The crimson witch

toward them. The first of the flock touched ground and scuttled forward, snarling, slobbering, their wicked fangs greenish-yellow and very, very sharp. There were easily eighty of them, and Jake felt certain they would sweep across and kill all three of them before Cheryn could burn them. But she did not plan, after all, to burn them anyway. When the bats were only twenty feet away, they stopped abruptly and dropped their arms to their sides. Their wings folded behind them, and some of the luster went from their eyes. They waited until Cheryn, Jake, and Kaliglia had passed, then fell into line behind them.
        “What goes?” Jake asked.
        “They know who is more powerful,” she said. “They are on our side now.”
        “I don't know if I like having that sort on my side,” he said.
        “Better than against us.”
        “True. True enough.”
        The manbats scuttled behind, an impressive rear guard.
        They walked across the drawbridge, and the two guards there stood back to let them pass, their swords limp at their sides. They moved into the great hallway and were confronted by a Talented, a black-robed man, squat and ugly with warts all over the left side of his face. “So,” he said, rubbing his hands together and advancing carelessly, “my winged friends bring me prisoners.”
        “Look again,” Cheryn advised. “They aren't bringing us. We're bringing them.”
        The Talented was suddenly surprised. He took several steps backward, then turned on Cheryn. He threw spears at her, creating them out of thin air. She turned them back on him so suddenly that the Thobs punctured him in a dozen places. He fell backwards with a clatter, bleeding all over the beautiful floor.
        They moved on.
        Somehow, the alarm had been sounded. At the next bend in the corridor, two more Talented were waiting. The first created a shield of protection about them, while the second created bolts of fire which he shot at Cheryn and her entourage. The bolts of fire bounced off their targets and ricocheted about the room, sputtering and dying, catching the long, velvet curtains on fire.
        The Talented hurled boulders now, boulders with steel spikes thrusting out of them as thickly as quills on the back of an enraged porcupine. The spined boulders were flung back at them, disappeared as the Talented released his hold on them.
        Cheryn reached out and set their shield on fire, turned it into burning stone.
        The two Talented screamed, tried to get out of their blazing prison. The flaming rock collapsed inward upon them, disappeared, taking their bodies with it.
        They walked on.
        As they entered the main throne room where the portal between worldlines existed, they were met by King Lelar. He stood on the throne platform, dressed in brilliant white robes, an orange crescent on his right shoulder, an orange crescent on the center of the cape that flowed behind him like wings.
        “Far enough!” he roared.
        “ Not far enough,” Cheryn said.
        “You're back,” Lelar said. “I would know where you went through the Portal and how you returned without using it.”
        “You will never find out,” Cheryn said.
        “Ah, still as fiery as ever,” the king said, smiling lopsidedly.
        “More than ever,” she replied.
        They kept advancing.
        “Far enough!” Lelar roared, creating a set of steel bars from floor to ceiling of the room, another set immediately behind them, enclosing them. He grinned. “Quite foolish of you to return, really. You were fortunate to have escaped. I will have no mercy this time, my dear. I feel you would not be that good a lover anyway. Perhaps you are too fiery.”
        Cheryn smiled. At the foot of the bars, small rodents appeared. They began to nibble at the steel. Soon, they were gobbling it at a fantastic rate, crawling toward the ceiling, using the bars they were eating for purchase while they worked. In seconds, the bars were gone-as were the bloated rodents.
        “Very good,” Lelar said. But he wasn't smiling now.
        Abruptly there were ropes around both of them, and Kaliglia-who had just barely squeezed down the hallways and into the throne room through the huge double doors-was bound and on his back like a pig to be spitted.
        The ropes turned to snakes and slithered off their charges, freeing them, slid across the floor and bit Lelar's legs.
        The