“Bravo,” Mandor stated, clapping his hands slowly and softly together. “You see, Merlin? I’d have won that bet.”

“You always were a better judge of talent than I was,” I acknowledged.

“…and swear to serve me,” I overheard Jasra saying. Sharu’s lips moved.

“And swear to serve you,” he gasped.

She lowered her arms slowly, and the line of force which held him began to lengthen. As he descended toward the Keep’s cracked floor; her left hand executed a gesture similar to one I had once seen an orchestra conductor employ in encouraging the woodwinds, and a great gout of fire came loose from the Fountain, fell upon him, washed over him, and passed on down into the ground. Flashy, though I didn’t quite see the point…

His slow descent continued, as if someone in the sky were trolling for crocodiles. I discovered myself holding my breath as his feet neared the ground, in sympathetic anticipation of the eased pressure on his neck. This, however, did not come to pass. When his feet reached the ground, they passed on into it, and his descent continued, as if he were an occulted hologram. He sank past his ankles and up to his knees and kept going. I could no longer tell whether he was breathing. A soft litany of commands rolled from Jasra’s lips, and sheets of flame periodically separated themselves from the Fountain and splashed over him. He sank past his waist and up to his shoulders and slightly beyond. When only his head remained visible, eyes open but unfocused, she executed another hand move went, and his journey into the earth was halted.

“You are now the guardian of the Fount,” she stated, “answerable only to me. Do you acknowledge this?”

The darkened lips writhed.

“Yes,” came a whispered reply.

“Go now and bank the fires,” she ordered. “Commence your tenure.”

The head seemed to nod at the same time it began sinking again. After a moment only a cottony tuft of hair remained, and an instant later the ground swallowed this, too. The line of force vanished.