The crimson witch

trees in a singsong warble based with a moan that sounded much like a huge bird…
        
        The dungeon was adance with ghostly tongues of blue psionic light as part of Lelar's mind dealt with providing illumination. The bare earthen floor glowed dully with it as if it were burnished copper, the red dirt swirling without gleaming, bright without seeming bright. The walls, wet and moss-coated, gleamed brightly in spots, reflecting the glow. The one barred window set high in the wall behind the hag showed twinkling stars and a few dark forms of light clouds.
        Against the far wall, the hag stood. Her hair fell to her waist, tangled into greasy knots, gray streaked with snow white, white like the center of the sun must be, white like the legends said the center of the Great Fire had been. She was dressed in leather and burlap, the traditional materials of hags, and her feet were crudely sandaled with leather straps and pads of leather for soles.
        At the hag's feet lay the bodies of two blasted, charred manbats. They lay in a tangle of crisped wings and shriveled legs, their eyes either singed from their sockets or staring straight ahead at nothingness. They were the manbats that had helped to bring her here while Lelar rode control on her. They had not lived to walk away from her once he had lost his complete crush on her psionic abilities.
        “Listen!” Lelar snarled across the bare earth at her.
        “I refuse.”
        “I am winning,” he said. He straightened his fur-edged greatcoat to show that he had energy for minor things aside from the contest of magics. “Look, I can even maintain the light and fight you at the same time.”
        “The… light… will… grow… dim… Lelar,” she said. But her voice was lacking the booming, commanding tone that it had first contained when she had been brought into the spider-web threaded rooms, under the dark and dripping stone arches, Lelar holding a candle because he was reserving all of his power to completely clamp her magics down until she could be placed in the dungeon and worked over. Yes, then it had been a strong and defiant voice. But now it was weak and contained a note of resignation that Lelar noted and appreciated.
        “The light stays bright, and I press the attack!”
        She screamed.
        He stabbed again with his psionic knife.
        She choked off this scream, still tough enough to deny him the pleasure of hearing it.
        She struck back, catching him unawares and dropping him to his knees.
        She allowed herself a hope of victory.
        She twisted her spurred magic blade in his brain.
        But the light did not dim.
        He lunged back.
        She screamed as he twisted the magic knife, spinning open her thoughts and peeling them like ripe fruit.
        She passed out.
        When she woke, there was still light.
        She tried to strike him.
        Her blade of mental force moved slowly.
        Through syrup…
        He shielded.
        Her blow was deflected harmlessly.
        She tried again.
        Missed again.
        He stabbed.
        She screamed.
        “You are mine,” he said. “I have taken your powers and have tamed them from tigers into kittens. You will do my bidding from this time forth. And I warn you, you wicked old bitch, that refusal to do what I command will meet with the slowest and most horrible of deaths. I have keyed your powers. I have locked them away from me. You will never harm me. You have no arm with which to hit back.”
        She tried again.
        He stabbed, stabbed, stabbed until she was babbling.
        And still, still there was light…

Chapter Nine: THE THOBS
        
        Again the air was rent with the eerie cry. It shifted up and down the musical scale, never producing music, a piercing ululation that chilled Jake through and through until he fancied he could hear his bones rattling at the joints, banging and clacking against one another within the meager and trembling sack of his skin. He forced his lips to suck in air to his aching lungs. He wet his lips with his almost dry tongue, squeezed it against the roof of his mouth to gain some saliva and tried again. He found, at last, his voice where it had hidden deep within his throat. “What the hell is that?”
        Cheryn shook her head doubtfully. Black hair flew. But there was no need to answer his question, for the thing that was screaming