The crimson witch

Cheryn cautioned him. “The… magic… in it… will kill your enemy… upon touching his blood…”
        He grasped the sword.
        Another manbat swooped in.
        He stabbed it with an overhand thrust, caught it lightly along its ribs. The blow should not have been fatal, but the beast puffed into ashes and was gone.
        “The hag,” he said, waving the sword. “I can kill her with this!”
        “No. She is… too strong.”
        Cheryn suddenly lifted from the ground and was drifting up into the darkness. Jake jumped, tried to grab her slim ankles but could not. Then, as he watched her go, the voice of the hag, withered and beaten slithered in his mind, shaped in his brain without sound: Go to see Mordath. He hates Lelar as do I.
        “What is this?” he shouted to the witch.
         Mordoth. In the Great Tree.
        “Wait!”
        But they were gone, the manbats, the hag, Cheryn. Only darkness waited overhead. He was alone with the dragon and the night…

Chapter Eleven: MORDOTH
        
        They set out that night, searching in the forest for the road that Cheryn had mentioned earlier. Jake's thoughts were on the girl, recalling the form of her body and the shape of her mind. Both were delightful. He was very much concerned for her. Had she not mentioned, in recalling her meeting with Lelar, that the king had torture chambers below his castle? Would he use them now as he had used them those years before? Would he use them on a Talented? And how could he make a Talented hurt?
        Then he thought of the hag that had come with the manbats, the hag that had sealed off Cheryn's powers and had captured her. Apparently, Lelar was a great enough sorcerer that he could cause pain in other Talenteds, for how else could he have gained the services of the hag who had bluntly stated she hated the king? Or was that a ruse, too? Were they sending him to Mordoth so that Mordoth could work some other evil on behalf of Lelar? No. No, had they wanted to bring him to bad times, the hag and the manbats could have seen to it easily enough. The hag, in fact, had killed the manbat that had attacked him. Perhaps the old witch was sincere, was working for Lelar against her will, was giving Jake a good clue by telling him to look for Mordoth in the Great Tree.
        They marched a forced march until sleep was a thing they could no longer deny. If they wished to be in top form when they met with Mordoth, they would have to sleep now. Jake found a place off the main road where the trees and vines conspired to conceal an easy-access clearing. When the dragon had entered after him, the clearing was filled to capacity. But there was warm grass and soft earth, and they fell asleep almost immediately.
        In the morning, they slept through the rising of the sun and the first early call of the birds of the forest. When they woke, the sun was approaching its zenith, perhaps only an hour away. With Kaliglia's aid, Jake foraged the bushes and weeds for berries and nuts. He found an apple tree and discovered the fruit was much the same in this worldline as it had been in his own. He ate his fill of the tangy globes and packed a dozen into his depleted knapsack.
        “Which way?” Kaliglia asked as they returned to the hard-packed earthen roadway.
        “Deeper into Lelar,” Jake said. “There will not likely be any big towns between us and the gorge.”
        They set off down the tree-hung road, Jake walking to unstiffen his sleep-cramped legs. Later, he rode the dragon until they reached a hamlet of perhaps five hundred people. There were approximately two hundred buildings, all stretched along the length of the highway. There were no secondary streets. The road, however, had been made for horses, not dragons, and Kaliglia nearly filled it to overflowing.
        Jake dismounted before what appeared to be a public tavern. It was a two-story stone building with six shuttered windows facing the street like cataracted eyes. The doorway was unblocked, and flies buzzed around the entranceway. Above the door was a sign that said THE GOLDEN CUP in hand-painted letters. Dust coated it thickly, almost blotting out the H in “the” and the LDE in “golden,” but the place had the look of a well-used establishment. The ground was beat into paths from several directions to the door. “Wait here,” he told the dragon. “I'll see if I can find anything out about Mordoth and the Great