloodhawk from Berenicis' grasp. It was a task he would not shun, could not!

Davin's hand closed about a wooden latch and lifted. The door opened and he stared onto the circular courtyard of Lorennion's keep. There at the very center the Blood Fountain sprayed crimson into the air. The Jyotian's gaze, however, focused on Lord Berenicis and the wizard Lorennion. Clumsily the two swung at each other—one with hand clutched to throat to staunch a trickle of red and the other staggering like a village drunk in his cups.

"Lorennion!" Lijena gasped behind Davin as he stepped into the courtyard. "He's young!"

In truth the mage appeared no older than the wounded man he thrust a wobbly blade toward.

"Your scheme worked," said Goran. "Nyuria's hairy ears, it worked! The mage can barely stand!"

Of the wine's effect Davin no longer held any doubts. Lorennion's youth and power flowed from the Blood Fountain's crimson waters—and six kegs of potent wine mingling, diluting, the unholy spray.

Berenicis maneuvered inside the mage's shaky defense and landed a heavy blow with the flat of his blade to the side of Lorennion's head. The sorcerer stumbled and fell. He struggled awkwardly to rise, both hands and feet flying out from under him on the flagstones.

"The sheath or your life!" Berenicis' sword tip pressed against Lorennion's throat.

"Wha?" The half word slurred from the drunken wizard's lips.

"Tell me where the sheath for the Sword of Kwerin is or I'll kill you!" To emphasize his point, Berenicis inched the blade along Lorennion's throat, in the same place the mage had cut the Jyotian lord.

"Wrapped up. Study. Put'er in the study...."

Davin needed no more. He turned and raced back into the keep with Goran and Lijena at his heels.

"... study... behind books. No thief'd look there." Lorennion's pleased chuckle transformed into a sob then uncontrollable drunken tears.

Berenicis' sword returned to its wooden scabbard as the Jyotian lord forgot the mage and hastened to reunite magical blade and sheath. When he burst into the study, Goran One-Eye waited for him amid a disarray of the wizard's tomes scattered on the floor.

"This is it, eh, Berenicis?" The Challing held the sheath in both hands, drumming his fingers on the hollow scabbard.

"Swine!" Blackheart roared, his hand dropping to hilt.

At that instant, Davin struck. Pressed flat against the wall just inside the door, he stood poised with a dragon-shaped vase held above his head. Now the vase descended, shattering into hundreds of fine shards as it slammed into the back of the Jyotian lord's head. Like a towering bluewood, Berenicis fell to the floor, unconscious.

Davin stooped, slid the Sword of Kwerin Bloodhawk from Berenicis' wooden scabbard, hefted it, smiled, and then thrust it into the simple, unadorned steel sheath Goran held.

"Now we can leave," Davin said, his chest swelling with pride.

"And leave him alive?" Goran's eye shifted between his friend and Berenicis. "Be through with the scum for once and for all. If not you, then let me slit his throat!"

"Nay." Davin shook his head as he motioned Lijena from her hiding place behind Lorennion's chiin wood desk. "There would be no pleasure in such an act. When Berenicis dies— and it will be at my hand—he will do so slowly, suffering as my family and I suffered."

"Then we'll take the bastard with us. When he awakes, you can have your fun." Goran handed Davin sheath and blade, then pulled the unconscious lord from the floor and threw him over a shoulder like a sack of grain. "You will let me watch, won't you? Mayhaps let me carve away an inch or twenty from his skin?"

Davin didn't have time to argue. He was uncertain how long the effects of the wine would keep Lorennion at bay. When the mage came out of his reeling stupor, he wanted to be leagues from the keep. Taking Lijena's hand, he started for the door.

"I'll take that, thank you." A feminine voice as cold as Ianya, legendary realm of ice and snow, stopped the thief in his tracks.

There, blocking the doorway, stood a raven-tressed woman wrapped in cloaks the same hue as her tresses. And at her side—Faceless Ones!

"The sword and sheath, thief! Valora, mage to High King Zarek demands it—now!" The woman held out a hand. "De-liver the the blade or discover the true meaning of pain."

"Yannis?" Goran blurted in disbelief as he let Berenicis' limp body slide from his shoulder and drop heavily to the floor.

Cautiously, Davin inched back, his gaze moving between the dark woman and her four hooded guards. More pieces of the perplexing puzzle slipped neatly into their terrible niches. The Faceless Ones who had chased Lijena and had nearly killed him, had not been after either, but the sword and sheath!

"I've no time for games." Valora motioned to her glowing-eyed companions.

The Faceless Ones advanced, scaled tails awrithe and taloned hands outstretched to take the Sword of Kwerin Bloodhawk.

chapter 22

One moment he backstepped and in the next Davin Anane leaped forward. With the Sword of Kwerin Bloodhawk still nestled in its long-lost sheath no more than a blunt club, he struck. He swung the scabbarded blade into the side of the closest Faceless One at the instant the demon shifted its weight to step forward.

To the Jyotian the blow appeared too slow and too late. But the Faceless One stumbled sideways into the others. Like hissing vipers the creatures from another time and realm spat. Their silver-scaled tails lashed violently as they struggled for and regained their balance. When they once again turned those soulless, emberlike eyes on the thief, Davin stood before them, feet planted squarely. No longer was Bloodhawk's sword sheathed, but lay bare, its honed tip leveled against the four in challenge.

"Kwerin defeated your kind with this blade once." Davin forced himself to speak loud and clear to hide the tremble of his tongue and lips. "Will you test its power now?"

A low, humorless chuckle came from the doorway. Valora's dark eyes glared into the Jyotian's soul while her hands rose from her sides. The mage's fingers wove, tracing arcane patterns in the air. Burning symbols of orange and red flame sizzled above her head.

Davin's hand quivered, the sword's tip dipping. With each heartbeat he felt the strength escaping his arm, sapped by the raven-haired sorceress' spell. Now or never! He swung, lashing into the side of a Faceless who cautiously eased forward.

The hooded horror yowled a bestial cry of rage as the blade rebounded off its demonic form.

Sweat beaded on the young thief's brow. The sword held no bite! An iron bar would have provided the same impact! Had the blade and sheath lost their power during the slow turn of centuries?

Valora laughed. "Give me the sword, weak one. I can use it. You cannot."

The way the Faceless held back, however, told Davin that they were not totally convinced of the mage's claim.

"You recognize it, don't you?" he demanded of the Faceless, ignoring the sorceress. "It slew legions of your brothers. It will do so again!"

He lifted the sword doublehanded and poised it above his head for a downward stroke. Whether or not Kwerin's blade still retained its magicks didn't matter. The Faceless retreated.

"The sword is useless!" Valora screamed. She yanked her black robes around her and advanced. "What has Yannis given me? Cowards! Are you all cowards?"

She kicked and prodded at the Faceless Ones who still refused to take another step forward. With a tilt of his head, Davin motioned Goran and Lijena toward the rear of the study.

"The window," Goran whispered. "Be ready."

Davin brought the sword smashing down against the foremost of the Faceless Ones. This time as the blade touched, a small blue spark leaped forth. Davin felt what little additional mobility there was in the blade vanish. The second thrust produced nothing at all.

"The weapon is useless," Valora said. "Take it from him. Stop him!"

The Faceless came to life. Hesitantly they plodded forward while the thief edged away from their stretching talons.

Behind the Jyotian, glass shattered, then came Goran's grunts and groans as he urged Lijena through the broken window. Davin swung again, the blade whistling as he summoned all the strength he could. The Faceless Ones leaped back, hissing and spitting while they scrambled to avoid the fabled blade.

That was the time Davin needed. Pivoting, he ran, jumped, and dived headfirst through the broken window. He hit the ground in a roll that brought him to his feet but sent the sword pinwheeling through the air.

"Sword. Where's the sword?" Davin croaked as he tried to recover the air driven from his lungs when he had struck the earth.

"I have it." Lijena had returned the blade to its sheath.

Davin glanced at the sword and shook his head. Had magicks fled the blade over the generations? Was it no more than another length of steel now? So little magic worked in Raemllyn since the days of Edan and Kwerin, perhaps this, too, had become only a legend and nothing more.

"The Huata wagons!" Goran pointed to the front of the keep, urging his companions away from the broken window and the howling Faceless within. "Aye, and the horses!"

"Why?" Davin puzzled. "What use would Lorennion have of these?"

A glance inside the first of the four wagons provided the answer. Piled one atop another lay the Huata who had chosen to flee rather than continue the quest. Each of their throats lay open from ear to ear. Black was their blood where it had pooled on the wagon's floor and dried.

"They knew too much," Goran said. "They had survived Lorennion's tests and knew the way to the keep. The mage feared the knowledge they held. He couldn't allow them to live. Come, there's nothing we can do for them. But we can save our own hides! There's saddles and bridles in Varaza's wagon!"

Davin glanced back at the study. The Faceless Ones still did not follow. He could hear Yannis' mage Valora railing at the four demons.

"They'll be after us," Goran said, shoving saddle and bridle into his friend's arms. "Evading such astute trackers will be difficult. But you know how, don't you, Davin? You did it before."

The Challing still sounded as if he doubted Davin's claim of having escaped the Faceless Ones months ago when their wild chase across Raemllyn had just begun. Davin didn't care. Knowledge gained then would aid them now.

"Water," he said as he tightened the girth about his bay's belly. "We've got to find a stream to confuse their sense of smell. They are good, but we can get away."

Davin looked at Lijena, who swung astride a sorrel mare, a grim expression masking her face. He wondered what thoughts haunted her now that she had been freed from Lorennion's demon. He pushed the question from his mind. There would be time enough to find out, after they had eluded the Faceless Ones and Zarek Yannis' black-cloaked mage. If they eluded them.

"Ride!" he called out, digging his heels into the gelding's flanks.

"After them!" raged Valora. "Not through the window!"

Too late!

The Faceless One nearest the window reached out a gaunt, taloned hand. Bright green sparks leaped from the shattered window to its hand. The Faceless One jerked away. Valora wondered if it felt pain or if it only sensed how complete its destruction would be if it climbed through the window. Lorennion had protected his keep better against demons of the Faceless Ones' ilk than he had against mortal thieves.

Valora ran through the house and out the front door. The two thieves and the blond bitch—and the Sword of Kwerin Bloodhawk—disappeared into the forest, only the hollow drumming of hooves echoing through the night to taunt the sorceress.

"Stop them!" she shouted, her anger knowing no bounds. She would not be cheated of that sword by vagabonds. "That sword must be mine!"

The Faceless mounted without question. Valora was only seconds behind the four, yet she still choked on the haze of dust and smoke kicked up by their horses' fiery hooves.

Berenicis shook himself and tried to rise. The room spun in giddy circles, and he collapsed back to the floor for another few seconds. Head pounding, the Jyotian lord fought the pain and stood, leaning heavily against the wall of the study. He grimaced and forced himself to think.

"Anane has the sheath and the Sword of Kwerin!" He spoke his thoughts aloud. He once had removed Davin's threat to the Jyotian throne; he would take care of the threat Davin now posed.

"The sword must be mine! My brother will not cheat me!"

On unsteady feet Berenicis shuffled from the room and started down the curved hall. An open door drew his attention— Lorennion's laboratory. Strewn atop one of the three tables were grimoires, papers with arcane symbols scribbled on them, and mystical parchments that appeared as ancient as Raemllyn itself. Berenicis took one of the grimoires and stuck it under his belt. When he reached for another of the ancient, dusty tomes, an invisible force shoved his hand away.

"Lorennion," he whispered. "Anane didn't kill the mage. Now he regains his power!"

Flee! He suppressed the panicked urge. If Lorennion re-gained his powers, he would send forth demons to retrieve those who had violated his keep. Lord Berenicis of Jyotis would head the mage's list, Berenicis realized. For he had masterminded the plot to steal the sheath.

Berenicis fingered the dagger at his belt and wondered if it would be adequate to dispatch the unnatural life flowing through Lorennion's veins. It would have to do. He squared his shoulders and left the second grimoire on the desk. After Lorennion was dead, the ward spell would vanish. The lore, the knowledge of Raemllyn's most powerful sorcerer, would then be his!

Berenicis found the mage sitting cross-legged in the keep's courtyard. He drew his dagger and approached.

"You still here?" Lorennion's bloodshot eyes rolled up to greet the Jyotian lord. The wizard's words still came thick-tongued and slurred. "I would have thought you long gone with both sword and sheath."

"Another has Kwerin's legacy," said Berenicis. "I stayed to relieve you of your life."

"And to gain the secret of the Blood Fountain, isn't that it?" Lorennion shrewdly asked. "The lure of immortality is great in one as ambitious as you, Berenicis. But it is no gift. If anything, it is a burden."

"How old are you?" Berenicis studied Lorennion.

The aging process again consumed the mage and turned him into a man of declining years. How much strength lingered in those old veins, those arthritic fingers? Berenicis would find out. He moved closer, his hand tightening even more around the hilt of his dagger.

"I see you have rifled through my spellbooks." The wizard pointed to the tome in Berenicis' belt. "But the book with the secret of the Blood Fountain proved too difficult to touch, did it not?"

"The sheath and sword might be lost to me, but this secret will be mine!"

"The burden," Lorennion said with a weary shake of his head. His tired gaze shifted to the Blood Fountain that now ran with a pink spray. "I needed at least four brave men to complete the spell. The Huata were but three... then there was ... what? Did you pour my own brandy into the waters, Berenicis?"

"There is no burden to living forever." Berenicis refused to let the mage sidestep the answers he wanted. "It is a gift second to none."

"Ah, but there is a penalty, Berenicis, there is. Why do you think I live in this desolate location? None comes to the Forests of Agda, save at the bidding of my demon-laced powders. Did you not wonder why I send out those powders?"

"Why?" Berenicis' cold gray eyes narrowed.

"I cannot leave this keep. The Blood Fountain holds me, even as it gives me life. That is the burden."

"Some hardship," Berenicis said.

"That thought is too frightening for me to bear. Once gone from the locus of the fountain, I can never return. I would age and die like any other mortal."

Berenicis said nothing. Something stirred within him at the idea of being so dependent on the Blood Fountain that the mere threat of losing its illicit gift of immortality turned a man into a cringing hermit. Berenicis shrugged this off. Immortality!

"I send out the demon powders to lure people here, and with obstacles such as I threw in your path, separate the weak from the strong as they make their way to my keep. It is the only way I can replenish the Fountain with the strong blood necessary for immortality." Lorennion rubbed his hands over his temples.

"You age rapidly now," Berenicis said, watching the wizard's hair turn from black to white before his very eyes.

"That is the other curse," said Lorennion. "I am fated to grow old and infirm before the Fountain will grant me youth again. And with the spell incomplete this time..."

"You need only feed the Fountain every few decades?"

"I become as one in the bloom of youth—it subtracts as much as sixty years from my age. But the growing old repeatedly, losing my hearing and sight and even my mental abilities to the point of senility, that is so hard to bear."

"You do it well, though."

"Spoken with the skepticism of youth. Yes, Berenicis, you could slay me with your dagger and pour my anemic blood into the Fountain. It would even grant you, oh, at least an additional ten years, considering your current age." Lorennion cackled. "It would have you in its power then. You could never leave here and return. The Blood Fountain would kill you, if you tried."

"Still, an additional ten years of youth?" Berenicis rolled the dagger in his hand.

"But only ten?" asked Lorennion, his voice turning sly. "Why not wait and have twenty? Isn't twenty a better bargain?

You would not be so old then, and the return of youth in all things would be even more pleasing for you."

"You only try to stop me from killing you."

"Or even thirty," Lorennion went on. "Thirty more years is not so great for you. Think then of returning to your youth. Fifty-sixty years of experience and knowledge in a twenty-summers-old body. Who could stand against you then? You could depose whoever sat on the Velvet Throne."

Lorennion's words worked on Berenicis. Only a handful of years now against decades later? Or simply kill the mage and have it for all eternity. To live forever! To do the unthinkable and cheat Black Qar, the God of Death!

"But, then as now, Berenicis, you will have to face and kill me." Lorennion threw back an aging head and laughed.

Then he was gone!

Berenicis blinked. He stared at empty air. The wizard had vanished.

"Where are you?" shouted Berenicis. "Come and fight. Come and die like a man!"

Disembodied laughter floated through the courtyard, mocking him.

"The stream, there's the stream!" shouted Goran.

The three-rode through the small brook, water spraying around them. Their mounts stumbled over water-smoothed rocks but the riders kept urging them to more speed. Danger followed too closely for caution.

They cut back and forth across the stream a dozen times or more. Davin Anane lost count. The sun beat down with an intensity far too great for this time of year—or was it only his feverish need to escape the Faceless Ones that made it seem so unbearable?

"That way, into the forest," called Davin.

The trio rode under low-hanging branches and found another stream. They crisscrossed it several times before Davin wheeled about to double back on their trail. A dangerous tactic to be certain, but subterfuge was all the Jyotian had. An all-out flight would only cost them their lives. No man, or woman, could outride the Faceless Ones and their steeds.

Some distance away from the stream, Davin called for a short rest. Their horses' chests were lathered and saliva came from their mouths. Without a short breather the animals would drop from beneath their riders in exhaustion.

"We'll soon see how effective our trail hiding has been. They should be along and looking for us yonder." He pointed to the far side of the distant stream. "If we've lost them, we can take our time getting through the forest. If not, we try something else."

"This is how you escaped them before?" asked Goran. "It would not fool the least of the High King's game wardens. Why should it confuse the hell riders?"

Davin motioned his friend to silence. The pounding of hooves reached them. The Faceless Ones rode to the edge of the stream. Their leader jumped from his saddle and dropped to all fours, sniffing about like a hunting hound. Even at this distance the burning red eyes were visible. Davin repressed a shudder.

"They know we are here," Lijena whispered in a tight voice. "They point in our direction."

"They can't know. They are only getting the lay of the land," Davin answered to reassure himself as much as the woman beside him.

"Friend Davin, you are wrong," said Goran in a low voice. "They do know. It's the witch; she guides them straight to us."

Davin swallowed hard when he saw the black-cloaked sorceress ride to the huddled Faceless. She turned from side to side, eventually facing in their direction. Valora opened her eyes and pointed. The Faceless One on the ground vaulted into his saddle and the hell riders rode directly for their hiding spot.

"Outdistance them! Ride!" Davin yanked Lijena to her feet and shoved her toward the horses.

While Goran and Lijena scrambled into their saddles, Davin placed a foot into his stirrup and pulled upward. Whether he kept too loose a hold on the bay's head or the gelding caught scent of the hell riders, he never knew. The horse reared and sent him cartwheeling through the air.

He landed flat on his back, air driven from lungs and head aspin. He shook his head to clear his vision and stared up into a formless darkness with two burning coals glaring down at him. The Faceless Ones!

He shoved to his feet and took a shaky stance. Through an angry buzz of wasps, he heard Goran.

"Some escape, Davin. Care to tell me again how you did it before?"

"Goran, take Lijena and flee!" Davin urged, his eyes never leaving the four demons as they dismounted and stepped toward him.

"Flee? To where?" Goran slid from the saddle and slipped battle-ax from belt. "There's no escaping these hell-spawn. If we're to die, it might as well be here."

"Give us the sword," a mockery of human words cracked.

Davin was unable to tell which of the hell riders spoke, nor did it matter. To turn over Kwerin's sword meant a quick death at the Faceless Ones' skeletal hands. He had no intention of doing that—not without taking at least one of the demons with him to Qar's dread realm of Peyneeha!

"I've spent my entire life preparing for death," said Davin. "We'll see how well I've learned."

Davin's hand closed around the hilt of the mystical blade tucked into his belt. In one fluid motion, he drew it from sheath and held it high. How light it felt, as though made of wood rather than steel!

The Faceless hissed!

"Come and take the blade, if you dare!" he challenged.

The demon riders attacked. And the sword of Kwerin blazed with eye-searing light of the purest pearl as Davin swung. Solidly the magic-forged blade sliced into one of the demon rider's midriffs. A loud crackling sounded, and the Faceless One screeched inhumanly. Where the blade touched, the unholy creature smoldered a drifting line of smoke.

Then the demon fell, its upper torso tumbling to the left side and the legs to the right—cut in twain by a single stroke! Those two writhing, twisting parts sizzled, steam pouring into the air like cobblestoned streets on a cold winter's day. The Faceless One melted! Seconds later, only the robe remained to show where the demon rider had fallen.

"Back, Goran. These are mine!" Davin waved the Challing aside. He felt the power that surged through the sword now, savored the magicks that once stirred Raemllyn's first High King Kwerin Bloodhawk. He taunted the three remaining demons, "Come and taste death!"

When the demons froze, he rushed them. A sword of crystalized flame arced to meet magic-tempered blade. Lightning sparked and thunder rolled through the Forest of Agda. Each clash of sword against sword produced this hell call of the gods until Davin's quick wrist twisted his blade under the guard of the demon's weapon and sent the tip ripping upward.

Another of the Faceless died, its body instantly transformed to churning steam.

"Get the sword," Valora shouted, her face unnaturally pale. She sent her most potent spells against the sword-fielder and they failed, as though the blade itself absorbed them. "Get him!"

The Faceless obeyed, fire-swords flashing.

Davin met the first attack with a circular parry and countered with a flick of his wrist that traced the tip of Kwerin's blade across a demonic throat. The light touch was all that was required. A formless, cowled head rolled from hellish shoulders and bounced once on the ground before dissipating in steam.

Davin caught and blocked an overhead swing from the remaining demon on the edge of the mystical sword. He then grasped the hell rider's wrist in his left hand, stepped beneath the crystalline blade, and drew his sword downward. Like a knife through curd, the Sword of Kwerin Bloodhawk split the demon's skull—if a skull did exist beneath that shadowy cowl.

Then all the Jyotian faced were four crumpled robes on the ground—the earthy remains of four creatures never meant to walk the realm of man.

"Your lackeys are gone." Davin turned to Valora, who sat straight in her saddle when he lifted the tip of the sword toward her. "Will you try to take the blade from me?"

Valora no longer attempted to bind the thief with spells. They were useless with the sword so near. The sorceress stared down at the Jyotian adventurer, now joined by Goran.

"The sword will do you no good. You are not trained to properly use it," she said calmly.

"He did all right by the looks of this battlefield." Goran glanced at the four empty robes.

"Leave them behind. Join forces with me," urged Valora. "Together we can wrest the Velvet Throne from Zarek Yannis. I offer you more than power, Jyotian. Much more!"

Her tone and the way she leaned forward in the saddle to expose the inviting valley of tightly pressed flesh revealed by the open neck of her robe left no doubt in Davin's mind what that "more" she offered was. Davin merely laughed. "What you offer can be bought on any street in any of Raemllyn's cities for a few coppers."

Angered, Valora jerked back and shouted, "You will rue this day, Davin Anane. You and your blond bitch and that overgrown gorilla. That I promise you!"

Jet eyes afire with hatred, Valora yanked the head of her mount about, then spurred into the woods, galloping toward Lorennion's keep. Davin stared after her until she disappeared into the dense forest.

"I just faced down Zarek Yannis' mage," he said in disbelief. "And I killed four of the Faceless Ones!"

He stared at the blade in his hand. Again it appeared no more than simple steel. He shook his head and pursed his lips. Not since the days of Kwerin Bloodhawk had anyone succeeded this handsomely!

chapter 23

Fear and panic quaked through Valora's supple body as she stood before the entrance to Lorennion's keep. Like a woman in a trance she stared at the whitewashed circular house, trying to quell the race of her pulse and the desperation that sought to rob her of what little logic remained in her mind.

Although no man or beast reared menacingly to threaten her, the simple truth was that she now battled for her life. The usurper Zarek Yannis was not an understanding ruler. She had witnessed his cruelty when he had turned on her predecessor Payat'Morve. The flaying of the former mage's flesh, the salting and honeying of his still-living body before he was lowered into a pit of starving rats, would be a quick death compared to what Yannis would devise for her.

Payat'Morve had merely plotted against the High King. She had failed in her quest for the Sword of Kwerin Bloodhawk. Not only had Davin Anane escaped with the fabled blade, and sheath, but he had destroyed four of Yannis' Faceless Ones. Forgiveness was not one of the usurper's virtues.

She hugged the black robes closer about her shoulders in an attempt to ward off a chill that was not born in the winter's breeze. There was no possibility of her ever returning to the High King's palace in Kavindra.

Unless...

Her jaw set as she clenched her teeth and stared at the mage's keep. Unless I can find something of equal value within to assuage Yannis' fury and redeem myself in the High King's eyes.

The Blood Fountain!

It came to her. Even the Faceless had been frightened by the mere mention of its name. Its secrets might contain the key to her continued life within the High King's palace.

Drawing a steadying breath, Valora walked toward the entrance to Lorennion's keep. Carefully she repeated the incan-tations required to evade the ward spells woven about the house. The front portal swung open to admit her.

Valora frowned. Was this a ruse, a subtle trap? The magicks around her had weakened considerably.

Trick or not, she had no choice but to enter. Warily she crossed the threshold and cautiously moved down a curving hall. Her eyes darted about nervously. When she had penetrated the keep's guardian spells before, she had four Faceless as protectors. Now she walked alone. Nor was she certain what she searched for. Or what Lorennion looked like. All she had seen of the keep before was the hallway and the study.

"Lorennion!" a man's voice shouted. "Come out and face me! Damn you, Lorennion! Lord Berenicis of Jyotis challenges you!"

Valora hastened toward the voice, finding a door that opened onto an immense circular courtyard. Not Lorennion but Berenicis stood at the garden's center. The sorceress smiled. She would gather what knowledge the former Jyotian ruler held before seeking Lorennion and his Blood Fountain.

"Who are you?" Berenicis pivoted, dagger in hand and blood sluggishly flowing from a cut across his throat.

"A friend. I... I was drawn from Weysh to this place. Magicks flared, pulling me like a lodestone. Forces beyond my comprehension." She paused as though noticing his throat for the first time. "But you are injured. Let me bind the wound. 1 know some small healing magicks."

Before the lord could answer, Valora's fingers danced. Berenicis' open wound closed.

"Excellent." The Jyotian tested his neck with fingertips. However, his cold gray eyes narrowed when they turned to her again. "Do you come seeking Lorennion?"

"No," she said softly with a shake of her head. " 'Twas magicks that drew me here, as I said before. I've only heard of this evil wizard and his dreaded Blood Fountain."

Berenicis laughed harshly. "Blood Fountain! Bah!"

Valora listened, her hope fading, as Berenicis told of the power held by the fountain that continually sprayed within the garden. To be certain, immortality would be a gem to tempt Zarek Yannis, but he would never allow himself to be confined to this remote wilderness for eternity. Yannis desired to rule all Upper and Lower Raemllyn, not a small portion of Agda's forest.

"He still lives and the Fountain remains his, but he is weak and old. I feel that," Berenicis concluded. "There is nothing more here to hold me. It is time I returned to Fel—"

Berenicis caught himself before he mentioned Prince Fel-rad's name. "Where is it that you ride?"

"I... I seek out, oh, I should not even mention such a thing. You might be a supporter of the usurper."

Valora allowed Berenicis to convince her that he despised Zarek Yannis. And she convinced him she sought out Prince Felrad. After all, nothing except death remained for her in Kavindra. And surely Prince Felrad had need of a mage of her ability. Yannis or Felrad, one ruler was the same as the other— for the moment.

"Then we journey together," Berenicis concluded with a leer that bespoke more than travel occupying his thoughts. "After we take what tomes we can gather from this keep. Never know when Lorennion's lore may be useful—to our prince, of course."

Valora smiled. Berenicis and then Felrad would provide the protection and time she needed to recover from today's near disaster. Eventually the Sword of Kwerin Bloodhawk would be hers. Davin Anane could not evade her for long. Then neither Yannis nor Felrad would be able to stand before her might!

Lorennion watched Berenicis and Valora leave his keep. He blinked weak, watery eyes and hobbled out of a hiding niche in the wall of his laboratory. He had felt the woman's probing powers and yet she had overlooked him.

Or had he cast a spell to befuddle her inexperienced mind? He couldn't remember; it was so difficult concentrating.

He shuffled out to the Blood Fountain and stared at the clear spray it threw into the air. The Huata had all been used, his heroes had fled and were now beyond his reach, and even the lovely Li—, Lo—, whatever her name was, he couldn't remember clearly now, had been freed of her demon. No more bait to lead healthy, strong heroes to his Blood Fountain.

He would have to wait again, long years of waiting, until another carcass of warm, rich, toothsome blood came by and he lured the needed victims to the rim of the fountain. Wait old, bent, senses fading, magicks virtually gone. But Lorennion would wait for as long as needed, could only wait—a slave to the Blood Fountain's life-sustaining magicks.

Davin watched Lijena cautiously examine the legendary sword that lay across her lap. "It looks so ordinary. No trace of magicks or power."

"It's harmless now. Mere steel," he said. "The sword only comes to life when magicks are about... at least that's what I think."

"Then why did it not slay the Faceless Ones you struck in Lorennion's study?" Goran One-Eye stretched atop his sleeping furs and gazed at the stars twinkling through the forest canopy.

"I'm not certain." Davin shook his head. "Mayhaps the sword is like a glowstone. Before the gem can radiate at night, it must soak up light from the sun during the day. The blade needed time within the sheath before its full power was restored."

"And mayhaps you grasp for straws, my friend." Goran chuckled and closed his eyes. "The witch Valora was right. You don't understand the power of Kwerin's sword any more than I do."

"Maybe, but at least it's not in Berenicis' hands! And I did slay four of the Faceless Ones with it!" Davin stared across the campfire's flames at his friend.

If the thief expected an answer, it wouldn't be from Goran. The Challing snored softly. Davin looked at Lijena, her aquamarine eyes shyly lowered.

"I think Goran has the right idea," she said while she snuggled beneath her own sleeping furs. "Today has been long. And we have little prospect of anything but long days ere we return to Bistonia."

A rootless hollowness suffused the heir to the House of Anane as he watched Lijena's eyes close and her breast rise and fall with the gentle rhythm of sleep. No, the emptiness was not without cause. This night of all nights he had hoped that she might offer to share his furs.

He shook his head, carefully placing the magic-forged blade and sheath beside him and tossing furs over his shoulders. He expected too much too soon. They both needed time. For Lijena, time to sort through and accept all that had happened to her since the day he had kidnapped her from beneath her uncle's nose. For him, time to examine the unfamiliar emotions the frosty-haired woman stirred in his breast. If the Sitala, the rulers of Raemllyn's fate, so ordained, with time he was certain he could win Bistonia's fairest daughter.

He smiled as he closed his eyes and drifted into restful sleep. An abundance of time was the one thing Lijena and he would have on the long ride back to Bistonia.

A songbird warbling to the predawn glow brought Lijena from a shallow sleep. She stretched and smiled. She had forgotten how beautiful the voice of a wild bird could be—how beautiful just being alive was.

But then, for the past six months she hadn't been alive. For six long, insufferable months, her life had been robbed from her. A slave. The thought rolled dark and ugly through her mind. She had been no more than the lowest of slaves to all who had stolen those months from her. From one man to another she had been passed, each using her body and mind to fulfill his own needs.

Lijena's gaze shifted from the sky to Davin, still bundled in his sleeping furs. It had started with this handsome thief, then Velden and his captain Jun. Her own lover, Amrik Tohon, had sold her to the slaver Nelek Kahl, and he to the mage Masur-Kell. To be certain, Davin and Goran had rescued her from the Letician wizard, but the golden box the red-maned giant purloined from the wizard had contained the demon that possessed her for so many of those stolen months.

Then came Berenicis, the Narain, and finally Lorennion. Each had used her, abused her mind and body. Even Davin, with all his protests that he was but a victim of the fates, had used her body twice when she was dominated by Lorennion's demon. Does a man of honor thus use a helpless woman?

No more! The names of her abusers rolled through her mind in a ceaseless circle. She had survived those long months with one sustaining thought—she would some day repay in full all that had been done her. The time for exacting retribution had arrived.

Easing the furs aside, Lijena slipped from her forest bed, crept to the hobbled horses, and quickly saddled and bridled them. She then tiptoed back to Davin's side. Stooping, she quietly lifted the sword that lay in the grass near his hand. She stood and secured the sheath to her belt then drew the blade from its scabbard.

A humorless smile on her red lips, she leveled the blade at the sleeping thief. "Davin. Davin."

He awoke with a sword tip at his throat, staring up into Lijena's fury.

"I should slay you, you miserable dog!" Her voice was colder than any winter wind.

"Lijena, no," Davin gasped out. "The demon!"

"No demon drives me now, Jyotian scum. I remember fully: I act on my own."

"But why...?"

"Why, you ask? You are stupid as well as cruel! How soon he forgets who kidnapped me and turned me over to Emperor Velden. How soon he forgets that the slaver Nelek Kahl sold me. How conveniently he forgets who was responsible for the demon that rode within me for so long!"

Davin winced as Lijena twisted the sword. A tiny, warm drop of blood trickled down his throat. "Kill me if you will, but you are wrong. Never would one so cruel as you portray me cross half the continent, risk death at every turn, do what I have done to free you from the demon."

"You sought only the Sword of Kwerin," she accused. "You and Berenicis Blackheart. You are both cut from the same cloth!"

Davin stiffened. Her words struck closer to the truth than she realized. "I knew nothing of the blade. I followed only for you."

"My Uncle Tadzi would berate me for weakness." Hesitation shadowed her face.

From the corner of his eye, Davin saw Goran still slept heavily. He could expect no aid from the dialling, not in his present debilitated condition.

Lijena eased the blade back. "I am softhearted. That you risked your life to free me is why you still wear your head on your shoulders. But be warned, if our paths should ever again cross, Davin Anane, there will be no further mercy from Lijena Farleigh!"

She backed away, the Bloodhawk's sword leveled and ready should he be foolish enough to try and stop her. Davin held no desire to challenge the hate he saw in her eyes or the magicks he knew dwelled in the blade. Without uttering a sound, he watched Lijena mount her chestnut mare then gather the other horses' reins.

"Remember well my words, Davin Anane. If we ever meet again, you die!" Lijena spurred into the forest, leaving the Jyotian staring after her.

"Umm, eh, what's happened?" Goran One-Eye rolled over and peered at his friend.

"Lijena," Davin said glumly. "She's stolen the sword and sheath of Kwerin—and the horses and our supplies."

"Is that all?" Goran asked with un-Challinglike cheerfulness. "We've been in worse places, have we not?"

Davin had to agree; there had been times much worse.

"We've defeated Berenicis and the Faceless and Lorennion and we fall prey to a mere slip of a wench. Think on it, Davin. Isn't this truly the stuff of which songs are sung?"

"Perhaps." Davin stared at the pines that had swallowed Lijena and the horses. "What now?"

"What now?" bellowed Goran. "Why, we are not that far from Weysh."

"And some problems with stolen jewels, too," Davin added.

"The only problem we had was that we left the merchant Parvan Weeselik with a single stone in that wooden chest of his!" Goran rose from his furs. "And if not Weysh—then A'bre!"

Davin's brow creased when he stared at his friend. Spirits this high were so uncharacteristic of the changeling.

"That skinny wench has been a weight about our necks for far too many long months," Goran said. "Robbed us of nigh half a year chasing her through this cold wilderness. Come, Davin, friendlier climes await us. Off your backside and on your feet! We've leagues ahead, and we'll not cover one this day if you sit there moping!"

Davin pushed from the ground. For once the Challing was right. All Raemllyn awaited them. And for all its untamed beauty there were few treasures to be found in the Forest of Agda. "Aye, my friend, let's be off. Weysh sounds right enough for now."

"Eye? Did I hear you ask about my eye?" Goran flashed a toothy grin at his companion. "Lost it I did while I was sailing with pirates on the Sea of Bua under a very shapely captain by the lovely name of Ciprianna. She was enchanted by the rich jade and the golden flecks of my handsome eyes. Wanted to make a pendant of one...."

Davin shook his head, uncertain he would be able to endure the Challing's good cheer. It was a long way to Weysh.

Rolling his sleeping furs in a tight bundle, he tied them with leather thongs, then hefted the roll under an arm and waved for Goran to lead the way.

Lijena. The emptiness he had felt the night before returned.

He smiled wistfully. Somewhere, somehow, their paths would cross again, and there would be no death in that meeting. Of that he was certain. Until then—all Raemllyn waited, perhaps even the fabled city of A'bre!

The End

Book Three: Blood Fountain in the Swords of Raemllyn series