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accompanied by crunching and crackling as the bush gave way to its relentless square teeth, then swallowed noisily. Its neck rippled as the remnants of the bush shoved down and into the dragon's stomach. “Oh, that's all right. Hardly means anything anyway.”
        “What's that supposed to mean?”
        “If you insist on going into Lelar-”
        “That again!”
        “-then I'm afraid your life will be taken sooner or later anyway.”
        “You do have a one-track mind.”
        “When it comes to Lelar, yes.”
        “For the last time, Kaliglia, the strange hole in Lelar's castle wall could be the link between probability lines that I need. Kell has seen it only once, but even she made the connection when I told her of my story. I must find that portal. I've got to return home. It is too difficult for me to accept a world where Talenteds rule supreme and where I will never have any hope of becoming anything because I was not born a mutated superman.”
        “Well, I think it's foolish.”
        Jake stood and threw his knapsack over his shoulders. He approached the beast, wagging a finger. “Look, are you going to serve me or not?”
        “Well-”
        The dragon tore the leaves off another shrub, munched on them.
        “The Sorceress Kell did not tell me you were a coward.”
        “Coward?”
        “So it would appear to me.”
        “I'm just not foolhardy is all. I like to think things out before I go running around brainlessly, asking for trouble. I like to think things out.”
        “Damn it, so do I. I've thought. I must go to the castle of Lelar in hopes that the hole in the wall is a portal back into my own probability line, a door warped open by the nuclear war-since the castle was built on the sight of a major blast, built to encompass the shimmering spot in the air that had drawn Lelar's attention and was mistaken, at first, for a powerful talisman. There are stories of people disappearing from my world. Perhaps they disappeared into the analog of this hole in Lelar's wall.”
        “And they never came out here. You are the first of your kind to have come to this place. Have you ever thought about that?”
        “Yes.”
        “And you still want to go on?”
        “Yes.”
        “Then you are most assuredly a fool.”
        Jake turned and walked off toward the bridge.
        The dragon watched him until he had set foot upon it. “Hey,” Kaliglia called at last, “where are you going?”
        “I may be a fool but I am no coward, Kaliglia of the Faint Heart.”
        The dragon snorted and tossed its head. It lumbered away from the copse and up to the wide span of stone that linked the two sides of the gorge. “Get on.”
        “You're coming with me?”
        “I never said I was a coward. You did.”
        Jake rounded the massive front legs and clambered up the thick-scaled side, mounting the horn of the natural saddle. “I apologize.”
        Kaliglia snorted.
        The beast marched forward onto the stone after only the briefest of hesitations, waddling step after step across the gorge. On both sides, the possible fall was tremendous and ended not with a floor of flat rock-which would have been bad enough and deadly enough-but in a jumble of broken stones whose pointed ends would make fast mincemeat of anything dropped from the bridge.
        Still, they crossed without incident, reaching the solid ground on the other side without even a single close call or slipped foot. Kaliglia stopped, sighing heavily now that he was sure disaster was about to be theirs. Jake slid down and put hand to eyes to ward off the bright sun, searching the way ahead. A hundred feet on, a thick forest of what appeared to be elm trees stood sentinel over the foothills and the mountains beyond. The way through the woods would be rough, and Kaliglia would have to squeeze through here and there, but there could be no turning back