Goth carrying Aquitainfinally reached the location and the Jeti warriors parted to letthem, with Zephira, pass. Aquitain summed up the situation at once.‘Miranda’s challenged the Taskmaster controlling the fightershasn’t she?’ he said to the chief and Rori.
‘Yes, Spirit Lord,’replied Rori, his eyes fixed on the rolling bodies in front ofthem. ‘But neither of them seem to be doing much other than rollaround.’
Aquitain checked hissource. He had enough power for one strong or perhaps two weakerdomination attempts, which he had been hoping would be against themask; but he could see that the little people would be hard pressedto pass twenty Crin warriors even with the help of Goth andZephira, and there would be much loss of life. Miranda needed hishelp to beat the Taskmaster, but the question was whether the Crinwarriors would detect external help and react adversely to it.
The main problem he hadwas he couldn’t see well, draped over Goth as he was. The littlepeople had glaring torches and there was a lot of moonlight, but towork out which of the two dark brown creatures rolling around onthe ground was Miranda was impossible. He asked Zephira for animage of the scene through her eyes and she sent him one throughtheir mindlink, but there was still no way to visually separate thetwo fighting Crin. If he could only touch them, he could work outwho was who. This gave him an idea.
Aquitain flowed offGoth, forming a large thin pool of goo at its feet, which spreadout toward the combatants. He changed his body color and texture tomatch the ground, becoming almost invisible, then asked Mirandathrough their mindlink to roll over in the direction of Goth.Miranda found it difficult as she was disoriented, so Zephirashouted out directions to her and half a minute later she rolledonto Aquitain’s flattened form; he tried to tell which was which,but still couldn’t distinguish them apart. All Crin seemed to tastethe same. So he asked her to change to her cat form.
Moments after shechanged he could tell who was who and mounted a domination attackon the mind of the Crin Taskmaster who was still occupied inattacking Miranda’s mind. In the act of shape changing, Miranda hadhad to stop defending her own mind. This had given Xentos the upperhand, and just as he felt that he had succeeded in capturingMiranda’s mind, Aquitain swooped in to overwhelm the Taskmaster’smind. There was no second chance; once you lost the battle you werecontrolled, and now Aquitain had firm control.
He commanded Xentos torelease Miranda’s mind, cease struggling, move over to his Crinwarriors and tell them to stand easy, part and let the littlepeople pass. He did this, and Aquitain told the chief to move onahead and that they would catch up. Miranda changed back to hernewman druid form and asked Aquitain to release Xentos, butAquitain wasn’t quite ready. He wanted some answers first, andwasn’t prepared to risk getting only half-truths.
‘Who are you?’
‘I am Xentos,’ said theCrin.
‘Who dominatedyou?’
‘There were two, awizard called Erastius and Jacintra, the Chaos Lord,’ repliedXentos.
‘Where were youdominated?’
‘Near the templeruins,’ Xentos replied.
‘Why were youthere?’
‘The queen thought thatthe druid Alin Amber might be there,’ replied Xentos.
‘Why did she wish tofind the druid Alin Amber?’ asked Aquitain.
‘She believes he stolea magic weapon from us.’
‘What sort of magicweapon?’
‘It was called a Rod ofLordly Might,’ Xentos replied.
‘Have you seen thedruid Alin Amber or the Rod of Lordly Might?’
‘No,’ said Xentos.
‘Please let him goAquitain,’ said Miranda. ‘He will answer these questions willingly.He has been a friend of mine for years.’
‘Are you sure?’ askedAquitain and receiving assurance from Miranda he released controlof Xentos, after ensuring that the Crin was no longer controlled bythe mask.
He thanked Aquitain forreleasing him from the mask’s domination, but would not help themin any fight against the mask. He needed to return to the Queen assoon as possible to advise her of the threat to the Crin city sothey might devise a suitable defence strategy, and asked for freepassage through the Jeti village. Aquitain told him that hecouldn’t give him permission to pass through the village, only thechief could do that, so he would have to await the outcome of theirclash with the mask.
Xentos apologized toMiranda for fighting her and commended her defence against hisdomination attacks. He then told her that he was under orders fromthe Queen not to assist her while she was still working with thechaos bear. However, after she told him that she had seen the Queenafter he had gone missing and that she had asked her to help findhim, he became a little more cooperative.
He told her that theChaos Lord and the mind wizard in the mask knew that Aquitain hadbeen reincarnated as a bear. They had known he was in the Jetivillage and had set a trap for him. The Chaos Lord wanted Aquitainto cause trouble all over Mudrun, but he had the feeling thatErastius, the other mind wizard in the mask, wasn’t so keen on theidea. He offered Miranda two Crin fighters for protection, but thatwas as far as he would go without the Queen’s approval.
Miranda told Aquitainthey were walking into a trap, and he said he had guessed thatwould be the situation when it was clear that the mask haddominated the Crin. However, unless they continued the littlepeople would become the innocent victims in this game that thePowers were playing, and he wouldn’t accept that. She began topanic at the gravity of the situation. Jacintra herself wantedAquitain as her slave. How could they fight against a Spirit Lord?She was frightened not for herself but for Aquitain, and everyoneelse on Mudrun. This could be disastrous.
‘Tain, perhaps weshould carefully consider this situation,’ Miranda said. ‘They havepurposely weakened you so that you can hardly move, let alonefight. The prediction of chaos throughout the land will come trueif they can dominate you. You should
