The crimson witch

uniform. But despite his snowy appearance, his mood was black.
        The doors to the throne room flew wide, banged against the stone walls, shuddered and were still. Four manbats shoved the hag through. She fell onto her knees, toppled onto her face. Her hands were bound behind her back by shimmering Thob rope constructed from the fringe powers of Lelar's mind.
        “It is thoughtful of you to lay prone before the king,” Lelar said, smiling.
        The manbats laughed and nodded at one another. One of them moved forward and kicked the hag in the side. The next instant, he was a burning lump, writhing on the floor, smoking.
        “That was a bad move,” Lelar said. He thrust his psionic blade into her skull and completely scrambled her brains.
        She screamed.
        He made her writhe.
        He made her try to climb the walls.
        He made her howl like a dog and gnaw at the floor as if it were a bone.
        He made her vomit and consume her own mess as a cat might.
        He made her beg.
        And whimper.
        And plead.
        And at last he released her and left her slumped on the floor, a shivering, defeated mass of flesh and, mostly, bones, a Talented without a will, the tool of a greater magic. “If you ever,” he said evenly but with malice afoot in each word, “destroy one of my men again, I will torture you for a thousand days and nights before killing you. If you ever attempt to escape, you will be bound by my will into the stone of these walls with only your head thrust out, and you will be the brunt of every foul and degrading amusement I can discover for as long as I shall live-which shall be at least another six hundred years. You are mine. Get used to the idea, you stupid bitch. Get used to it. Live with it. You have no choice.”
        She wanted to spit, but she dared not. She was getting used to it. She had no choice. She knew it.
        “Now listen,” Lelar said, standing and pacing about the great throne room, standing at last before the hole in the left wall and watching the play of dark colors from the mysterious world beyond, “an expeditionary force of manbats, complete with its Talented supervisor, has disappeared. They should have been back this evening, but they have not arrived, and I cannot find the 'mind' of the Talented no matter how hard I search with my own magics. I must assume they have been murdered-or at least that the Talented has and does not, therefore, register with me. I want you to go in search of the first squad for any traces whatsoever giving clue to their disappearance. If you see anyone mysterious on the roads, anyone aside from Commoners, anyone who looks capable of such destruction, I want you to bring them to me. Only another Talented could have destroyed my man. But all Talenteds in Lelar-with your taming-are under my control. Someone new must have arrived. I want him or her or them found. Do you understand?”
        She lay still, gasping for breath that was only now beginning to return to her tortured lungs.
        “Do you understand?” he repeated, his voice climbing higher, growing tighter.
        “Yes,” she wheezed.
        He booted her in the side as she started to get up, knocked her flat again. “Louder.”
        “Yes.”
        “Louder!”
        “YES!” she screamed, cursing him silently.
        He turned and walked back to his throne, purposely baring his back to her as a taunt that he knew she would not take up, would not dare to take up. He turned again and sat in a swirl of white. “Then get on with it,” he snapped, dismissing her.

Chapter Ten: A DREAM OF KINGS
        
        They stopped for the evening, and Jake went hunting pheasants with a Thob bow and arrow. He had asked Cheryn to make, instead, a gun and bullets, but she could not, for she had never seen one of these things. She asked him to explain how it worked in hopes she could create one from the description. Jake found, however, that though he could explain what a gun did and-generally speaking-how it did it, he could not give her a diagram of the workings of the device. Such was the mind of a Twentieth-Century man, familiar with the surface of the things that sustained him but unable to work with those things on any practical level. The world of Jake's probability had become too specialized so that one man knew only one part and could not command the general picture with what skills and knowledge he