"Do it," commanded Grand Duke Jagiellon, and his huge hand swept across the floor, re-opening the passage.

Stifling a whimper of protest, the shaman underwent the shape-change again. As always, the transition was accompanied by agony?and even more so the passage through which his master sent him. But those agonies were familiar things. The source of the shaman's terror lay elsewhere.

Nor did the terror stem from the lagoon itself, as much as the shaman despised the stink of the waters?in his new form even more than he would have in his human one. His fishlike body swam through the murky shallows, nosing the scents drifting through the mud swirls and reeds.

He detected the mage soon enough, as familiar as he now was with that scent. Again, as before, the odor was very faint. The mage remained near water at all times, but rarely ventured into it. To do otherwise would have been dangerous.

More dangerous to leave the water's vicinity than to enter it, in truth. The shaman's jaws gaped wide, displaying teeth that could rend human flesh easily. But the display was more for the purpose of driving away the shaman's own fear than any prospect of savaging the mage. The mage had protectors in these waters. The shaman was not the only thing swimming there which possessed sharp teeth.

And there were worse perils than teeth, anyway. Much worse. It was to detect the greatest of those perils that Jagiellon had sent the shaman back?again and again?to scour the waters of Venice and the Jesolo.