Teri McLaren

The brown viper lunged and twisted its rough, saw-toothed underbelly around Claria's ankle once, opened its mouth, and struck blindly at her foot, missing only because she jerked her foot underwater at the snake's cold, sharp touch.

"Og!" The songmage jumped at the power in Cheyne's voice, ceasing his laughter.

And dropping the staff. He had finally noticed Riolla.

Cheyne had no time to deal with it. He dove for the brown viper, snatching its wide, flat head from Claria's kicking limb, and pushing its bared fangs under the waves, squeezed with all his strength. The snake coiled and twisted around his arms, then caught hold of his neck, the choking pressure and pain from its grip causing Cheyne to surface again and again as he wrestled with the viper.

Og watched in despair as the current quickly carried the scepter over the churning waves and into the mouth of the cauldron. The other snakes, still in its magical thrall, confused and churning the water, began biting one another and racing over the waves toward Rotapan, who had again caught a slippery turtle and was clinging to it for all he was worth.

The cauldron toyed with the staff, the light of its red ajada stone unquenched by the whitecapped waves. It danced merrily on the edges of the vortex, and then bobbed underwater for a time, only to reappear moments later in the same place.

Rotapan grabbing wildly for it from his handhold. Chastened, distraught, Og remembered his purpose, waiting until he was sure Riolla would not be drowned, hoping that Rotapan would be, and hummed into the conch shell. Without the staff…

But the red light fragmented and dissolved, and the confused turtles instantly broke formation and swam off.

Last in the chase, Riolla found her chair sinking and taking on water quickly, the three Neffians having

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abandoned their posts in the onslaught of angry, waterborne vipers. At last she disappeared into the dark waves. Caught totally by surprise, Yob dove with his turtle, who stayed under almost longer than the ore could bear, but then surfaced again close to the far shore. Yob broke the water with a huge gasp, never so glad to see land in his life, and promptly passed out, tiny waves lapping at his chin as he washed in to shore.

Farther back, Rotapan found himself trying to swim amid a roil of serpents, many of which had tired and began wrapping themselves onto whatever solid thing they could find in the sea. Struggling to break from the whirlpool's currents, the overking slung two kraits and a copperhead from his arms, screaming in circles of terror. He would have surely been swallowed by the cauldron had not Riolla floated past, her sedan chair bedecked with hissing reptiles and moving under the power of a turtle who was trapped underneath. As he lunged for a handhold, she batted at the half-ore's clutching fingers with her fan, a sneer of mild distaste on her overpainted lips. Og watched her blissfully, his heart now pounding from more than the hard run across the turtles.

Finally on shore, the brown viper dead, Cheyne motioned to the forest. "Og, come and now," he panted. "Claria says we have two choices: the old caravan road that leads toward Drufalden's mountain, or straight through that thick wood."

Claria stood silently watching him gingerly dab at his neck as she wrung out her robes. The dead snake lay in loose coils a few feet away, but her ankle was raw and still twitched from its touch. Claria shivered, thinking how close it had come to biting her.

"Here, let me do that. Please," she said, reaching up and taking his hand away from his neck.

While Og hurried up the beach, Claria quickly cleaned Cheyne's abrasions as he scanned the thick, swaying pine trees that marched westward just a hundred yards from

Teri McLaren

the shore. Enough cover, he thought, if they could get in quickly. He checked his pack for his boots and then for the totem, finding it sticky with salt, but secure. But the little bronze-bound book was gone. There was no time to look for it now.

"Og!" he rasped impatiently.

"I know. I'm coming. But isn't she lovely? Just like a queen." Og sighed. Claria shot him a killing glance at the mention of the word "queen," but said nothing.

"Hey, what is that?" Cheyne pointed to something caught in the shallows, rocking back and forth in the waves like a piece of driftwood.

"It's the staff! I thought it gone forever," cried Og, throwing his boots off as he charged into the water to retrieve the ajada.

"Not so fast-that's mine!" shouted a voice from the breakers.

Rotapan, covered in a cloak of seaweed, a water-shy coral snake wrapped around his head like a crown, bobbed under the shallow water. When he broke the waves again, Og, Claria, and Cheyne had disappeared once more, right before his very eyes, leaving only one of Og's castoff boots, and the sound of Claria's laughter rising on the wind through the tall pines.

"Well, what a lovely job you have done with the power I gave you, Rotapan. 'Rex Serpens,' was it? I have seen that stone do a lot more than draw reptiles." Riolla chortled as she shed her bobbing chair, sopping pink silks and all, and stepped out onto dry land.

Before the water became too shallow, instinct had called the trapped turtle back out to sea, but Rio 1 la's lambskin boots had never so much as touched water during the entire ordeal. One or two little diehard asps leapt from the wreckage of the sinking chair and wriggled toward the drier sand, their horned heads disappearing beneath the low dunes in seconds.

Rotapan envied them their concealment. He sat on the white beach, exhausted and powerless to fend off Riolla's digs. He had also forgotten the coral snake around his head until it sensed a lack of movement, unwound lazily, and fell about his narrow shoulders in bright loops. Remembering that he had no immunity to its bite now, Rotapan sat terribly still, puckering his face in disgust and trying not to breath until the snake had completely departed its perch. He cast an irritated eye upward, where Riolla stood fanning herself in the humid heat and listening to the cicadas choiring in the pines.

"What do you want of me?" He sighed, beginning to smell like dead seaweed. Riolla breathed through her mouth.

"Oh, first I think you might want to repay me for the heads your war party took from my assassins. I wasn't nearly finished with them yet, you know. And they are so expensive. Drufalden seems to want more and more for less and less these days," she replied.

"How? The staff and its stone are gone-back in the hands of the songmage. What can I do now? And what of my Lord Chelydrus? The ajada helped me to talk with him. The magic is departed, and so my cabinet will not be able to advise me; the heads of my enemies are surely good only as gargoyles now. And venom-venom will be very hard to come by without the staff… How will I ever know when Chelydrus demands an offering?" Rotapan moaned.

"Yes. I know. I am quite sure he will be very displeased with you now. But I would let you have the red stone again if you help with a certain task I have in mind," she lied. "And you do owe me."

Rotapan's shoulders straightened. "Perhaps I can be of further service after all." He smiled, his little blue eyes distant and strange.

"I need a small force of fighting men, Rotapan. Swift of mind, fleet of foot, and tough. So no ores, understand? I need soldiers I can count on, who will obey me.