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darkness above them, small but wide apart, and the hiss filled the whole stairway, beating at Rod's ears. Enough, he decided, and thought of molecules racing faster and faster, closer and closer together...
    A spark glowed in midair, growing and growing, shedding a dim light on the scene.... Enough for Rod to see a monster snake, gliding down the stair toward him. Its body was at least three feet thick; its mouth opened a foot wide, and that was just enough to let out the hiss. The pits beneath its eyes were minor caves-but it seemed to have been waked in mid-molt. Shreds of skin hung from it, some showing muscle and blood underneath; a rotting crest waved atop its head; wattles hung down from its jaws. There wasn't enough light to tell colors, really, but it seemed to be the grayish-blue of a dead fish's belly.
    The anger surged back, forestalling both panic and nausea. What kind of depraved maniac kept pets like this around the house? Rod drew his sword, trying to think of something a little more effective.
    "Hold fast, Rod." Fess half-reared, striking out with a hoof. The snake almost sneered-until the steel hoof caught it sharply in the face with a soggy crunch. The serpent reared back, hiss rising almost to a shriek, then struck in rage. Page 19
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    But Fess had given Rod just time enough to think up the appropriate response. He wasn't the world's best crafter, but he could manage something simple, and had: he had pulled together the witch-moss at the bottom of the stairs. It now shot toward him, powered by his son's telekinesis-a twenty-foot trident with tines eighteen inches apart. It arced down, catching the snake just behind the head, slamming it down against the stone of the stair. It couldn't pierce the rock-there was a limit to the hardness witch-moss could be formed to-and the center tine bent against the serpent's scales; but the top of the handle bent, too, against the ceiling, pushing like a living thing, and the snake thrashed about, hissing in fury but unable to lift its head against the force of the spear. The whole stairwell resounded with the noise of the giant's thrashing-but it could do no damage; the walls of the spiral held it too closely. Now that it was immobilized, Rod could devote himself to its demise. The stairwell itself seemed to become dim, the snake brighter, as he concentrated all his attention on it, thinking of it as just a huge doughy mass. He felt another mind warring with his, striving to keep the snake in its current form, but he had expected that, and bore down all the harder-with the strength of two minds, one distinct and alien from the Gramarye gene pool and mindset, the other a hybrid with ferocious strength. The witch's power crumbled, and so did the snake; it softened more and more, losing its color and becoming the grayish-pink amorphous mass that was witch-moss in its natural form. Not enough. Rod knew that if he left it raw, the witch could easily re-craft it into the snake, or something even more dangerous, as soon as he and Magnus stopped paying attention to it. He thought of something small and harmless, lots of somethings-and the doughy mass separated into thousands of small curly objects that lightened in color as they hardened. Rod rode on up the stair, through drifts of macaroni that lined both walls. Stray bits of pasta crunched under Fess's hooves, but didn't impede him at all.
    "Not too slippery, is it?" Rod asked.
    "Not when it is uncooked, Rod, no." The robot-horse climbed on up the stair and out into the chamber at the topA chamber hung with scarlet brocades and filled with cushions, downy, tempting-and the most voluptuous wench Rod had ever seen, sloe-eyed and full-lipped, clad only in a swath of gauze about her hips, accentuating that which it concealed. Golden hair tumbled down over her shoulders, parted in the middle to reveal the high curves of full, naked breasts. The houri gave him