"I have cast a Cage spell around you," explained the wizard. "It will protect you from the spirit I am about to conjure. Only a minor spirit. A puck. Something I can easily conjure on my own, but quite capable of gobbling you up if the Cage spell fails. You may nod once to show you understand this."

     Tak nodded, his forehead beaded with nervous sweat. He thought seriously about running, of getting the hell out of there before his master could raise the spirit. He had no doubt, though, that Molos Gomm could strike him down before he could reach the stairs, and having demonstrated his unreliability the old wizard might well end his life there and then. A small flame of pride began to burn inside him. He'd pass this bloody test! He'd show him! Besides, after all the hard work of teaching him, he couldn't believe he'd put him in a position in which he had no chance of survival. Having put so much into him, Molos Gomm would want a return on that investment; a long career as a valuable assistant. He stayed put, therefore, while Molos Gomm moved away and began the casting of another spell.

     First he created another magic cage. A larger one thirty feet across that enclosed Tak and the centre of the room. This one was more robust, and Molos Gomm explained that it would be impassible to Tak as well as the spirit. If his personal cage failed, he would be trapped in with the creature. He then spent another few minutes describing what the thing would do to him. How other victims had clawed their own faces off or had the flesh flayed from their bones, or been turned inside out, and how some of the less fortunate had still been alive when the fiend had finished with them and returned to its own dimension.

     "I saw a young man once," he said conversationally, as if discussing the weather. "About your age. Tried dabbling in a bit of conjuration but failed to take sufficient precautions with his personal protection. When I found him, he'd been opened up like a rat on a dissecting table. I could see his heart beating inside the gaping ruin of his ribcage. He begged us to kill him, but my master (did I mention this was during my apprentice days?) made me watch him for half an hour until he died naturally. Most important lesson old Claff ever taught me. Oh well, can't stand here chatting all day."

     He began the casting of the summoning spell, while Tak shivered with terror, aware that even a muscle twitch could leave him helpless and exposed. He knew the story had been made up. A man simply couldn't live, injured the way he'd described. He'd been trying to scare him, to see if fear alone could break his self control. It had terrified him nevertheless, but it also made him angry and even more determined to pass this test. I'll show him! he vowed silently. I'll show him he can't scare me with horror stories!

     Molos Gomm had lit several candles and one of the braziers and was now sprinkling a white powder into the flames, generating the pungent smell of burning rubber and thick, black smoke that coiled near the ceiling. He then began intoning long, terrible words of magic, each of which made the flames leap and dance. The air in the middle of the room began to shimmer and ripple like water. There was a sound like ripping cloth, and suddenly there was something there. Something so horrible that the mere sight of it almost made Tak cry out and stumble away in terror.

     It was basically humanoid. The general arrangement of features and limbs was that of all the intelligent mammalian races inhabiting the island continent of Garon, but it was distorted and deformed worse than any of the aborted fetuses stored in bottles of alcohol in Molos Gomm's divination laboratory. It was what one of those stillborn monsters might have looked like, perhaps, if, by some godless miracle, it had lived and grown to adulthood.

     Its upper body was strong and well formed, except for the hands that were little more than twisted hooks of gristle and bone bearing dirty yellow nails as long and sharp as daggers. The legs, though, were shrunken and twisted. So puny and weak that the creature should not have been able to stand. Somehow it did stand, though.  It not only stood but capered back and forth across the room until it bumped into one or other of the room's containment spells. The head was bald and bulbous, more swollen on one side than the other so that the facial features were pushed over. One hideous yellow eye was almost hidden beneath a protruding brow ridge, while the other bulged the size of a tennis ball but blind and sightless, the tiny pupil leaking a thin dribble of pus. The nose was a gaping hole in the front of its face and saliva drooled idiotically from the slack, toothless mouth.

     The creature was an apparition of such sickening, paralysing horror that only a supreme act of willpower allowed Tak to remain motionless, but he felt the gorge rising in his throat and was helpless to stop it. He was going to throw up. He'd be bent over by the convulsions of his stomach. The cage spell would be broken, and the creature would rip him open with one of those powerful talons...

     "Interesting," mused Molos Gomm. "I haven't seen this one before."

     The puck heard him and loped over in his direction, bellowing in fury, and Tak felt his stomach settling as it moved away from him. It can't hurt me, his panicked mind gibbered over and over. So long as I remain still, it can't hurt me.

     "I'll give you about an hour," the old wizard said, preparing to leave and ignoring the spirit where it spat at him and beat the magical barrier with its powerful talons. "Hope to see you still alive when I get back."

     No, wait! Tak wanted to cry out. Don't leave me alone with it! He had just enough sanity to keep still and silent, though, but he turned his eyes as far as they'd go in their sockets to watch him descending the stairs, passing out of sight. A few moments later he heard a door open and close. He was alone.

     His whole body seemed to turn to jelly as the spirit twisted its head around to look at him with its one good eye, and his own eyes brimmed over with tears of shame as his bladder failed him and he felt warmth spreading down his legs. He had never been this scared. Not when he'd seen his family killed by shologs in the forest. Not when he'd been wrapped up in the tentacles of the reacher and being pulled helplessly towards the water. Not when Molos Gomm had first brought him to Castle Nagra and he'd realised the nature of his interest in him, or when Jack Nowl had had him in his power. He would willingly have returned to any of those situations to escape from this one. If he'd known that his beloved sister was still alive he would have given her to the creature to save himself. He would have done anything. Anything!

     The puck gave a gurgling bellow of rage, and Tak screwed his eyes shut, only realising once he'd done it that even this might have been enough to make the cage spell fail. His soul shrieked in despair, but the spirit thumped into the still active barrier surrounding him and spun away to the floor, its limbs flailing. Then it was back on its impossibly shrunken feet and hurling itself at the barrier again, and again and again, swinging its massive claws at the imprisoned apprentice, the barrier spell turning them aside mere inches from his soft, vulnerable flesh. Tak allowed himself to breathe a little easier, but his heart pounded with such force that he feared it might fail from the overexertion and that he would collapse from sheer terror.

     The assault on the cage spell ceased and Tak opened his eyes cautiously, to see the creature's face mere inches away from his own, examining him with its sunken good eye. The spell was no barrier to the creature's foul breath, though, and Tak wanted to gag and retch at the reek of rotting, diseased flesh. The monster reached one clawlike hand out until it reached the barrier and stopped. Then it carefully traced its circumference, looking for a weakness while its eye glared at him with malevolent hatred and a cruel, naked hunger. Tak somehow knew in that moment that it didn't just want to kill him or eat him. Nothing so mundane as that. It wanted to do things to him. Things of such loathsome depravity that even Molos Gomm would have recoiled in horror from the very thought. He saw all this in its eye by some kind of horrid telepathy and the terror soared to new heights at the knowledge that it would have its way with him if he so much as twitched.

     The creature discovered that it could push the barrier an inch or two inwards if it exerted all its strength, and with a shriek of glee it concentrated on trying to reach his shoulder, the part of him closest to the barrier. The first two attempts failed, but on the third try it succeeded in pushing the barrier inwards far enough that his upper arm was momentarily exposed.

     Tak felt a sharp pain and was jerked forward by the talon raking his flesh. The creature danced in jubilation, its eyes rolling in ecstasy as it licked the blood from a daggerlike fingernail. Tak sank back in black despair. Surely now the barrier had fallen. He'd been moved more than the cage spell would allow. His only chance was to run for it. If he could reach the outer barrier before the creature...

     But Molos Gomm had said it was as impassable to him as it was to the spirit. Or had he just said that to increase his fear? If it had been the truth then he was dead. The chance that his master had been lying was the only chance he had. He had nothing to lose, he had to try it. He waited for the creature to dance a good distance from him, therefore, to give him as much of a headstart as possible, and in the meantime he remained motionless, not wanting to warn it of his intentions.

     It was coming back to him, though. He closed his eyes and waited for the end. All that happened, though, was a thud as it hit the barrier again. The cage spell was still up! Being jerked forward by the creature hadn't made it fail. It must only be movements initiated by him that would spoil it. He almost cried out in relief, but his joy was short lived. It was trying to get his arm again.

     Its next attempt caught up a fold of his robe but missed the flesh beneath. The seam around the shoulder tore and the smooth, pale skin of his upper arm was exposed in the opened gap. The next lunge tore the sleeve away, baring his whole arm. Blood flowed in a crimson trickle from a wound above his elbow, dripping from the tips of his fingers. How much hurt could it do him? he wondered in sick horror. If it succeeded in pulling him closer to the barrier, would it be able to strip all the flesh from the bone? He prayed for Molos Gomm to come back, to banish the creature and end his ordeal. He'd do anything he wanted! Serve his pleasure with a joy and enthusiasm he'd never offered before if he would only come back now! Now! Right now! Please! Oh please!

     But Molos Gomm didn't come and he felt another pain in his arm as the puck scored another hit. The blood was flowing freely now and he could do nothing to stem it. He couldn't even move back into the centre of the circle. As though that weren't bad enough his legs were starting to get tired. Molos Gomm had taught him the trick of shifting his weight from one foot to the other to help the circulation, but he didn't know if even that much movement was allowed and he didn't dare find out. He'd been told it would only be an hour. Surely he could hold out that long, but how much of that hour had already passed? Fifty minutes, or only five?

     The puck, scenting victory, attacked the barrier with new enthusiasm, whooping and howling with diabolical glee, saliva frothing and foaming around its twisted, toothless mouth. It capered in front of the desperate apprentice, who was certain now that his end was not far away. It danced before him, thrusting its hideous head forward, leering and sticking out a long, tentacular tongue that dripped thick, yellow saliva. Then it went back to work on his arm and Tak could only close his eyes and wait for the sharp pain of another slashing wound.

     The creature backed away from him, crouching and leaning forward, its eye fixed in its target, and then it launched itself at him, gathering momentum from a long run up and throwing all its weight at the cage spell. The barrier was pushed inward further than ever before, leaving half of Tak's body momentarily exposed. His arm was seized between talons that cut like razors and he screamed, his self control destroyed at last as the slobbering mouth closed over his shoulder. He threw his arms up in a hopeless attempt to fend it off and the cage spell burst like a soap bubble...

     "Enough!" cried Molos Gomm and he barked a pair of magic words, one hand outstretched towards the puck. The creature howled in frustration and fury and vanished, leaving behind a reek of sulphur, and the young wizard collapsed, weeping and shivering. Molos Gomm dissolved the outer barrier and strode over, his face as hard as granite. He pulled Tak roughly to his feet, picked up the torn sleeve and used it as a bandage to bind his shredded arm. "Stop blubbering, boy!" he snapped irritably. "What are you, a man or a baby?"

     "It got me!" wailed Tak, clutching hold of the older wizard's arms and holding on as if his feet were hanging over a cliff. "It g-g-got me!"

     "A couple of scratches," sneered Molos Gomm contemptuously. "I've been injured worse than that by things that would snap your sanity like a rotten thread. You don't see me blubbing like a baby. In this job you get hurt now and then. It's just one of those things."

     "Just one of those things?" cried Tak in sudden fury, beating his master on the chest with his fists. "If you hadn't come back at that exact moment... Just one of those drassing things!"

     "I never went away," explained the old wizard. "I created an illusion of myself leaving. I wanted to see how you coped."

     It took a few moments for the words to sink in, and then Tak was staring at him in astonishment. "You mean I was never in any danger?"

     "You most certainly were. Dispelling the puck takes a few moments of preparation. I had decided to end the test when it wounded you the first time and had begun the banishment. Otherwise, nothing I did could have saved you. If your self control had failed earlier I would only have been able to watch as it carried you back to its own dimension, where it would have revealed itself to you in its true form."

     Tak felt a glow of pride, but Molos Gomm's face hardened when he saw it. "Of course, if you'd had the courage and control to remain standing where you were, there would have been no need for me to save you," he said. "I always knew you were a weakling. Now I know it. I'm going to have to think long and hard about whether you can be trusted to take part in the coming ritual."

     The glow of pride remained, though. "But I passed the test," said Tak happily "I survived."

     "Passed the test?" cried Molos Gomm in outraged indignation. "I had to end the test early, to save your life!"

     Tak knew he was right, though. He had passed. Passed with flying colours, in fact, but Molos Gomm would never say that. Instead, he frowned the frown Tak had learned to fear.

     "I suppose I'll have to use up another of my precious Potions of Healing to fix your arm," he growled, as if the injury was Tak's fault, "and then your favourite job needs doing again."

     Tak shrivelled into himself with horror and revulsion but he didn't dare speak out against it. Besides, after his encounter with the puck, cleaning out a few hundred gallons of putrifying sewage no longer seemed quite so bad. At least it wouldn't try to eat him. The thought, along with his reaction at having come so close to a horrifying death, made him giggle a little hysterically.

     "What!" cried Molos Gomm furiously, and suddenly there was a heavy wooden staff in his hand, knotholed and knobbly. "Think it's funny do you? Think it's funny?" He began beating the terrified apprentice, who could only collapse into a quivering ball and wait for it to be over.