The light ahead flashed more brightly now, winking from heavenly blue to baleful red.

“Gryll,” I said. “Do you detect a spell upon me?”

“Aye, m’lord,” he replied.

“Why didn’t you mention it?”

“I thought it one of your own — for defense, perhaps.”

“Can you lift it? I’m at a disadvantage, here on the inside.”

“’Tis too tangled in your person. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“Can you tell me anything about it?”

“Only that it’s there, m’lord. Does seem rather heavy about the head, though.”

“Could be coloring my thoughts a certain way, then?”

“Aye, a pale blue.”

“I wasn’t referring to your manner of perceiving it. Only to the possibility that it could be influencing my thinking.”

His wings flashed blue, then red. Our tunnel expanded suddenly and the sky grew bright with the crazy colors of Chaos. The star we followed now took on the proportions of a small light — magically enhanced, of course — within a high tower of a sepulchral castle, all gray and olive, atop a mountain the bottom and middle of which had been removed The island of stone floated above a petrified forest. The trees burned with opal fires — orange, purple, green.

“I’d imagine it could be disentangled,” Gryll observed. “But its unraveling be a bafflement to this poor demon.”

I grunted. I watched the streaking scenery for a few moments. Then, “Speaking of demons…” I said.

“Yes?”

“What can you tell me about the sort known as a ty’iga?” I asked.

“They dwell far out beyond the Rim,” he replied, “and may be the closest of all creatures to the primal Chaos. I do not believe they even possess true bodies of the material sort. They have little to do with other demons, let alone anyone else.”