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Then, oozing slowly, the anger. Unsettled and thick, wrath sloughed off the bristly white fur like flakes of dead skin, touching the breeze around the creature and turning the air cold, then colder still. Fury spread through the heavily muscled body in sharp, wild spirals. Rage boiled the acid deep in the cauldron of its belly. Rage. Burning white hot. White Rage. Somehow it knew this was its name: White Rage. It was the only thing that had remained with the beast as it was wrenched from its homeworld. And now even that homeworld's name was lost to the creature. Its memories were now leeched, purged and tossed away; not merely forgotten, but completely erased. Yet that was not the most maddening thing for White Rage. The thoughts of another mingled with its own: a grating, jarring voice that did not belong there and which sang a steady mantra of hate within the beast's skull. The hate-filled voice spurred White Rage on through this world's countryside urging it to loose its fiery breath upon all that lay in its path. And whatever it chose not to burn, White Rage consumed with a hunger only slightly surpassed by its own anger. For hunger was the only other memory it had taken with it from its homeworld. This world offered much to eat and so White Rage fed, filling its belly and then filling it some more. But even through the sharp, tearing shrieks of its prey; through the thick gravely sounds deep within its own throat as it swallowed huge chunks of meat; and over the roaring sound of the fires as they devoured the lands, White Rage still heard the Voice. It cajoled, berated, and raged through the beast's mind in a mad dervish of thought. The Voice guided the beast's feet, its sight and every other sense it possessed. White Rage felt the Voice's presence as if the beast were merely a suit of clothing to be worn over the real being inside. But after a while, White Rage no longer resented the presence of the Voice. Its belly was full. ### The first village had lain before White Rage like a banquet, just as the Voice had promised--and just as this one did now. The beast's jaws relaxed slightly to allow a trickle of saliva to seep from the corners of its wide mouth. Its long whiskers trembled in the now frigid breeze as White Rage sniffed at the air. The creature smelled the people down below as their scent rode the wind and entered the flaring nostrils. Fresh meat, the Voice announced, and warm blood all for the taking. Eat what you wish and destroy the rest. With the words, White Rage began to feel the cravings throb deep in its gut and a growl roil within the thick throat. Feed as if you contain the hunger of a thousand worlds. Feed as if your belly will never be full and the meal before you might be your last. Soon the growl turned into a whimper of anticipation, and then a growl again. White Rage began a heavy, plodding descent down the hill toward the village, the large clawed feet crunching heavily into the hardened earth. As the beast drew nearer the hamlet, so too did the aroma of the villagers' warm flesh as it commingled with cookfires and the sharp tang of the late autumn air. It was intoxicating and it hastened White Rage's pace: no longer a lumbering beast now, but an agile killer. The creature heard the jagged shards of laughter cutting into its brain, but in its urgency to allay its craving for food, White Rage paid the Voice no heed. At last the beast sprang upon the village, flicking long tongues of fire at the buildings as it reached the main thoroughfare. People ran screaming from their burning homes and into the creature's deadly embrace. Some of the villagers White Rage singed instantly; others he lashed with his knife-sharp claws, tearing gouts of flesh from faces, chests and bellies. The pink meat hung, dripping blood, from its paws as the beast pushed the flesh into its wide mouth. Soon the men of the village had come to meet White Rage with weapons brandished; but they fell quickly under the creature's flaming breath. White Rage continued to spare no one. Women and children both suffered the same fate as the men trying vainly to defend them; the Voice seemed almost to delight in the plunder of the innocent. They are all doomed, the Voice crooned bitterly. Their purity is false; ridicule is their avocation. The women are all gossiping guttersnipes and the brats are cruel and teasing little creatures. Spare not a single one of them. And so White Rage plundered on at the urging of the Voice: alternately setting both people and structures afire; stopping only to consume a few partially blackened corpses. As the beast's attack intensified the air seemed to grow even colder, and soon wild spirals of snowflakes whipped through the village. White Rage paid little heed to the gradual change in temperature, for the weather did nothing to impede the beast's destructive purpose. The beast could, however, sense unease in the Voice's instructions, as if the disembodied utterances had not expected such a dramatic change in the environment; but given no instructions to the contrary, White Rage kept to its ruinous mission. ### Reghar the Fang's patience was not enduring very well. He was an impatient and unattractive man--these two things he acknowledged about himself: the former reluctantly, the latter bitterly. His pudgy nose squatted in the middle of his face like a pale toad, and he knew his jowled, square-jawed face made him resemble a bulldog. His lips were the only attractive feature he possessed for they were full, with an oddly sensuous quality. Heavy black brows slanted downward in a bitter frown as he remembered the cruel, relentless taunts of childhood. With the cynical satisfaction of a tortured child, he constantly reminded himself that a conjurer's looks had nothing to do with his talent for sorcery. Now Reghar paced back and forth, like an expectant father, within the bare and hexagonal chamber where he'd summoned the direspawn, White Rage. Remembering that earlier triumph, Reghar smiled. He had been quite proud of the exquisite quality of the summoning: all pure light and fire. In a dandelion of brilliance, the direspawn White Rage, had appeared quickly before him, Reghar the Fang. Deftly, he had seized the creature's mind, calming quickly its surly mien. But Reghar had experienced something even more interesting...later. Reghar's smile grew wider. The creature had required something to lure it from its homeworld and into the ring of golden light Reghar had sent to that plane. Only the promise of food for the starving creature was all that was needed. It had been a fortuitous quirk of fate that he'd managed to lock his mind upon the most important dignitary in Quitonne. Soon the very Mayor of Quitonne, Laranj D'Orrn, stood defiant and indignant before Reghar the Fang. But defiance had changed quickly to terror as the Honorable Mayor D'Orrn realized he was to be served in sacrifice to a growling, seething creature. In a frenzy of horror, D'Orrn had promised Reghar a bribe of a fortune in sovereigns for the mayor's immediate release. Reghar had laughed harshly, "Gold! You think it is gold I seek from you? No, dear Mayor of Quitonne: it is the flesh upon your bones that I need. Gold will not bring the direspawn from its home plane to this one; only the promise of fresh meat will tempt it from the world where it now starves." With no further preamble, Reghar had loosed the creature upon a miserably weeping D'Orrn. Reghar had closed his eyes, cutting the mind-leash that held the beast in place. His own mind had seemed to float within the creature's mind and he was able to see what the creature now saw, felt what the creature felt. Luranj D'Orrn's screams had torn through the air as Reghar felt the weight of the beast's arms rise in an arc, swiping flesh from the still-shrieking man's face with the terrible, curved claws. Reghar felt the other arm swing upward, hooking talons into the soft meat of the man's belly, tearing through muscle and fat as easily as an oar cutting into the surface of a lake. The room had become filled with the sharp, hissing sounds of flesh being torn and consumed. Moist, copper-scented mists of blood hung in the air perversely, seductively. When the beast had finished, its hunger sated, it crouched low, and looked at Reghar, its savior, with grateful eyes. But the conjurer had paid the creature's adoration little mind, for Reghar puzzled over the lingering taste of blood upon his tongue. He stroked his arms feverishly for he still felt the bristles of the beast's fur pressing upward through his skin like the phantom sensation of a lost limb. The most unsettling thought of all was that, for Reghar the Fang, both sensations were not entirely unpleasant. ### Now almost two weeks had passed since the arrival of the beast into this plane, Reghar thought moodily, and Terjal Rakmir was no closer to meeting up with it. What must I do to hasten the encounter? Reghar thought angrily, hands clasped tightly behind his back. Should I order White Rage to appear at Cloudreach's doorstep? So much for the clever headmaster! Well, he'll know of my brilliance if I have to set the beast upon Rakmir's scent myself. In the beginning the devastations caused by the creature had sated Reghar's newly acquired hunger for blood, death and power satisfactorily. His eyes grew wide with the excitement of each new kill as he watched behind White Rage's amethyst eyes, delighting in the terror they both wrought amongst their endless victims. Many were the times Reghar nearly swooned with the brightness of the pleasure he felt as the beast scraped the flesh from each of its screaming prey. It was as if Reghar's own hands wore the creature's paws like gloves; his feet slipped into the beast's hind legs as if they were furry white boots. And the tastes upon Reghar's tongue--never had he once thought to taste human flesh and human blood. A small part of him wondered at what he was becoming, but the tiny voice was silenced by the hedonist within Reghar, assuring himself that he was well above those the creature--and he--consumed. For the Fang was a super-being who fed not on physical flesh, but on the ethereal wash that followed each kill. Reghar's belly was not full, but his mind and heart now were. "Your restlessness," came a liquid voice from a far corner of the chamber, "will not guide the direspawn on its proper course, you know. Only calmness and patience will hold it to an accurate bearing." Reghar had almost forgotten that he was not alone; he had expended so much thought in controlling White Rage's movements, that the world he'd created around him seemed to squeeze everything else from existence. Now he turned dark eyes toward his deceptively polite companion. Then without a reply, Reghar turned his eyes away, pretending to stare through the wall opposite him. Grafter the Ageless, frail elegance draped in a cloak of smooth ashen velvet, held a venerable air about him that went beyond a simple, visible accounting of the many years beyond him. Though his hair was grey, dry and thinning with age, Grafter's face was smooth and unlined. No net of wrinkles clung to the corners of his eyes and mouth; his eyes were sharp and clear as if the irises were ringed with crystal daggers. The Old Master sat on a high-backed chair upholstered in burgundy velvet, its serrated trim of dark wine--colored mahogany. The Old Master's throne, Reghar thought sardonically. Ruler of a stinking, festering swamp! Reghar remembered with some irritation Grafter's chiding of him once he'd arrived at the Grip. Reghar had needed to complete his conjuration instructions after his expulsion from Cloudreach. For years afterward he'd sent spells in waves toward any mage who might listen. Grafter had been the only Master Conjurer to seize Reghar's spell and summon the young master to his side. That had been five years ago. Reghar had spell-traveled to the edge of the Grip; Grafter had stood just inside the perimeter of the swamp, waving at and beckoning the young man inside its tepid darkness. Reghar had nowhere--and no one--else to turn to, and so he stepped gingerly into the gloom, feeling the humidity like hot, moist breath upon his face and neck. The air smelled as if infection had seized the place, Reghar had thought as he gazed at rotting tendrils of vegetation spiraling round equally rotted trees. He hadn't had time to fully inspect the environment he'd now found himself in, for Grafter, without preamble, had spell-traveled them both to the old master's keep, Pedistal, immediately. Now, after five years under Grafter the Ageless's painstaking tutelage, Reghar was at last granted "permission" to summon and control a direspawn. In his first year of training, Reghar had often gazed upon his new instructor with looks of open awe. His reverence had been so focused, that he'd failed to notice the look of blissful contentment upon Grafter's ancient, yet smooth face. But after the second year, Reghar did notice and it had annoyed him; but he was trapped. For after having been expelled by Terjal Rakmir, headmaster of the most esteemed school of sorcery in all of Ryndorhn and great grandson of the former High Court Sorcerer Jrrnyn Rakmir--Grafter's rival then, it was expected that no one would accept Reghar as a student. Reghar felt again the old bitterness as it tugged down the corners of his mouth. He remembered the humiliation of having every mage's door slam against his thoughts as he stretched his spells out toward them, beckoning--sometimes even begging for their acceptance. Reghar was not yet whole in his knowledge of conjuring: more like an unfinished vase that had been shaped of clay, but not yet glazed and fired in a kiln. A vase that would quickly melt into a puddle of mud upon receiving its first pouring of water, thus losing its future potential for use. Each spell-summons he cast had caused him great agony, for he had been dropped from Cloudreach before he'd been able to complete the Final Trials. Reghar winced slightly as he remembered how he'd writhed upon his bed in the tiny inn not far from Cloudreach his first week after expulsion, casting his thoughts far upon the spell-winds. Reghar's back had arched convulsively with every casting and he stuck his whitening knuckles against the roof of his mouth to stifle any sound, lest the innkeeper become curious. Without a mage to show him how to find the right eddies and currents to use, or how to harness the power of the sorcery he carried within him, Reghar was nothing more than a walking cage of energy with not the reins to control it. For nearly three years Reghar had traveled throughout Ryndorhn, spending each night in torment as he spell-cast farther and farther, hoping for some small shred of a reply. When Grafter the Ageless had replied affirmatively, it was like water falling into a parched mouth. Reghar was so grateful that he did not question his new benefactor's qualifications. All he knew--from heresay, mostly--was that Grafter had once served as Court Sorcerer in Ryndorhn's Court of Tahlahnn for uncounted years and who, for whatever reason, had disappeared. There had even been rumors that the former Court Sorcerer been exiled. For Reghar the politics of the throne were of no consequence; only the magic itself mattered. ### Now Reghar stopped his pacing, furtively studying the Old Master from the corner of a slitted eye, Grafter's calm half-tilted smile was still fixed upon him. When Reghar could stand no longer the heat of the old conjurer's stare upon his back, he whirled to face Grafter the Ageless directly. "I think," his voice was purposely harsh, "that I have proved my patience by remaining in this decaying puddle of muck for five years." "You have proved nothing," Grafter replied, the words brusque, his voice mild and benevolent. "If you have proved anything it is that your patience has limits. Rakmir will find the beast--or the beast will find him." "And it is you who will decide when White Rage shall encounter Rakmir, I suppose?" The words slid from Reghar's full lips like warm oil. "I was obviously mistaken in thinking that the beast was mine to control entirely." Grafter's forehead crinkled slightly and a lone eyebrow lifted in a bemused frown. "And haven't you the confidence to realize that it has been you directing the creature's every movement? Surely you would have sensed my presence in White Rage's mind, were I the one acting as puppeteer; your perceptions are savvy enough." Then pausing, he added, "Or perhaps it is I who was mistaken in assigning you to such a task." If the Old Master's words were meant to incite anger within in him, Reghar's simmering blood told him the ancient mage had been successful. How many times, Reghar scolded himself, has Grafter reminded me of my unrestrained rage: that it will eventually conquer and then enslave my talent for sorcery? At their first meeting, the magnitude of Reghar's fury had impressed Grafter; but then the Old Master quickly snapped his wonderment shut and admonished his new student that he must keep his high emotions well-reined--else suffer unalterable consequences. No matter how hard he tried, Reghar always felt the tiny stinging bubbles spring from the pit of his stomach and climb up his throat. Eventually the ire would twist into his brain like a turned knife, and unseen daggers of energy would fly from his eyes--and his tongue when he was so careless. Grafter shook his head slowly as he leaned slightly forward, one long slender foot slipped out from under the hem of his robe. "You have learnt well the ways of conjuring and your power is the strongest I have seen of any novitiate. However," the Old Master leveled his gaze squarely at Reghar, the eyes moist and bright, "you have not mastered patience. And patience is a virtue no conjurer can do without. If you allow your emotions to flow unbridled, they will destroy you slowly from within, devouring every last scrap of magic until not a crumb remains." Then he sat back, chin up and lowered lids regarding the younger man as if appraising a painting. "Have I squandered my teachings, then?" Reghar knew the old man was testing him again; but he would not fail this time. "Were you in my position, not having fully exercised your muscles of sorcery, would you exhibit such calm patience? No, I think you'd be fairly bursting with restlessness." Grafter's thin line of a smile widened, then shrank slightly. "But I know how to channel the energy of impatience and to store it for future use. You, my student, allow it to spurt from you in thick runnels like blood from a wound." He shook his head slowly. "Too, too much waste, I think." Reghar began to grind his teeth, the square jaw dimpling as it moved. Don't let him goad you into showing your anger, he warned himself. The Old Master thinks he knows my weaknesses well; I will show him that he does not. "Talking of patience is a waste of time; perhaps I would be able to maintain aplomb more easily if you would care to explain in more detail your reasons for the summoning of the direspawn. Surely your own purpose goes beyond simple revenge?" "And then," the Old Master's small slash of a smile widened farther still, "you might explain your intentions toward the creature. Don't look so surprised--I know that you have an agenda of your own as well. You have something to prove to Terjal Rakmir: the one who expelled you and stanched your potential." "And so you?" Grafter leaned back against the worn dark brocade and smoothed his long narrow hands along the handrests till his palms cupped the whorled ends. "My reasons are more...complicated than yours. And yes, they do involve Terjal Rakmir." Looking up suddenly, eyes crinkling amusedly, he added, "If you've the patience, I will explain." Without a word Reghar dragged a chair from a far corner of the room, its legs scudding noisily along the stone floor, and placed it before the Old Master. Reghar settled himself into the chair, one arm draped casually along the back, the other imploring Grafter with a wave of his hand to begin. For a brief moment, Reghar thought he saw a trace of irritation on the Old Master's unlined yet weathered face. Reghar felt smug satisfaction in knowing a simple, insolent gesture could put a chink in the armor of Grafter's composure. "All you need know," Grafter's eyes narrowed slightly, "is that White Rage's plundering of the lands only surrounding Windemere is no coincidence. Lord Vaukmond, Empress Perseldeth's favorite Duke, oversees those farmlands and the merchant city of Quitonne. It is no secret that whoever controls Quitonne has the means to control the commerce of all of Ryndorhn, and in so doing has the ability to choke the Court of Tahlahnn until it is nothing more than a puppet monarchy. Quitonne itself shall be left intact, but with Mayor D'Orrn removed from power I...we...can deal with his vice mayor: a rather easily bullied fellow; he often shouts with a false harshness that ill-hides his true meekness. I am certain that he has taken note of the destruction around him, and must now realize that there is a reason why his city has been spared." "And so, after a time, you will force him to enter into an alliance with you? With what as barter?" Grafter's eyes widened in mock astonishment. "Why, with their lives and vast holdings of course! I will bring White Rage to burn down the very gates of Quitonne if I must. But I do not anticipate that it will come to such." Reghar fell silent for a moment, his fingers lightly spidering the cleft in his chin as he studied his elegantly calm mentor. He's forcing me to pull each bit of information from him fragment by fragment, Reghar thought with another touch of annoyance. "But there is something more that has spurred you to this mission. You know of my bitterness toward Terjal Rakmir; but what of your own bitterness?" "I should think," again the galling poise, "that my bitterness, as you say, is obvious and simple: I was banished to the Grip because I dared to challenge the Court of Tahlahnn. You need no more details than this." The last sentence held a finality in its tone that told Reghar the subject was closed. But more will worm its way through, he thought with some conceit, for as my own power grows, I will draw the answers from the Old Master as the creature's power has leeched the warmth from the air. That last notion brought a knawing thought to the forefront of his mind: What of the change in weather brought on by White Rage's assaults upon the farmlands? Had Grafter known of such a consequence or had it been unforeseen by an aging, exiled mage whose own powers were waning? Reghar seized at the breach in Grafter's fortress of vagaries. "Then if you will not elaborate further upon your ambitions toward the Throne of Ryndorhn, perhaps you might tell me why the weather has changed so dramatically upon the creature's arrival?" Reghar noted with satisfaction the sudden pleating of the Old Master's forehead as he considered the puzzle brought before him by his student. It was obvious that Grafter the Ageless did not like riddles thrown at his feet--especially those that he could not readily solve. The old man's slender fingers threaded and unthreaded fitfully for a moment until he noticed Reghar watching the nervous movements. "We will not concern ourselves at present with these happenings," the voice was imperious, "for I am confident that Terjal Rakmir and his band of questers shall meet up with our beast soon. In the meantime, we will let White Rage travel without wreaking destruction--for even such a powerful beast must conserve its potency." Then the furrows above the brow gradually disappeared and the tiny placid smile returned. "We must allow White Rage to store its energy for the eventual meeting with Rakmir. Perhaps if we allow the weather to brace, it will lull our quarry into taking a few missteps." Reghar couldn't help but allow his own mouth to stretch in a wide smile, the perfect, square teeth between his full lips glinting in the torch glow. It will not be 'missteps' that will bring the Headmaster of Cloudreach to my feet; for I will drag him here myself with all of the power in my possession that he chose to ignore so many years ago. Terjal Rakmir will come to me and I shall feast on the awe upon his face and in his mind as he beholds my powers-- Reghar severed his own thoughts abruptly; he had to conserve his anger and bitterness, bottle and save it for White Rage's inevitable confrontation with the Master of Cloudreach. "What if Rakmir is clever enough to circumvent our beast and somehow determine its immediate origin? That is a possibility--a remote one, mind you, but nevertheless one to consider." Grafter allowed a dry laugh to escape his thin lips. "How do you think I have managed to remain in the Grip undisturbed for so many long years? The snares surrounding the inner perimeter of the swamp alone have allowed me to exist here in peace--boring though it has been. I'd forgotten that I'd never given you a thorough tour of my abode in the last five years. Though, I suppose," the Old Master snorted, "that you mightn't have survived such an expedition." It was true that Grafter had denied him access to the outside of the small castle; Reghar had seen enough of the Grip upon his arrival to realize the dangers within the swamp, and that wandering around it alone would be unwise. Still, that did not stop him from glimpsing, on many occasions, the dark murky swamp from the safety of the castle's main turret. There he might survey the shadowy depths as the sulfurous odor of rotting vegetation and stagnant algae in its waters billowed around him. The Grip was like the maw of a dying dragon: the hot fetid breath blowing through the swamp in putrid gouts. But Reghar never surrendered to its foulness; he stood stalwart before it, challenging the Grip to corrupt him. The swamp never got the best of him. Often, in the night, as the hot and humid air of the Grip surrounded him, Reghar heard the sounds of animals wandering through the darkness, their journeys interrupted by their own shrieks as something clutched at them. Reghar had never allowed himself to ponder the means of each animal's destruction. Until now. "And what traps have you lain out for any uninvited guests?" "Unfortunately," Grafter began, "I cannot take credit for all of the active and passive hunters--all of which are plant life. I will let you guess which are indigenous and which I have created; suffice it to say, neither distinction is very important." "I have often heard the cries of animals snatched by these plant--hunters of yours then," Reghar said pensively. "I've yet to witness their victims' demise, however. And I have heard other sounds...the sounds of bones clinking together..." "Ah, my Guardians! I created them when I first arrived at the Grip. They were birthed from the dark syrup of the tar pits bone by bone. Since they do not require air to breathe--for they no longer have need of breathing--I have placed some in quicksand traps dotting the inner perimeter of the swamp." "Who--or what--where they?" "Let us simply say that some were intrepid--and unlucky--visitors to my domicile. Mostly thieves thinking such a place holds riches worth risking life and limb for--a sadly incorrect notion, but one that has provided me with additional Guardians throughout the years." Reghar felt a sudden oily chill scroll up his spine. He suddenly remembered how, upon the first initial greeting, Grafter had appeared, accompanied by creatures who seemed to hover in the background as the Old Master had advanced toward him. They appeared as quick flashes of white through the dark lace work of flora, their movements making dull clicking sounds that joined with the Grip's rush of sounds. Reghar had been apprehensive at the time to inquire as to the identity of the creatures, allowing that as long as he walked with Grafter they would not harm him. Still, those clicking sounds... "So you see, the Grip is very secure," Grafter continued, his perfunctory tone suggesting the matter was closed. "Now we must plot the next destination for White Rage. Conjure a map at once!" Reghar was beginning to loathe Grafter's commanding whine, which had intensified soon after the creature's birthing. Is the Old Master losing his own patience? Perhaps we are reaching the denouement of this little drama. Without reply, Reghar traced a rectangular shape in the air with the forefinger of each hand. Then, palms facing forward, Reghar began to swipe at the invisible square as if he were polishing it. Slowly, with each sweep of a hand, the square began to fill with spots of weathered parchment. As Reghar continued to give the map solidity, he glanced briefly at Grafter. The Old Master watched Reghar as a hungry man might watch a baker creating some frothy confection: except that the mage's mouth did not water, but his eyes glimmered brightly with anticipation. He's only glad to see that his teachings have succeeded, thus validating his own abilities. Reghar began to feel the bitterness seeping once again into his heart. With the point of an incisor, he speared a fleshy corner of his lip; the pain and the trail of blood sliding down his throat drew him away from the bitterness long enough to finish the conjuration. When the map was whole, Grafter sprang from his chair with unusual agility and snatched it from Reghar's grasp. "Now who is the one without patience?" Reghar asked--then instantly regretted the chide, for Grafter favored his young student with a glower darker than the stygian depths waiting beyond the chamber's walls. "If I show a momentary lapse of patience now," Grafter replied, menace delicately accentuating each syllable, "then it is earned--my tenure in this place justifies any impatience I might present to you. The difference is that I know how to measure and channel it so that my conjuring abilities are not hampered." Then he turned the map to face his protégé, as the slender fingers of his hand fanned across the parchment's writing. "Terjal Rakmir and his party must be on the main road from Quitonne by now and on their way towards Titan's Teeth. I want you to guide White Rage directly toward that path, then we will see how well the great-grandson of Jrrnyn Rakmir stands against a direspawn. Perhaps he will flee to the safety of his precious Cloudreach: his arrogance dissipated and the true color of his cowardice staining his flesh." For a moment Reghar felt a twinge of regret as Grafter's venomous oath seeped into his mind. True, Reghar had waited patiently for this time to come, but not because he longed for the destruction of his former teacher. No, what he'd wanted all along was to impress Terjal Rakmir: to show the headmaster that he'd wrongly expelled his most promising student. He was afraid, Reghar thought, the old bitterness joining with the feelings of remorse like two rivers merging. Afraid of the great powers of conjuration within in me. Terjal called me reckless--but he chose to blind himself to my endowments because he must have feared they'd usurp his own. It wasn't my fault that a classmate was killed--it was Fehl's own carelessness which killed him. He... Reghar squeezed his eyes shut against the vision of young Fehl Cuire swallowed by a plume of firestorm, his eyes wild with fright and pain as the flames erased him from the earth. Fehl had panicked at the last moment as he and Reghar were to create a tandem shield of flame around each other: a spell that Terjal had forbidden any of his students to cast. But Reghar had known--known--he could demonstrate such a feat. Persuading the eager, puppy--like Fehl, a good six years younger than himself, to join him had been the easiest part. My only error was choosing someone with talent unequal to my own, Reghar thought darkly. But he still saw Fehl's tortured face in his dreams: the mouth twisting in a grimace of suffering, and strangely, of disappointment. He remembered how in that instant as he'd watched, Reghar had felt a spasm of guilt flood into his heart at the sight of his classmate perishing before him. It was a short--lived feeling, however, quickly replaced by anger and humiliation at being summarily ejected from Cloudreach. Fools! Fehl would have caused his own demise without my help soon enough. The anger of that last thought pushed any trace of guilt from his mind, and he opened his eyes to face a staring Grafter. The old master's veiled lids seemed to shrink as his grey brows drew down. "You are not concentrating," was the single oath, the tone flat and with no trace of emotion. "You will empty your mind of any interfering thoughts. Concern yourself only with White Rage and the route it must take." Reghar knew he must obey this time--and not out of any fear of Grafter the Ageless. He did not wish to fail. ### The next morning's light offered no more chill than the evening's darkness as Grafter drew himself upright upon his bed--a bed upon which he only rested the night, for sleep was forever denied immortals. Already he smelled the humid soup of the swamp beginning to simmer beyond the single window of the tiny chamber. Perspiration had pasted his thin batiste bed clothes to his body in dark patches. Annoyed, he pinched a square of cloth and plucked it away from his flesh, shaking the gown lightly as if to drive the moisture away. He endured nearly everything about the Grip: the solitude; the never-ending night sounds; even the nearly overpowering stench of the swamp--all but the unmerciful, cloying humidity. It lay upon his flesh like a fevered hand; it clogged his nostrils and filled his lungs with the heaviness of it. Uncounted years had passed and Grafter still endured it no easier. But Grafter had no time to waste pondering his tenure in the Grip, for he had been eavesdropping on his young student's control of White Rage and so turned his thoughts to his findings. What he had discovered on one particular sweep pushed away the last remaining shred of thought regarding his current domicile. A slow smile jerked at the edge of his thin mouth as he got up off of his bed, the perspiration soaking his gown no longer troubling him. He'd found a random thought. While Reghar had toiled in the main chamber, guiding the creature to each destination, Grafter had sat on the other side of the chamber's walls, a dry cheek pressed against the cool granite. With eyes lightly closed, the lids shuddering with the movement of the eyes beneath, Grafter's mind had...touched...something. It had happened when White Rage had ventured near Quitonne. A jagged shard of recognition had carved into his thoughts like a child idly scarring a tree. Quickly, he subdued and captured it--but it drifted from his grasp before he might fully identify it. Grafter had quickly snatched back the fleeing thought and held it firmly in the cradle of his mind long enough to realize that it belonged to someone familiar--though not familiar enough to allow it to instantly reveal itself to him. The thought had squirmed and wrenched itself free of his grasp before squeezing away into the ether. But the thought had been in his grasp long enough for Grafter to know that the captured thought belonged to the progeny of one of his past associates--someone who'd stood at his side while he had served in the Court of Tahlahnn. A loyal follower, he'd sensed, as the thought had quivered in his hold: someone willing to do the bidding of his ancestor's old master once the possible rewards of such service were revealed to him. Grafter shook his grey-maned head lightly. I will discover the identity of this person soon enough. He may even be walking with Terjal Rakmir, for all I know. But I will find him and I will bend his mind to my will as I once did his ancestor. Grafter the Ageless smiled. It would be so easy. And, as an immortal, he still had all the time in the world to do it.
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