Gerth went to his knees. His voice trembled. "The lich Terabith, my lady."

Phage stared angrily at the man's bowed head. She lifted her hand and imagined setting it on his shoulder and rotting him to nothing.

Without looking up, Gerth said, "Are you going to kill me?"

That was the question. He was a worm, kneeling there. Somehow, though, Phage could not set her hand down. It was his fear that made him disobey.

Zagorka blurted, "Will he be a better lesson dead or enslaved?"

At last, Gerth lifted his eyes. Hope was there, but also terror. The other slaves would not be kind to a former taskmaster. Still, it was better than death. Phage's hand cast a black shadow across his face. Gerth said, "I will be your slave and work hard for you and be ever faithful. I will go to the other taskmasters and warn them against my fate."

"If they disobey," Zagorka said, "she'll kill them and you too. You rive only as long as you're a lesson."

Phage could not have put it better. "Your death sentence is commuted but not canceled."

Zagorka said, "First warn Terabith not to fall to your fate. Then tell the others. Last, report to the slave pens."

Gerth bowed his head in thanks. "Yes. I will tell them. It will not happen again."

Phage looked to her new mouthpiece. "I think you are right."

CHAPTER NINE: IMAGE MAGIC

The delusions of night cleared away, and the sun rose upon Ixidor in his undreamed land. Doubt had proven false. The mirage had proven true.

Ixidor dived. It was deep enough here. The sandy shore gave way to tan contours in clay, and they in turn to green depths. Water enveloped him-cool, clean, bracing. It washed away dirt and salt scales. The water was life. Ixidor opened his mouth and drank as he swam. Water poured through and around him. Life filled him.

He had almost missed it. Three days of tortures in the desert, mirage after mirage, rainstorms that turned to sandstorms, dunes that turned to graves-all of it had taught him to distrust hope. A man who distrusts hope is a dead man. When he had found his paradise, he had nearly been unable to recognize it. He had to drink sand before he knew.

Ixidor rose. A cry of joy began in his throat and burst up through struggling bubbles toward the surface. His shout erupted from the water just as he did. Amid leaping waves, Ixidor roared the defiant cry of survival. He had wrestled death and pinned it.

Ixidor's feet dug into the clay. Small curls of mud streamed away from his toes as he climbed the bank. His hair rained water down around his shoulders, and he laughed in the midst of it. He sat on the bank. The river tugged insistently at his feet as if it were eager to bear him to the dark cave where the waters were swallowed.

Drips ran like tears down his face. Ixidor had not truly defeated death. It had defeated him.

Nivea was gone.

Rolling over into the shadow of a palm, Ixidor cried until he slept.

The waters tugged at him. The dark cave growled like a hungry stomach.

Nivea haunted his dreams. She had brought him here to live. He had brought her to the pits to die.

Bleakly, Ixidor woke. The sun had reached midday, driving away palm shadows, and burning him. His feet were numb and cold. His heart was too. It would have been unbearable except that hunger eclipsed all else.

Ixidor sat up and peered into the blue-green stream. There should have been fish darting through its verdant waters. He saw none. He had not seen any as he swam either. How could there be fish? The spring rose from killing sand only to descend into a voracious cave.

What of animals? The oasis should have swarmed with creatures. Ixidor stood and stalked among the curving boles of the palms. He followed the sandy shores, looking for footprints, droppings, any sign that other creatures had come to this spot. Only his own tracks marked the sand. He saw not so much as a bird flitting among the trees or a line of ants rising up a palm. More telling still was the profound silence. Only the murmur of water, wind, and his own breath disturbed the quiet.

Surely the palms would hold something-dates, coconuts, fruits… He walked among them, his head craned back. There were at least three separate species of palm but no fruit on any of them.

Ixidor seated himself beside the stream. He would die in paradise after all. It was another mirage, promising life but offering death. Waters flowed, deep and cool, away to the yawning cave mouth. Ixidor had been a fool to hope. All the while that he jeered death, it only tightened its grip.

Absently, Ixidor dragged his fingers through the clay. It curled up in little rolls that looked almost like prawns. Ixidor stared at them. His stomach rumbled. In trembling fingers, he lifted a single curl of mud. The outside of the clump was smooth and round while the inside was jagged like the jutting legs of a crayfish. Ixidor lifted the thing to his mouth and bit. Sand crunched, clay clung to his tongue, and mud dissolved and spread. Ixidor spat the clod from his mouth. Angrily, he backhanded the other curls of mud.

They struck the stream and sank. The clods left ribbons of mud as they spun slowly through the water. Halfway down, currents grabbed the clay and flung it in circles. Ixidor watched, fascinated. There was something familiar about that churning motion. Ixidor crouched on his knees above the stream and stared down. The clods were swimming. They weren't just hunks of clay, but actual prawns. They had transformed.

Ixidor glanced back at the mud curl he had spat out. It was undoubtedly clay. It had never been alive. He stared into the flood again. The other clods had become living things.

It all was beginning to make sense-the sand that became water, the shadows that became trees, the clay that became crayfish… a new power.

Nivea's death had given it birth. Ixidor's desperation had nursed it. He had been buried alive, but someone had dug him out. He had been lost in desolation, but someone had led him to water. Nivea had become his muse, inspiring him to create.

Image magic. Instead of making images into illusions, he was making them into realities.

Ixidor stooped at the stream bank and dipped his hands into the water. The crayfish shied from his touch. He swiped down to catch them. They darted and spun away. He was their creator, true, but he would also be their killer, and they evaded him.

Ixidor dived into the water. He rushed down among them, hair streaming and hands lashing. He caught one of the creatures in a tight fist. Not even waiting to surface, he rammed the thing into his mouth and bit. It was not clay anymore but a creature-flesh, fins, scales, head. It crunched between his teeth. The last of its life fled as he swallowed. It was real. The thing tumbled uneasily in his stomach, the first food it had held in three days. Ixidor reached out to snatch another of the creatures, but they were gone. They had escaped downstream.

There would be easier prey. Stroking to the bank, Ixidor climbed. He sat, water streaming down the clay. The blood of the prawn lingered on his tongue, but it was time for better fare.

Kneeling, Ixidor murmured, "Nivea." He closed his eyes.

She hovered there, gleaming and beautiful, within his mind. She seemed an angel, with white pinions glowing fiercely.

Opening his eyes, Ixidor dug his hands into the clay bank. Two great scoops of mud came up in his grip. He pressed the hunks together and began to shape the mass. Fingers traced lines into the clay. He narrowed one end and twisted it into a conic shape. The other end flattened to a tapered edge. A small avian head took form. Mud smoothed into a downy body, and wings tucked up tightly. At first, it was only the approximation of a bird. Ixidor added scales to the feet, an idiosyncratic tuft behind the head, and deep slanting nostrils. To be real, it had to be individual. Creators moved from general forms to specific actualities.