Jedit

Chapter 15

Whistledove Kithkin pelted hell-for-leather through the forest, red hair flying back in a wedge, little legs churning, making no effort to hide.

"Heath's taken! Men in black leather captured him!" "Murdoch! Jedit!" ordered Adira. "Get after-" The tiger flashed past his chief in long loping strides, sometimes on two legs, sometimes on four, bounding through the forest as others struggled to keep up. This patch of forest was a maze of boulders and brush. The break in the unending pine canopy was nice, for they could glimpse the overcast sky. On the other hand, it was perfect country for ambush.

Adira Strongheart, Simone the Siren, Sister Wilemina, Whistledove Kithkin, Sergeant Murdoch, and Jasmine Boreal trotted behind their captain. Adira limped from blistered toes. Like her crew, she was hungry, tired, aching, and unprepared for battles in the wilderness. Having survived the shipwreck, the sailors and corsairs from Buzzard's Bay had simply walked away, north toward home. Adira had forged on with their mission, marching into the dark pine forest with pirates and one tiger reluctantly tagging along. Now came ambush in unfamiliar territory by an unknown foe, and they had only a few blades and tiger claws. Adira prayed that, if anyone must be killed, let it be her for foolish pigheadedness.

A tiger's roar split the air. Between the towering pines four men carried Heath like a sack of potatoes. Queer looking enemies, thought Adira, like giant wingless wasps clad in leather armor, black and shiny from boots to pate. A hood let only a slit of eyes show, and even the faces behind had been blackened with soot. The four carried only naked slim swords and twists of black rope. Heath was bound by such a sinister thong. Why, Adira wondered, would wasplike soldiers kidnap folk? To be taken to the castle of Shauku?

Then Jedit struck, and the four soldiers got the fight of their lives.

Despite the frightening sight of an upright tiger charging, the soldiers kept their heads. Two shielded their prize captive while two fell elbow to elbow and raised their swords, one even switching to his left hand, so the blades could swing freely. The pair timed their strike perfectly-but missed.

Even running like a raging bull, Jedit was canny enough to plant his feet and skip in place. Skittering backward, the swords skimmed his belly fur. In the half-second the blades crossed, the tiger-warrior struck. Claws slashed the men's arms from shoulder to elbow. Black leather sheared, white skin parted, and red blood spurted. Jedit coiled stumpy clawed fingers around the men's elbows and yanked. Twin pops, sickening and loud, resounded as arms were yanked out of joint. The hooded men went down in a bloody tangle as Jedit vaulted over them.

One wasp-man stuck to his mission by shouldering the unconscious Heath and jogging off through the forest, naked blade pumping in one hand. The other fought a delaying tactic. Squatting with legs spread wide, the soldier cocked his sword overhead, blade flat, hand outstretched. Watching, Adira was impressed at the graceful and unassailable stance. Even the tiger was wary.

Doing the unexpected, Jedit let his feet slip to half-crash on his haunches. Pine needles were so thick he slid almost past the crouching soldier. Not wasting an opportunity, the assassin swept the sword like a scythe. Its tip would brush the carpet of needles and cut everything in its path. Yet Jedit again eschewed common sense. The tiger snap-rolled onto his belly and slapped both paws flat to lunge.

Mighty fanged jaws snapped shut on the soldier's black boot, cutting leather, tearing flesh, crushing bone. Slapping both paws again hard, Jedit jumped to his feet. Clamped in his jaws, the assassin dangled like a mouse. The man gargled as broken bones ground together, but nonetheless he swiped with his blade to slash his foe. With both arms free, Jedit walloped the man's spine with a fist like an anvil, then snagged the man's sword arm in two hands and twisted. The wrist tore free like a roast chicken wing. Jedit tossed the clenched fist and sword a dozen feet, then dropped the crippled mercenary to bleed to death.

Still running toward the fight, for the three-fold slaughter was over in seconds, even Adira Strongheart was stunned by the tiger's ferocity. But no matter.

Dashing past, she shouted, "Stop larking! Have you forgotten Heath? He's-Oh!"

Ahead, the path was crowded by tall people in leathers and furs. At their feet lay a black-clad warrior shot full of arrows as a porcupine. Lying nearby was Heath, woozy but whole. Yet perhaps a prisoner.

For a while, the pirates just stared at the natives. Many goggled at Jedit Ojanen. In the light of late afternoon, he loomed huge and terrifying as some primitive forest god. Both paws were bloody to the wrists, as was his muzzle, and he licked blood off his whiskers with a broad pink tongue.

For time to think, and because her blisters tortured, Adira plunked on her bottom and yanked off her boots. She hissed massaging all ten toes. Her good seaboots had been ruined by soaking and drying by fires. It was little things, she thought, that make or break you.

Like ghosts in a graveyard, with the patience of hunters, the foresting men and women waited. They looked so well-fed and well-armed that Adira instinctively resented them. Thin, tall, tanned, and dressed in hides and furs decorated with feathers, their faces were long and lean with slanted eyes that suggested wolves. Knotted arms looked capable of swinging their iron-headed knouts, axes, spears, and- mallets. The Circle of Seven stood very still with hands in sight.

Still rubbing her toes, Adira said to Jedit, "I suppose it's too late to keep one wasp-man alive for questions."

"Legionnaires die but never surrender," quoted the woods-folk leader. More quiet. Adira was reminded of the pause between lightning and thunder.

Weary, Adira Strongheart didn't even rise, but sat with arms folded across her knees and wiggled her aching toes. "What will you have? You can keep Heath. Any scout that gets kidnapped deserves to be boiled in oil. He couldn't track a bleeding bull through a baron's ball, obviously." Heath blinked in dismay.

A woman shifted a spike to the crook of her elbow. The hardwood shaft was painted red and topped by an iron head like a whale's tooth. Her dark hair was braided tight to her head1 and stuck with white feathers. She wore a long oyster-white shirt with a wide belt, a mantle of silver fox, and boots wrapped with elkhide. A cased bow and quiver hung over one shoulder. She spoke in a odd low-pitched whisper.

"We are the people of the pines, and this is our land. You intrude. We demand to know where you go."

Aggravated, Adira could only think how elegant and proud the pine dwellers looked, and how she must look like a drowned muskrat. Her party had almost nothing. Adira had her twin daggers, Simone a cutlass, and the rest weapon-knives. No bows nor quivers, no canteens, no blankets, no cloaks, no pots or kettles. Not even cloaks or coats, just their sweaters and jerkins. Further, they were dirty and hungry. True, Jedit had knocked down deer, wild boar, and partridges, which they'd cooked without utensils or salt. Still, Adira's crew was ill-equipped to mount an expedition, and it showed to the natives.

Perhaps facing an addlepate, the spokeswoman tried again, still husking low, "We are the people of the pines, and we demand-"

"Yes, yes, we heard. Talk until your tongues turn blue. We have no idea where we go."

"Nor why," put in Simone.

Adira tugged on her boots with a grunt. She was being a balky bitch, she knew, but her feet hurt, and she disliked the leader's lofty tone. Adira pointed with her thumb. "Who are these black devils, and why do they capture strangers?"

"Akron Legionnaires." The leader spat the name. "They bring victims to Shauku. What she does with them we don't know, for none ever return."

Adira kept a poker face but secretly congratulated herself. Her bullheaded never-retreat forge-onward foolhardiness had brought her crew to their goal: striking distance of Shauku's castle, and hopefully, Johan. Swinging her left hand behind her, for her right was slashed and sore from the shipwreck, she accepted a sword from Simone. Like its master, the legionnaire's sword had a black leather haft and balanced blade slim as a wasp sting. Sword in hand, Adira hoped she looked more confident than she felt.

"The truth is, we hunt Shauku's castle to find an enemy. Nothing will stop us." The sword bobbed in her hand as if thirsty for blood.

Stunned silence dragged. Then came a rumbling purr in an antique accent. Natives goggled to hear a tiger talk. "The truth is, if our enemy shelters with your enemy, we have much in common. Furthermore, we heard of you folk in Buzzard's

Bay. You trade furs and timber fairly, so are unlikely to harm travelers without cause. The murdering warlord we hunt is Johan, who seeks to conquer or lay waste all of Jamuraa. He passed this way and goes, we are sure, to the castle. If we all run him down, we all benefit. May we count on your help?"

The spokeswoman husked, "A red man with black stripes who wields deadly magics?"

"That's he," said Adira.

"He wrought havoc on our scouting party. Please be our guests."

"We thank you," said Adira. "Lead on. I want to get off my fins."

With a collective sigh, the pirates stripped the black bodies of ropes and swords and, luckily for Adira, a new pair of shiny black boots. In diplomatic silence, the natives fell in front of and behind the newcomers. Walking no path, but simply between trees.

Murdoch asked low, "That's it? No fight?"

"No," said Adira Strongheart. "We've got a new pack leader. Jedit Silver-Tongue Ojanen, Harbinger of Peace and Master of the Soothing Balm. Who'd have thought such a fearsome warrior would prove an artist at diplomacy?"

Clearly chagrined by backhanded praise, the tiger quirked his muzzle, so one fang shone. Everyone laughed.

"Where is your camp?" asked Adira.

"Here," husked Magfire, the warchief. "And nowhere."

Adira blinked at a patch of pine forest like any other. Jedit further piqued her by purring, "Clever."

Heath stepped to one side and reached out a hand. Seeming to grope at thin air, the part-elf caught a film light as spider web. Adira saw some near-invisible cloth or webbing was strung between three trees to cover a bedroll, woven packbaskets, and some cordwood. Adira caught the gossamer. Even held against the dusky sky, the fabric took on the mixed-gray tone of overcast.

"Don't bother to ask," whispered Magfire. "We shan't share its secret."

Heath positively bubbled, a strange sight to his crewmates. "Anything! I'll give anything for a swatch of that fabric! Just enough to cover myself in full!"

"Anything?" The tall chief smiled as might a black widow spider, thought Adira. Magfire's whisper exuded sex. "To promise anything is rash, my friend. You might live to regret it."

Puzzled, Heath wrinkled his brow while his shipmates laughed. Jedit Ojanen had meanwhile moved on. The forest seemed untouched, as if humans had never existed, yet he stopped at a shallow depression littered with pine needles and tipped up another nigh-invisible cloak that covered a blackened firepit.

Magfire whisked off the gossamer, rolled it into a ball, and tucked it in her belt. "Without our camouflage cloaks we'd be extinct."

"How do these soldiers snare your crew?" asked Jasmine. "Black leather is ill-fitted for a forest, while your people are born to the trees."

"They have traps and magics that deceive." Magfire gathered charcoal and tinder and struck a flint on her steel knife. "By the time we learn one peril and counter it, the legionnaires spring another."

"It's true." Heath was still sheepish about being gulled. "I detected no sign, smelt nor heard nothing. Just a blow upon the head."

"Verily," said Magfire. "Legionnaires have no smell. It's masked magically. They can see in the dark too. Detect strangers behind them, or above in trees, or screened by brush. They know each other's whereabouts at all times, so to assault one brings many running. They nab our hunters and pickets. Sometimes even trailblazers and trackers."

"What's the difference?" asked Heath. Everything this tribe did intrigued him.

"Trailblazers explore and trackers hunt. But their ranks mean more than that." Magfire fed a crackling pyre. "Either requires senses more animal than human that are honed by years of study under a master. Such blessings cannot be learned but are bestowed by the gods, born in the bone, then refined."

The Robaran Mercenaries marveled as-as if popping from the ground like mushrooms-more people of the pines filtered from the lowering dusk. Clad in leather and furs, with many cowled by the heads of animals, the gathering seemed like herds of ghost animals. The eerie picture was compounded because the woods dwellers trod silently and conversed in whispers. The pirates had to lean close whenever a pinesman spoke. Up close they exhaled a blend of pine sap, tannin, sweat, and juniper. Low voices and earthy spice gave an air of intimacy that was dizzying.

Over fifty natives and guests congregating made the gloomy woods almost homey. Hunters had fetched three deer on poles, as well as a bundle of grouse, fat raccoons, and opossums. Others brought beechnuts, walnuts, mushrooms, and other scomber. A cheery fire crackled in the firepit as night settled, though the flames were kept low.

"Won't Shauku's soldiers spot your fire by night?"

"Legionnaires never venture out by night. They're not that good. And we move camp often," explained Magfire.

"Good idea," said Adira. "I saw them fight Jedit. They're top-notch soldiers, all right. Practiced killers. They'd cut us to pieces going toe-to-toe."

"Something we avoid," admitted Magfire.

Warchief and pirate captain sat side by side on cloaks to eat. The pirates devoured anything handed to them. Afterward the natives passed around some fiery liquor in gourds. Even Sergeant Murdoch and Adira Strongheart lost their breath at a long pull. Yet no one got rowdy, for the natives never spoke above a whisper, even tipsy, and shushed any pirate noise.

"Where are you from?" asked Adira.

"The heights of the southern forest." Magfire accepted a gourd and sucked down a draught that made her wheeze. "This was our land decades ago. But a great disaster drove us out. Too, a monster haunted the forest."

"Monster?" Adira jolted, unsure she'd heard right. "What sort of monster?"

"What?" Magfire lost the topic and found another. "Then an old man in our village in the south began to speak. He'd been mute and senile for years. Now he talked incessantly about reclaiming our heritage, our lost homeland. The time of prophecy neared, the time of None, One, and Two."

"Song of the Sea King!" Adira swayed on the cloak and almost tipped over. "Not that again! Hazezon uncorked that bottle! It's mackerel tripe! I don't know why I married him!.."

"We swore an oath upon the war post in our village." Mag-fire slurred on. "Painted it red with our own blood! But when we got here, we found Shauku infested the ruins. That's where the disaster sprang from, you see. Long ago… Curse them all! No legionnaires will push us from our land! We will drive her and them out, on my honor!"

Both blabbed, drinking steadily. Then a voice by Adira's elbow asked, "So you venture farther afield than just Buzzard's Bay?"

"Uh, beg your pardon?" Muzzy, Adira turned toward the new speaker, who'd sat for hours without saying a word. He had a lean face and neat brown beard, and wore a homespun tan shirt, leather kilt and leggings, a hood and cowl thrown back, and on his chest, a neatly stitched wolf's head.

"My brother, Taurion," slurred Magfire. "He finds our forest confining, though it stretches a thousand leagues."

Taurion waited quietly for an answer. Addled by liquor, Adira babbled to the brother, "Uh, yes, we sail the Sea of Serenity and beyond. Past the Onyx Bridge thrice, south of Albatross Alley, and uh, elsewhere. Anywhere water will run under our keel! Why do you-"

A distraction intruded. A flash of white caught Adira's eye. Squinting across rippling firelight, she realized it was Murdoch's bare belly. A woodswoman tossed his shirt to the night, then flopped on his chest to smother him with kisses. Simone the Siren laughed amid a circle of admiring men and one woman who stroked her limbs. Jasmine Boreal whispered in Heath's ear, or else chewed on it, while a pine-dwelling woman slid her hands under his shirt. Whistledove Kithkin rode a man's shoulders, giggling. Murdoch hoisted over his head a laughing lithe woman and bellowed like a bull, but was hushed by passionate kisses. Even Jedit Ojanen received affection, lying alongside the fire while four woman rubbed his belly. Many woodsfolk had slipped away in pairs.

"But we just met." The thought struck Adira funny. She giggled and couldn't stop. Suddenly a black shape eclipsed the campfire. Under her butchered blonde mop, Sister Wilemina was white-faced and sweating. The archer had borrowed a bow, though her right arm was still cradled in a sling.

"A-adira, 1 v-volunteer to st-stand guard!" Then she bolted into the night. Taurion had also departed in silence.

"What distresses the girl?" mumbled Magfire.

"She's a-what do you call it-a virgin, dedicated to some goddess. I forget who." Adira took another pull of the scorching liquor. "You certainly are friendly people! What is this stuff?"

"Pulque from a highland cactus," Magfire gabbled. "And herbs. Lobelia and verbena to excite passion, ginger to make women fertile, zigiberis to make men virile."

"Love philters! That explains it!" Waving a hand, Adira slopped drink down her ample cleavage.

"Allow me." Magfire twisted and planted her face in Adira's bosom, lapping up liquor.

"Whoa!" Squawking, the pirate queen sprawled backward in pine needles. Magfire followed. The woman's hair was stippled with white feathers, giving her a bizarre birdlike intensity. Chuckling, she smothered Adira with a burning, throaty, drunken kiss. Gasping, snorting for air, Adira at first gave in. But as Magfire's tongue intruded into her mouth, the pirate queen bucked and tossed the chief aside.

In her husky whisper, lips inches from Adira's, Magfire said, "I should have warned you. Our tribe is too closely related to interbreed. We count on outsiders for our blanket-wrestling."

"This outsider isn't breeding with anyone!" Shaking her wobbly head, shedding pine needles, Adira Strongheart tried to clamber to her feet. Five men helped her rise, hands floating everywhere. Adira's traitorous loins tingled and itched with lust-whether the feeling was magical or natural seemed beside the point. She mumbled, "Ship your oars, you octopuses! I don't-"

"Alarm! Rouse! Alarm! Someone's killed!"

Wilemina's shouting electrified the camp. Men and women scrambled upright, some only half-dressed but all clutching weapons.

Panting, the archer pointed west with her borrowed bow. "Two folks are dead, eaten alive! They're covered with a furry moss such as I've never seen!"

"Spuzzem." Magfire shrugged aright her belt and silver fox mantle, and picked up her iron spike. "It's too late, but show me."

"Drag your anchor!" Adira grabbed the black-hiked sword of the legionnaires, which she had to carry naked for lack of a scabbard, and in her left hand. "What was that word? Spuzzem?"

Without answering, Magfire trotted after Wilemina. Jedit Ojanen launched after on all fours, silent on pine needles.

Adira Strongheart jogged too, though her brain throbbed and stomach churned. Running helped sweat out the poisons, and gradually she felt better. Fighting suited her better than loving, she thought bitterly.

Sister Wilemina stopped at two mossy logs. Jedit snuffled the air and curdled his muzzle. Magfire bent over the forms but did not touch. Adira approached and gagged.

Not mossy logs, but the remains of two lovers who'd slipped away from the party. They might have lain here for years. Covered in a fuzzy gray moss or mold, their mouths hung open in horror, teeth and tongues sprouting velvet. The pair looked like something dredged from the sea. Their bellies and loins were gaping cavities.

"The spuzzem." Magfire tapped the red-hafted spike against her hand. "It eats guts and leaves the rest. These two wandered too far from the fire."

"What is it?" rumbled Jedit. "This spuzzem?"

"No one knows." Magfire scanned the dark woods. "It's haunted our forest since the disaster. It preys on elk and other animals. And us. It has no head."

"No head?" asked Adira.

"None. It comes and goes like fog, and we cannot track it. Some think it can't be killed at all, that it's an avatar of the forest. It can't be killed by spears or arrows, we know, for heroes have hurled missiles into it in times past. Too, anyone who comes too close writhes in terror. The pixies say-"

"Pixies?" chirped half a dozen.

The warchief scratched her braided scalp where small white feathers jutted, then changed the subject. "We'll break camp. You need to see the castle."

Turning abruptly, Magfire strode back toward camp. Pirates jogged to catch up. Adira nodded over her shoulder. "What about those two?"

Magfire said only, "You live, you die, you feed the forest, you're reborn, you do it all over again. Such is life in Arboria." Without further ado, they quit the camp. Fires were snuffed and watered, and pine needles raked back. All other traces were smoothed over.

The pirates were armed. The people of the pines had generously shared supplies. Adira, Simone, Murdoch, and Wilemina had the captured legionnaires' swords. Raw deer hide made scabbards and baldrics tied with the black slave ropes. Heath and Wilemina, despite her broken arm, were given bows and precious hand-made arrows, for which the archers were slavishly grateful until they realized they were property of the dead souls lying eaten in darkness. Whistledove, too tall for a sword, borrowed one of Adira's matched daggers. Jasmine Boreal accepted a bronze knife and magic oddments from the tribe's shaman. Too, they were given wool blankets traded from Buzzard's Bay, water gourds, food satchels woven from hemp, and other small effects, but none received the gossamer camouflage cloaks. Only Jedit received nothing, for he needed nothing. Armed and outfitted, the pirates felt ready for anything.

Yet in packing to go, Adira missed Virgil and Peregrine. For the first time, Adira wondered if Virgil had family, a mother, brothers and sisters. For that matter, she knew little about all her Circle. There was never enough time, it seemed, to become friends. Lately her life raced helter-skelter like a skiff before a typhoon.

"It's the bearers, milord. They're afraid."

Johan only glared at his captain of bodyguards. For the first time, the Tyrant of Tirras gave thought to his entourage and the discomforts they endured. The castle was drear. The Akron Legionnaires shunned the Tirran soldiers as inferiors and warned that any peasants who set foot in the great hall would be cut down without mercy. So Johan's porters, bodyguards, seer, lesser mage, barbarian bearers and others camped in the moldy cellar of a decrepit tower without windows or proper chimney. Only the huntsman and two porters had permission to leave the castle grounds to hunt food, and the cook and helper to fetch firewood. Thus the entourage kept a house cramped and cold and miserable. In nine days the Tirrans had grown haggard and haunted. Not that Johan cared about their comfort, but sick troops and porters would hinder his efforts to leave when he wished.

"I fear the barbarians might bolt by night, Your Grace," said the Tirran captain. "If they desert, you'd be stranded."

"Ah." That interested the emperor.

As night fell, the two stood before the empty doorway of the crumbling tower. Johan had found almost two dozen volumes intact, and he studied daily. Arcane lore swirled in his mind like dust devils. He'd read so many spells and remedies and potions and histories that the real world was becoming a blur. Yet so much seemed familiar. Finding information on the cat warriors had thrilled him at first, but the more he read, the less he seemed to know. How could that be? Such confusion felt queer.

Just as odd as dining with Lady Shauku last evening. A gracious host, the liege lord invited him to sup each night. The emperor was not much for social graces, preferring the company of his own mind, yet he conceded to keep his privileges in Shauku's fabulous library. Every night the two wizards sat under the stars in the ruin of the great hall and talked of magical lore, though they ate barely enough to keep a pigeon alive. Johan found the conversations bland and unhelpful, but he suffered in silence. Even last night, when both had sat in an ugly slanting rain tinged with sleet, both pretending the weather was delightful. Worrisome, Johan reflected. He was not mad…

"Milord?"

Frustrated and disturbed, Johan forced himself to attend his captain's wishes. "Summon the bearers."

Rounding the tower, the captain drove the barbarians before Johan with blows and curses. The sullen hulks stood slack-armed and loose-jawed. Short tusks glowed yellow in fading light. Dumbly they awaited orders.

Johan frowned. Like all his minions, the barbarians were dressed in the imperial uniform, a linen tunic painted with the four-pointed star that represented Johan's skull. Yet each northman had added new designs to the sigils, so one bore a yellow glyph, one a white, one red, and one green.

"Who ordered those devices painted?" demanded the tyrant.

"Milord?" The Tirran captain squinted at the uniforms. "Uh, you did, milord."

"Of course I did," snapped Johan, "but I recollect no additional devices be painted atop my star. They are not provosts nor zephyr captains nor any other elite force."

"Of course not, milord." Stupefied, the captain fell back on simple agreement.

Johan frowned deeper. Why this insolence? He shook his horned head, promising to address it later. Bad enough Johan himself was painted with Shauku's weird glyphs in a chain around his shoulders.

Raising a lank hand, Johan waved the barbarians to the tumbledown gates of Shauku's castle. Both gatehouses were mere heaps of rocks rife with weeds and briars. Bidding the men stop, Johan reached out with deceptive gentleness and touched each on a tusk, fuddling the brutes mightily. Touching his own teeth, Johan duckwalked while his charmed hand sketched a line in the grass and weeds where once had stood iron-barred gates.

Rising, Johan gestured to the outside world. "Leave. If you dare."

The four men grunted, flummoxed, but too looked at freedom hungrily. Finally, snorting through thick nostrils, one stepped forward.

And, crossing the invisible line, immediately collapsed.

Howling, shrieking, the barbarian thrashed amid briars in unspeakable agony. His mates stared goggle-eyed as the interloper curled in a ball from pain. The victim seemed distorted. His fingers knotted and splayed, his arms dislocated, his legs contorted as if he suffered rickets and crippling arthritis. Sobbing, begging for mercy, the northman tossed like a child in nightmare. Johan ordered the remaining three to grab their companion. As they did, their fingers twisted and knotted, so they howled until they'd pulled their comrade over the invisible line, where all quieted.

Touching a tooth, Johan explained, "One's teeth are the only visible part of one's skeleton. I touched your tusks, each one, and laid a curse. Step over the line, and every bone in your body will curve and flex until it snaps. You'll not leave the castle grounds until I allow it. Do you understand? Good."

Leaving them to sweat and squirm, Johan turned to his captain. Again he frowned. Standing alongside the officer was a greyhound. Holding onto the dog's collar sat a white monkey with luminous golden eyes.

"Whose pets?" demanded the master. "Do they belong to the legionnaires? Or Lady Shauku?"

"Pets, milord?"

"Yes!" snarled Johan. "Are you deaf as well as blind? This dog-"

The mage blinked. Dog and monkey were gone.

Johan watched the captain's face swell like an overripe melon. The man's eyes bulged. Red veins throbbed in his forehead. Abruptly, both eyes popped from their sockets like corks from a bottle. The ghastly orbs hung by their nerves down the man's cheeks, yet the captain seemed oblivious.

"Captain…" For the first time in ages, Johan felt a faint stirring of terror. "Captain, your eyes…"

"Eyes, milord?" The man's dangling eyeballs bounced as the man's lips moved. Still swelling, the orbs exploded into gobs of white-red goo. Yet the captain never flinched. "Wh-what about them, Your Grace?"

Without answering, Johan reached with a cold hand. He touched warm cheeks dappled by sweat, not ichor. Two healthy blue eyes stared back. Johan glanced at the bearers. The colored glyphs painted on their breasts had disappeared.

Sipping air through his regal eagle's nose, Johan pondered. He remembered the sigils now. He'd seen them in a book. Too, he remembered a domination spell illustrated with a saluki, a greyhound. And a potency spell sporting a white monkey. And a spell to blind a foe at a distance.

Why hallucinations?

Then, a jarring thought: perhaps he was mad.

Gingerly Johan touched the glyphs painted on his lizard-skin robe. Rather than the paint flaking off, it had etched the purple hide stark as a cattle brand. A badge of servitude, a yoke. Affecting his mind, altering his very thoughts, inducing bizarre daymares.

Shauku's doing. As tyrant, Johan had enthralled enough servants to see the pattern. Now was too late to prevent it. Fear knotted his stomach. Would he only be enslaved or be reduced to a drooling moron, the castle fool, the village idiot?

Time, Johan thought, to learn more about his mysterious host, and gain a hold upon her.