The crimson witch

she realized that fighting only brought on more spanking. She went limp and did not try to harm him either with her magics or her feet and hands. When he saw that she was out of reserves and that she had surrendered, he stood, dropping her into the dust, letting her go. She jumped to her feet, spat at him, lifted into the air and sailed quickly out of his reach, constantly muttering the vilest threats she could summon from her throat to her lips.
        He stood, laughing.
        She hurried away into the wind, lost in the darkness, shrieking curses to the four corners of the night…

Chapter Five: INTO LELAR
        
        The dawn came with a million fingers and pried away with golden nails until the darkness had been levered out of sight. The sky slipped from ebony to amber and from amber to green. The green soon was streaked through with blue. The blue came to dominate and the day was then completely upon them.
        Jake ate breakfast from his knapsack, feasting on the fruits and dried meats that Kell had prepared and packed for him, washing down the cheese and tough, dry bread with short swigs of sweet wine from his canvas canteen. Kaliglia satisfied himself with devouring half the copse that Cheryn the witch had hidden in the night before.
        “I should thank you for saving my life,” Jake said after finishing his meal.
        The beast turned to face him, a small berry bush half-munched in its great maw. It chewed for a few moments, accompanied by crunching and crackling as the bush gave way to its relentless square teeth, then swallowed noisily. Its neck rippled as the remnants of the bush shoved down and into the dragon's stomach. “Oh, that's all right. Hardly means anything anyway.”
        “What's that supposed to mean?”
        “If you insist on going into Lelar-”
        “That again!”
        “-then I'm afraid your life will be taken sooner or later anyway.”
        “You do have a one-track mind.”
        “When it comes to Lelar, yes.”
        “For the last time, Kaliglia, the strange hole in Lelar's castle wall could be the link between probability lines that I need. Kell has seen it only once, but even she made the connection when I told her of my story. I must find that portal. I've got to return home. It is too difficult for me to accept a world where Talenteds rule supreme and where I will never have any hope of becoming anything because I was not born a mutated superman.”
        “Well, I think it's foolish.”
        Jake stood and threw his knapsack over his shoulders. He approached the beast, wagging a finger. “Look, are you going to serve me or not?”
        “Well-”
        The dragon tore the leaves off another shrub, munched on them.
        “The Sorceress Kell did not tell me you were a coward.”
        “Coward?”
        “So it would appear to me.”
        “I'm just not foolhardy is all. I like to think things out before I go running around brainlessly, asking for trouble. I like to think things out.”
        “Damn it, so do I. I've thought. I must go to the castle of Lelar in hopes that the hole in the wall is a portal back into my own probability line, a door warped open by the nuclear war-since the castle was built on the sight of a major blast, built to encompass the shimmering spot in the air that had drawn Lelar's attention and was mistaken, at first, for a powerful talisman. There are stories of people disappearing from my world. Perhaps they disappeared into the analog of this hole in Lelar's wall.”
        “And they never came out here. You are the first of your kind to have come to this place. Have you ever thought about that?”
        “Yes.”
        “And you still want to go on?”
        “Yes.”
        “Then you are most assuredly a fool.”
        Jake turned and walked off toward the bridge.
        The dragon watched him until he had set foot upon it. “Hey,” Kaliglia called at last, “where are you going?”
        “I may be a fool but I am no coward, Kaliglia of the Faint Heart.”
        The dragon snorted and tossed its head. It lumbered away from the copse and up to the wide span of stone that linked the two sides of the gorge. “Get on.”
        “You're coming with me?”
        “I never said I was a coward. You did.”
        Jake rounded the massive front legs and clambered up the thick-scaled side, mounting the horn of the natural saddle. “I apologize.”
        Kaliglia