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"Looks like we may be here a while."
    "Are we freaking going to eat today or what?" Bonbon asked indignantly, hands crossed over his chest. "Or is this a fast that no one told me about? I've had it with your skeletal dogs, grave-digging and..." His grumbling became drowned out by the roaring laughter of his companions. The bald man shook his head and, grinning despite himself, plopped down on the ground and produced a rolled-up cigarette. "I don't get no respect around here. Just wait till you ask me to cook you all barbecue next time..."
    "Look! Alyona was right!" Rexar shouted excitedly, pointing toward the forest. Nine young trees were growing along the edge, swaying gently to sporadic gusts of wind. Their leafage was a resplendent orange in the sunset.
     
     
    Chapter 3
     
    The woods stirred awake by the morning breeze. It ruffled raspberry patches and massaged the tall grass, then got tangled up in the mighty boughs of a live oak growing twenty yards from the black hole gaping in the hillside. Day was breaking over Demon Grounds.
    "Why in Hart's name is this called a 'swamp' cave?" I hopped off the razorback and scratched him gently behind the ear, then gave Iam a quizzical look. "Where's the swamp?"
    "A quarter mile from here, in the direction of Indis," the black-haired warrior looked up from his boot, which he had been trying to wipe clean off slime, and motioned westward, toward the Great Lake. "As to its name, you should ask Reece," Iam nodded at the mage, who was toiling over the corpse of a giant horned toad. "He's the smart one around here. He'd even traveled to Xantarra to study something or other, albeit with little success."
    "Do my ears deceive me?" tearing himself away from the toad's body for a moment, Reece shot a look of incredulity at the grinning warrior. "Or did Iam just employ sarcasm in a sentence? I'm impressed," with a snort, he returned to his task.
    "There's one thing I don't understand," Salta said musingly. "The way you are with these frogs, I've never seen you so focused, so eager... Not even with all those, um, let's call them 'patients' of yours. The ones you kept treating for migraines every night. We've already lost half an hour on account of your new hobby."
    "That's the straight-arrow archeress we all know and love," the mage gave a heavy sigh, slicing brownish warts off the amphibian's carcass. "What a pure soul, unclouded by realities of life. Tell me, sunshine, did you ever stop to think what ingredients might be used to brew elixirs against Nature magic? Or poison antidotes? But what am I saying—thinking is the prerogative of the few..."
    "In some countries," I noted, holding back the indignant archeress, "the legends say that a frog might actually be a princess under a hex. And in order to dispel the hex, the frog must be kissed on the mouth."
    "Ah, that makes more sense," said Salta, suddenly calm. "I'm sorry, Reece—seems we've just exterminated all your potential mates. But don't fret, we should find plenty more in the cave."
    "I fear that these here frogs," the mage surveyed the dead toads piled up outside the cave, "would make rather unusual princesses. So, I think I'll hold on to my kisses for the time being. Besides, what would a humble mage like me do with a princess? I'll leave all that stuff to noble princes—not that I could forbid them at any rate." Reece shot me a slanted glance, and pulled on his right earlobe for some reason.
    I snorted, shaking my head, then sat down on the grass next to my clanmates. Try as you might, you can't correct the son of a succubus—Reece was a scoundrel through and through, and I viewed that as a good thing. I felt a bit ashamed of my recent tantrum when I had threatened to rip his ears off for joking about me, but what's done is done. Apologizing for it wouldn't change anything—and besides, I suspected my apology would go in one ear and out the other anyway.
    Eighteen days had passed since my party conquered Feator, fifteen of