broad back was the naked form of a young woman toasted
pink as a boiled lobster.
Drom trotted to a halt beside them. He was foaming at
the mouth and soaked with lather.
“Hot,” he told them unnecessarily. “Excruciatingly
hot.” Folly slid off the unicorn’s back into Jon-Tom’s
arms, barely conscious. “She was walking blindly toward
an open lava pit. I got there just in time.”
“Jon-Tom.” He held her carefully, acutely conscious of
the first-degree burn that covered her whole body. “I.. .1
didn’t know what was happening, what I was doing.
Jalwar… he made me feel so strange. I couldn’t think my
own thoughts anymore.” She leaned against him.
“That morning when he woke me and made me follow
him out of our camp, I wanted to cry out, to warn you, but
I couldn’t. He made me go with him, and he made me fetch
and cook and carry for him, but it wasn’t me, it wasn’t
me! It was like I was a prisoner in my own body and I
couldn’t get out.” She was sobbing now, the tears wet
against his chest. She leaned back and looked up at him in
astonishment.
“I’m crying. I didn’t think I could cry anymore.”
“You were hypnotized,” Jon-Tom told her. When she
continued staring at him in puzzlement he explained fur-
ther. “A kind of magic. You couldn’t help yourself.” He
hugged her to him and when she moaned in pain he was
quick to release her. “We’ll have to do something about
your burn. Maybe Snooth has something. We can buy
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Alan Dean Poster
medicine for you, too. I still have the three gold pieces
that Mudge didn’t lose in Snarken.”