The crimson witch

world was behind him and he had exchanged realities. That time, he had just barely choked a scream. “And what did they do with Golgoth?” he asked Kaliglia.
        The dragon rumbled. His voice cracked. He sniffed and began again. “He felt the smoke ghosts touching him, humming ghostily moans as if they wanted to tell him things. He lost consciousness then, screaming, just as he felt the ropes being retracted. He remembers nothing else until the Sorceress Kell opened his mind and freed him of his horror.”
        They sat in silence for a moment.
        “Well?” Kaliglia asked, wiping a tongue across his thick, black lips and bunking his enormous eyelids down over his blue and green eyes.
        “Well what?”
        “Now do you believe Lelar is an evil kingdom?”
        “Perhaps.”
        “Then we won't be going there?”
        “Oh, yes, but we will.” Jake stood and stretched.
        “But with the smoke ghosts and-”
        “I have to go there. It is there that the portal to my own time line exists. Without it, I must remain here forever.” He walked to the beast's side, pulled himself up the great back, climbed into the natural horn saddle. “Let's get up to that rock bridge and camp there tonight. Tomorrow morning we cross into Lelar.”
        Kaliglia turned his truck cab head around, looking over his shoulder, snorted with disgust. He lumbered to his feet and crashed off along the gorge in search of the natural bridge…

Chapter Two: THE CRIMSON WITCH
        
        She bent over the cauldron, her hands clutching at the iron rim, squinting her eyes so that her eyebrows almost met, and concentrating as hard as she possibly could, concentrating until her head swam a little and her blood pounded dizzily in her temples. The liquid in the pot was hazing, eddying with ebony and ocher, streaked through with gamboge and silver, damping out the picture of the man and the dragon that she had been watching so intently. Too intently. She had become so absorbed in the picture that she had neglected to hold it on the surface of the liquid. Now it was slipping away from her, lost in the swirlings of colors. She doubled her force on it, set it to bubbling again. The silver formed bubbles that burst and splashed back as ebony onto the gamboge surface, swirling into cream and ocher and amber… Once more, froth collected at the edges of the pot and boiled there until she eased back some of the pressure of her magics. Then the liquid cooled again, smoothed into a mirror that reflected her face, the perfect greenness of her eyes, the perfect upward tilt of her haughty little nose. She snorted, stamped her foot, released control of the liquid.
        The hearth fire flickered.
        Outside, the storm had reached the mountain and was surging against the peak, caught in the down-drafts that were turning it backwards onto the valley once more.
        Lightning flashed.
        Thunder erupted, boomed, crashed backwards, echoed into quiet, only to erupt again, pounding, stomping across the sky.
        She exerted herself again, turned on her magics. The liquid cleared once more and presented a picture of a man riding a dragon alongside a deep gorge toward a natural bridge that would eventually carry them across the river and into Lelar. The man clung to the great horny ridge of the saddle, fighting to stay on during the bumpiest moments of the ride, leaning against it and relaxing when the way grew smooth. He was truly a handsome man with a magnificent mane. She wondered what thing could draw him from the peace on this side of the gorge to the horror and evil that lurked in Lelar.
        Then she remembered to get mad at him again. “Damn it!” she snapped, stamping her foot hard on the floor again. She kicked the kettle and screamed almost at once, dancing around and trying to grab hold of her injured toe. When she got hold of herself, she reached into the toe with her magics and set everything straight again. It stopped hurting.
        She turned back to the cauldron, called the picture back again, and concentrated on hating him. He had used her! She mumbled the words of the proper chant. She mumbled them forwards, then backwards. She blinked her eyes thrice, twitched her nose to the left once and to the right twice. Then she concentrated…
        But he remained seated on the dragon, cocksure as when she had begun the chant, as undamaged as he had been before she had muttered a