Dorad Fallentree caught sight of the lone traveler far down the path and grinned. “My pretty does hunger for fresh blood,” he whispered to the blade, which called itself Serpens.
Its haft looked pewter but was light, and set at its base where blade met haft a single sapphire was mounted, embedded in metal. At the pommel was a screw-on cap, and beneath the cap was a tiny scroll, the spell upon it written so long ago that the ink had faded and the vellum flaked.
But Dorad had no learning to read and would not have cared if he had. All he cared was that it worked, for Dorad was a brigand, preying upon the lone traveler such as he who approached, prowling roads that twisted through forest or up steep hillsides, where terrain made ambush more facile, where help was hard to come by, and where
