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them, red tongues lolling in human imitation of hunting dogs, and devour them all. They would perish in
the jungle. They would die on the plains. How many, if any at all, would reach safety?
I had vowed with my Delia to end the abomination of slavery on Kregen, thinking that a part of what the
Savanti wished. But how would that vow help me now?
By Hito the Hunter! said a voice in my ear, a startled voice. I thought you were dead for sure!
I looked up from the floor and there was Nath the Guide, bending over me, wearing a mightily puzzled
frown. Of course he could recognize me, for I had gone through the baths of the nine, and had my hair
and beard trimmed, and so looked something like the Dray Prescot who had first arrived here. And, also,
something else I should have observed much earlier then struck me. These so-called guides who claimed
to guide people out to safety would hardly swear by the name of a mighty hunter. No, I should have seen
that earlier.
And I thought you dead, also, Nath.
I refrained from immediately leaping up and dealing with him as he had left us to be dealt with by the
great Jikai. It was through no help of his that Princess Lilah and I had escaped. You disappeared, and
we feared a leem had taken you.
He cobbled a story together swiftly, and, truth to tell, he was more concerned with his lies than he was
to find fault with my story of running and walking until strange beast-men had taken me and so,
eventually, sold me back here.
Nath talked on, very volubly, about his concern for the slaves and how he sorrowed that he had been
snatched away by wild beasts, and fought them, and so won free. In truth, there in the barred caves cut
into the rocks, we had a high old time swapping lies, and this brought me back to something of a better
humor.
I would like to go out again, Nath, and this time escape clear away.
Of course! A party is due tomorrow. You must be with us. Then, meaningfully, he added: There are
three Khamorros among us, and they are very fierce men.
So be it.
There was no doubt in my mind why I needed to go out with a hunted party of fugitives. I would take
their treacherous flier from them, as I had done before. I had to take care not to betray any knowledge of
what had transpired here after my Jikai with Nath, and nothing of the disappearance of Inachos the Guide
passed my lips. But I guessed Nath and his fellows, and Nalgre, may Makki-Grodno rot his liver, were
mightily perplexed.
If I make keeping my fingers off Nath the Guide s throat sound easy believe me, it was not.
Wild plans scurried through my head, and I slept fitfully, awaking with the others to rush at the stentors
call to the feeding cave. In the morning we would be taken out and prepared in the slave barracks.
Fantastic and unworkable schemes flitted into and out of my imagination, as a flick-flick shoots its tendrils
out to gobble flies.
Many of the slaves had been beaten into submission and could not respond to the meal call, and the
usual Kregan custom of six or even eight square meals a day did not always impel them to answer the
stentors summons. I noticed a little Och with a chin fuzz and skinny arms and legs who, so Nath told me,
was due to go out with us in the morning. Then this Och, a man named Glypta, pulled back as an ancient,
yelling female Och rushed into the chamber beating her broom wildly behind her. Screeching like one of
those devil-bats from the hell-caves of Karsk, the old Miglish crone rattled into the chamber, thwacking
her broom at the Och woman, raising a great dust and commotion, catching the Och woman cunningly
around the head, then switching to trip her legs and so tumble her sprawling into our filth.
Keep off! Keep off, Mog!
I ll see Migshaanu the Ever-Vengeful tears out your liver and your tripes and strips your skin off! The
Migla was stuttering in fury, thwacking with her broom, a very witch in truth, from her mass of tangled
hair to her bare and filthy feet. You don t trick Mog and regret the day you dropped into this world!
Andthwack! went the broom and the little Och shrieked and tried to spring up and run, andthwack!
down came Mog s broom again in a gigantic rustling and swishing of twigs.
Bedlam broke out with scuffling and dust flying. Then the Och managed to scuttle out. Mog leaned on
her broom and the liquid sheen of her eyes as she leered after the Och sent a shiver up my spine, as I
remembered Tulema s avowed declaration that this Miglish crone was in very truth a witch.
She ll think on! said this Mog the Migla, in a shrill cackling tone of satisfaction. Ar!
There was no Tulema to pull me away.
I stared at Mog.
And the thought dawned. The thought I felt a deep reluctance to face. The thought that must be a true
thought. Now, may Zair take my ib for a harpstring! I said, but to myself. And so I continued to stare
at this old harpy, this filthy harridan with the rat-tail hair, crooked nose, and nutcracker jaws, and I
thought that I had taken four people out of here and all of them wrong and this this monstrosity of a
halfling witch had to be the right one.
She had been here when I arrived. Tulema had said so. And she was still here.
Mog the Witch!
Incredible!
What could the Star Lords be about, to want this object restored to the outside world of Havilfar?
However much I did not wish to believe what I had so belatedly discovered, I had to believe. And if I
freed all the slaves and did not set Mog at liberty, I had the nastiest of suspicions that I would be hurled
back here yet once more.
I set myself to talk with the witch, and she beat at me with her broom, and spat, drawing her filthy old
blanket up around her shoulders as though I assaulted her, and bade me clear off or, by Migshaanu the
Mighty-Slayer, I d be sorry!
But, Mog, I said, I can get you out of here.
She cackled at that.
Get me out! she mocked. Onker! Nulsh! And you d take me out for the manhounds to gnaw on!
Not so, Mog.
Yes, yes, you great ninny!
But, Mog I said, breathing hard and gripping both my fists together lest they do harm I would feel
sorry for after. The guides! I repeated what the deluded slaves believed. The guides will take us
through to safety.
She leered at me, mocking, spitting, drool running down that promontory of a chin, the black hairs in her
nose quivering. Onker! Idiot! Nulsh! The guides are She swung a bright beady eye to where Nath
was deep in conversation with a fair-haired girl, and she cackled like any loloo laying a square egg, and
drew a corner of her gray blanket up over her face. May Migshaanu the All-Glorious turn your belly to
porridge and your back to paste! And she scuttled from the chamber. I lost her in the gloom of the maze
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