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By Root 1234 0

flying round and round in an ever-widening spiral with Pastedion at its center. Here in this sparsely populated country he saw little but the wild hills, rolling in the rusty-reddish glow of the burgeoning grass up to the mountain peaks, silver-blue and grim under their eternal snow. He felt the master’s will speaking in his mind, then, urging him south along the river. At first Baruma whimpered and fought. Gushing up from the water rose a silver veil of elemental force, a surging and turbulent counterpart to the flood runoff swelling the physical river below, and a real danger to a weak soul like him, flying on someone else’s will rather than his own. But the Hawkmaster’s whisper promised torments, and in the end, Baruma flew south.

Whenever he could, he pulled away from the threatening veil with its tendrils of mist that seemed to reach out deliberately to snare and drag him down to his death. He was so preoccupied with the river, in fact, that it was some time before he realized that he had a shadowy companion. Out of the corner of his eye, just behind him and on his left, he could see a dark misty shape following along. Whenever he turned his head for a better look, the shape dodged away and disappeared. His fear began to swell like the water veil, and he heard his own voice babbling to the master.

“You’d better come back, then.” The master’s hated voice had never sounded so welcome.

Baruma swooped away from the river and began to circle back, only to come face to face with a dark tower of a figure: a sweep of black robes, marked with glowing red sigils and belted with a string of severed heads, and a face barely visible in a heavy hood. When he yelped, the figure raised a shadowy hand and shoved back the illusionary hood to reveal the grim eyes of the Old One.

“So, I’ve found my lost little sparrow, have I?”

Baruma could only babble out a confused welter of thoughts. He could hear the Hawkmaster’s voice, edged with fear, demanding to know what he was seeing, but the voice seemed very far away. When the Old One’s simulacrum raised both hands, a line of grayish light appeared, stretched between them. As he worked his hands back and forth, the line doubled, then snaked out like a thrown rope to circle them both. Once it was in position, it swelled, shot up and down, and turned into a wall of dirty-colored light, glare-shot and feverish, ringing them round.

“Your captor won’t be able to force himself through that.” The Old One actually sounded amused. “When you return to your body, he’ll question you, of course. Tell him the truth. I want him to know exactly what he’s facing. I hope he squirms, the dog.”

“Master, please, save me!”

“Eventually. Perhaps. You’re useful where you are for the moment. Where did he capture you?” “Indila. I was on my way to you.”

“What does he want?”

“Rhodry.”

“What? What does the idiot boy want with Rhodry Maelwaedd?”

Dimly Baruma knew that Rhodry’s full name was important, but in his terror and ensorcelment he could only stare like an idiot himself.

“I don’t know, master,” he said at last. “Or wait! He wants to know what you’re doing. Or something like that. I don’t understand.”

“No doubt he hasn’t shared his heart of hearts with you, no.” All at once, the face of the simulacrum smiled, a ghastly gesture, the draw of bloodless lips away from a hollow black cavity of a mouth. “Very well, little Baruma. Tell him everything you know, and tell him that the Master of the Aethyr is here in Bardek. Let him sprinkle every sharp thorn of the truth between his sheets and then have sweet dreams.”

In a flash of blinding blue glare the Old One disappeared. The wall of filthy light hung steady for a moment, then dissolved and flowed away into nothingness. Standing waiting was the towering simulacrum of the Hawkmaster, the face raging and swelling above its blood-red robes.

“It was the Old One, master.”

In the secret place of hatred in his mind Baruma laughed, seeing the Hawkmaster shrink—literally shrink out on the etheric—in fear. Then the simulacrum swelled again to larger than normal size,