Terjal and his party were gone from the Grip the whole of a day--and most of the next--when they came upon one half of what they sought.

A swarm of wasps, many times their normal size, dived mercilessly at several women, children and the group of calvarymen attempting to protect them. While the women and children cowered beneath metal shields, the soldiers slashed at the insects from above with swords. When those weapons proved inadequate, some soldiers took up poleaxes and morningstars, clubbing at the insects blindly as the creatures' stingers parried them time and again. A few of the soldiers already lay dead upon the ground, the insects' stingers obviously having made successful entry past the warriors' armor and mail.

Terjal's Blades immediately spurred their mounts headlong into the skirmish, their own weapons bristling up. Even Arjas, one arm encircling Darman's waist as he rode behind the First Blade, took up his scimitar with his other hand.

Terjal, riding behind Aiya upon her horse, tapped her shoulder and said, "I've only enough spell energy for finger flames, I'm sure of it."

"The same," Aiya returned, aiming her free hand with index finger pointing as a thin vein of flame sprang from it. The flame quickly found its mark in a wasp making a dive toward a battling soldier. The burnt insect turned end over end in the air, the force of its movement tossing flames toward its companions. Soon it and its charred fellows were falling to the earth, their broken forms smoldering in the winter-wilted grass.

Terjal, whose energy was far more depleted than Aiya's, still managed to call up enough spell power to douse a few of the insects with fire. As he directed his own finger-flames, Terjal watched as his Blades fought wasp after wasp. The Blades were armored, but not as heavily mailed and armored as the soldiers. Yet, despite this disadvantage, Terjal was relieved to see that Darman, Arjas and Strandholt took care to shield the unguarded parts of themselves, while still effectively battling the swarm.

Finally when the last of the wasps were either cleaved in two or burnt from the air, Terjal and Aiya both dismounted and strode toward the remaining soldiers. "Which of you," Terjal asked the closest group of them, "is in charge?"

A young man, less than thirty years of age, stepped away from his group. "Well, as our original commander and his second are both dead, I suppose that I am now commander. I am called Lieutenant Gervase Liahl, if it matters."

"You are Lord Vaukmond's men," Terjal said, noting the crossed daggers stamped upon their metal breastplates.

"Aye," Lieutenant Liahl answered, gazing hard at Terjal. "And you are the conjurer His Grace sent to battle the first creature. I hope that the first has been defeated, for as you can see," arms spread to encompass the gory tableau, "there is now another."

Aiya moved beside Terjal. "Have you seen it?" she asked the lieutenant. "Besides these insects which we believe to be the new creature's offspring, that is."

The lieutenant nodded somberly. "Aye, we saw it." The soldier spit bitterly into the grass before he continued: "We were patrolling the hillsides, on the Duke's orders, and came upon a great snail which seemed a boulder at first. It appeared to be feeding, and when we got close enough, found out just what it was eating." The lieutenant swallowed thickly. "The creature was devouring these women's' husbands: we saw legs and arms sticking from the thing's mouth, so we knew what it was doing. The Commander sent a few men at it, but the creature had them as well. Next came eggs of some sort popping from the creature's body. When the eggs hatched--and I've never seen any hatch so quickly--the wasp--things sprang into the air. Swarms of them--so many they blotted the sun from the sky."

Terjal knelt beside a dead yet still intact wasp, then turned to look up at the soldier. "Did you see where the 'mother' went?"

Lieutenant Liahl gave a short harsh laugh. "And how could we? The wasps were upon us before we could take notice of the other creature's whereabouts."

Strandholt rode up to Terjal and the others. "There's a trail of dried slime headed southwest; I did not follow it for long as some of it was lost upon a few remaining patches of melting snow."

Aiya knelt beside Terjal. "Southwest: toward Windemere--and Honor's Start."

Terjal nudged a stick into a wasp carcass, turning it over. "The direspawn and its progeny may have already reached Honor's Start by now, no doubt the Weapon Master has joined his soldiers in taking up arms against the creatures." Then, looking up at the young lieutenant, said, "The day is half over, we may as well set up camp here. Moving at night might make us vulnerable to any wasps lingering near."

A look of resentment passed quickly over the lieutenant's face. Terjal ignored it. If I were a soldier, Terjal thought to himself, I don't believe I'd relish taking orders from a conjurer. But the rebellion seemed confined only to the young man's expression and he answered, "As you wish. We left our horses within a small copse of trees; we'll fetch them and build shelters for all."

For the first time, Terjal glanced up at the women and children who had reluctantly come out from under the soldiers' shields. They now sat in a tight huddle, shivering with fright, their eyes fearfully glancing over the blackened, torn bodies of the wasps as if the creatures might suddenly spring to life again.

Their looks of conspicuous terror reminded Terjal that he had not yet allowed fear to enter his own heart.

###

Night had fallen, swathing man and beast in a chilled breeze. Since the demise of White Rage, the weather had returned to normal for late autumn, though small patches of snow still remained. The smoke from the fire they'd built mingled with the sharp, frigid air giving it an irresistible, delicious tang. Terjal inhaled deeply the cold air as he had each morning and evening since leaving the Grip. Before venturing into the hot and humid depths of the swamp, Terjal had cursed silently the bitter cold. Now he relished it.

Terjal sat staring into the fire, his knees drawn up against his chest, his arms encircling them, as he considered the results of the field necropsy. Both the eyewitness testimonies of Vaukmond's men, and a closer examination of the deadly insects, confirmed to Terjal what they were up against. He'd seen a direspawn like this one once before in his own apprentice days.

Terjal had learned some of the Conjurer's Art, beginning in his boyhood, under the scrutiny of the great mage Tesurus Blackmoor--the only conjurer of his time to offer teaching of the Art. Tesurus, like Terjal, disliked for his students to prove themselves too early--but in every class there was always one student who would brook the mage's rules.

One errant student in Terjal's class, a young boy, would summon a direspawn--a skill Tesurus Blackmoor had promised his apprentices he would never teach. To this day Terjal never learned where the boy had picked up his ability in summoning direspawn, deciding later that he didn't really want to know.

The boy had chosen to bring forth the creature in the midst of class as Tesurus read from one of his many ancient tomes. Instead of halting the boy in mid-conjuration, the mage had abruptly ceased his narration to gaze somberly upon the student as the boy waved his arms about, chanting a spell excitedly. Suddenly a small sphere of diaphanous light sprang in the middle of the circle of boys and girls. As Terjal and the other apprentices scooted away from it, the ball began to pulse like a heartbeat; soon a shape could be seen within it.

When the light had at last fallen away and disappeared, an overlarge snail sat in its place. The student who'd conjured the creature took from beneath his tunic a small mouse and flung the tiny beast toward the snail. The gastropod grasped the unfortunate mouse with its radula and began to consume the creature. No sooner had the mouse passed through the snail's vitals when a blister began to form upon the snail's long, gelatinous foot.

The blister then burst, sending from it a larva which hatched immediately. Terjal and the others had time to see that the newly hatched creature was a wasp before Tesurus smashed it with the book he'd been reading. The mage had then banished the mother-creature back to its home plane with a few hastily spoken spell words.

"Do not," the mage spoke calmly to the errant student, "ever bring into this plane a creature over which you have little control or knowledge." Then Tesurus Blackmoor returned to his narration as if nothing had disturbed him.

Mortified, the young boy never returned to class after that day.

Terjal had asked the mage later what the direspawn had been called. Tesurus had looked at his student sternly, and replied, "The mother-creature has no name that I know of, other than what we would call it in our plane. But its progeny, which is common to other direspawn, has a name: they are called envies. If allowed to feed upon the fluid of other creatures, they can grow very large in size. Only those seeking revenge summon direspawn; you will not learn this in my class."

Terjal looked up to see Aiya coming toward him, arms laden with several of the books they'd taken from Grafter's hold. Her black hair held the fire's light, reflecting the flame from her dark tresses as if from a mirror. Whether in sunlight, Terjal thought, his breath catching a little in his throat, firelight or moonlight--all light is enhanced by her beauty. But his admiration had grown far beyond prizing Aiya's beauty--no, Terjal knew she wouldn't appreciate that. He valued her competence, her loyalty and dedication--physical beauty didn't given her those qualities. And Terjal knew, smiling up at Aiya, that he would love her still had she a face full of warts and hair stiff and dry as hay.

"Your voice is becoming normal again," Aiya said as she sat beside Terjal, handing him two of the books.

"And no doubt you're glad of that," he replied, opening one of the tomes carefully. "I would imagine my throat-clearing was becoming quite...annoying after awhile. Especially when I had to ride sitting behind you."

"Well," Aiya sighed as she favored him with a warm smile, "at least I was able to gauge how quickly your throat was mending: the fewer throat-clearings meant that your wound was healing."

The first book Terjal had opened was apparently a journal of sorts. Its pages were scrawled in an untidy, slashed hand as if the writer were either impatient or angry--or both. Terjal ruffled the pages searching for the name of the journalist, but finding none. The writing seemed too undisciplined to belong to Grafter the Ageless, so Terjal decided that the journal must belong to the other spellcaster--the one who'd managed to escape.

Most of the writing was too illegible for Terjal to decipher, once back at Honor's Start, he might engage the court graphologists to translate the scratchings for him. He did find one passage, near the end of the journal, which had been written in a more precise hand. It outlined the summoning of this latest direspawn, and it gave the creature a name: Creeping Lust.

Terjal loosed a muffled snort. Creeping Lust? Why would anyone give such a ridiculous name to a direspawn? Terjal suppressed another snicker. But the entry ended abruptly with a single neatly cursive sentence: It is here now and they will meet it soon enough.

"Something?" Aiya looked up from the book she'd been reading.

"Not much, except that I now know the name of the new direspawn. This spellcaster calls it 'Creeping Lust.'"

Aiya shook her head as she let out a short laugh. "Well, the creature doesn't exactly 'creep'; it slides, I think. And 'lust'? That's all?"

"Apparently," Terjal said, shrugging. "I really can't deign any more than that, his handwriting is so unreadable. What have you found?"

"This is the book," she held it up, the tome's metal spine gleaming in the firelight, "that I'd found along with the journal you now hold." Aiya paused as if she were being coaxed, then added, "I found several passages underlined: all pertaining to the amplification of spell power by another."

Terjal felt his stomach dip sharply within his belly. He'd had little niggling suspicions since their first spell battle with White Rage that someone was intensifying their spell power. Obviously it was either himself or Aiya. Suddenly the other spellcaster's motives were becoming a little less murky.

"Aiya," Terjal said abruptly as he drew a pouch from his belt, pouring some of its contents into his palm. "I'm going to conjure a small orb above my palm."

"Why?" Aiya frowned, then her eyebrows flew up in a mixture of surprise and understanding. "The power strengthening--you think that I'm a natural conduit. You needn't conduct an experiment to see if it's true." Then she paused, taking a deep breath. "Because it is true."

Now it was Terjal's turn to wear an expression of surprise. "How long have you known?"

Aiya turned away from Terjal, casting her gaze toward the fire. "How long have I known you? Yes, I've always known--at least since the Final Trials at Cloudreach. That's yet another reason I didn't choose to pursue a career in sorcery; especially in the teaching of it. Can you imagine what might happen were I to encounter a spellcaster with a dark heart that I couldn't detect? For all I know, I may even be partly responsible for all the destruction..."

Terjal halted Aiya's confession with a caressing hand upon her back. "If you are responsible for any of the devastation--and I doubt that sincerely--it is merely an indirect thing." Then, pouring the powder back into its pouch, Terjal continued. "Your ability helped me to destroy White Rage and so too will it help defeat this Creeping Lust creature. In the morning I'll have Lieutenant Liahl dispatch a messenger to Honor's Start informing Lord Vaukmond of our progress."

Aiya turned her face toward Terjal, the glitter of tears teasing her eyelids. She dabbed at her eyes quickly with the tips of her fingers, then blinked the moisture completely away. She cleared her throat, then in a steady voice said, "My 'powers' should enable us to send this Creeping Lust to Grafter's demiplane since the direspawn, a gastropod, is obviously a creature of moisture. It's either the dry, searing heat of the demiplane...or...a bucket of salt, perhaps?"

"Do you think you could help me conjure up a net of salt when we meet up with the creature?"

Aiya grinned widely, her face no longer flushed. "I'm sure I could summon a whole vat of the stuff."

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