Her screams rang through the quiet cliff cities above the silvery-purple jungle. Inside her private chamber, Zufa Cenva lay sweat-streaked on a pallet. She shrieked in pain, clenching her teeth, her eyes glassy.

Alone. No one dared come near a delirious Sorceress of Rossak.

A metallic doorway curtain rattled with an invisible tele-kinetic force. Wall shelves buckled in the aftershocks of Zufa’s psychic explosions, scattering pots and keepsakes all over the floor.

Her long white hair was wild, quivering with internal energy. Her pale hands gripped the sides of the pallet like scraping claws. If any woman had come close enough to try to soothe her, Zufa would have scratched her face and mentally hurled her against the whitewashed walls.

She screamed again. The chief Sorceress had endured several miscarriages before, but never one so agonizing or disruptive. She cursed worthless Aurelius Venport.

Zufa’s spine shuddered, as if someone had jolted her with electricity. Delicate ornamental objects floated into the air on invisible strings, then flew in every direction, smashing into shards. One hollowed-out irongourd stuffed with dried flowers burst into white flames, crackling and smoking.

She gasped as her body cramped, squeezing her abdominal muscles. It seemed as if this unborn child wanted to kill her, to drag her down to death before she could expel it from her uterus.

Another failure! And she so desperately wanted to produce a true daughter, a successor to lead her fellow Sorceresses to new heights of mental power. The genetic index had misled her again. Damn Venport and his failings! She should have abandoned him long ago.

Out of her head with pain and despair, Zufa wanted to kill the man who had planted the child-seed inside her, even though the pregnancy had been at her own insistence. She had completed the bloodline calculations so carefully, had gone over the genes again and again. Breeding with Venport should have produced only superior offspring.

Nothing like this.

Telepathic blasts echoed into the corridors, sending Rossak women scurrying in terror. Then she saw Aurelius Venport himself standing at the doorway, haggard with worry. His eyes were filled with concern.

But Zufa knew he was a liar.

Unafraid for his own safety, Venport entered their bedchamber, displaying patience, concern, and tolerance. His lover’s mental blasts ricocheted around the large room, overturning furniture. In a petulant attempt to slight him, she smashed a set of tiny hollownut sculptures he had given her during their courtship and genetic testing.

Still, he stepped forward, as if immune to her ferine outbursts. In the hall behind him, muted voices urged caution, but he ignored them. He came to her pallet, smiling with compassion and understanding.

Venport knelt beside the bed, stroking her sweaty hand. He whispered soothing nonsense in her ears. She couldn’t understand his words, but she grasped his fingers until she expected to feel the bones snap. But he remained frustratingly close, not intimidated by her in the least.

Zufa hurled accusations of treachery at him. “I can sense your thoughts! I know you’re thinking only of yourself.”

Her imagination concocted schemes, attributing them to his deviousness. If the great Zufa Cenva was no longer there to protect him, who would keep this man as a pet? Who would care for him? She doubted he could take care of himself.

Then, with greater fear:Or could he?

Venport had sent Norma off on a long journey to Poritrin, arranging everything behind Zufa’s back, as if he believed that a man like Tio Holtzman truly wanted to work with her daughter. What was he planning? She gritted her teeth, wanting to prove that she understood his intentions. Her threats came as sharp gasps. “You can’t . . . let me die, bastard! No one . . . else would . . . have you!”

Instead, he looked at her, coolly patronizing. “You’ve told me many times that I come from a good genetic line, my darling. But I do not desire someone else among the Sorceresses. I prefer to stay with you.” He lowered his voice, looking at her with an oddly intense love that she could not quite fathom. “I understand you better than you do yourself, Zufa Cenva. Always pushing, constantly demanding more than anyone can possibly give. Nobody— not even you— can be perfect all the time.”

With a final prolonged shriek, she expelled her deformed, resistant fetus, a monstrously abnormal creature. Seeing the bright blood, Venport bellowed for assistance, and two brave midwives scurried into the chamber. One reached down with a towel, placing it over the fetus like a shroud, while the other bathed Zufa’s skin, adding pain-numbing salves distilled from jungle spores. Venport sent for the best drugs from his own stockpiles.

Finally, he took the squirming fetus himself, holding the bloody larval thing in his hands. It had dark skin and strange mottled spots that made it look as if proto-eyes had grown all over its limbless body. He saw the thing twitch a final time, then it stopped moving.

He wrapped it up in the towel, trying to ignore the tear in his eye. His expression stony, Venport handed the corrupt fetus to one of the midwives, saying nothing. It would be taken out into the jungles, and no one would ever see it again.

The exhausted Sorceress lay back, shuddering, just now beginning to feel a sense of reality and despair again. The miscarriage had hurt her, leaving her with a deep sadness that went beyond the goals of any breeding program. Her vision returned to focus, and she noticed the psychokinetic destruction she had caused in the room. It all spoke of weakness, of lack of control.

This was her third horrific miscarriage from mating with Venport. Deep disappointment and anger boiled inside her. “I chose you for your bloodline, Aurelius,” she muttered through dry lips. “What went wrong?”

He looked at her, still expressionless, as if his passion had been washed away. “Genetics is not an exact science.”

Zufa closed her eyes. “Failures, always failures.” She was the greatest Sorceress of Rossak, and yet she had endured so many disappointments. Sighing with disgust, Zufa thought of her stunted daughter, not wanting to believe that the ugly dwarf was the best she could achieve.

Venport shook his head, uncharacteristically stern and impatient now that the danger was past. “You have had successes, Zufa. You just don’t know how to recognize them.”

She forced herself to rest, to recuperate. Eventually, Zufa would have to try again, but with someone else.