The sparks floated in through both entrances, but more seemed to simply spring forth from the rock about them. Talen caught a twinkle in the dust at his feet, and then the fleck of light floated free to join the rest.

The sparks coalesced into thin, whirling streams that were drawn to Da like water is drawn to the center of a lazy whirlpool. Da knelt in his chains as the bits of light flowed and clung to him. The shining flecks began to accumulate thinly in his hair and eyebrows, upon his nose and arms, between the very fibers of his clothing. Specks of light tinged ever so faintly with blue and yellow.

River put her hand to the collar about her neck. “She’s coming,” she said. “I can feel it.”

Sugar couldn’t help but marvel at the tiny sparks that suddenly glimmered and glittered in the stone ceiling, walls, and floor. Each would build in intensity only to break free and float purposefully toward Zu Hogan.

He was drawing the very might of the earth to him. Zu Hogan still knelt on the floor. She wanted him to get up, to take the tooth from her. She wanted any one of them to take it.

But she looked at the others, stooped with weariness, and realized they would not be taking the tooth from her. She would have to defend them.

Now was the moment. Her heart pounded in her chest. She was the only thing standing between the others and their approaching doom.

Things to act, and things to be acted upon. She was not going to quail. She had the tooth. She had seen its power work on man and weave. She was going to face this enemy head-on, just as Mother had faced that mob only a few days ago. Whatever came out of those entrances was going to feel the bite of Purity’s daughter.

She glanced at the entrance to the chamber that she and Talen had used. Nothing was there. But then it was so black she wouldn’t see anything until it was in the chamber anyway.

There was a slight breeze running to that entrance from the other one. The breeze brought her a strong whiff of sulfur and pine. And then another even stronger.

She turned. The monster would come from that direction, from the second entrance. She wouldn’t have much time once it entered the chamber.

“Talen,” she said. “Bring me the other tooth!”

Something flickered in the corner of her eye. And then the monster burst from the blackness.

She should have been more used to the sight of it, but the creature was even more horrible to behold than it had been in the vale. Its enormous ragged mouth. Its dark pit eyes. Her knees quivered.

The monster gave her one look and, in an enormous stride, flashed past. It swatted the Creek Widow aside and grabbed Zu Hogan by the throat.

Ke and Zu Argoth did not attack, but stood aside, slumped, the crown obviously having its effects on them.

The monster grasped the crown and began to tug. Zu Hogan clutched at the creature’s rough arm. The thin streams of sparks in the room had grown thicker, but now slowed their movement. Zu Hogan was shining with the flecks of light, but the monster grabbed the crown and began to pull. It was going to rip it off. And then it would kill Zu Hogan just as it had the Skir Master.

She thought of Legs and Mother and the tooth in her hand.

The tooth in her hand!

Her courage returned even if the fear remained. She cried out and charged.

The monster turned and caught her by the waist in its enormous grip. It felt as if she’d run herself onto a post. Its fingers, hard as stone, wrapped round and squeezed so hard she could not breathe.

She gasped for breath, tightened her grip on the hag’s tooth, then brought it down, stabbing deep into the monster’s ragged forearm.

The monster looked down at the tooth.

The tooth bucked like a fish and disappered into the stoney flesh.

The monster released Sugar. It reeled back, let go of the crown, and clutched its forearm.

Sugar turned, looking for Talen and the second tooth.

Zu Hogan spoke a word under his breath, and the sparks around him grew thicker. A low thrumming began to reverberate through the room. It built in intensity.

The volume and pitch rose, vibrating through her and the very rock about them. The sparks in the room multiplied. The air was thick with them now. The thrumming turned into the rushing of waters or a mighty wind.

Zu Hogan stood, his chains still binding him to the wall, and stretched out his arms. His face shone with fierce knowledge.

The whirling streams of blue and yellow sparks picked up speed, converging on him. The volume built to a roar. Sugar covered her ears.

Then came a concussion, an enormous slap of air that forced Sugar to stagger back. It was followed by a blinding flash as all the remaining sparks in the room rushed to Zu Hogan.

The thrumming and roar cut off, vanished, and Sugar’s ears rang in the silence.

Zu Hogan stood. From head to toe, he shone with a thin skin of blue and yellow light. Joy suffused his face. And when he moved the very air about him seemed to bend and blur.

Zu Hogan took hold of his chains and pulled them apart like a child might break a thin braid of grass.

The monster had fallen on its back, frantically clutching at its arm.

Out of the corner of her eye, Sugar saw the passageway beyond the second entrance flicker and then illuminate.

A ribbon of blazing violet flame flew through the opening. It was followed by another and another. Each stretched a yard or more. Each undulated like an eel swimming through water. The three ribbons of light sped about the room, hissing like the wind through dry weeds. One circled her with blinding speed. It paused momentarily as if looking her in the face, the hot white of its core fading to tongues of violet flame. It seemed to be whispering something.

Fear gripped her. These weren’t ribbons of some strange fire-they were alive!

The light in the passageway grew brighter. And as it did a thick knot of the creatures, blazing their oddly tinged light, swam through the opening to the chamber. Some of these were shorter than the first three, but most were as long as a man’s leg. Some longer. They moved like a school of shining eels, hither and thither, wrapping themselves around something at their center.

The school of light shimmered to one side, parting ever so briefly, and Sugar saw a glimpse of what it contained-a woman wrapped in undulating, living segments of light.

The first three ribbons swirled about Zu Hogan. In his right hand he held a long length of the thick chain that had bound him.

“Whatever you are,” Zu Hogan said to the woman, “your time is at an end.” He stepped toward the knot of light. But as he did so an arm shot out of the knot of shining serpents and pointed at Zu Hogan.

The school of light, paused, shimmered, and then a mass of the creatures sped toward him. The undulating segments struck. She saw one open its mouth, full of thin sharp teeth, and bite him on the throat. Another attacked his cheek, and then the great mass swallowed him like a storm, the ribbons jerking and biting.

Zu Hogan stumbled back, the creatures covering him in a thick knot. He flailed his arms, tried to pull and swat them away, but the creatures attacked as if in a feeding frenzy.

Zu Hogan yelled a word in some tongue she didn’t understand. Immediately, there was a flash of light at the center of the seething mass.

A number of the creatures flew back. She could see much of Zu Hogan now. Yet many of the creatures still clung to him, biting in fury.

Zu Hogan reached up and grasped the one clinging to his eye.

Sugar fully expected to see some grotesque remnant of his eye pull away with the eel, but when he yanked it off and flung it to the ground, she saw that both of his eyes were exactly where they should be-perfect, whole, and gleaming with purpose.