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could achieve their ends before then."
    "Rider will take his father's place, I guess. Oh-oh. There they go."
    Greystone joined Chaz. They watched their comrades race toward the gnarly man, who spotted them, took off, stubby bow legs pumping furiously. "That fellow can surely run."
    "For a ways," Chaz said."Bet he ain't much over a quarter mile." Below, Soup suddenly slowed to a trot, though he did not give up pursuit. "What's Soup up to?"
    Soup had been smitten by a suspicion that Emerald had been too easily spotted. Maybe he was leading them into another ambush. If so, he would get a surprise of his own. Soup would materialize after the trap was sprung.
    Emerald began to slow and his pursuers to gain. The looks he cast back seemed genuinely desperate. He whirled around a corner, knobby limbs flailing.
    Rider's men rounded the corner and drifted to a halt. "Where'd he go?" Spud demanded. "He couldn't disappear into thin air."
    "Look around," Preacher said.
    "I know. 'Seek and ye shall find.' Su-Cha, do your stuff."
    There was no place for the gnarly man to have gone. The street was just a wide alleyway between two doorless walls. It dead-ended in another brick wall.
    "Dig through that trash," Soup said. "Maybe he's under it." He had arrived to find his friends baffled.
    The usually loquacious Su-Cha said nothing for several minutes. Then he grunted, snatched up a broken brick, flung it at the alley-spanning wall. It did not rebound. It simply vanished.
    Soup howled. "We've been hornswoggled! The wall is an illusion."
    He charged forward—and through. His hair stood up and crackled. When he looked back he saw no evidence of the illusory wall, just his comrades looking baffled.
    There was no sign of Emerald.
    The others joined him. "What now?" Spud asked.
    "We still have a trick," Su-Cha said. He grinned and tapped his nose.
    The others chuckled. "Is he going to be surprised."
    Soup, though, recalled his earlier reservations. "He may be leading us away from the laboratory."
    "Maybe," Spud admitted. "But Chaz and Greystone are there. And he expected to lose us here.
    Let's go, imp."
    There was a delicate tap at the laboratory door. Chaz and Greystone exchanged looks. Greystone whispered, "I'll cover," and stepped into a contrivance of mirrors from which a man could watch the doorway without being seen.
    He picked up a light crossbow. The tapping was repeated. Chaz pulled the door inward.
    His eyes grew huge. He gasped, "I think I'm in love. The heavens have opened and shed an angel on my doorstep."
    The woman was startled, not just by this remark but by the barbarian's size. Then she glanced over her shoulder fearfully, as if expecting peril to overtake her any moment. "May I come in?" she asked breathlessly.
    "A godsend," Chaz said. "I have to be dreaming. Do come in. Do sit down. Just anywhere."
    The woman did so, her gaze fixing upon the cadaver of Protector Jehrke. Her mouth opened and closed several times. Nothing came out. Horror flooded her face.
    "More like a devil in disguise," Greystone said, stepping out of the mirror contraption. "This is the witch Soup told us about."
    "Mercy," Chaz breathed, startled. "It isn't possible. The gods could not be so cruel as to make something so gorgeous so wicked."
    "Horsefeathers," Greystone countered. He prided himself on his immunity to the glamor and wiles of the fair sex. "Bet that Emerald character was supposed to draw us off so she could get in here and unravel what's left of the web." The scholar kept his weapon aimed at the woman's heart.
    Chaz was smitten but not blind. "Well? What about it, Sweetheart?"
    "The Master planned that. But not I. I knew you would not all pursue Emerald. Your reputations say you are too wise."
    Greystone snorted and muttered.
    The woman continued, "I hoped to be captured."
    "Why?" Greystone demanded.
    "Because that is the only way I will ever escape him."
    Chaz drifted to the window. Below, the festivities were approaching a roar. The rope divers