The crimson witch

weary with treading. He would not be able to hold them off. They would circle like buzzards and finally devour him.
        The beast darted at him.
        He dived again.
        But it had been coming in for a bite of its dead companion. It dived, too, ripped into the other alligator corpse, and ignored Jake. It would not last for long. Others would be coming, and there would not be enough dead meat for all of them. He turned to rise, jumped as he was confronted with another dark shadow in the murky gloom. He waited for the bite of razor teeth, but the shadow didn't move. He realized, suddenly, that he was beside the wall and that the black mark he was seeing was a hole in it big enough for a man to get through. With the last air in his lungs, he shoved himself inside the castle wall and swam upward, seeking desperately for air.
        He broke the surface in a dark cellar whose floor was covered with water. There was absolutely no light in here, and he stayed where he was, bobbling, hoping his eyes would adjust sufficiently to allow him to navigate. After five minutes or so, he realized there was just not enough light to see adequately. He would have to feel his way about. Keeping one hand against the slime-covered stones of the wall, he moved along, not quite knowing what he was looking for. When he found it, he knew it was the right thing: stairs.
        He kicked onto them and lay breathing heavily, too exhausted to find out, for the moment, where they led. All that mattered was that he had escaped from the moat, from the alligators with the fine, sharp teeth. To the onlookers at the drawbridge, it would appear as if the second beast had gotten him. They would have seen him go down, the beast dive over him, and his failure to reappear. There would be no search parties, for they would expect no remains-let alone a living, breathing man. He was inside the castle, a free agent, just as he had set out to be.
        When his breath returned, he got up and followed the stairs upward until he came to a small landing. From there, the steps went in two directions, to the left and right, obviously following the wall of the castle, providing secret passage behind every room in the structure. There was light here, too. At several points in both directions, there were exits from the stairs through the fireplaces that led into other rooms of the castle. Light poured through these fireplaces and dimly illuminated the secret passages.
        He chose the stairway to the left, followed it to its end and found no fireplace that gave access to a room where Cheryn might be. He went back to the landing then and moved along the right stairs. At the third point of egress, when he hunkered down to peer around the baffling and through the fireplace grating, he saw her sitting at a vanity, combing her hair…

Chapter Fourteen: THE PORTAL
        

    BETWEEN THE WORLDS
        
        He was about to venture forth and announce himself when the door opened and a woman servant entered the chamber. She closed the door after her and approached Cheryn. She was a fat, middle-aged shrew with thin lips and tiny, beady eyes set on the sides of a beak of a nose. “The King will see you now,” she said to Cheryn.
        “Tell him to go to hell!” Cheryn snapped, slamming the comb down on the vanity top.
        “Little lady-” the woman began in a condescending manner.
        “Go to hell yourself,” Cheryn said.
        “When the king chooses a woman,” the servant said, “that woman should be grateful to be of service to him. Now you will come with me and no further dillydallying.”
        Jake's ears pricked, and his face grew red. So Lelar had seen the beauty, had appreciated the form of this girl and had immediately set out to conquer her. He would pay for that some day. Jake wriggled around the baffling and into the fireplace. The servant woman had her back to him, her hands on her hips as she regarded Cheryn.
        “If you think so mighty much of the king,” Cheryn hissed, “why don't you be his mistress? Could it have anything to do with all that fat hanging on you?”
        The servant woman slapped Cheryn's face. “I'm a Talented, too, little girl. And now that the king has once checked your powers, the pathway is open for any Talented to do it. So if you want yourself made helpless, I can oblige. Then I can give you more than an open hand on the face. I know how to hit to keep you from bruising. The king