Her skin was pale, like ice, and her lips the color of freshly spilled blood. He was in love. He would do anything for her, even kill himself if she only chose to speak to command it. "Your old masters are playing a dangerous game, my pet. They each think to set me against the others. Tell me, were you thinking of setting me against them?" Amaan nodded. "Good. I would be sad if you weren't." She moved over to his chair and sat. She drew a small pouch from somewhere on her person, and tossed it into the fireplace - the flames began to burn green. It emitted a strange smoke, thick yet not burning, indeed, a restful scent, and Amaan felt his head spinning, his body becoming somehow distant and at the same time every nerve tingling uncontrollably. "Come, sit here at my feet and tell me all about it." He gasped, an ecstasy gripping him as he moved. He carefully knelt, and looking only at her perfect feet, recounted his experiences with Dariel, his imprisonment and escape, the conspiracy to assassinate Archmage Delalle, and the machinations of Thorn and his people. Somehow, it was unimportant to him that wracking pains tore across his body whenever he spoke of the Archmage of Politics - the smoke made the sensations interesting, he began to crave more. He repeated the details of Thorn's plans, described again how Delalle had wrenched information from him. The agonies were amazing. He started again... "Now, enough, pet. I already know about Thorn and his people. Tell me of the Shaheran's plans, what of his agents?" Amaan shuddered involuntarily as the sensations stopped, and recounted the involvement of the Shaheran and his plenipotentiary, their intent to make Generica into just another colony, the plans for the capture and replacement of the Prince and Princess, the already-accomplished addiction of the wife and sons of Melwiss the Wise to the ensorcelled narcotics provided by the agents of the plenipotentiary. He described the slave trade whereby they had accustomed many sons and daughters of the merchants and nobles to the proper use of the bodies of their subjects. "Tell me more about this entity you captured in the desert." Amaan recounted the capture, the way it had eventually broken free, his very brief battle, and how it had torn his magic from him. He told of being put into the bottle, and taken out. He told what he had learned, how he drew the power of the being, how to construct the trapsphere. "Very good, Amaan. You have done well." She held out a stylus and a glass topped box, glowing faintly yet opaque. "Now, write down the last syllable of the creature's name on this surface." He complied eagerly. The stylus left a glowing line of light on the surface, which faded when he had finished. "Now the first syllable." Again he wrote. "Now the center parts." He complied, and she took the stylus and the box from him. She stood, leaving him kneeling and staring at where her feet had been. She did something he could not see, and the green effulgence from the fire went back to the color of normal flames. "Now, pet, get into the chair." He rose from the floor and sat. "Amaan. Your mistress commands you. Forget that we have spoken. Forget that I was here. Remember only that one came to you in the night, a woman of dark countenance, and that you offered to pay her in gold for killing three persons. Unless we are alone, you will behave as though I were not your mistress, until I command you otherwise. Now, chew and swallow this." She handed him a small capsule, bread soaked in honey wrapped around a bitter pellet of herbs and essences, all dipped in wax to protect from the stickiness. He took it, and chewed, and swallowed. A heat grew in his stomach, spreading like alchemist's wine through his body, and the pleasant glow grew more and more intense until he could bear it no longer and fell unconscious. He awoke to the scullery maids clattering pans. He had been dreaming, he was sure, but it had faded. He smiled, secretive and evil, remembering the night before and how he had bargained with the assassin woman to have his enemies killed: Thorn, Prince Hasched, and the thrice cursed creature which had stolen his magic. It was costly, but she had promised they would die in an explosion of balefire, hot and sudden as the furnaces of hell, more than adequate to destroy even one such as Dariel.