They stared at her in stunned horror, until Shaun grabbed her around the throat. "You monster!" he yelled. "You unspeakable pile of filth! You'll tell us now or I'll throttle it out of you!"

     Diana and Matthew had to pull him off her. "It's no use, she won't tell us," said Diana. "She's right, we've got nothing to threaten her with. The only way is to give her what she wants."

     "Absolutely not!" said Shaun. "I completely forbid it! We'll find the Oracle another way, by going to one of the other places she mentioned!"

     "That could take months," said Diana calmly. "Maybe more time than we have. The Shadowarmies could invade at any time. We must take the quickest path to the Oracle, no matter what the personal sacrifice."

     "She's right," said Lirenna, "and I should be the one. With my shae blood I can expect to live two, maybe three hundred years. Maybe longer, as I'm three quarters shayen, not just half. I can afford to lose seven years much easier than you."

     "Rubbish," said Jerry. "As a nome, I could possibly live for up to six hundred years, if the Gods spare me, so by your own argument I should be the one. I'm fed up waiting to grow up, anyway. We nomes take a long time to mature, compared to you biggers."

     "It's my mission," protested Diana, "so I should be the one..."

     "Sorry, you're outvoted," interrupted Jerry with a grin. He turned to the Mad Woman. "Okay lady, I'm volunteering."

     "I need me hands untied," said the old woman, "and I need a coupl'a bits ‘n pieces from the next room."

     "How do we know she won't just kill us all as soon as we set her free to cast spells?" protested Shaun.

     "Good point," said Jerry. "Do you swear by the Gods, old woman, that you will cast only the spell you have described and no other, and that you will do nothing to harm any of us, either directly or indirectly, ever again?"

     "I do swear by ye Gods," said the Mad Woman, "with the provision that I cease ter be bound by it if any one of ye try ter harm me, either directly or indirectly."

     "Agreed," said Jerry. "Untie her, Shaun."

     With great misgivings, Shaun untied her, and watched as she crossed the room to a cupboard, opened it, and took out a handful of dried leaves. "Ye must eat these," she told Jerry, "and ye must submit ter me completely. The slightest bit o' resistance from ye'll ruin the spell, and I c'n cast it but once a year."

     Jerry took the leaves, glanced at the others for a moment, then put them in his mouth, but he found them so bitter that he almost spat them out again. He dutifully chewed them up and swallowed them, though, and the Mad Woman took him through to a bedroom, making him lie down on the hard uncomfortable bed. While the others gathered round protectively to watch, she sat next to him, put one dry, bony hand on his forehead and the other over his heart. With her hissing inhuman voice, she then spoke some archaic magic words in an ancient dialect of the language of magic that had not been heard outside the cottage for over two hundred years.

     The tiny nome screamed in agony as he felt something being torn out of him, as though his heart were being ripped out of his body. He doubled over in pain, and Shaun shoved the old woman away in fury while Diana examined him in fear and guilt. I should have been the one, she thought. What has she done to him?

     "He'll be right as rain in a minute or two," said the Mad Woman. "'Tis merely the shock o' losing so much life all at once."

     Sure enough, Jerry was already sitting up and opening his eyes, and although he was shaking and pale, he seemed to be more or less all right. He had changed a little, though. His short, stubby beard, which before had been a dark, luxuriant brown, now had flecks of grey in it, the beginning of the silvery white that characterised an adult nome, and a few faint lines had appeared around his eyes. He had indeed aged by about seven years.

     The Mad Woman, however, didn't seem to have changed at all. She certainly didn't seem any younger. When Thomas asked her about this, she replied that the spell didn't reverse the ageing process but merely delayed it for about five years. She would not grow any older until that time had elapsed, whereupon the ageing process would continue where it had left off. It seemed to Thomas a poor substitute for the immortality spells used by the mighty Agglemonian wizards.

     "All right," said Diana angrily. "We've paid your price. Now tell us where to find the Emerald Oracle."

     "Tis in the Lonely Isles, in the Western Sea," said the Mad Woman. "Ye go t' the isle o' Greenwing, and position yer ship so ye c'n see the central peak of the island behind the neighbouring island of Arn. Ye then sail directly away in a straight line. The island of the Oracle is shrouded within a dome of invisibility, so ye won't see it ‘til ye're almost atop of it. Ye must not approach it from any other direction, ‘cos ‘tis surrounded by rocks on all sides bar that one."

     "And the Oracle can tell us where the Sceptre is?" asked Diana.

     "Oh aye," said the Mad Woman. "The Oracle knows all that is or was on this world and many others. Mind ye ask the right questions, though, ‘cos each o' ye may ask but one question only in yer lifetimes, and once asked, it will ignore any future queries from ye."

     "How do we know she's telling the truth?" demanded Shaun. "For all we know, she might be making the whole thing up as she goes along."

     "I swear by the Gods that all I say is true," said the Mad Woman, her sunken eyes glittering dangerously.

     "But people say you're mad," said Shaun. "If that's true, you might not be as worried about divine retribution as other people."

     "If ye think that, then nothing I say will change yer mind. Ye must either trust me or not."

     "I believe her," said Diana confidently. "My Lady would not set us on a false trail, and her eagerness to take some of Jerry's life shows that she's still too fond of life to risk angering the Gods." She turned to the Mad Woman. "Thank you for the information. We will now go and leave you in peace, and you will remember your oath not to try to harm us ever again."

     The old woman laughed. "Aye, I will, though I'll miss the taste of yer sweet flesh. Especially hers." She indicated Lirenna. "Over a century, but I still remember the taste o' shae flesh."

     Lirenna paled, and Diana and Thomas subconsciously rubbed their wrists, beginning to itch as the chafed skin began to crust over.

     They left hurriedly, and to their surprise found that it was almost midday. They looked back just once, and saw the Mad Woman's house as it really was for the first time. The fairytale cottage had gone, and in it's place stood an evil looking hovel with empty black windows like the eye sockets of a skull. Vines and creepers covered the walls, and the roof was almost completely buried beneath a shaggy carpet of moss and lichen. They shuddered, turned their backs on it and hurried off as fast as they could.

     They would have been happy to travel all the rest of the day and all through the night to leave the Mad Woman's house behind them, but Jerry was still weak and in pain and Derek and Lirenna were still suffering the after effects of the more powerful spell the mad woman had cast on them, so they decided to rest as soon as they crossed the hills and returned to the normal woodlands close to Andor. They made camp that evening in a small clearing where they could see the stars and a comet shining above them. They had thought that they were too tense to sleep, but they dropped off almost immediately, leaving the two woodsmen awake to keep watch.

     Thomas dreamed that he was a prisoner in the Mad Woman's slaughterhouse. She was sitting on top of him, tilting his head back with one hand and cutting his throat with the other. He felt the knife slicing through his windpipe, his veins and arteries, and saw a crimson fountain of blood spurting up above him while the Mad Woman cackled hysterically. He woke with a shriek, his clothes drenched with sweat, and lay there shivering with fear.

     He knew there was no chance of his getting back to sleep again, so he got up and replaced Shaun on watch. He noticed that Diana had already replaced Matthew, and was sitting on the other side of the camp, watching him strangely.

     The nightmare bothered him. He'd never had a nightmare before. His ordeal must have scared him more than he’d realised and he felt ashamed of the fact. He was a man, and men should be able to handle fear. He was quite certain that none of the others would have been quite as terrified as he'd been. Take Shaun, for instance. He would have been scared, sure, but he'd have been able to cope with it. He wouldn't have struggled so much that he rubbed his wrists until they bled. He wouldn't have tried to beg for mercy.

     Aha, he thought. That's what's really bothering me. The fact that he'd been so afraid that he'd allowed all his dignity and self respect to be stripped away. That he'd been reduced to begging for mercy. That was something that none of the others would have done, he was certain. Shaun would have retained enough self control to spit in her eye, figuratively speaking. He certainly wouldn't have begged. Thomas sat there miserably, consumed by shame as he looked at the sleeping forms of his friends.

     He caught Diana's eye again, and suddenly, somehow, he knew that she knew exactly what he was thinking. She gave him a look that somehow communicated understanding, sympathy, reassurance and also, to his surprise, fear. He suddenly remembered how she'd been when she realised the fate the mad woman had in store for her. How she'd allowed panic to take complete possession of her as she struggled desperately against her bonds.

     She would have begged as well, he realised, and it would have been a thousand times worse for her because she was a cleric. A worshipper of a powerful Goddess who would gather up her soul and lead her to paradise when she died. She wasn't supposed to be afraid of death. In fact, fear of death could be thought of as sinful. She would be thinking that she'd failed her Goddess, that she'd revealed the weakness of her faith.

     Thomas wanted to tell her that it was okay to be scared, that anyone would have been scared, and that made him realise with a shock of surprise and relief that it was okay that he'd been scared. He wanted to tell her this, to explain that her fear had helped him to come to terms with his, but the words wouldn't come. He was afraid that whatever he tried to say would sound false and contrived. He realised that a powerful bond had formed between them, though. The bond of a shared experience.

     He got up and crossed over to her, quietly, so as not to awaken the others. She reached eagerly out to him, and they hugged each other tightly for a long time.