Fire leapt from the boy's hands in a double bolt that converged in the center of the dark bodies. A red flair silhouetted the jagged edge of a wing. A wing flamed, waved flame, and the burning beast tried to take air before it fell, splashing fire about it. Orange light caught sharp on brown faces chiseled with shadow, caught in the terrified red bead of an eye or along double fangs behind dark lips. Burning wings withered on the ground; dead leaves had sparked now, and whips of light ran on the clearing floor. The beasts retreated and the three men stood against the wall, panting. "Watch out!" Iimmi suddenly called. Snake looked up as the great wings tented over him, hiding him momentarily. Red flared beneath them, and suddenly the beasts fell away, their sails sweeping over the dead leaves, moved by wind or life, Geo couldn't tell. Dark flappings rose on the moon, grew further away, and were gone. Away from the wall, they saw the fire had blown up against the wall and was dying. They ran quickly toward the edge of the forest. "Snake," said Geo when they stopped. "This is Iimmi, this is Snake. We told you about him." Iimmi extended his hand. "Glad to meet you." "Look," said Geo, "he can read your mind, so if you still think he's a spy ..." Iimmi grinned. "Remember the general rule? If he is a spy, it's going to get much too complicated trying to figure why he saved us like that." Urson scratched his head. "If it's a choice between Snake and nothing, we better take Snake. Hey, Four Arms, I owe you a thrashing." He paused, then laughed. "I hope some day I get a chance to give it to you." "Where have you been, anyway?" Geo asked. He put his hand on the boy's shoulder. "You're wet." "Our water friends again?" suggested Urson. "Probably," said Geo. Snake now held one hand toward Geo. "What's that? Oh, you don't want to keep them?" Snake shook his head. "All right," said Geo. He took one jewel and put it around his neck. Geo took the wrought chain with the platinum claw from his neck and hung it around Iimmi's. The white eye shown on his dark chest in the moonlight. Now Snake beckoned them to follow him back across the clearing. They came, stopping to pick up swords from the shriveled darknesses on the ground about the clearing. As they passed around the edge of the broken building, Geo looked for the corpse they had left there, but it was gone. "Where are we going?" asked Urson. Snake only motioned them onward. They neared the broken cylinder and Snake scrambled up the rubble under the dark hole through which the man-wolf had leaped earlier that evening.