The sholog wizard had gotten there first, however, and was puzzled to find the door standing open when he distinctly remembered closing it before leaving to investigate the commotion by the wall. Someone's been snooping around in my hut! he realised in fury, but his angry first reaction turned to fear as he remembered his spell chest, the iron box within which all his spells were locked. He dashed over to his secret hiding place, looked inside, and was relieved to find the chest still there. He didn't relax, though, until he'd unlocked it with the key he kept on a stout chain around his neck. He opened it, saw the crumpled scraps of paper upon which all his spells were written, and gave a great sigh of relief.

     Most of the other shologs were afraid of him, he knew. As they should be, although they would never have admitted it. Some of them tried to cover their fear by mocking his superior status as a wizard, though, and he worried that they might dare each other to steal his spell chest, as a prank. No sholog could refuse a dare without losing face, even knowing that they would be arousing the wizard's fury and courting certain death. Fortunately, one popular, and far safer, alternative to accepting a dare was to kill the sholog who'd issued the dare, and that was what had kept his chest safe so far.

     Locking the box again and putting it down on a wooden table, he drew his sword and stood stock still, listening for the sound of someone hiding nearby. Shaun arrived back just then, and the sholog heard his footsteps as the woodsman approached and cautiously entered. In the pitch darkness, his invisibility was useless. The sholog judged his approximate location, stepped quietly forward, and swung his sword with all his strength.

☆☆☆

     It would have been the end of Shaun if Thomas hadn't been there. After becoming separated from his friend he'd spotted the wizard easily. He'd become experienced at spotting wizards during his five years at the University, and he could now spot a wizard out of a crowd of hundreds of similarly dressed people without really trying. There was something in the way a wizard walked, the way in which he carried himself, that informed the trained eye that here was someone with power and not afraid to use it. Here was someone better, more important, superior in every way from the rabble around him, someone who shone out like a lamp in a cave. It was an aura of arrogance that Thomas spotted, as easily as though he'd had a huge neon sign above his head spelling out the word ‘Wizard!'

     He'd followed the sholog wizard back to his hut and followed him in, his ethereal form allowing him to pass through the wall as silently as a ghost. He'd then allowed the spell to lapse, allowing his body to assume its customary solidity. He brought the words of his firebolt spell to the forefront of his mind, preparing to cast it while at the same time drawing his dagger. A single firebolt was unlikely to kill such a large creature by itself, though, and he wasn't going to risk finding himself fighting a huge, angry sholog armed only with a tiny knife.

     He waited, therefore, to see whether Shaun would turn up, and watched in fascination as the sholog took the chest from its hiding place and opened it. What was inside? he wondered. Could it be the treasure the nomes had promised? Then he saw the loose sheets of paper, saw the intricately drawn lettering, and his heart leapt with excitement. Spells! And each one on its own individual sheet of paper! No need to worry about magical booby traps such as human wizards so often used to guard their spellbooks. This was a gold mine! This was better than a whole cave full of treasure!

     He would never have had the chance to obtain them, though, if Shaun hadn't happened to arrive just as the sholog wizard froze, listening for the intruder he knew was nearby. Thomas would never have been able to hide for long. The sholog would have felt his way around the room, or perhaps just lit a lamp, and Thomas's single spell would have done nothing to slow the creature as it chopped him in half with its scimitar. Shaun's arrival saved Thomas's life, therefore, and Thomas was able to return the favour as the huge sholog sprang out to attack the entering woodsman.

     He cast his spell, and a fiery bolt of light sprang from his pointing fingertip, striking the sholog with deadly accuracy in the middle of his back. Shaun heard the sholog's cry of rage and pain and leaped inside, drawing his own sword and swinging blindly. By sheer chance the tip of his weapon grazed the sholog's arm and the two antagonists became aware of each other's rough location. Shaun's invisibility remained intact, but in the darkness neither of them could see each other anyway and they were reduced to flailing around blindly with their swords, each hoping to hit the other by sheer chance.

     He'll raise the alarm, though Thomas in rising panic. All he's got to do is cry out and he'll bring the whole tribe down on us. We're finished! Our only chance was to take him by surprise and kill him quickly, but we blew it and now it's us who are going to die...

☆☆☆

     The sholog didn't cry out, though. It toyed with the idea but dismissed it 1almost immediately. Despite being the most deadly, most dangerous creature on the island, he was held in rather low regard by his fellows. Feared, yes, but without respect. Shologs determined status by their prowess in physical combat, either hand to hand or with weapons. Since he needed to spend so much time studying his spells, though, he tended to neglect his weapons training and was consequently just about the worst swordfighter among them, and therefore the lowest ranked. This made him very angry. As a wizard he should, by rights, be first among them, not last! He could throw bolts of lightning, hurl balls of fire, kill by touch alone! They should kneel down before him and hail him as their king. They should honour him as he deserved.

     The trouble was that, like any wizard, he could only cast spells so long as he had enough of the magic force in his body. Once it was all used up he was just an ordinary sholog, and a very poor swordsman, until his body had absorbed some more from the world around him. Also, he had to sleep much more than the others, to keep his head clear, and so missed most of their all night drinking and slave torturing bouts. He had been taunted as a ‘puny bookreading pup' so many times that he was determined not to give them any further reason to denigrate him. He had to defeat this intruder alone, therefore, without help from anyone else. There was no reason he couldn't use his magic, though.

     Stepping back out of range of Shaun's sword, he laid his own sword carefully down on a palmwood table where he could snatch it up again in an instant. He squinted into the darkness, trying to make out the intruder's form. For this spell to work, he would need to see his target. There was nothing there. But that was impossible! Shologs have excellent night vision and with his night adapted eyes he should have been able to see the intruder easily in the tiny glimmer of light filtering in around the edges of the closed door. No matter how hard he stared, though, he could see no sign of his attacker. Shaun, however, unable to get a proper idea of the hut's dimensions in the darkness, accidentally allowed the tip of his sword to strike the log wall beside him, and the jolt of the impact broke the invisibility spell, although he was unaware of the fact.

     The sholog's black lips drew back from his long, yellow teeth in a snarl of rage as he saw a shadowy form appearing from nowhere in front of him, waving his sword about as he cautiously advanced. A wizard! That explained the pain in his back just now. Another ship must have found the island, a ship carrying a wizard. But a wizard with a sword! What was this?

     Thinking wasn't something shologs were very good at, though, or he might have deduced that there were two people in the hut with him, not just one. Instead, he pointed at him with one wickedly clawed hand, spoke the magic words and the hut was briefly illuminated by three small bolts of energy that sped through the air and hit Shaun squarely in the chest. Most of their energy was wasted as they burned through the thick slennhide of his breastplate, but then they were through and the diminished darts struck his unprotected flesh...

☆☆☆

     Thomas tensed up in terror as Shaun writhed in agony, three small flames momentarily dancing through the smouldering holes in his breastplate before being replaced by coiling plumes of smoke. Gleefully, the sholog snatched up his sword and rushed forward to finish him off. Thomas gasped with shock and, acting without thinking, he pointed his finger and spoke the words of the firebolt spell again, forgetting that he could only store enough of the magic force in his body to cast it once a day.

     He remembered while he was still speaking the words, but there were only one or two syllables left and he spoke them out of pure force of habit. To his shock and surprise, though, another bolt of fire shot from his finger, striking the Sholog wizard and throwing him off balance as a shock of pain lashed through him.

     The sholog spun around, sweeping with his scimitar in the hope of hitting his second attacker, but Thomas had jumped back out of range and was cowering on the floor behind a small table, quivering with fear. The sholog knew he’d been hit by a very minor spell, though, and knew his enemy would have used a more powerful one if he'd had one. That meant the first man, climbing painfully back to his feet and shakily raising his sword, was the more dangerous enemy and he spun about to face Shaun again, swinging his sword wildly in the hope of hitting the woodsman before he was fully recovered.

     They traded blows for a minute or so, the sholog grinning wickedly as he drove the weakened human back, and he made hand motions with his free hand, speaking the words of another, more powerful, spell. There was a chance that the spell would fail or misfire, as it really needed both hands to cast it, but luck was with him and as he finished the last gurgling, barking syllables his hands began to glow with a cold, blue fire, lighting the hut and filling it with dancing shadows.
     Thomas recognised the spell with a shiver of fear. Freezing touch! All he had to do now was touch Shaun and he would be dead, frozen solid like a carcass hanging in a butcher's freezer. The sholog saw the human standing a few feet away, crouched over in pain, his free hand on his burned chest and fear on his face as he saw another magical attack coming. The sholog glanced around, looking in vain for the second intruder, and Thomas saw it sneering with contempt. Hiding like a coward, Thomas imagined it thinking. Run off and left his friend to face me alone. Left him to die alone.
     So do something! Thomas told himself angrily, but his body stubbornly refused to move. He could only watch as, with a savage grin, the sholog swung his sword, forcing Shaun to swing his own sword to parry him. The sholog wizard then jumped under his guard, thrusting forward with his glowing blue hand.

     Shaun's eyes widened with terror as he faced the sure and certain knowledge that he was going to die, but the deadly attack never came. Just as the sholog lunged forward, Thomas gave a cry of terror and jumped forward, stabbing with his knife and grabbing the sholog around the neck with his free hand. The sholog threw him off with scarcely a twitch of his powerful shoulders, but he'd bought Shaun the time he needed to recover and the woodsman swung his sword with all his strength, severing the sholog's head from his shoulders and sending it across the hut to land on the dusty floor with a sickening thud. It rolled like a ghastly ball until it came to a stop beside the table where it glared balefully up at the ceiling while its body crumpled and fell at Shaun's feet.

     Shaun gave a sigh of relief as the glowing blue fire died away with the sholog's life, plunging the hut back into darkness. "Thanks, Tom," he muttered, leaning against the wall and sinking to the floor, his face a grimace of pain.

     "How do you feel?" asked the wizard, still trembling with adrenalin. He carefully unbuckled the woodman's breastplate and lifted it off. Then he opened the woodsman's shirt to examine his chest. He gave a gasp of horror at the large areas of burned flesh. It looked as though he'd been poked several times with a red hot poker. Shaun was lucky to be alive.

     "I'll live," the woodsman replied, although he didn't look too sure of the fact. "We've got to tell the others, tell them he's dead." He gave a nod of his head towards the beheaded sholog, lying in a spreading pool of blood.

     Thomas nodded and removed the third bottle of potion from his pocket, giving thanks to the Gods that it had managed to remain unbroken. "Will you be okay until I get back?" he asked anxiously.

     "I'll be fine," Shaun assured him. "Go."

     Thomas nodded and drank the potion, and a moment later he was ethereal again and on his way back out of the village as fast as he could swim. There was nowhere in the single roomed hut for Shaun to hide. He just had to hope that none of the other shologs would come barging in. How long will it take to get the sailors? the wizard wondered. Say an hour to cover the two mile distance back to the ship, another hour or so to convince them that the sholog wizard really was dead and to get ready to fight, and another hour to get back here. Three hours minimum. That meant they would probably attack at dawn. Could Shaun remain undiscovered that long?

    He swam through the etherial realm as fast as he could, desperate to bring help in time to save the life of his friend.