Two figures appeared, patches of black against deeper black, bracketing the treeagainst which he had recently lain.

"Well?" came a voice, loud in the darkness. "Where is my patient? I can't treata ghost."

"He was here, I swear it!"

Jubal smiled, relaxing his grip on the dagger. The second voice was easy torecognize. He had heard it daily for years now.

"You're still no warrior, Saliman," he called, propping himself up on one elbow."I've said before, you wouldn't recognize an ambush unless you stumbled intoit."

His voice was weak and strained to a point where he scarcely recognized ithimself. Still, the two figures started violently at the sound rising from apoint near their ankles. Jubal relished their frightened reaction for a moment,then his features hardened. "You're late," he accused.

"We would have been quicker," his aide explained hastily, "but the healer hereinsisted we pause while he dug up some plants."

"Some cures are strongest when they are fresh," Alten Stulwig announced loftilyas he strode toward Jubal, "and from what I've been told-" He stopped suddenly,peering at the weeds around his patient. "Speaking of plants," he stammered,''are you aware that the particular foliage you're laying in exudes an irritatingoil that will cause the skin to itch and bum?"

For some inexplicable reason the irony contained in this recitation of dangersstruck Jubal as hilarious, and he laughed for the first time since the Stepsonshad invaded his estate. "I think, healer," he said at last, "that at the momentI have greater problems to worry about than a skin-rash." Then exhaustion andshock overtook him and he fainted.

It wasn't the darkness of'night, but a deeper blackness-the blackness of thevoid, or of a punishment cell.

They came for him out of the black, unseen enemies with daggers like white-hot