"The champions come," he said, his distinctive rasp familiar but somehow infused with malice. "Uthgar's champions come marching from the wood of their ancient home." He extended a finger in Vell's direction. "The blessed one," he hissed, "the brown-eyed one—Uthgar's favorite."

"No," said Vell. "No, Keirkrad. You must understand. Uthgar did not choose me."

"No?" Keirkrad's lined brow furrowed. "No? He did not pluck you for glory on Runemeet, on the site of his own death, the most sacred Morgur's Mound? He did not invest in you all the power he denied me?"

Vell shook his head firmly. "I am not of Uthgar's choosing, and this is not glory. This is a curse."

"Again you spurn the honor!" Keirkrad shouted to the sky. "Again you turn away from your god's calling! Is there no end to your gall? I will do his work in destroying you, though I have found a more potent master than Tempus's son could ever be. As a child, Uthgar granted me a glimpse of Morgur's Mound, but cruel and capricious he was, revealing to me the place where I would be undone and betrayed. Now the Beastlord has granted me what Uthgar would not."

Keirkrad snarled, and the red in his eyes spread till his eyes swam in crimson. Huge leathery wings unfurled from his sides and his face twisted and distorted into a drooling werebat. Heskret had inflicted lycanthropy, the ultimate punishment, on an enemy of old. He had not foreseen how the blessing of Uthgar resident in Keirkrad would manifest in his new form. With Keirkrad's mind wrested from his old form, he served his new master with devotion far exceeding that which he had lavished on Uthgar, and Malar responded to this fervor. Keirkrad was no simple werebat, but a nightmare of strength and power.

He was quickly a mass of fur and vast wings. Sharp claws spouted from his hands and feet, his ears grew huge and cupped like a bat's, and his teeth lengthened into glistening white fangs. Most terrifying of all was that he was still Keirkrad. Something indescribable in his movement—the way he held his shoulders and his head—and those watery blue eyes were the same, but now set in a bat's leering face.

The Thunderbeast party fanned out and drew weapons. I am a werebeast of sorts, too, Vell realized for the first time.

Keirkrad advanced in slow steps, his wings dragging on the ground. His eyes locked on the axe in Thluna's hands.

"How is this?" he asked. "The axe reclaimed? Sungar's folly undone?"

"There is much to be explained, Keirkrad," said Thluna. "We Thunderbeasts have been misled and manipulated. Let us explain."

"There is no reasoning with a werebeast," Kellin warned.

Keirkrad let out a throaty chuckle. "For once, the southland whore and I agree. You are weak creatures, all. I have borne witness to the fickleness of your kind all my long life." He scanned the assembled Uthgardt. "The child chief, the traitor druid of Silvanus, an orc infiltrator, and warriors of no particular distinction. You disappoint even so minor and weak a god as Uthgar. Only one among you is worthy of the transformation, of Malar's blessing, and that is purely for the power that resides in you. A repository, the treant called you. Just what is a reservoir, if not a power waiting to be tapped?"

A new kind of anger awakened in Vell.

"You wanted to groom me as your champion to challenge Sungar's chiefdom!" he shouted. "And when I wouldn't, you slandered me instead, told me that I was not worthy of Uthgar's blessing. You openly schemed against the chief to whom you swore fealty—what behavior is this for a shaman? "What actions are these for a favored son of Uthgar? I did not betray Uthgar—you did."

The composure drained from Keirkrad's batface, and Vell counted that as a victory. He went on. "And now you would make me a monster? Perhaps I am a monster already." Lanaal's lessons in transformation, which he had resisted, suddenly struck home. When he shed his human form, he largely kept his own mind and volition.

* * * * *

Vell's transformation into a brown-scaled behemoth was more shocking than the first incident. In Sungar's Camp, it had happened so quickly amid such confusion and in the dark of night—it had seemed like a strange dream. Now, in the daylight amid a tranquil setting, it bore a new reality. Vell was gone, or what the warriors knew as Vell, and in his place stood a creature of legend, a creature the Thunderbeasts had been taught to revere. No glimpse of the bones of the beast hovering above Morgur's Mound could have prepared them for the flesh and blood behemoth before them.

Vell stood as tall as the treetops. He felt a strange rush of embarrassment as he looked down on the disbelieving faces of his friends and allies as they rushed to keep clear.

Hissing, snarling, Keirkrad sprang from the ground into the air. His physical weakness was erased by his bat-form, and he landed on Vell's vast face, clamping on with his claws and wrapping his huge wings over Vell's eyes. Vell charged, partly to keep Keirkrad away from the others, and partly to disturb Keirkrad's grip, the ground trembling as he did so. He blindly strode into the River Delimbiyr. A massive splash drenched the river's banks, and Vell waded into the middle of the river.

Vell felt the shocking coldness of the water rush up his massive limbs, reaching his brain with the intensity of a thunder strike. He dunked his head into the water, dousing Keirkrad. All around them, currents and eddies swirled, formed by the sudden intrusion of Vell's bulk. The werebat clung, squeezing more and more tightly on Vell's face; but he could not maintain his grip, and drifted away in the rapids.

Vell watched Keirkrad's huge wings vainly struggling against the water, their fine bones and leathery covering inadequate against the Delimbiyr's onrush. Then the water swirled around him, forming a whirlpool and a wall that protected him, and Keirkrad magically lifted above the Delimbiyr's surface. Beating his wings steadily to dry himself and stay aloft, he looked toward Vell with a perverse grin as he faced the lizard in the middle of the river.

"I am no longer human, perhaps," Keirkrad taunted. "But a cleric I am still." He spat out a prayer, and when Vell tried to urge his vast body to action, he could not move. A vicious torpidity seized his limbs and held him captive in the middle of the river, where the chill still assaulted his senses. He urged his animal body to action, but it would not answer. He was still as a statue, and the cold numbed his senses. He could barely feel his legs beneath him.

How could I have been so stupid? Vell asked himself. He had no way of knowing how long he could maintain his beast form, especially while paralyzed.

When he lapsed back to his human shape, he would be at Keirkrad's mercy.

A loud roar filled the air. A burst of sound caught Keirkrad and blasted him out of the air with such force that he landed beyond the south bank, clapping his clawed hands to his ears. From the corner of his eye, Vell saw Kellin standing on the river bank, Thanar alongside her. He could only guess that they were trying to dissolve the magic that held him.

Keirkrad unfurled his wings and flew across the river, bound for the druid and the sorceress. Thunderbeast hammers and arrows assailed him, but they bounced off as if he were solid metal. When he swooped down to harry Kellin and Thanar, Rask Urgek planted a blow solidly in his face with the Tree Ghosts' club, sending Keirkrad reeling, but leaving him aloft. His nose was smashed, and blood dripped down his face. He let out a high-pitched chirp of pain.

Thluna ran at Keirkrad with the greataxe, but Keirkrad ably dodged, and it slashed through empty air next to him. Too heavy for Thluna to wield properly, the axe went astray, and its head embedded deep in the ground. Keirkrad let out a twisted laugh as he swooped.