“Old” is a misleading adjective for him. It suggests weakness and degeneration, but the army officer standing before me shows no traces of decay or infirmity. He looks enough like his son for me to recognize him. But Dargon was handsome and leonine—he had a dashing movie-star quality, and he dressed the part. This man has no need to show off. With his white hair, in his black-frame eyeglasses, with shelves of books all around him, he looks like a librarian on steroids.

And then there are his eyes. Not quite human eyes. Some basic soft, warm-blooded mammalian quality is missing. They’re the empty eyes of a predator without the slightest glimmer of a soul. Cold. Merciless. Spidery.

“I am Colonel Aranha,” the musical voice says. “But then, I see you’ve already figured that out. You recover quickly, my young friend. You remind me quite a bit of your father. You have his strength, and his determination. I hope for your sake you have more wisdom.”

This would probably be a good time for me to try to exercise self-control, but I hear myself growl back, “And you remind me of your son. You have his cruelty and his arrogance. I remember that arrogance especially well—it was flashing in his eyes the last time I saw him, just before I threw him into a volcano.”

At the mention of his son’s death, the colonel tenses. I have the feeling he may lash out at me, but instead he gives me a tight-lipped smile. “Brave words from a young mouth. But we have much to talk about and little time. Where shall we start?”

“What did you do to Gisco?” I demand.

“It’s not a name I’m familiar with.”

“My dog.”

“Ah, yes. A most interesting specimen of canine. After many questions were asked and few were answered, and I started to lose my patience, he had the audacity to open up his mind and take me on. Imagine a chess match, played violently and on many levels simultaneously. How courageous of him to challenge me, knowing who I was.”

“What did you do to him?”

“I returned him to his true form, his essence. He was a dog who had learned too many tricks. So I made sure he won’t jump through those fancy hoops again. Now he eats. He barks. He lifts a leg and urinates. It’s enough.”

“It’s not enough. He was my friend, and he’s worth ten of you.”

“Your loyalty to him speaks well for you,” the colonel says. “But then it was loyalty that brought you here. If I’m not mistaken, you came to save a damsel in distress.”