Then his hand fell limply back against his thigh. The drain had ceased and the singing was fading. Simon opened his eyes. Where the murk had been a solid wall it was now showing holes. And in one of them he caught sight of a brutish face, a beastly caricature of human. But in it sat Koris’ sardonic eyes. And a little beyond was another with disease-eaten skin and a flat lid where an eye had once been.

He wearing the Captain’s eyes glanced from Simon to his neighbor and grinned widely, displaying decayed and yellowed fangs. “A fair company we shall be!”

“Dress you!” snapped the witch from the disappearing murk. “This day you have come out of the stews of Kars to loot and kill. It is your kind who thrive upon hornings!”

They put on the gear they had brought into Kars, but not enough to go too well clad for the dregs of the city that they seemed. And Koris took up from the floor — not the Ax of Volt — but a rust incrusted pole set with hooks, the purpose of which Simon would rather not imagine.

There was no mirror to survey his new self, but he gathered that he was as disreputable as his companions.

He had been expecting changes in the witch and Briant also — but not what he saw. The woman of Estcarp was a crone with filthy ropes of grayish hair about her hunched shoulders, her features underlined with ancient evil. And the youngster was her opposite. Simon stared in pure amazement, for he fronted a girl being laced into the scarlet and gold gown discarded by the witch.

Just as Briant had been pallid and colorless, here was rich beauty, more than properly displayed since her tiring maid did not bother to pull tight breast laces. Instead the crone quirked a finger at Simon.

“This is your loot, bold fellow. Hoist the pretty on your shoulder, and if you grow tired of your burden — well, these other rogues will lend a hand. Play your part well.” She gave the seeming girl a shove between her shoulder blades which sent her stumbling into Simon’s arms. He caught her up neatly, swinging her across his shoulder, while the witch surveyed them with the eye of a stage manager and then gave a tug to strip the bodice yet farther from those smooth young shoulders.

Inwardly Simon was astonished at the completeness of the illusion. He had thought it would be for the eyes only, but he was very conscious that he held what was also feminine to the touch. And he had to keep reminding himself that it was indeed Briant he so bore out of the house.