The crimson witch

Well-nourished, carefully grown hatred,
        “I'll teach him!” She spat the words out to no one but herself. Beautiful, she remained strangely alone, seeking no companionship but the comfort of her own magics and the things they could do for her. Warm, she fought to be cold, and her reputation about the kingdom was one of dullness and aloofness, one of odd, solitary smugness. She paced the middle of the room, stood before a cauldron of bright green liquid that held her face in as much detail as a mirror of fine quality might. It was a fine face, a lovely face. The midnight hair tumbled around smooth, perfect skin, contrasted magnificently with her green-green eyes, framed her pert nose and her honey-dripping, bee-stung lips.
        Her voice changed from fury to an electrified calm, from razor screech to a thing of humdrum and wind-moan. “As I am the Witch of Eye Mountain, the Crimson Witch, Cheryn the Daughter of Mulgai, thus I command you to clear, to show me the vision I seek.” She closed her gem eyes, strained her forehead.
        The liquid began to bubble, forming froth that swam to the edges and clung to the iron cauldron like filings to a magnet. Then the bubbling grew less and less until the surface had once again become calm and smooth. But it no longer reflected her lovely face or the sleek curve of her sensuous neck, the pert upthrust of her breasts. Now it showed pictures…
        She opened her eyes and stared at the vision.
        Her face was gone…
        Instead, there was a man and a dragon…

Chapter One: THE TREK BEGINS
        
        Jake reigned his mount, digging his feet hard against the beast's thick sides, and came to a halt, swaying as the beast swayed. He crossed his arms on the great horny ridge that was the front of his saddle and sat looking across the gorge. Steam snaked up from below where the Ice River splashed onto the Hell Boulders, sissing, dissipating itself in a furious explosion of white, condensing and continuing beyond as a new and purer stream, smaller in size, but warmer. Far away, across the crack in the land that some Commoners called Devil's Grin and some called The Lips of Satan, stood the purple mountains like rotting teeth, dark, emerald forests ringing them like diseased gums. The mountains tempted, beckoned to him. He watched them as clouds, white and full, drifted among them, curling like fog fingers of some sentient mist creature. At the mountains, he would find that which he needed, that which he had come here for. He let his mind indulge in fantasies of success. Finally, his hind-quarters itching and sore, he slid from the giant back of his mount, dropped the last ten feet to the ground, shook his wild mane of blond hair and delighted in the clatter of his walnut shell necklace that hung to his waist. Rounding the colossal leg, he said, “Yonder is Lelar.”
        “Lelar gives me the shivers,” the dragon said, lowering the huge head that topped its graceful neck. It stared across the gorge with him, clucking its tongue and sighing heavily.
        Jake kept his gaze fixed on the mountains as his mind fiddled with the remnants of his wishes. “Why should anything scare you?”
        The dragon, Kaliglia as he was named, snorted, clucked his giant pink tongue in his cheek again, making a sound vaguely like a shotgun blast muffled in a pillow. “There are stories.”
        “And that's all they are. Stories. Nothing more.”
        Kaliglia shook his head negatively, stirring a small breeze that played through Jake's hair. “Lelar is an evil kingdom. It has always been an evil kingdom, ruled by King Lelar since its founding more than six hundred years ago.”
        Jake snorted his disgust, pushed his hair back from his face, “Now, how could that be? Even in this country, men don't live that long.” He stretched, yawned. He sat on the ground, folded his brawny arms across his chest and drew up his knees. He still had thoughts of the witch, the red-robed wonder with the body of a goddess. He remembered her sleek legs, her hand-sized breasts and taut, chiseled nipples. He also remembered her weakly issuing curses and waving charms, wanting him as much as he wanted her but unwilling to admit it, to give in and enjoy. He wanted to laugh as the memory lodged in his mind and replayed itself over and over. He shook his head instead. Walnuts rattled. “The longest a man has ever lived, that I know of, was the Priest of Dorso. Kell