There were twelve broad steps leading up to an ancient grey door. Upon reaching it, Senta rested for a moment before knocking. Switching her bag momentarily to her other hand and resting the baby on her hip, she reached up into the air above her and picked one of the sparkling magic jewels that orbited her head. Like the magic residue on the building, they were something that only she could see. After crushing it between her fingers, she returned her handbag to her right hand and hefted little Senta a bit higher on her hip.

“You’re too heavy to carry around,” she told the baby. “Perhaps we should have brought the pram with us.”

The door opened with a groan, revealing a man in a worn tweed jacket. He had a heavy grey beard, bushy grey eyebrows, and a monocle in his right eye. About five feet seven, he looked up into Senta’s grey eyes.

“I’m looking for Peter Sallow,” she said with a smile.

“Did I ask who you were looking for?” he said in a wheezy voice. “I don’t care who you’re looking for. Go away.”

“Get out of the way, old man. I’ll find him myself.”

The man raised both hands dramatically. “Uuthanum!”

“How very disappointing,” said Senta. “I wasted one of my best protective spells and all you had was four syllables. Uuthanum pestor uusteros jonai.”

The bearded man gave a squeak and then he seemed to turn inside out. A long tail shot out behind him as his neck stretched up and his head grew thinner, his eyes becoming wider, his mouth and nose forming into a parrot-like beak. He bent over at the waist. His clothes turned to feathers. In three seconds he had completely transformed into one of the strange Birmisian birds—a conchoraptor. Before she had left Port Dechantagne, Senta had seen a group of the six-foot long beasts eating pinecones at the edge of her garden. The creature gave a squawk and raced off down the steps and up the street. The sorceress could hear the shrieks of startled Brech citizens as she bent down to pick up the monocle, which was the only thing that remained where the man had been.

Stepping inside, she closed the door behind her and walked down a long hallway to a study. The walls were covered with bookcases, filled with books, making the room smell of moldy paper, old glue, and leather. A cast iron stove made it uncomfortably warm. In the corner, hunched over a small writing desk was a young man of eighteen. It had been six years since she had seen him, but Senta recognized him.

“Hello Peter.”

He looked up, squinting. “You!”

“Well spotted,” said Senta, plopping the baby in a plush but dusty armchair. “What are you working so hard on over there?”

“I’m copying Master Hollingberry’s mathematics text.”

“Is he the old fool with the monocle?” she asked, casually flipping the eyeglass toward him like a coin. He caught it and nodded, as he stared at it in his hand. “I’m not very impressed.”

“I’m still an apprentice. I can’t advance without a teacher,” said the young man with a frown. “Master Hollingberry isn’t… wasn’t?” He looked up at her.

“He’s still alive.”

“He isn’t the great wizard that Master Bassington was, but I needed someone. I was all on my own.”

A third and a fourth lizzie stepped up onto the platform to be smashed by the stone of Hissussisthiss. The lizardmen in the audience seemed to be enjoying themselves—talking, slapping each other on the shoulder, and bouncing up and down in their seats.

“I think I pieced it together,” said Bratihn. “I’ve been listening to these brutes behind us. The citizens vote on who they want to be down there, and the top five hundred vote-getters are sacrificed. It’s their chance to get rid of their rivals and the neighbors they don’t get along with.”

“Kafira,” muttered Brown. Senta thought that he might be imagining how many of his neighbors would vote for him.

Suddenly her attention was pulled back to the sacrificial boulder. A young female lizardman had just stepped into the place of honor. Senta immediately recognized her as Szim, the lizzie who had served as her tour guide the day before. The giant rock trembled for just a moment. Senta snatched one of the floating glamours from around her head, activating the spell stored within it. She stretched out her right hand just as the boulder began to fall. It stopped in the air a foot above the lizzie’s head.

“Oomph,” Senta grunted. It felt as though three hundred pounds had been dropped on her shoulders. She could hear pandemonium erupt around her as lizardmen all over the arena began hissing and gesturing wildly. She could hear her companions as well.

“What the hell are you doing?” growled Staff.

“You’re going to get us killed,” said Brown.

“Form a cordon,” Bratihn called to the other former soldiers.

The reptilian witch doctor went running across the arena’s open area. He brandished his lizard fetish and cast his own spell, trying to force the rock down. Senta felt sweat break out all over her body. It wasn’t because of this new spell though. It was because of the great weight of the draconic rock, which was far heavier than her telekinesis spell was normally empowered to lift. Compared to the simple physics of gravity, the witch doctor’s spell was a veritable pebble.

When he saw that pushing the rock wasn’t going to work, the lizardman turned toward her waving his lizard lollipop. Two tiny shooting stars sprayed from his talisman. With her free hand, Senta grabbed another glamour, throwing a shield spell around her and her companions. The energy darts ricocheted off into the sky.

“Uuthanum uastus carakathum nit!” she shouted. The witch doctor was engulfed in a pond of mud where a moment before there had only been stone.

“Leave the lizzie!” shouted Staff. “We’ve got to get the hell out of here!”

“Do I tell you how to drive a boat,” said Senta, but her voice was quavering, and her body was starting to shake.

Then she heard the shouting of the Freedonian commander. “Halten sie sie auf!”

One of the wizards, she thought it was Hoff, cast a spell to force the rock down. She took no more notice of it than she had of the witch doctor’s first spell. Neither of them was a match for her. Then Tourbell threw a simple electricity spell at her, a far less potent version of the lightning spell with which she had killed the flock of achillobators. It bounced off of her magical shield. The third wizard, evidently the most powerful of the three, tried the more direct approach. He tried to overpower her mind with a domination spell. Senta grunted as a blinding pain shot through her skull. The dragon stone dropped about six inches, before she caught it again.

“Uuthanum uluchaiia uluthiuth,” she said, sending a ball of flame shooting from the fingers of her left hand. It grew to a size of ten feet in diameter in the short distance between the Brechs and the Freedonians, and burst upon the wizard, igniting him and two non-magical Freedonians. Half a dozen other humans as well as a dozen lizzies who were nearby had small patches of hair, clothing, and skin catch fire.

Senta could see Bratihn in the right corner of her eye brandishing a pistol at someone. The party had not brought their rifles, but he must have kept the handgun concealed. When a lizzie approached too close, he shot it in the face. Other sporadic gunfire echoed around her. She could feel the stone slipping. Her will was not enough to hold it up forever.

“Rezesic edios uuthanum erros paj,” she said, casting the same type of telekinesis spell she was using to hold up the boulder, instead to yank Szim out from under it. The lizzie went flying down onto the floor of the arena. The rock shaped like Hissussisthiss slammed down onto the platform, smashing through it, destroying the copper mechanism below. Then it rolled over on its side into the large puddle of mud now dominating the stadium floor, squashing the witch doctor beneath it.

“I’ve been waiting quite a while for you, sorceress.” He smiled broadly, his thin-lipped mouth seeming abnormally wide across his heavy jaw line.

“I’m not a sorceress. I’m just a little girl and you should leave me alone.”

“Ah, I know that game.” He pulled the horn-rimmed spectacles from his upturned nose and wiped first his eyes and then the lenses with a handkerchief, replacing the glasses on his face and the handkerchief in his pocket. “You make three statements. One is true and the other two are lies. Then I have to guess which is true. Right? Then I will have to say, you are a little girl.”

Senta crossed her arms and rocked back onto the heels of her shoes.

“My turn,” said the wizard. “My name is Smedley Bassington. I was born in Natine, Mirsanna. I know nothing about magic.”

“That’s too easy,” said Senta. “Smedley.”

“You should say Mr. Bassington. After all, I am your elder. One mustn’t be rude.”

“Okay, this one is harder,” replied Senta. “I’m going to have to say, number two, you are my elder.”

Bassington took a step forward, and then another.

“Uuthanum,” said Senta, waving her hand.

“Uuthanum,” said Bassington, waving his hand in an almost identical motion.

It might have seemed as though the two were exchanging some kind of secret greeting. In actuality, Senta had cast an invisible protective barrier between them. Bassington had dispelled the magic, destroying the barrier.

“I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, the chosen apprentice of the most powerful sorceress in the world. That is, after I found out Zurfina was here. I had no idea where she had gotten to. Here I was, checking out that idiot and his machine, and instead I find the two of you.”

“I think that’s too many statements,” said Senta.

He stopped in the middle of the road about five feet away from her. A little wisp of wind whipped his short graying hair.

“Did she leave you here alone to take care of yourself? That’s just what she does, you know? She’s totally unreliable.”

“Are you allowed to use questions?” asked Senta, thinking to herself that this wizard did indeed seem to have her guardian pegged.

“Let’s not play that game,” said Bassington. “Let’s play something a little better suited to our unique abilities.”

He held out his hand, waist high, palm down and said. “Maiius Uuthanum nejor.”

Red smoke rose up from the ground just below his hand. It swirled and coalesced into a shape. The shape became a wolf. Its red eyes seemed to glow and the hair on its back and shoulders stood up as it bared its dripping fangs and snarled at Senta. She held out her own hand, palm pointed down.

“Maiius Uuthanum,” she said.

Green smoke rose from the ground below her hand, swirling around in a little cloud, finally billowing away to reveal a velociraptor with bright green and red feathers.

“A bird?” said Bassington, derisively.

The wolf lunged forward, snapping its teeth. The velociraptor clamped its long jaw shut on the wolf’s snout, and grasped its head in its front claws. The huge curved claw on the velociraptor’s hind foot slid down the canine’s belly, slicing it open and spilling steaming entrails out onto the gravel. A moment later, in a swirl of multihued smoke, both creatures disappeared again.

“Prestus Uuthanum,” said Bassington, placing his right palm on his chest, and casting a spell of protection on his own body.

“Uuthanum uusteros pestor,” said Senta, spreading her arms out wide. She seemed to split down the center as she stepped both right and left at the same time. Where there had been one twelve-year-old girl a moment ago, there were now four twelve year old girls who looked exactly the same.

The wizard waved his hand and said. “Ariana Uuthanum sembor.” All four Sentas found themselves stuck in a mass of giant, sticky spider webs.

One of the blond girls fell down. One of them pulled vainly at the webbing. The third picked up a rock from the ground and threw it with all of her might at Bassington hitting him just above the temple. The fourth waved her hand, saying the magic word “uuthanum”, and dispelling the webs. The girl who had pulled at the webbing helped the fallen girl stand up, and then the two of them merged together. The other two girls merged into her, and once again, there was only one Senta.

“Uuthanum uusteros vadia,” said Bassington and he disappeared.

Senta stood there for a moment, and then out of the corner of her eye, she saw several pieces of gravel shift on the ground to her left. She pointed her finger in the direction.

“Uuthanum Regnum,” she said.

A ray of colorful, sparkling light sprayed from her fingertip in the direction she pointed. Bassington cried out in surprise and reappeared, though he didn’t seem to suffer any ill effects of the spell, which usually left its victims covered in painful rashes.

“Erros Uuthanum tijiia,” he said.

A huge spectral hand, more than five feet across, appeared in the air in front of Senta. The middle finger was bent back beneath the thumb, and then flicked Senta in the chest. She fell backwards onto her bottom, crunching her bustle, and sliding several feet across the gravel road. She struggled to suck in a breath.

“Time to say ‘uncle’, don’t you think?” Bassington crossed his arms.

Senta tilted her head back and at last managed to pull some air into her lungs. The wizard waited.

“Well?” he said, finally.

“The sky is purple,” said Senta. “My dress is orange, and my dragon is going to bite your head off.”

Bassington stared for only a moment at Senta’s blue dress, before diving out of the way, just as Bessemer landed with a huge whomp right where he had been standing.

“Maiius Uuthanum nejor paj!” shouted Bassington, pointing toward the dragon, and then turned and ran north up the road as fast as he could.

Red smoke erupted just in front of Bessemer. As it dissipated, it revealed a huge shaggy man-like creature, covered in white hair and more than seven feet tall. Senta had never seen a gharhast ape before except in books, but she recognized one now that she saw it. The ape bared a set of incredibly long fangs, and yelling out a tremendous roar, jumped onto the dragon. Two very human looking hands grabbed the dragon around the neck as the ape attempted to dig its fangs into Bessemer’s neck. The steel colored scales remained impenetrable, though a startled look was visible in the dragon’s eyes.