Tala staggered in fear and almost fell. She spun around and searched the leafy canopy above her and there she was; the ghostly outline of the ancient woman she'd seen in the cottage. She tried to back away but found herself frozen to the spot. The Crone was using a Compulsion against her.

     <My man Bronn is on his way,> the ancient witch added. <He's pretty angry with your Knight for the death of his dad. He's looking forward to paying him back for that. And when he's done that he's going to collect you and bring you back to me. The circles are still here, waiting for you. All they need is a little more blood to freshen them up.>

     Tala almost didn't hear her words, though. She was too busy trying to move, to get away. Her limbs refused to obey her, though, and she could only stand there as if waiting patiently for a friend to arrive. Somewhere nearby she heard Gareth chasing after her but then all sounds of motion from that direction ceased to be replaced by the sounds of a man walking across a carpet of fallen leaves. Bronn, Tala knew. And Gareth was hiding from him. He knew he wouldn't stand a chance against the witch's servant in his present condition so he was lying flat on the ground, hoping that the scant undergrowth would hide him from the other man's sight. It was only a fool's hope, though, as the Knight must have known. It was only a matter of time before he was found.

     And then Bronn would come for her. He would blindfold her as she stood paralysed by the Crone's Compulsion and tie her hands with a thin strip of leather, making sure it was too tight for her invisible hands to undo. And then he would lead her helplessly back to the cottage where the Crone would resume her interrupted ceremony, this time with no-one to save her.

     Panic tried to take control of her. She wanted to beg and plead for her life, even though she knew it would be useless. She sensed sympathy from the Crone, which terrified her even more. The older witch clearly felt that her soul was as good as in the younger woman's body already and that there was nothing left to do but wait for her manservant to avenge his father's death.

     Something within Tala rebelled, though. She wouldn't just give up. It wasn't within her to do so. The witch was more powerful than she was, it was true, but she was also old. Was it possible that her ancient heart wouldn't be up to a strenuous effort? Might she just drop dead if the effort proved to he too much? It was a small hope but it was all she had. She took a moment to gather her strength, therefore, and then tried to move with all her might.

     It was hopeless. It was as if her limbs were made of stone, and she sensed that it would be the same no matter how much strength she had. <That's right,> the Crone confirmed as if sensing her thoughts. <The strength of the body is useless against the strength of the spirit. Struggle all you want. I can hold you here for as long as I need to.>

     Tala felt a bright burst of new hope, though, as the Crone's words gave her an idea. She had strength of the spirit too. She was also a witch, just like the Crone. She looked upwards at where the Crone's astral form still hovered above her and opened her Eyes that Bite.

     She hadn't known whether the Eyes would work against a purely spiritual opponent, but to her delight the Crone drew back in shock and surprise. She recovered quickly, though, and rushed forward again. <You dare?> she hissed, suddenly angry, but Tala imagined that there was a trace of fear in there as well. <You think you can use your green Eyes against me? Against me?>

     The Crone's Compulsion vanished, to be replaced by invisible hands that wrapped around the younger woman like a snake, making her feel as if she were being crushed by a giant fist. She ignored the pain and intensified her own attack, putting more force into her eyes than she ever had before. The Crone gasped in pain and fury. <You fool!> she said, her ephemeral eyes blazing with anger. <I can crush the life out of you with the slightest effort.>

     <But you need me alive,> Tala reminded her, straining to put even more power into her eyes. <You can't hurt me, but there's no reason for me not to hurt you. That gives me the advantage.>

     <Stop it!> the Crone demanded. <Or when you're in this ancient body I'll keep you alive and punish you for your foolishness. You'll regret your decision to defy me a thousand times before I finally let you die.>

     Far from being scared, though, Tala was encouraged. <I don't think you'd be making threats if you were so certain of victory,> she said. <You know what I think? I think you normally choose girls younger than me to be your next body. Girls whose powers are only just beginning to appear. I think you had no choice but to choose me because there are so few of us still alive, and I'm old enough to be a serious threat to you. You're old, Crone. How long can you keep this up? How long before you collapse from the effort?>

      The Crone hissed with fury, but now there was definite fear as well. Tala could sense her straining with the effort of shielding herself against Tala's green eyes. From somewhere Tala found an ounce more strength and put it into her eyes, glaring it straight into the barely visible, shimmering form above her that was now quivering with the effort. The Crone's invisible hands strengthened their grip on her and Tala gasped as she felt a sharp pain in her chest. She wondered if it was one of her ribs breaking. She ignored it and continued the attack with all the strength she had left.

     <Bronn!> Tala heard the Crone crying out. <Forget the Knight. I need you here. Come take care of the girl. Blindfold her.>

     Tala didn't hear if the man replied. All her concentration was on the Crone who was now visibly close to collapsing with the effort. Tala could feel a pain building up behind her eyes, though, and knew she wouldn't be able to keep this up much longer. She relaxed the force she was putting into her green eyes just a little, therefore. Just enough to allow her to build up a small reservoir of strength. She sensed the Crone gasping with relief, but then Tala returned her attack to full power, along with the small amount of strength she'd saved up. She put it all into a single spike of pure mental power and hurled it at the Crone like a nail being driven by a hammer. Right into her head.

     The Crone cried out in pain and her astral form vanished. Tala fell to her knees as the power that had been crushing her vanished but she knew it was only a temporary victory. The Crone would be jerking upright in her bed, back in the cottage, rubbing her throbbing head and spitting curses as she prepared to return to the fight. Tala only had moments before the elder witch's astral form would be back, and she knew she no longer had the strength to repeat her feat. Also, Bronn was probably on his way, if his loyalty to the Crone was stronger than his need for vengeance against Gareth. Tala had only gained herself a breathing space. What could she do with it?

     If she just waited to be attacked again, she was finished. She had to launch an attack of her own, but how? The cottage was too far away. There was no way she'd get to it in time, on foot. There was only one way. She would have to create her own astral projection and send it to attack the Crone in the cottage. If the Crone was also sending her astral form to attack Tala then her body would be seemingly lifeless and helpless. Tala would be able to simply crush her heart with her invisible hands, something the Crone couldn't do to her. She could put an end to the Crone as simply as that if she could figure out how to send as astral projection, and quickly.

     How do you send your soul out of your body? Well, she mused, three quarters of being able to do something is simply knowing it's possible and the Crone had proven that. All she had to do was figure out the remaining one quarter. She laughed bitterly at the thought, but then brightened as she remembered what it had felt like when the Crone had tried to pull her soul out of her body. What if she tried to recreate that feeling? Was it possible? Would it work?

     She tried. She lay down on the leafy forest floor and imagined her soul lifting up, away from her body. To her delight, it worked! Suddenly she was seeing the forest differently, as if with her soul rather than with her eyes, and when she looked down she saw her body lying, apparently lifeless, on the ground. The sensation was bizarre and delightful, but she didn't dare take the time to appreciate it. The Crone's astral form might already be on its way. She willed herself to move, therefore, and sped through the forest, back towards the cottage.

     It took her a while to find it, and she was filled with dismay as she sped back and forth through the trees trying to remember the path she'd taken away from it. What was happening to her body while she was away from it? Was Bronn even now binding her limbs with leather thongs? Was he making sexual use of her body? She forced herself not to consider the possibility. One enemy at a time, and the Crone was definitely the most dangerous of the two. She carried on searching, therefore, trying to control the sense of desperation that kept trying to overwhelm her, and suddenly there it was. An abandoned, decaying wreck of a house that still showed poignant signs of having once been the happy home of a family. What had happened to that family, she wondered? Had they been struck down by the fever, the same pestilence that had claimed her mother? She dismissed the stray through and sped in.

     She found the Crone in a back room, lying on a new bed that the witch had clearly brought in to sleep on for the duration of her stay. There were other personal items scattered around the room but Tala had no chance to look at them as the Crone leapt to her feet, staring in surprise. "What a quick learner you are," she said in clear admiration. "I think you may have gone on to become the greatest witch that ever lived, if you had lived a little longer. What a pity."

     Tala reached out with her invisible hands to crush the Crone's heart, but stopped. She couldn't do it. She couldn't take a life. The Crone laughed, seeing her hesitation, and suddenly her eyes were blazing with fire and light.

     It was the first time that Tala had felt the Eyes that Bite used against her and she cried out in shock and pain. Was this what she'd been doing to other creatures? If she'd known she was causing such suffering she would never have been able to do it. She felt her astral form withering, like a damp leaf thrown onto a bonfire. She drew back. She had to get away, back to her own body. She had to escape this pain...

     But if she did that, she would be captured and killed. She had this one chance to save herself, and Gareth. That thought brought her to a halt and gave her new strength. If she failed, the Knight would die as well as herself. If you can't kill to save yourself, she told herself, then kill to save him, and all the other young girls the Crone would claim in the future every time her body grew old. Save them, she commanded herself. You have to save them.

     She reached out with her invisible hands again, through the witch's thin, papery skin and into her body. There was the old woman's heart, thin and calloused with age and beating rapidly with desperate effort. How could someone so old and frail maintain this level of psychic activity? she wondered. The Crone must be close to just dying as the feeble blood vessels in her heart and brain burst from the pressure. Tala hesitated, suddenly hopeful that the older witch might die on her own and spare her the need to become a killer, but the Crone sensed her reluctance and redoubled the strength of her green eyes. Tala felt her astral form on the verge of collapsing, as the Crone's had, sending her tumbling back to her body in defeat...

     Tensing herself up to do the unspeakable, Tala wrapped the fingers of her invisible hand around the Crone's heart. At the very touch, the Crone cried out and the deadly power of her eyes died away. Tala took the opportunity to grab a blanket with her invisible hands and wrap it around the old woman's head, ending the threat of her green eyes.

     "Not easy, is it, to take a life," said the Crone from inside the blanket. She lifted her withered hands to pull it away and Tala grabbed her bony wrists with her invisible hands. Physically, the Crone was frail and weak. Tala was able to hold her easily.

     "I remember the first time I took a life," the Crone replied. "When my first body began to grow old. I knew I could take a new body, but it took me a long, long time to find the will to do it. My own body almost died while I strove for year after year to work my way up to doing it. Can you do the same in just a few minutes? That's how long you've got until Bronn finds you, and when he does he'll put his hand over your face. Keep the breath from entering your body until you lose consciousness. He might be doing it even now. How do you feel, Tala?"

     She was playing for time, Tala knew. Buying time for Bronn to find her. She should just kill the Crone while she could, but she still hesitated. The older witch was right. If wasn't easy to kill, and the more she thought about it, the harder it became. The Crone was five hundred years old. The things she must have witnessed in that time. The history she must have observed. A wealth of experience and, yes, wisdom. Maybe even an evil murderer could accumulate wisdom over such a span of time, and the thought that Tala could wipe it all from existence with a simple squeeze of her hand seemed horribly obscene. The Knights called her evil. If she committed an act of murder, even in self defence, how could they not be right?

     It seemed that the Crone could sense her moral crisis and had decided to take advantage of it. "I was the first, you know," she said conversationally. "The very first witch. I found the glowing stone that had fallen from the sky and felt its power going into me. All other witches are descended from me. You are descended from me." The Crone cackled. "What do you think of that?"

     <Then the first person whose body you stole must have been your daughter or granddaughter,> said Tala, horrified. <How could you kill your own blood?>

     "My granddaughter," the Crone replied. "Her name was Connie, but don't think too badly of me for killing her. She was wicked, using her green to torment animals instead of helping them. The world was better off without her."

     <You're a monster!> cried Tala in outrage. <You're evil! A killer.>

     "Aye," said the Crone, "and if you kill me you'll be just the same."

     The accusation shocked Tala and she felt her astral form quivering in the air above the old woman. <Not the same,> she replied, trying to make herself believe it. She felt that the Crone had somehow turned the tables on her and that she was now the accused, with the Crone the prosecutor in gown and wig, striding back and forth across the courthouse as she turned the jury against her. <I'll be killing you to save lives. The lives of innocent girls not yet born whose bodies you'll steal to prolong your own obscene existence.>

     "Then kill me," the Crone dared her defiantly. "Kill me now."

     Tala reached out with her invisible hands again. If she didn't do it now, she knew, she never would. She, Tala, would die. So would Gareth and unknown girls to come. Girls who would curse her name if she didn't save them now, when she had the chance.

     She reached out towards the Crone's heart, but try as she might she couldn't do it. She couldn't kill. Her astral form shrank in on itself to form a luminous, pale globe floating near the ceiling, weeping bitter tears of fear and defeat, while the Crone laughed and laughed in jubilant triumph.