“He declares that it is for your ear alone,” the Shadow answered.
Her mistress frowned impatiently. She was in no mood to talk with him.
“He waits at the palace door,” continued Creeping Shadow, “and says that he will remain there until you are pleased to receive him.”
“Go, then, and bring him hither,” was the reluctant answer. “I will hear what he has to say.”
Creeping Shadow hastened to obey, and presently returned accompanied by a dwarfed creature, black as the blackest soot and clad in raiment as dusky as himself. It was the Chief Imp, a trusted messenger of the Wizard.
The Shadow Witch especially disliked him. He was at times impertinent when he came on her brother’s errands, therefore she held herself haughtily and folded her robes closer about her when he drew near.
But the Chief Imp bore himself humbly today and his disagreeable face wore an air of deep distress. He bowed himself to the earth, and waited permission to speak.
“What says your master?” demanded the Shadow Witch imperiously. “Speak.”
“Alas!” groaned the Imp, as if in profound grief, “My master lies in his cavern sick unto death. He begs that you will come to him, and, by your magic, restore him to himself.”
The Shadow Witch regarded him unmoved. “Has so great a magician as my brother no magic of his own that will be potent to restore him, that he must ask aid of mine?” she inquired.
“Nay, madam,” replied the Chief Imp, rolling up his eyes, “He has tried every means within his power and grows no better. He turns to you, therefore, in his extremity and beseeches you not to refuse him.”
Knowing, as she did, the craftiness of her brother, the Shadow Witch heard his message with distrust. She knew that if he had discovered that it was by her help that the prince had escaped him and that evil had been brought upon himself, it would go hard with her once she was in his power. Therefore, she determined, before she yielded to his request, to learn from his servant whether or not he suspected her of what she had done. So she bent a searching gaze upon the Chief Imp and began to question him.
“Tell me,” she commanded, “what is this sickness from which your master suffers, and what is its cause?”
The Imp hastened to inform her. “A strange prince penetrated the Cave of Darkness, a short time since. For reasons of his own, the Wizard sought to overpower him with the spell of his Urn of Vapors, but the prince, who had come upon him without warning, suddenly flashed about him a magic weapon, the Sword of Flames, that instantly took from my master all power to protect himself. He cried aloud to us, and at once we hurried him away to an inner chamber, far from its dreadful sway. There he lay for a time insensible, and we feared for his life, but at length, tended by his servants, he became able to move a little, and, at last, even to speak. But that is all.”