head; the troll wolf followed close behind, watching for its chance to catch the human off guard.
Slowly, slowly, they circled the perimeter of the ruined temple, slowly coming within sight of the precious spell book. Mika gauged his steps carefully, eyes glued to the troll wolfs chest, watching for the moment when the terrible wound would close completely.
The troll wolf drew nearer. Slaver foamed around its teeth and dripped off its tongue. Deep snarls erupted from its throat, thick and heavy with menace. Its dark eyes seemed to glow with hatred, and never once did they leave Mika's face.
In spite of himself, Mika was frightened. Knowing that it was really Tam didn't help one bit. Being killed and eaten by your best friend was somehow worse than being killed by an enemy.
As they crept within reach of the spell book, two things happened at once: the edges of the wound came together, and the troll wolf made its move.
As though realizing that Mika was about to end its existence, the troll wolf sprang for the man who had once been his friend. But hoping to catch him off guard, he leapt only to groin height, jaws open wide, teeth gleaming in the soft, filtered light that streamed through the broken dome.
A very real shriek of terror poured from Mika's lips. Leaping backward, he brought the hunk of marble down as hard as he could, smashing it on the top of the troll wolfs head.
The troll wolf staggered back drunkenly, its eyes crossed and its tongue lolling out the side of its mouth, which was, for once, closed. It tried to focus and took several additional steps before it keeled over and fell directly on its muzzle, sprawled in a half- kneeling position, its scrawny, hairless rump stuck in the air.
Off balance, Mika tumbled to the ground himself, crying aloud as he struck the flat of his burned palms against the gritty paving stones. Blinking back the tears of pain that came to his puffy, lashless eyelids, he scooted across the distance to the spell book and erabbed it in his shaking hands.
Breathing deeply, he pulled himself into a seated position, trying to find a spot that did not hurt. He flipped through the pages of the book quickly, looking for the spell that would return Tam to his normal state.
Puffy fingers pointing out the words, he mumbled his way through the spell, committing it to memory between frequent groans of pain. This time he concentrated on the spell totally, trying to get it right, wanting no mistakes. Yet he was forced to hurry, fearing that the troll wolf would regain consciousness and try to kill him before he could memorize the spell.
Just as Mika had feared, the troll wolf raised its uglv head, stared Mika in the eye, and snarled. Mika snapped the book shut, met the troll wolfs gaze even- lv. and began to chant.
The troll wolf snarled, and the sound turned into a choked, garbled whimper that seemed to stick in its throat.
Other changes occurred simultaneously. Even as Mika watched, hair began to reappear on the troll wolf, pushing through the greenish-gray skin like a needle through cloth. The dead look faded from the wolfs eyes, replaced by one of puzzled concern. Soon, the last vestiges of the awful troll wolf were gone, leaving the welcome vision of Tam in its place.
With the return of Tam came pain. Mika became aware of just how terrible he felt. Every last bit of his body was either burned, scorched, or blistered, and in some instances, all three. His eyelids were thick and puffy, and his lips were grotesquely swollen, fat imitations of themselves that protruded far out in front of his face, as did his nose, which, when viewed through crossed eyes, looked like a bulbous over-ripe rutabaga. Even the spaces between his toes and fingers hurt. As he sat there feeling pitiful, the last of his hair broke off and fell to the ground.
It was too much. Mika felt a tear tremble on the edge of his fat eyelid and trickle down his burned face. In his imagination, he heard it sizzle as it dissipated on his hot skin. He sighed deeply, echoed in turn by Tam whom he had almost forgotten in his misery. He glanced up.
Tam looked almost worse than he did! There, square between the wolfs eyes, on the very top of his head, was an enormous lump which seemed to grow bigger even as Mika watched in amazement, making Tam look like some kind of hairy unicorn. The lump appeared to throb as it rose until it nearly equaled the wolfs ears in height.
Tam whimpered and pawed at his head, but as soon as his paws touched the incredible lump, he howled aloud. Mika noticed with interest that the wolfs eyes were still crossed.
There was nothing that Mika could do for him; all of his healing herbs were strewn on the floor of the temple, mixed and trodden underfoot. Nor did he have the strength to perform another spell.
Mika put the spell book down, then sagged slowly and very carefully to the ground. Cradling his head on the spell book, he closed his eyes with a deep sigh.
Later. I'll fix the eyes later, he thought as he drifted into an exhausted sleep, Tarn's whimpers, as well as his own, echoing in his ears.
CHAPTER 3
It was night when Mika wakened. For a moment he just lay there, too stiff and too sore to even contemplate moving. Tam was still whimpering occasionally, interspersed with low groans. It wasn't like Tam to show his pain; usually he was grimly stoical. Mika doubted that the bang on the head had broken any bones. Quite probably Tam just had a terrible headache that would go away in time. Considering the way that the wolf had tried to kill him, Mika did not feel too sorry for him.
If anything, he felt sorry for himself. Every single bit of his body throbbed with pain. His clothes were in tatters, and his hair was burned down to a rough stubble. He didn't have to check himself in a glass to know that he looked awful.
Even worse than looking awful, a demon was angry with him and had charged him with an impossible mission that he had no interest in performing. How would the demon know if he disobeyed? At that moment, filled with pain and self-pity, Mika resolved not to do as the demon had told him. Why should he go to Exag? He didn't even know this king. Furthermore, he didn't even like the king's daughter, the Princess Julia. After all, hadn't he nearly gotten himself killed trying to help her? She'd been enchanted before he'd even met her and had fallen into a deep sleep.
He and his fellow Wolf Nomad, Hornsbuck, had been attempting to bring her to Eru-Tovar, where a cure could be found, when their caravan had come under attack. It wasn't his fault that everyone else had been slaughtered by the gnolls and hyenas and the dread Iuz. He and the princess and Hornsbuck and their two wolves had barely survived themselves.
Mika turned his head painfully and looked across the temple. Yes, Hornsbuck was still there and still appeared to be deep in the miasma of the confusion spell he had received from his encounter with an umber hulk. Mika wondered if the spell would ever wear off. Since the moment of his affliction, Hornsbuck had spoken rarely and thought everyone he met was some long-lost love named Lotus Blossom.
The Princess Julia had indeed been roused from her enchanted sleep, but far from viewing Mika as her rescuer and showering him with gratitude as he had hoped, she had tried to kill him. It had been her knife, meant for Mika, that had struck Tam and so nearly cost him his life.
He did not turn his head to look for Julia. He did not care where she was. For all he cared, she could run away and stay a wolf forever.
Mika's resolve hardened as he thought back over the events of the past several moons. No, he would not do it. He would not do as the demon had bidden him. The Princess Julia could go hang, she was no longer any of his concern. He would take Hornsbuck and the wolves and just go on his way and be long gone before the demon ever figured out that he had disobeyed him.
But no sooner had he made this decision than sr›methine strange began to happen. At first he mere- Iv thought that the skin on his hand was itching, due to the burn he had sustained, a common enough reaction to sunburn. But the skin began to tingle and then hurt.
Mika gripped his wrist and hugged the hand to his chest, gasping with the intensity of the pain. The ache grew worse. He clenched his teeth and felt the muscles in his jaws creak as the flesh and skin of his pointer finger swelled to mammoth proportions and then began to split and peel like an over-ripe gapa melon left too long in the
