wouldn’t have had to resort to all this trickery.”

“But - But, Lord Wulfston,” Jareth stammered, “when did you realize that this was all an elaborate ruse?  They had me fooled until almost the last moment!”

He smiled patiently.  “Almost as soon as Brellen came to us with that wild tale.  He spoke the local ‘untutored worker’ dialect fairly well, but inconsistently, especially when he pretended to be excited.  He was probably considered a rather poor actor back in the Aventine Empire, if he’d ever worked in the theatre.”

Jareth glanced over at the corpse.  “He was an Aventine?!”

“Definitely.  My adopted family tutored me in my birth language, so that I would not forget my heritage as the son of freed Aventine slaves.  There was just enough Aventine flavoring in Brellen’s diction for me to realize the truth about him.”

“Then he must have been an Aventine spy,” the merchant concluded, “sent here to assassinate you.”

“No.  More probably, he was a minor Adept, forced to flee the Aventine Empire to avoid being killed by a mob if his latent powers were discovered,” Wulfston said.  “That’s why I killed him in front of his followers.  If he could have proved himself to them by killing me, he might have gotten other minor Adepts and enough hill bandits to join him to make an impressive army.”

“To seize your lands and stand against your allies?”

“Or loot what they could and flee north before my sister and my friends could gather their forces, which might have taken a while,” he reminded him.  “They are still getting themselves established in their new lands, just as I am.”  The Lord Adept looked toward the campfire and shouted, “Mik!”

One of the horsemen not wearing Wulfston’s livery rode over to them.  Jareth recognized him as the ‘stablehand’ at Zegra.  “This is Mik,” Wulfston introduced, “whom I assigned to watch over you after we left Zegra.  He’s very strong in the Adept talent of putting people to sleep.  Well done, Mik.”

“Thank you, my lord,” Mik said.  “Though I almost failed you at the crucial moment.  That white wolf of yours startled me . . . ”

The wolf!  Astounded that he could have forgotten about such a creature, even with all this going on, Jareth looked back at the cave area.  Nothing.

“He’s gone,” Wulfston shrugged.  “Comes and goes as he pleases.  In truth, he’s no one’s property.  I didn’t expect to see him here, either.”

“Incredible!”  Jareth breathed.  “When I saw those flaming eyes —”

The Lord of the Black Wolf laughed.  “That was just a trick of the light.  The setting sun and the torches.

“After all, Jareth, we all know there’s no such thing as a werewolf . . . ”