The crimson witch

shuffling his mammoth feet uneasily.
        “Doesn't bother me.”
        “Nothing bothers you!” Cheryn snapped. “You're too dense.”
        Jake stood, brushed the dirt off his trousers. “If you two want to stay behind, that is okay. I had hoped- But, it's your choice.”
        “You can't succeed without my magics,” Cheryn said smugly.
        “I can try.”
        “You mean you would go on, pitting your bare hands and Kell's silly knife against Thobs and man-bats? You'd go on without me?”
        “Sure would.” He slung the depleted knapsack over his shoulders, jabbed the knife through a loop on his jeans, and took a few steps toward the forest.
        “Wait,” she said, thinking furiously.
        He turned, stopped. “What is it?”
        She thought of a new tact now, and she smiled sweetly, ready to put it into practice. “I thought you said you loved me.”
        “I do.”
        Kaliglia shuffled uncomfortably.
        “Then you wouldn't walk off and leave me like this.”
        He smiled back, understanding her ploy. “It is not me who is leaving you. It's the other way around. I am going home, and you refuse to help me get there or to come along with me.”
        She felt anger, but she tried to control it. “And once we get to your home, your worldline, what would become of me? Once you are back there-”
        “I'd marry you,” he said.
        She continued over him: “-with all those girls you once knew and once slept with, what would happen-” She stopped, his words finally registering with her. “You'd what?”
        “Marry you.”
        “But-”
        “I was serious. Were you?”
        She stood and stamped her feet as if she were beating out little fires that nibbled at her toes. “Oh! You're so damned sneaky!”
        “Well!”
        “I hate you.”
        “I guess-” he began.
        “But I love you, too.”
        She crossed the space between them. “Come on, let's hurry and make a little time before darkness. Someone might come looking for the manbats and the other Talented.
        “Wait,” Kaliglia said, shifting from his left foot to his right so that he wallowed like a great ship in high tide.
        “What is it?” Jake asked.
        “I-”
        “You want out of our bargain. You want to go back to the Sorceress-”
        “No, no!” the dragon protested, waddling up to them. “No, no, nothing at all like that.”
        “Well?” Cheryn asked impatiently.
        “I want to come along.”
        “No one's stopping you,” Jake said, turning to start again.
        “You don't understand.”
        “Well, explain for heaven's sake! Don't hold us here until more manbats come looking for their buddies,” Cheryn said.
        “I want to go through the portal with you,” Kaliglia blurted. “I want to go back to your worldline.”
        Jake dropped his mouth, almost needed his hands to push his lower jaw back into place. “Impossible!”
        “No. Golgoth said the hole was wide enough to drive a dozen horses through. I'm not as big as a dozen, by any means, perhaps only as large as seven or eight. I'll fit.”
        “But how could we ever get you in the castle?”
        “You and Cheryn could go first. When you're inside and ready to make your escape through the wall, Cheryn could blast open the castle with her magics, make a pathway through for me.”
        “Too dangerous,” Jake said. “We don't need a mount. Cheryn can make me fly like she can, and then we will make better time than if-”
        “No,” Cheryn said. “I cannot levitate and propel both of us and still be on guard against manbats and Thobs. We need a mount.” She locked her emerald eyes with Jake's blue eyes, and they seemed to communicate through the gaze alone.
        “All right,” Jake said at last. “We'll work something out. But why this sudden desire to plunge into the adventure with us?”
        Kaliglia snorted. “It gets pretty boring around here. Awfully boring. I might be afraid, but at least something interesting will be going on for a change.”
        
        Lelar sat on his carved onyx throne, fingering the heads of dragons that formed the ends of each of the arm rests. He was dressed in white from head to foot, a white slouch hat, a white cape, a white, ruffled shirt, white trousers, and white albino deerskin boots. Only the orange crescent of Lelar on his left shoulder broke the starkness of his