Sahmanan brought him through the long eastern day, into the twilight, over the desert, and down to his place between the stone beast’s paws. She was now but a ghost of the ghost she had been. The monster’s voice was the whisper of a petulant child when it questioned her. It hadn’t the strength for anger.

Ethrian decided to release them a little more, for his own sake. He went down inside himself and found the key to it, and tried to replenish them.

The will of the stone beast smashed against him. He staggered, fought back. It had deceived him. It was not as weak as it pretended.

He controlled his panic, used his will. Gradually, the flood rushing to that mighty thing failed.

Stopping it completely was as hard as slamming a vault door. He did it, and lent the closure a deep-throated finality. He tried following through with a bolt of anger, but there was nothing left to throw. He was exhausted.

He collapsed in his sleeping place.

The monster alternately cursed its failure and crowed over its success. It had stolen ten times the strength Ethrian would have delivered willingly.

The boy slept. Time lumbered along. The woman came to him in dreams, again arguing for deliverance. He ignored her, and nurtured his hatreds.

He would shatter the island in the east. He would carry fire and sword through the Dread Empire. His armies would feed on the enemy fallen, and grow fat. They would become invincible. He would take them across the world, to his former homeland, and would avenge his father….

These aren’t my thoughts, he told himself. Something is shaping my dreams.

The something left him. His dreams became his own. His strange companions were preoccupied elsewhere.

Often, it seemed, he touched distant minds and unconsciously took from them, adding to his own knowledge and strength. He began to follow his desert companions more exactly.

At first they were delighted with their new strength. As time passed, though, there was a change to consternation which threatened to become fear. Then:

“Deliverer! Wake up!”

A hand rocked his shoulder violently. He ignored it. He clung to his twilight state and drifted out of himself, surveying his surroundings.

The pool had grown again. Water poured out of it now. The moisture ran down into the desert, where it quickly vanished. Plants and creatures crowded the short brook in a dense, intense little life-patch. Life had launched its counterattack against desolation.

This was Sahmanan’s doing. She was devoted to restoring her homeland. Her master simply wanted to extend his rule, to find himself new worshippers.

The shaking became gentler. Ethrian shifted his attention to the body lying between the beast’s paws.

It had grown. It was about to become that of a man. A man who would be tall and powerful and dark, like his mother’s brothers. The sleeper’s face resembled that of his uncle Valther, the one who had married the Shinsaner sorceress. Ethrian and his mother had been living with Valther when Lord Chin’s agents had spirited them away.