Pages of Pain

Pains Of The Mind

Black hair and ebony eyes, a cleft chin and sun-bronzed skin, he is no denizen of mine. He shoves his way through the teeming lanes of the Lower Ward, both arms wrapped around that enormous amphora he carries and no hand free for his sword. He wears the bronze armor of Thrassos, with no cape to protect against the acid haze that always hangs in this part of the city. From his belt dangles a purse, fat and naked, just daring some fingersmith to ply his trade. The gray-swaddled crowd swirls around him with scarcely a stare; with Abyssal fiends and celestial seraphim walking the streets, they have better things to heed than wide-eyed pilgrims too naive to hide their coin.

A clever disguise, but I know that Thrasson for a Hunter. Those ebony eyes can see through my thickest granite walls, and that long aquiline nose can smell a drop of blood at a hundred paces. Those ears-small and shaped like shells, in the human fashion – those ugly little ears can hear a hiss of pain in the next ward. He has one of those long forked tongues that can taste the fear of those who have. looked upon my face. And if the Thrasson presses his hands to the cobblestones, he can feel the coldness of my passing. I know he can.

In Sigil, the Lady of Pain always knows. I hear all the lies whispered into all the tepid ears in the dark bedchambers of all the great manors. I see every hand that slips into an open pocket on every bustling street, and I feel the dagger that bums in the belly of every trusting fool who ever followed a glitter girl into a dark alley. No longer can I tell where Sigil begins and I end; no longer can I separate what I perceive from what the city is. I am Sigil.

(In a dreary room where sick men slake their secret fevers, a yellow-bruised girl climbs naked from the zombie pit. She opens her palm and walks the aisles and does not cringe when the hot hands caress her thighs. She lives the best way she can; in Sigil, the noblest act is to survive.)

I open my eyes, and the Lady of Pain is there-not just watching, but stalking the Hunter up the teeming street, with the clamor of forge hammers ringing in my ears and the stink of hot slag scorching my nostrils. She is tall and serene, a statuesque beauty of classic features, with sulfurous eyes and a cold, callous air. A halo of many-styled blades surrounds her head, some notched and pitted, others silver and gleaming, but all keen-edged and tainted with blood. The hem of her brocaded gown sweeps along the grimy cobblestones, but never soils.

My gray-swaddled denizens bustle by, blissfully unaware that she – no, I – that I walk among them. Only if my feet break touch with the ground will they notice me, and I am careful to keep my shoes on the street. Better for them to see the Lady of Pain when they have offended me, when they feel the fear eating their.bellies and hear the death gods calling their names.

Whenever my denizens brush against me, tiny white welts rise on their skin. Before my eyes, these blisters swell into thumb-shaped pods. They begin to grow more slowly, then sprout dozens of hooked spines. As the crowd mills about, the barbs catch hold of anything they touch, and the husks pass to fresh carriers. They continue to enlarge and soon latch onto someone new, then someone else after that, and it is not long before a sea of bulging pods is spreading steadily outward around me.

My denizens continue to bustle about their business. They cannot see the pods, nor feel the extra weight, nor even smell the fetid reek that clings to their bodies. Only I perceive the husks, slowly swelling and turning emerald and gold and ruby and jet; only I see them oozing yellow ichor and starting to throb like hearts.

Thus are the four Pains spread through the multiverse- agony, anguish, misery, and despair-to ripen and burst and bring low the mighty and the meek alike. From whence they come, I do not remember. It may be that I create them myself, or that they rise from some hidden place deeper and blacker than the bottom layer of the Abyss, where smoke hangs thick as rock and death is the sweetest memory. I can only say there is a void in my chest where I once had a heart, and from this emptiness springs all the suffering in the multiverse.

At first, the Pains are like a kiss, hot and breathy and welcome. They reach out with long cajoling fingers and make my bones hum with delight. I warm to the touch and, though I know what must follow, yearn for more. My flesh tingles and flushes and shudders, and the more my ecstasy builds, the more the void pours forth. It fills me to glutting, sates me with honeyed rapture until bliss rolls half a turn and becomes sweet agony. Then my body nettles with a blistering itch no ointment can heal. And the greater my woe, the more scalding the anguish that seethes from the empty well inside. I boil in my own sick regret, and I cannot staunch the flow. It billows up in white plumes and blanches my bones with sorrow; I bum with the shame of a thousand evils I cannot recall, and still the well pours forth. It fills me as fire fills a forge, until I must burst or scour myself clean on the swarming streets of Sigil.

They are a gift, these Pains.

(A bottle of Arborea's best in one hand and a chain of Ossan pearls in the other, a jolly merchant home early flings open his door to see his young wife lying cold and blue on the floor, her child clinging to her breast and wailing for a reason. There is no reason; only life and suffering and then a terrible lingering emptiness, and, hard as I try, I cannot see beyond that)

Pain can force fathers to forsake their daughters and heroes to betray their kingdoms. It can change the hearts of tyrants, or subdue the lands of proud and vicious warriors. It is pain that makes wives hate husbands and immortals beg for death, and only pain that can shackle whole planes to the will of a single lord.

And so the gods send their Hunters; they thirst for the Pains as flames thirst for tinder. The wicked ones would make a weapon of suffering; they would spread it among their enemies and brandish it over the heads of their comrades. And worse would the good ones do; they would drive torment from the multiverse altogether-destroy misery if they could-and end forever all suffering and despair.

Frauds and fools, every one – and the good ones more than the bad. Like quicksilver, pain slips from the hand that would grasp it and divides before the blow that would cleave it. Without the Pains, the multiverse can endure no more than wind can blow without the air. Suffering breeds strength from weakness, it heralds new births, it guides all beings through life. The dead soar to oblivion on black wings of anguish, and even pleasure springs from the same well as agony. To shun pain is to lie stillborn forever.

(A child, wishing he could swim once more in brown waters, lies slick with sweat and speckled in pink, his stiff legs withering to useless sticks. I have hugged him to my breast; the Pains have rooted and sprouted unseen and unfelt, and now they have burst It is not right, and it is not wrong; it is life.)

At a crossroads, the Hunter stops and turns his head right, then left. He is looking through walls with those ebony eyes, searching for what has already found him. I take him in my arms and press myself close. A hundred blisters sprout beneath his armor, and still I hold the Thrasson tight as a lover; I hold him tight so the pods will root deep, deep down in his soul and not rub off.

His body tenses.

That huge amphora slips through his arms and nearly crashes to the street. He cries out and drops to his heels. He catches it, and gives out a long breathy sigh, as though smashing that jar would be worse than dying.

Perhaps it would. There is a golden net inside, god-enchanted just to catch me.

The Thrasson balances the amphora on the street and slowly turns, his free hand on his sword and his eyes narrowed. It may be that he felt a chill beneath his armor, as though a ghost had embraced him, but he cannot be certain. So sudden and fleeting was the touch that even now he wonders if he imagined it The crowd swirls past, cursing him for a fool or a madman and keeping a watchful eye on his weapon hand. Though I stand less than a pace away, of course he cannot see me. Soon enough, he decides it was nothing more than a sudden case of armor itch. He takes up the amphora again and bulls his way back into the crowd. Already, I see a thousand hooked spines stabbing through his backplate.

Do not call it revenge-never revenge. Even the gods deserve their pain, and the Thrasson shall bear it to them. Hall Of Marble

After so many hours harrowing Sigil's teeming lanes, what does the Thrasson think when at last he plows through the crowd and sees the Blue Hall looming ahead? I know. The Lady of Pain always knows, and she will tell you:

The Hall of Information looked exactly as twenty or more peevish direction-givers had said it would: an imposing monolith of pale blue marble, with a roof of black slate and three massive columns straddling a pair of gray entrance ramps. Inscribed on the capitals of the three pillars were the words "Cooperation," "Compliance," and "Control," an oddly ominous motto for what was purported to be a service bureau. A web of fracture lines laced the "Cooperation" post, which, despite a supporting cage of steel braces, appeared on the verge of collapse.

Clutching his amphora in both arms and pushing through a torrent of drab-cloaked beings-human and otherwise – the Thrasson angled across Crystal Dew Avenue toward the ramp between "Compliance" and ''Control." The nearer he approached the hall, the less he agreed with the churls who had called it "an edifice of stately grandeur." Even a simple man of action could see that the building suffered from a clumsy attempt to substitute opulence for taste. The stark bands of the onyx corner boards made a mockery of the marble facade's soft swirls, while the turquoise window casings looked like the painted eyes of a common harlot. The door guards, with their crimson breastplates and rusty shoulder spikes, added just the splash of blood to make a vulgar mess of the whole thing.

Jewel of the Infinite Planes indeed! Sigil so far had been a bitter disappointment to the Thrasson. So thick was the ginger air that it dragged over his face like cobwebs; just breathing the awful stuff filled his throat with a burning, acrid grit. In some wards, the avenues ran ankle-deep with swill, and in others, a man could hardly shove his way through the throngs that packed the streets. Everywhere, the constant drizzle stained the dreary building facades with runnels of yellow sulfur. Upon each sweltering breeze came a stench more rancid than the last, and nowhere did the clamor ebb for even a moment.

The Thrasson had heard that Sigil was shaped like the inside of a floating wheel, and that if he looked straight up, he would see the roofs of distant buildings instead of sky. So far, he had seen nothing but a sick, brown haze. It was said that the city was the hub of the multiverse, that somewhere in its bounds lay a portal to each world in the infinite planes; to the Thrasson, it seemed that every one of those portals was the wrong end of a garbage chute. He wanted nothing more than to complete his task and be gone from the place.

The Thrasson climbed the ramp and crossed the portico, unabashedly returning the stern glower of the guards. He would have welcomed a challenge, so anxious was he to vent his frustration. In addition to the difficulties of delivering the amphora, no one in the city seemed to know of him. He did not expect them to recognize him by sight, or anything so foolish, but it did seem reasonable to assume that by now his deeds would have been sung in even the lowliest gutter house of Sigil. Yet, when he introduced himself, he still had to recount his entire list of feats – at least those he could remember – and even after he described the felling of the Acherian Giant, most people simply turned away in indifference. The only ones interested in him were the thieves eyeing his heavy purse and the guides who, hearing the name of the one he wished to find, scurried away without naming a price.

As the Thrasson neared the entrance, the sentries reached over and pushed open the doors. They gave no salutation or comment, and their faces betrayed no hint of either respect or disdain. They were simply holding the doors for a man burdened with a heavy amphora.

That anonymous courtesy made the Thrasson's belly bum with indignity. Still, as it was the burden of fame to suffer ignorance in good grace, he paused long enough to utter a few sentences of thanks.

"Bar that, pal," answered the tallest guard, a square-chinned fellow with a two-day growth of beard on his cheeks. "We'd do the same for any blood. Now get on with it." He jerked his head toward the entrance. "Madame Mok don't like us letting in drafts."

The Thrasson stepped into a murky foyer of blue marble, where he found himself standing at the end of a serpentine visitors' queue. The line switched back and forth a dozen times until it finally stopped before a high, looming counter of black marble. The massive desk stood directly beneath a glowing chandelier of blue-green beryl crystals. It was flanked by a pair of silver, hand-shaped braziers, from which rose two plumes of pink, apple-sweet incense smoke.

Behind the lofty counter sat a single bespectacled clerk, hunched over the bench and using quill and ink to scratch notes into a parchment ledger. From the wooly nap atop his head rose the double-curled horns of a bariaur, a sort of goatlike centaur that roamed many of the multiverse's planes. The Thrasson had already been surprised by the hundreds of bariaur pushing through Sign's packed streets; in his own plane, Arborea, the bariaur were an unsettled, carefree race who would sooner leap into a cesspool than enter a city. He found it difficult to believe that any of them actually abided in Sigil, much less worked inside a gloomy building like the Hall of Information.

The Thrasson considered the line only a moment before deciding it was beneath him to wait. Scattered among the humans were frog-faced slaadi, dwarves both bearded and bald, a svelte trio of elves, even a lizardlike khaasta warrior, but he saw no sign of anyone who matched his own stature. Had he seen the shimmering feathers of an astral deva's seraphic wings, perhaps, or the smoking horns of a great baatezu lord, he might have waited. As matters stood, however, it seemed apparent that his business took precedence over that of anyone else in the foyer.

The Thrasson pushed straight through the looped line, issuing stem yet polite commands for those ahead to stand aside. The humans obeyed, of course, though it surprised him to note how many of them looked taken aback. Even in Sigil, it should have been obvious from his bearing and fine armor that he was a man of renown, beloved of the gods and deserving of all respect

When the Thrasson reached the khaasta, the reptilian suddenly raised its tail to block the way and craned its sinuous neck around to glare. The warrior's head was typically lacertilian: a flat wedge that was mostly snout, with a long, stupid grin and beady slit-pupiled eyes that betrayed no emotion at all.

"You wait like the ressst of ussssss, berk."

The Thrasson regarded the tail. The thickness of a human leg, it was armored in leathery scales and braided with the rippling sinews of a race not far removed from the brute. The appendage was no match for the star-forged blade in the Thrasson's scabbard, but he had no wish to punish the khaasta so severely. He threw one leg over the tail, then forced the scaly appendage downward until he had it trapped between his knees.

"You would be wise to defer to your better."

The khaasta's head began to bob in that angry lizard way, then its scaly hand dropped toward a broad manskin belt.

The Thrasson snapped his hips forward, trapping the tail behind one knee and before the other, then scissored his legs. With a sharp pop, the appendage kinked and went limp. The reptilian roared and produced a stiletto from its belt sheath, but with its broken tail still trapped between the Thrasson's legs, it was helpless to spin and attack.

At the head of the line, the old bariaur scowled and looked up from his ledger. "Here now! What's all this?" He peered over his spectacles at the growling khaasta. "People are working. If you can't be quiet, I'll ask you to leave."

The khaasta quickly slipped his dagger out of sight. "Assssk me to leave?" He pointed a single yellow talon at the Thrasson, who released his tail and continued to push toward the counter. "That berk'sss the one who'sss shoving ahead!"

The bariaur studied the disheveled line, then turned his glower upon the advancing Thrasson. "We have procedures in this hall. You'll have to stand in line like everyone else."

"Do you not know me, old sir?" The Thrasson hipped aside a scowling dwarf and continued forward. "Have you not heard of the slayer of the Hydra of Thrassos, the tamer of the Hebron Crocodile, the bane of Abudrian Dragons, the savior of the Virgins of Marmara…"

He reached the counter, and the bariaur leaned over his desk to scowl down. at the Thrasson, who continued to list his feats: "… the champion of Ilyrian Kings, the killer of the Chalcedon Lion-"

"No, I have not heard of you," the bariaur interrupted, "nor do I much care what you've done. If you can't comply with the rules, I'll have you removed."

The clerk cast a meaningful glance toward the door. The two sentries now stood inside the foyer, glaring at the Thrasson as though they had expected trouble from him all along.

"What'ssss of me tail?" complained the khaasta. "There'sss lawsss againssst the breaking of tailssss, there issss!"

The sentries nodded, more to each other than the khaasta, then snapped their glaives to the advance guard and started forward. The crowd parted to let them through, and the bariaur scowled down at the Thrasson.

"Is this true? Did you assault the reptilian?"

"I caused him no serious injury." The Thrasson's tone was sharp, for it had been the khaasta who had wronged him. "He dared block my path, and even you must see that my concerns take precedence here."

The bariaur arched his brow, then raised a hand to stop the two sentries. "Are you declaring an Emergency Priority?"

"If it means I am entitled not to wait, then yes."

The bariaur licked his lips, then clasped his hands on his desk and leaned on his elbows. "The proper procedure is to announce the Emergency Priority to the door guards, who will then certify that you have the proper funds and escort you to the front of the line, so as to create minimal disturbance and avoid unpleasant incidents such as the breaking of tails." The clerk made a sour face and glanced at the khaasta, then looked back to the Thrasson. "However, since you have already reached the counter, we will skip certification and proceed directly to collection. You may now present the fee."

"Fee?"

"Ten gold pieces." The bariaur's eyes grew large and menacing behind his spectacles. "Otherwise, every sod who came through those doors would declare an Emergency Priority, would he not?"

When the Thrasson did not immediately produce the fee, the guards began to advance again. "By order of the Hall of Speakers, false declaiming is a crime against the Lady's Order," said the tallest one, who had spoken to the Thrasson before. "Crimes against the Lady's Order are punishable by a sentence of not less than-"

"I have the fee!"

The Thrasson placed the amphora on the floor and balanced it against the counter with his leg, then opened his purse and counted out the gold. Ten gold coins would buy a lot of wine, but he could always get free wine back in Thrassos. He passed the coins up to the bariaur, who confirmed the count, entered the amount in his ledger, and dropped the coins into a slot on the surface of his bench.

"Do you want a receipt?"

"No. I want…"

The bariaur raised a finger to silence the Thrasson, then produced a large iron bell from behind his bench. He rang it six times. Though the tolling was not particularly loud, it reverberated through the cavernous hall as clearly as birdsong. By the time the last knell had died away, a gentle murmur had arisen to fill the entire structure. A trio of human youths, all dressed in pale blue uniforms with ugly red shoulder sashes, rounded a comer and stood at attention beside the counter. Around the opposite corner came another six guards, all wearing the same red plate armor as the door sentries. These men positioned themselves between the crowd and the counter, holding their glaives at port arms. From somewhere in the depths of the building echoed the measured clatter of four hooves clacking upon the marble floor.

The bariaur dipped his quill in the ink, then poised it over his ledger and peered down at the Thrasson.

"Name?"

The Thrasson hesitated, loathe to admit his one weakness in public. An impatient murmur rustled through the lobby, and the guards began to push the crowd back.

"Name?"

"I-er-uh, why is my name important?"

The bariaur's eye twitched. "We have our procedures, berk. Name?"

"You dare call me-" The Thrasson bit his tongue, reminding himself that he needed the bariaur's cooperation to keep the promise he had made. "I-uh-I can't tell you my name."

Deep in the building, the steady clacking of hooves grew louder, and the two door sentries stepped to the Thrasson's flanks. "Can't, or won't, berk?"

"I cannot." Though hardly intimidated by the guards, the Thrasson forced himself to answer politely. His task did riot call for the shedding of blood, and it was the hallmark of a true champion never to cause unnecessary harm. "I don't know my name. I recall nothing before awakening on the shore near Thrassos, where the citizens were kind enough to care for me until I could repay their hospitality by slaying the great hydra. Not long after, I heard of the mighty crocodile menacing the fishermen of the river Hebrus, so I journeyed-"

"Yes, yes, I have heard all that," the bariaur snorted. "But what am I to put in the ledger? He who slew the Hydra of Thrassos, then tamed the Hebron Crocodile, and on and on? I only have one line."

The Thrasson thought for a moment, and while he thought, the clacking of hooves deep in the building continued to grow louder. At last, he looked up. "The people of Thrassos call me the Amnesian Hero. That should fit on one line."

The bariaur nodded sagely. "The Amnesian Hero it is, then." He scrawled in his ledger, then dipped his quill again. "And may I put down Thrassos, Layer the First, Arborea, as your home?"

The Amnesian Hero nodded. "That is the only home I know."

The bariaur wrote this as well, then peered down at the Thrasson. "I'll grant that not knowing your own name is serious, but it hardly seems an Emergency Priority." He dipped his quill arid, almost sympathetically, said, "Still, you paid the fee and I can't get it back for you. Who would you like to see first? The Bureau of Human Affairs, or perhaps the Nonplanar Races Commission? By the Emergency Priorities Edict of the Hall of Speakers, you have a maximum of ten appointments to answer a single question."

The Amnesian Hero felt an unexpected flutter in his stomach. "You can tell me who I am?"

The bariaur smacked his lips. "I'm not authorized to dispense that information." His quill remained poised over the ledger. "My duties are limited strictly to the scheduling of appointments. Now, whom do you wish to see?"

The Amnesian Hero came close to requesting the Bureau of Human Affairs, but at the last moment found the strength to resist the temptation. Whoever he was, he was certainly a man of renown, and men of renown did not put their personal needs above their promises.

"If you don't know who you wish to see, I am authorized to give you a list."

The clacking of hooves deeper in the building grew so loud that the Thrasson expected to see an enormous bariaur rounding the counter at any moment. Voices in the impatient crowd began shouting suggestions, some more polite than others. The guards yelled back, bellowing warnings about staying in control and complying with the rules. To make his answer heard above the clamor, the Amnesian Hero nearly had to shout.

"I'm not here about my name. I want to see the Lady of Pain!"

The old bariaur yanked off his spectacles, and, save for the mounting echoes of hooves on marble, the chamber abruptly fell silent. The clerk leaned out over the counter and, bushy white brows half-arched, peered down at the Amnesian Hero.

"Pardon me. Did you say, the Lady of Pain?"

The Amnesian Hero nodded. "I did." He gestured at the large amphora he was still balancing against the counter. "I have a gift for her."

Nervous laughter rustled through the crowd, drawing several stem threats from the guards. On the other side of the counter, the steady clacking of the hooves suddenly ceased. The bariaur's face turned a deep shade of crimson.

"This is no time for jokes, berk! You're the one who declared an information emergency!"

"I am not joking," the Amnesian Hero replied. "I came to deliver a gift to the Lady of Pain. My question is: where do I find her palace?"

A brief clatter sounded from the rear of the counter, then a second bariaur appeared beside the clerk. She was by far the largest the Amnesian Hero had ever seen – at least that he remembered seeing-looming a full head above her associate. In fact, she was so large that the silk-draped swell of her broad, goatlike forequarters was visible over the lip of the counter. Her face was gaunt and amazingly flat, save for a long narrow nose hanging like a bartizan over her gash of a mouth. Her hair was dyed the same pale blue as the hall's marble walls, and she wore it in a long, unruly mop that could not quite conceal the two golden horns curling back from her temples.

The Amnesian Hero felt his mouth gaping open. He promptly clamped it shut and averted his gaze. Horns were something of a deformity on female bariaur, and it would be unseemly to stare.

The female took a moment to glower over the crowd, then turned her glare upon the clerk. "You rang the emergency bell, Earlick?"

Though she pronounced it "Earlick," Erlik was a common enough name for the Thrasson to suspect she was being intentionally insulting.

Without looking the female in the eyes, Erlik nodded. "I did, Madame Mok." The clerk squinted at his ledger and laid a finger on the appropriate line. "A human, one Amnesian Hero of Thrassos, Arborea, Layer the First, declared an Emergency Priority and paid the fee."

Madame Mok glared down at the Amnesian Hero, her sour face now absolutely curdled. "And this Amnesian Hero, has he no real name, Earlick?"

"None that I can recall." The Amnesian Hero was tired of being treated as though he were not there. "I remember nothing before awakening on the shore near Thrassos, where the kind citizens cared for me until I grew strong enough to repay them by slaying a hydra that had-"

"Silence, berk!" Madame Mok snapped. "We have our procedures in this hall…"

The Amnesian Hero bristled under the rebuff, but inclined his head politely and allowed Erlik to answer for him.

Erlik swallowed, then licked his lips. "The Amnesian Hero cannot recall his name."

"I see. And has a Mercykiller confirmed his claim? Or could this be another attempt by the Hall of Records to embarrass us?"

The color drained from Erlik's face. "I d-don't have the auth-th-thority to auth-th-thorize-"

"Of course you don't." Madame Mok turned to the Amnesian Hero, then pointed at one of the door sentries standing beside him. "You will look into the Mercykiller's eyes and repeat your name."

Growing more perturbed with each passing moment, the Amnesian Hero turned to the guard. Though there were not many Mercykillers in Arborea, the Thrasson had heard the name before. They were a group of fanatics who dispensed "justice" to the "guilty"-though no one in Arborea seemed to have a clear idea of who the guilty were or what justice they received.

The Amnesian Hero met the Mercykiller's gaze, and the sentry's pupils suddenly seemed as glimmering and dark as cavern pools. The Thrasson felt a gentle tingle behind his brow and realized the fellow was looking someplace beyond his eyes. It did not matter to the Amnesian Hero; the best thing that could happen to him would be for the guard to discover that he did know his name.

"I cannot remember my name," said the Thrasson. "I recall nothing before awakening on-"

"That's enough – I don't need your whole life history." The Mercykiller turned to Madame Mok and nodded. "He's telling the truth."

She smiled rather wickedly. "Now that we have established who you are – or, rather, who you are nor – what do you want from the Hall of Information? I believe I overheard something about a gift?"

"For the Lady of Pain." The Amnesian Hero rested a hand on his amphora. "My question is: where do I find her palace?"

Again, a nervous chuckle rose from the crowd. Even Madame Mok sneered in amusement. "And this gift, it is from you?"

The Amnesian Hero scowled. "Am I not the one who paid good gold to have his question answered?"

"You paid to have your appointments expedited – as they have been," Madame Mok corrected. "But I am in control here. If you wish to have your question answered, you must comply with my procedures."

The Amnesian Hero ground his teeth and said nothing.

"Is the gift your own?" demanded Madame Mok.

"No, I am only the bearer. The gift comes from Poseidon, King of Seas and Cleaver of Lands."

Madame Mok's face turned as pale as alabaster. An astonished drone buzzed through the foyer, and people who had been waiting in line all day long began to scramble for the exits. The guards turned away from the crowd and formed a ring around the Amnesian Hero, who, though surprised by the reaction, was glad to be at last accorded the proper respect.

"Poseidon?" Madame Mok asked. "The god Poseidon?"

"Of course. What mortal would dare send a gift to the ruler of Sigil?"

Madame Mok fixed the Amnesian Hero with her harshest stare. The Thrasson stood proudly while she scrutinized his patrician features, the rich red tint of his bronze armor, the silver-gilded hilt of his star-forged sword, even the polished leather of his sandal straps. When her gaze finally returned to his face, her expression had changed from imperious to suspicious. She slipped back from the counter's front edge.

"You're a proxy, then?"

"Hardly. A proxy is a servant. I am a man of renown, beloved of the people and favored of the gods, as befits the bearer of a gift from the King of Seas."

The color began to return to Madame Mok's face. "Then you are not invested with Poseidon's power?"

"I have might enough of my own." The Amnesian Hero glanced contemptuously at the ring of glaive blades leveled at his chest. "Now, if you will direct me to the Lady's palace, I will deliver the gift and be gone from this swarming city."

"And this gift, what is it?" Madame Mok leaned over the counter to peer down at the amphora. "Some of that rancid pine sap you Thrassons call wine?"

"I suspect not." Poseidon had told the Amnesian Hero only that the jar contained a treasure that the Lady of Pain had lost before the founding of Sigil. "However, since the Cleaver of Lands bade me never to remove the stopper, I cannot say what the amphora holds – nor would I, if I knew. What passes between Poseidon and the Lady of Pain is no business of mine – or yours."

Madame Mok's face grew pinched and red. "In this hall, I decide what is my business and what is not!"

"Then you remove the stopper." The Amnesian Hero waved at the amphora. "If the contents are truly the concern of the Hall of Information, it will not trouble the Lady that you opened her gift."

The Thrasson's mocking manner drew none of the expected sniggers from the guards. Instead, Madame Mok studied him with narrowed eyes for several moments, until finally the shadow of a smile crept across her lips.

She shrugged. "As you wish. The amphora's contents are no concern of mine. I was only trying to do you a favor, Thrasson."

"I am sure you intend to tell me how."

Madame Mok nodded, accepting the sarcasm with surprising humility. "Tell me, how much do you recall about the Lady of Pain?"

"I know only what the King of Seas told me," the Amnesian Hero admitted. "She is the winsome ruler of Sigil, alone and aloof, and very sad."

"All that is true, of course, but she is also quick to anger. If she dislikes the gift, she will certainly slay you."

"I thank you for the warning, Madame Mok." The Amnesian Hero believed at least this much of what she said. Conditions in Sigil certainly suggested the city's ruler was callous and cruel. Still, the Thrasson had every intention of delivering the amphora. Poseidon had promised to restore his memory once the Lady of Pain received her gift. "We men of renown must accept such risks, so I would be grateful if you would direct me to the Lady of Pain's palace."

Madame Mok gave him an acid smile. "Certainly. It will be a pleasure to get you out of my hall. I trust that heavy purse of yours contains five more gold pieces?"

Though the Thrasson would gladly have parted with the coins just to learn the location and be on his way, a Mercykiller stepped to the counter and aimed a glaive at Madame Mok's breast.

"By edict of the Hall of Speakers: bribery, or the solicitation thereof, is punishable by-"

Madame Mok slapped the glaive aside. "Buckle your bone-box! I'm not hunting a garnish." She turned back to the Amnesian Hero. "Do you have it or not?"

The Thrasson opened his purse and withdrew five yellow coins, then raised a hand toward the counter. Madame Mok shook her head and pointed at the square-chinned Mercykiller who had accused her of soliciting a bribe.

"Give it to Cwalno."

The Amnesian Hero passed the money to the guard, who held the coins at arm's length and grimaced as though clutching a handful of scorpions.

"What am I to do with these?"

Madame Mok pointed at the door. "Go outside and hire eight lantern boys and a sedan chair for the Amnesian Hero."

"A sedan chair?"

"Of course. He'll need to show the proper dignity when he goes to see the Lady." Madame Mok looked down at the Amnesian Hero, then glanced at his open purse and sneered. "In fact, I'm sure he has coin for each of you Mercykillers as well. Why don't you give him a full escort and make sure he arrives at the Gatehouse in style?"

"Are you sure that will do?" The Amnesian Hero shoved his hand into his purse. "I have more gold. Perhaps you want to come too?"

Madame Mok smirked and shook her head. "That isn't necessary. Eight Mercykillers should be enough – even for you, Thrasson." Bleak House

How squalid the Amnesian Hero must find the Hive as he rides down Whisper Way in his elegant sedan chair, borne over the muck and the sludge on the hulking shoulders of four white-tusked ogres, four lantern boys leading the way and four more bringing up the rear, four Mercykillers to the left and four more to the right. How he must despise the grimy bloodblades who slip along the mud brick tenements, shadowing his chair, balancing the heft of his purse against the swiftness of his guards' bare blades. How he must abhor the droning black flies that hang in the air as thick as drops during a rainfall, feeding upon the stink of a street knee-deep in carrion and offal. How he must pity the gray armies of children, with their wooden forks and their starving eyes and their rat-hunt scramble.

How the Thrasson curses the wickedness of callous, foul Sigil, until he comes at last to the Marble District, where the buildings are tall and stony and black with soot. His bearers turn down Bedlam Run toward the Lady's palace, and how he gasps at its sprawling, begrimed majesty.

The Gatehouse looks like no palace the Amnesian Hero has ever seen. Large enough to house the Cleaver of Lands himself, its shape, that of an immense battle crown with a long, blocky wing spreading outward from each side. The walls were as drab as mudstone and as high as cliffs, their faces striped by three mundane rows of small square windows. The most striking feature was the central gate tower, an immense helmlike turret crested by six curving spires that arched inward toward a central minaret so high the apex was lost in Sign's brown fog. The gate itself was an impossibly huge portcullis, with bars the size of Arborean cypress trees and spaces through which a titan could have passed.

A long string of gray flecks stretched from this entrance halfway down Bedlam Way. So dwarfed by the Gatehouse's immensity were these specks that the Amnesian Hero did not recognize them as people for several minutes, until his bearers had carried him close enough to make out the shapes of their heads sitting atop their hunched shoulders. The column packed the street completely, leaving only enough room for area residents to squeeze along the tenement fronts on the way to and from their homes. The Thrasson groaned, realizing that this was a line of petitioners, waiting to see the Lady of Pain.

"Lock that bone-box, berk!" hissed Cwaino, who was marching along outside the chair box. "In this part of town, sniveling draws bloodblades like flashing gold draws glitter girls."

"I do not snivel. As for your bloodblades, let them come. I would welcome the fight." The Amnesian Hero glared at the supplicants ahead, wondering how many coins it would cost to declare an Emergency Priority to bypass them. "Is no place in Sigil free of these monstrous lines?"

Cwaino squinted at the wretched column. "Bar that. If you wait, I wait-and I'm not staying down here a minute longer than I need to."

The assertion seemed bold for a mere guard, but the Amnesian Hero would be glad to avoid paying more bribes. He was running low on gold, and he hated nothing more than relying on the good will of others for his wine.

As the Thrasson's procession approached the line of supplicants, the four Mercykillers moved forward to shove people out of the way. The petitioners grudgingly yielded to the rough treatment, pressing aside just far enough to let the sedan chair pass. Most were humans, but the Amnesian Hero also saw bariaur, elves, dwarves, ogres, khaasta, githzerai, and a few other races he had never before encountered – at least that he could recall. All had gaunt, haunted faces wearied by hunger and despair, and the soiled rags hanging from their bony shoulders hardly resembled the bejeweled foppery of most royal supplicants.

The Thrasson saw teary-eyed women supporting drooling elders whose glassy eyes were looking somewhere far beyond. He saw lonely naked orphans with swollen bellies and skin hanging loose on their crooked bones. He saw burly guards holding the leashes of wild-faced men with shackled hands, he saw coughing, quivering women trembling with age and flushed with fever, but nowhere did he see anyone arrayed in what Madame Mok called "the proper style." Aside from his own, there were no sedan chairs, no lantern boys or guards, not even a single figure dressed in a cloak decent enough to hang in a shepherd's hut.

Cwalno reached up to draw the chair curtain closed.

The Thrasson grabbed the cloth and held it open. "What do you hope to hide, Cwalno? I've already seen that those poor wretches hardly look like royal supplicants."

Cwalno appeared vaguely uncomfortable, but chuckled grimly. "Who else would they be?" He shoved aside a babbling madman whose handler had dropped the leash. "You can't think a sane man would – er, sony. That must be why Poseidon sent you."

The Amnesian Hero locked gazes with the Mercykiller. "I hope you are not trying to say that I am demented."

Cwalno sneered, while at the same time hastening to shake his head as though he had been terribly misunderstood. "A cutter like yourself? 'Course not!" There was a mocking tone to his voice. "I'm only talking about your condition. Poseidon wouldn't send no blood with a memory to deliver his present. Any berk who can remember half what he's heard about the Lady of Pain would sooner jump into the Abyss than stand face-to-face with her."

The Amnesian Hero sat back and nodded thoughtfully. Despite Cwalno's condescending manner, there was truth in what he said. The King of Seas was by nature a selfish god, hardly the type to restore a mortal's lost memories in return for a simple errand like delivering a gift. Since accepting the amphora, the Thrasson had been expecting to run into some such trouble. Now that he finally had some idea of its nature, he was almost relieved.

"If the Lady is so terrible to face, why are all these people waiting to see her?" As the Amnesian Hero studied the throng of dismal supplicants, it occurred to him they all had an abundance of one thing. "Do the wretches not fear the Lady because of the gifts they bring her?"

Cwalno eyed the derelicts with a disdainful smirk. "And what could the Lady want from these sods?"

"Their suffering, of course! That's why she is called the Lady of Pain, is it not?"

Cwalno, sneered, but was careful to neither nod his head nor shake it. "You'll see soon enough, Thrasson."

The Mercykiller pointed forward, where his three crowd-breaking companions had just pushed through into a large open square. A dozen men in cloaks of bright, spangled colors were cavorting in the space, leaping and tumbling and springing off their hands both forward and backward, all the while voicing a dismal, deep-throated dirge with no words the Amnesian Hero could identify.

On the far side of the square stood the yawning mouth of the Gatehouse's central tower. There were no guards in the area other than the strange acrobats, yet the crowd made no effort to creep forward. They seemed entirely resigned to their wait. From them, even the frantic energy of the tumblers drew no more than gray, disinterested stares.

The scene kindled a feeling of sad inevitability in the Amnesian Hero. The sensation had a vague familiarity that he sometimes experienced in moments of empathy, as though sensing the emotions of others could trigger the sentimental dregs of his own lost history. The Thrasson made no effort to call forth the memory which stirred the emotion; a thousand times he had tried to fish his past from such residues, and never did he draw up more than frustration and biting despair.

The Mercykillers led the procession straight across the square, marching through the acrobats' performance without a word of apology. The intrusion bothered no one, least of all the tumblers, who incorporated it into their act by doing handsprings between the armored guards and somersaults under the chair box. One exceptionally lithe performer leaped high over the forward bearers to come down, light as a feather, on the support shafts before the chair box. He squatted there like a frog with red mad eyes, glaring at the Thrasson and singing in a high, jittery voice:

"O tower not of ivory, but builded

By hands that reach heaven from hell;

O mystical rose of the mire,

O house not of gold but of gain,

O house of unquenchable fire,

Our Lady of Pain!"

The Amnesian Hero leaned forward, carefully considering the words of the mad-eyed acrobat. In the Thrasson's experience, the accomplishment of any great feat required the solving of a riddle, and the fellow's strange words were nothing if not an enigma. He weighed each element of the song: a tower built by hands that stretched from the Lower Planes to the Upper, a magic rose growing in slime, a house of gain and unquenchable fire.

"Of course!" The Thrasson peered past the acrobat, noting the overall shape of the Gatehouse. The central tower was clearly a crowned head. The side wings could be taken for arms, while the comer towers bore a superficial resemblance to closed fists. "The Gatehouse is the Lady of Pain!" The acrobat cackled and bobbed his head, singing:

"I have passed from the outermost portal

To the shrine where a sin is a prayer;

What care though the service be mortal?

O our Lady of Torture, what care?

All thine the last wine that I pour is,

The last in the chalice we drain."

This riddle was even simpler than the last, divided as it was into two-line sections, and the Amnesian Hero was almost disappointed in the answer.

"Often have I been warned to abandon hope before entering some dank place. Many times has someone assured me I would find only anguish inside, or warned me the place's terrible occupant would pour my lifeblood upon the stones. Yet, it is always I that return to the light, and it is always my sword that is smeared with steaming black gore." The Thrasson glanced past the acrobat and saw that they had nearly reached the looming bars of the portcullis. "You must do better than that to frighten the Amnesian Hero."

The acrobat smiled grimly and opened his mouth to speak again-then the shaft of Cwalno's glaive caught him in the head and sent him flying.

"That's enough blather, addle-cove!" The Mercykiller rolled his eyes and turned to the Amnesian Hero. "Pay him no attention. They do that to every poor sod we bring down here. It means nothing."

Quietly seething at his guard for interrupting the third riddle, the Amnesian Hero watched the acrobat gather himself up. "Everything means something."

"Not down here it don't."

The Amnesian Hero looked forward and saw that they had reached the jaws of the great gate tower. He expected the Mercykillers to stop at the threshold and send him into the bleak place alone, but they did not hesitate to escort him inside. The Thrasson found himself in a circular courtyard surrounded by high, gloomy walls. An enormous mosaic of gray-shaded basalt covered the floor, so large that the Thrasson could determine only that the pattern represented some twisted conglomeration of bones. A handful of brightly-cloaked attendants and despairing supplicants stood scattered along the curving walls, their voices filling the area with a gentle murmur of sobbing and softly uttered words of comfort.

Halfway across the circle, the huge portcullis divided the courtyard in two. The bars looked more enormous than ever, descending from a vaulted half-ceiling high overhead to rest inside a set of immense lock wells. The Thrasson could not imagine the creature the gate was meant to keep out, but it seemed clear enough that the present occupants never raised the portcullis. The lock wells were so full of rust and corrosion that a halo of orange crust covered the floor around the base of each bar.

The Amnesian Hero's procession passed through the gate without having to tighten its formation. The back half of the courtyard, covered as it was by a second half-ceiling, was even gloomier than the front. The square eyes of dozens of candle-lit windows peered out from the depths of the citadel, barely illuminating dozens of brown stains that trailed down the walls from a leaky roof. The steady drone of solemn voices, frequently punctuated by an echoing scream from some place deeper in the building, filled the air with a grating hum.

As the eyes of the Amnesian Hero adjusted to the dim light, he saw that this area was far more crowded than the front half of the courtyard. To his left, a long line of petitioners waited before an iron door, patiently allowing a colorfully dressed attendant to sprinkle powder over their filthy heads. In the back of the enclave, a spangle-cloaked dwarf kneeled before another iron door. He was wailing madly and, despite the efforts of two escorts to restrain him, beating himself fiercely about the head. A short distance away, another pair of burly attendants had the arms of a lithe, black-caped woman stretched taut between them. She seemed to be glaring at a gentle-looking elf who stood a safe distance away, addressing her in a voice of honey and holding his palms spread open. Behind him, a third iron door led deeper into the palace.

Cwalno led the Amnesian Hero's procession past this group, then stopped. Fifteen paces ahead, before yet another iron door, stood a second elf who bore a brotherly resemblance to the first one. Along with a small group of brightly cloaked attendants, he was studying a dazed man with the tip of a tongue showing at the comer of his mouth.

Cwalno turned to the Amnesian Hero. "I'll arrange an audience with the Lady of Pain. You wait here."

After the Amnesian Hero nodded his assent, Cwalno marched over to the second elf's group and shouldered past the brightly cloaked attendants. The Thrasson watched until the Mercykiller began to whisper into the elf's ear, then turned his gaze upon the black-caped woman being restrained near his sedan chair.

It is a ploy, of course. While he watches the woman, the Amnesian Hero is listening to every word Cwalno says. The Mercykiller does not realize this; only I know that the Thrasson is a Hunter, gifted by the gods with those ugly little ears that can hear the spider in the comer sighing.

"Madame Mok's sent a special barmy for you, Tyvold." The Mercykiller points at the sedan chair, but the Amnesian Hero, cunning as always, pretends not to notice. He continues to stare at the black-caped woman, as though he finds her more interesting than any discussion about his fate. "Sod claims he can't remember his own name."

Tyvold sneers and does not look toward the Amnesian Hero. "Did he wait in the Salvation Line?"

"What do you think? I'm going to camp down here twenty days?"

Tyvold shrugs. "That is your choice, of course." He turns away from Cwalno. "This isn't the Prison, you know. Mercykillers have to wait like everyone else."

"That so?" Cwalno demands. "And maybe Factol Lhar wants to show me permits for those Bleak Cabal soup houses springing up all over the city? If every letter ain't just right, you can be sure he won't have to wait in line at our place."

Tyvold's kindly features stiffen into a mask of anger. He knows it is a sign of inner deficiency for a high-up in the Bleak Cabal to show irritation-it suggests that he himself is nearing readiness for the Grim Retreat-but the elf cannot help it. The Mercykillers, with their blind devotion to "justice" and "order," are the worst of the Deluded. Not only do they think the multiverse has meaning, they are convinced it is their duty to impose that meaning on everyone else.

Of course, the fact is that nothing has meaning, especially the multiverse. But try telling that to a Mercykiller, and you'll spend the next ten years on the Racks of Enlightenment with a self-renewing charge of Mockery. By the time you come out, you'll be as mad as Cwalno and his kind. Better not to argue. Quarreling implies meaning, and, as Factor of the Redeemable Wing of the Gatehouse's Asylum, Tyvold has seen enough madmen to know what comes of allowing meaning to creep into one's mind. The elf waves the barmy before him into the care of two assistants, then turns to the Mercykiller.

"Very well, Cwalno. Describe your ward's condition. By itself, a simple memory lapse hardly entitles him to a cell in the Asylum."

"Don't you worry. He's barmy enough. To start with, he's looking for the Lady of Pain. Says he's got a gift for her from Poseidon."

"Truly? That is interesting." For the first time, the Factor of the Redeemable looks in the newcomer's direction. "Do continue."

There can be no doubt that the Amnesian Hero finds it difficult to hide his rage as Cwalno, hardly able to stifle his laughter, describes how Madame Mok tricked the Thrasson into seeking the Lady of Pain at the Gatehouse. Even when the Mercykiller snickers out an account of how she convinced him to hire a sedan chair and a full escort for the journey, the Amnesian Hero shows no sign of the fury so surely eating at his stomach. He is too clever for that. Instead, as Cwalno chuckles at how his captive suggested the wretches outside have come to offer their suffering to the Lady of Pain, the Thrasson betrays no hint that he is listening with his ugly little ears. He rests his chin on his hand and continues to stare at the black-caped woman, and so complete is his control that his cheeks do not even flush with anger.

From what the Amnesian Hero could see of her shadowy face, the woman's features were slender and winsome, not quite sharp enough to be those of an elf. She had left her black hair hanging loose and long over her shoulders, like a rippling black penumbra that might have flowed from the Abyss itself. With huge dark eyes and a button nose over a cupid's bow mouth, she was possessed of a dusky beauty that seemed to mock cuteness more than celebrate it.

When the woman's gaze swung toward the Amnesian Hero, the darkness that masked her face seemed to move with her head. Whatever was casting the shadow, the Thrasson realized, it was not anything in Sigil. The woman was probably a tiefling, a child borne to a human and – well, to something else; even in Arborea, the Amnesian Hero had learned better than to ask. Although no two tieflings were alike, they were all quick to anger and rather touchy about their heritage.

"What do you look at, pretty boy? You want to make kiss with me?" The woman puckered her lips and made smacking sounds. "Last chance before they lock us up, yes?"

The tiefling's keeper stepped closer to her. "Jayk, that's enough. Isn't this what landed you here in the first place?"

Jayk shrugged indifferently, but kept her huge eyes fixed on the Amnesian Hero. "What matter if I make kiss with him, Tessali? He is dead already, yes?"

"Were I you," said the Thrasson, "I would not be so certain."

The Amnesian Hero sprang from his sedan chair and landed light as a cinder on the gray floor, then started toward the tiefling. His Mercykiller escorts moved to block his way, but he pushed past them with hardly a glance. In the performance of any great feat, the champion always had to face some trial of character or intellect, and there was much about Jayk's manner to suggest she embodied such a test.

"I have fought the Hydra of Thrassos and wrestled the Hebron Crocodile and harried the Abudrian Dragons and battled many more foes too numerous to name, and always have I been the one who departs the bloody fray standing and alive."

"Or so thought you." Jayk gave him a coy smile, then ran her dark gaze down his armored body. "Pity for a man like you to think he is alive." She turned to Tessali and asked, "A sad, sad delusion, is it not?"

The Amnesian Hero frowned, but continued toward the tiefling. Arborea was a place of passion and vigor, where life was an eternal celebration and death its inevitable but loathsome end. He had never met someone who called living a sad delusion, and he could not decide whether she belonged to some strange faction of death worshipers or was only suffering from some plane-touched dementia.

The tiefling's keeper, Tessali, grasped the Thrasson's arm. "You mustn't get too near. She's one of the-"

The Amnesian Hero shook free of the elf's hand. "If life is a delusion, then it is not a sad one." He continued to stare at Jayk. "And, if you will be kind enough to repeat the Third Riddle of the Gatehouse, I hope to remain deluded even after I have seen the Lady of Pain."

Jayk threw back her head and laughed, a bony, fiendish rattle that drew a chill up the Thrasson's spine. He did not flinch or back away.

"The Third Riddle of the Gatehouse?" Jayk cackled. "The dead go in and the dead go out, and still they are as barmy as you! Now we make kiss, yes?"

The Amnesian Hero realized instantly the tiefling's riddle, lacking the poetic form of the first two, was not the one he sought. Still, he hesitated before replying, trying to decide whether the test was to show his courage by kissing Jayk, or demonstrate his resolve by resisting the temptation.

Taking advantage of the pause, Tessali slipped between the Amnesian Hero and the tiefling. "Stay back! She's one of the Menacing Mad."

"Me?" Jayk scoffed. "It is you who clings to delusion like his mother's teat!"

With that, Jayk's head shot forward, the pupils of her dark eyes taking the shape of two elongated diamonds. The Amnesian Hero thought he glimpsed a pair of needlelike fangs folding down from the roof of the tiefling's mouth, but her mouth closed abruptly when her burly handlers jerked her back. Tessali stepped away and turned around, rubbing his neck as though he could still feel her hot breath upon his skin.

Jayk switched her gaze to the Thrasson, the pupils of her dark eyes slowly returning to the round. She gave him a provocative smile, then ran her tongue over her damson lips.

"Come to me. It will be a long time before you make kiss with a woman, no?"

"No." It seemed clear enough now that the test had been one of resolve. "There are women enough in Thrassos, and I will have my pick of them after my audience with the Lady of Pain."

Again, Jayk threw her head back and gave that bony laugh. "You have not solved the Third Riddle, no? The Lady of Pain, you will not find her here! This is the House of Bannies, do you understand? And you and I, we are their prisoners!"

The Amnesian Hero scowled. "Now it is you who are deluded. I have solved the First Riddle, and the second as well, and I have seen the Lady's vassals waiting with their gifts of pain…"

"The Stumbling Dead, yes, hoping for a bed of straw and a bowl of gruel, fighting against their next stage, the fools!" Jayk went limp, leaving her body to dangle by her outstretched arms. "I wish I were one of them, and you as well-but we are here, prisoners of the Bleak Cabal, to be locked away until we become as barmy as they, yes?"

The Amnesian Hero shook his head. "No! This is the Lady of Pain's palace!"

" 'Course it is!" growled Cwalno. The Mercykiller was approaching with Tyvold at his side and a dozen wide-eyed assistants at his back. "Do I look the sort to disobey orders? You heard Madame Mok say to take you to the Lady of Pain."

The Amnesian Hero eyed the Mercykiller warily and said nothing, and Cwalno tensed in his stance. Yet, so perfectly had the Thrasson played his role to that moment that even Tyvold-who has lured a thousand madmen cunning as fiends into the dark warrens beyond the iron door-failed to guess that his ward had long ago learned the lie. The elf only stepped forward, raising a gray canvas cloak that an assistant had fetched for him from the depths of his asylum.

"This is the Ceremonial Robe of Pain." Tyvold gave it a shake, unfurling a dozen straps, chains, and belts attached to the sleeves and waist. "Before you see Her Serenity, you must remove your armor and put on this instead."

Cwalno motioned to the other Mercykillers. They inched toward the Amnesian Hero, their knuckles growing white around the shafts of their glaives. The Thrasson's eyes widened. He swung his gaze toward the tiefling, who winked and gave him a crooked smile.

"Maybe you make kiss with me now, eh?"

The Amnesian Hero's hand dropped toward his sword.

The Mercykillers lowered their glaives, but Tyvold motioned them sharply back, then inched toward the Thrasson.

"What about the Third Riddle?" the elf asked. "Don't you want to hear it?"

The Amnesian Hero paused short of touching his sword. "I do, if you can tell it."

"And then you will change your armor for the Ceremonial Robe?"

"Of course." The Amnesian Hero glanced at the Mercykillers, almost sneering at the confidence in their stances. "If the riddle is a good one."

Tyvold screwed his face up in thought, and though the Amnesian Hero must have known that the elf did not have the Third Riddle, he was too cunning to give up his pretense even then. He waited a moment longer, then gripped the hilt of his sword.

"Do you know the Third Riddle or not?"

"Of course," Tyvold blurted. "I walk upon four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three at night!"

So common was the riddle, and so well known the solution, that the Amnesian Hero did not bother to answer. He simply drew his sword and, before the Mercykillers could stop him, pressed the tip to Cwalno's throat.

"I paid my gold to the Hall of Information, and I expect to see the Lady of Pain! Take me to her now!"

Showing no concern for their comrade's safety, Cwalno's companions stepped forward, slashing at the Thrasson's throat or trying to drive their hard steel through the soft bronze that covered his torso. Of course, the attacks failed. The Amnesian Hero's armor had been forged by the god Hephaestus himself. While he wore it, no weapon could harm him; the blades aimed at his neck dipped and broke upon his pauldrons, and those striking at his chest simply shattered against his breastplate.

The Amnesian Hero whirled on his attackers, slipping between the shafts of the closest pair's useless glaives. He tapped his sword against one man's armored midriff, then flipped his wrist and caught the other on the backswing. The star-forged blade cut through their armor as though it were cloth, leaving a deep gash in each warrior's flank. The two men screamed and dropped to their knees, blood spilling from the rents in their breastplates.

The Amnesian Hero was already past them and behind their comrades. The Thrasson lowered his blade and drew it lightly across the thighs of two more Mercykillers. Again, the star-bom steel cut through armor as easily as silk, and the Mercykillers hurled themselves to the floor, screaming more in terror than pain.

The Thrasson barely had time to lift his blade beforeCwalno and three more guards were upon him, hurling themselves forward in a wall of armored flesh. The Amnesian Hero did not resist the charge. Rather, he dropped to the floor and slid toward their feet, bringing his sword across the front of his body in a sharp arc that cut deep into the shins of two of his foes. He rolled onto his stomach and sprang up behind the last pair of attackers, denting the helmet of the closest with his sword pommel and dropping the fellow on the spot.

Cwalno turned, a belt axe in his grasp.

The Thrasson lopped off the offending hand, then sent the Mercykiller flying with a thrust-kick to the chest. Cwalno's wound was the most severe the Amnesian Hero had inflicted, but he refused to let that trouble him. The oaf had been instrumental in deceiving him. In the future, perhaps Cwalno would think better of helping Madame Mok ridicule those who came to her for help.

The Amnesian Hero took a moment to look the Mercykillers over. Although none were in danger of dying, they seemed too awed by the speed of their demise to cause him any further trouble. The Thrasson turned his attention to Tyvold, who was staring, gape-mouthed, at the mayhem on the floor.

"Now I have a riddle for you, elf:

"Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel

Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour;

The heavy white limbs, and the cruel

Red mouth like a venomous flower…"

"You didn't say he was one of the Menacing!" Tyvold screeched, glaring down at Cwalno's groaning figure. The elf backed away, clutching the Ceremonial Robe of Pain as though it were a shield, and looked toward Tessali. "He's one for your wing, brother."

Tessali shot his brother an angry look, but quickly ordered, "Clear the area!"

The elves and their attendants began to cautiously retreat toward the iron doors that led deeper into the asylum's wings. Jayk's handlers also began to withdraw, dragging their squirming charge along.

"Wait!" the Amnesian Hero called. "All I want is my answer!"

Ignoring him, Tessali reached the iron door and yanked it open. "Fetch the netflingers and sleepcasters!" His voice echoed off the stones of a long, murky corridor. "And be quick! We've got an armed Menace out here, and he knows how to use his weapon!"

The hollow echoes of alarm cries began to spill through the doorway, drawing an angry curse from the Amnesian Hero. "By the bolt of Zeus, what's wrong with you people? Just tell me how to find the Lady of Pain, and I'll be gone!"

"I help you, yes?" called Jayk."You have only to take me with you!"

"Quiet!" One of the tiefling's guards slapped his palm over her mouth, then dragged her through the iron door.

They were only halfway across the threshold when the Amnesian Hero noticed a certain narrowing in the pupils of Jayk's eyes. The man screamed and jerked his hand away. The appendage was bleeding profusely and already beginning to swell. He opened his mouth to say something, then his eyes rolled back in his head. He fell dead on the floor, his vacant gaze fixed on the gloom above.

Jayk whirled on her second captor, her mouth open to reveal the needlelike fangs that had folded down from the roof of her mouth. The guard wisely released his grip and hurled himself to the floor. The tiefling laughed, then blew him a kiss and, leaving Tessali to quiver behind his iron door, slunk across the floor to the Amnesian Hero.

"Come, you and I, we leave here together." Her pupils were still slender and diamondlike, and she had two runnels of dark blood dribbling down her chin. "Then I show you how to find the Lady of Pain, yes?"

The Amnesian Hero did not answer immediately. Instead, he cleaned and sheathed his sword, at the same time studying the carnage around him. Why would so many men elect to do battle with him rather than answer a simple question about the Lady of Pain? When he could think of no reasonable answer, he reluctantly looked back to Jayk and nodded.

"As you will; we have a bargain." He picked up his amphora, which his nervous chair-bearers had been wise enough to leave lying upon the floor, then turned toward the exit. "It appears I have need of a guide." Dustmen

How Jayk got that blood-bubbling slash across her thigh, I do not know. Nor can I relate how she and the Thrasson came to be panting for breath in a crooked dead-end alley, surrounded by black tangles of razorvine and cornered by seven armored githyanki. I can only say that as they fled the Gatehouse, the tiefling's body flared with a silver aura of delight, and the sight of a denizen's joy is more than I can bear. There is a flash behind my eyes, then a raw, scintillating light – a sparkling torment like an axe blade in my brain – and then I see nothing but bright-winking stars. It is my weakness, this bedazzled blindness. It is a false fire, a brilliant burning apparition that flashes and fades and leaves in its place a silhouette all the blacker for its passing, and so it was that I lost for a time the Amnesian Hero and his guide.

When my vision cleared, I found them in this cul-de-sac, gasping for air and searching the hard walls for escape routes that were nowhere to be found. Every barricaded door and bricked-over window hung hidden behind thick snarls of razorvine that even the Amnesian Hero knew better than to think of climbing. Beneath the glossy black leaves lay fluted stalks with ridges as sharp as swords, and so dense Were the coils that anyone scaling them would find himself hopelessly tangled. There was only one way out of the trap. The Thrasson lay the amphora on the ground, then drew his star-forged blade and faced the githyanki.

They had the look of elves gone bad. Their faces were slender and delicate, marked by sharp angles and warped features, with gritty yellow skin and eyes that gleamed like polished coal. They kept their gray lips raised in snaky, fang-toothed snarls, and their flat noses were so small they looked almost absent. All seven were armored in dark, baroque plate and tall cone-shaped helmets, and each carried a two-handed sword with a saw-toothed blade. Wherever they could find a lobe or a fold of skin to pierce hung chains of gold finery, a sure sign that they were both more vicious and more capable than the many bloodblades who would gladly have taken the jewelry from their dead bodies.

"We have no… quarrel with you." The Amnesian Hero was still winded by the long run from the Gatehouse. "Stand aside, and I won't hurt… any of you."

"Tessali said you two was barmy," sheered the tallest githyanki. "Come along quiet. You're worth more alive than dead."

The Amnesian Hero gnashed his teeth at the speaker's insolence, but held his temper and tried to think of a quiet way to dispose of his seven enemies. The sound of clashing steel would certainly draw the attention of the many search parties scouring the streets of the Hive for him and Jayk, and then there would be even more bloodletting.

The Amnesian Hero sighed heavily. "Very well. It seems we are captured." He flipped his sword around and laid the hilt over his free arm, then stepped forward. "I have no wish to fight."

The githyanki slipped back. "That's far enough, berk." He pointed at the ground. "Drop your sticker there."

"As you wish." The Amnesian Hero stopped and gently tossed his sword into the dirt. Though it grated on the Thrasson to treat his weapon so badly, he hoped the act would quell the githyanki's suspicions. If he could make a hostage of the leader, perhaps he could end the confrontation without shedding blood or creating a clamor. "We surrender."

"Surrender?" scoffed Jayk. She was standing behind the Amnesian Hero, and he could not see what she was doing. "Never!"

"Magic!" Three githyanki cried the word at once, then lunged for the tiefling together.

Cursing Jayk's impatience, the Amnesian Hero pivoted on his heel and slammed a spinning thrust kick into the first warrior's flank. The fellow's breastplate spared him any shattered ribs, but the blow sent him crashing into the next githyanki, who was knocked deep into a vicious snarl of razorvine. The third one charged past, his saw-toothed sword already arcing down at the tiefling. The Thrasson thrust a hand out and caught him by the collar, then yanked him off his feet.

The githyanki's helmet hit the ground first, striking with a deep, metallic toll. Two paces beyond the fellow's feet, Jayk was tossing a gob of rough wool into the air and uttering the dark-sounding syllables of a spell. Before the Amnesian Hero could turn to face his remaining foes, four huge swords slammed into his back. The blades shattered against his god-forged armor, but that did not prevent the impact from driving him off his feet. He landed face first and tasted mordant Sigil dirt.

The battle clamor grew abruptly distant and muffled. The Amnesian Hero feared, for only the briefest instant, that a foe's blade had actually rent Hephaestus's magic and struck his head. When he did not fall unconscious or feel his skull erupting into pain, however, he quickly realized that could not be so and sprang to his feet. He found himself facing four astonished githyanki holding four broken swords. They appeared to be shouting at each other, but the only sound in the alley was a faint, uneven drone no louder than a fly's buzzing-apparently a result of the spell Jayk had cast.

Resisting the temptation to glance at his sword, which still lay upon the ground behind his four enemies, the Amnesian Hero hurled himself forward. The leader shoved his fellows into the fray and retreated. The three githyanki flailed at the Thrasson, but their broken swords always shattered against a pauldron or glanced off a vambrace. The Thrasson slammed his elbow up under a chin, and one foe fell; he grabbed a throat and pinched off the carotid arteries, and another dropped; he trapped a wild swing, then popped a shoulder out of its socket. The last attacker fell to the ground, the scream that came from his gaping mouth silenced by Jayk's magic.

As fast as the Amnesian Hero disposed of his enemies, he was not quick enough to reach his sword; the githyanki leader had already snatched it off the ground. This time, the Thrasson did not rush to the attack, as even his god-made armor was no defense against that star-forged blade. Instead, he glanced in Jayk's direction and found her atop the warrior he had kicked earlier, clawing at his eyes and doing something bloody with a dagger. Not three paces from her, one githyanki was thrashing about in the razorvine, growing more tangled by the instant and bleeding from all the places not covered by his dark armor. Another fellow, the one whose helmet had made such a toll when the Thrasson jerked him to the ground, was shaking his head and slowly rising to his knees.

The Amnesian Hero took a flying leap at this githyanki, kicking him in the helmet with enough force to smash his face back to the ground. When the warrior's body fell instantly limp, the Thrasson snatched up his sword and whirled around, automatically bringing the weapon up to slap aside a slashing blade that was not there.

The githyanki leader, more cautious with his own safety than that of his underlings, had not leapt to the attack. He stood three paces away, frantically trying to rouse his fallen warriors by kicking them in the helmets. The Amnesian Hero raised his borrowed sword to column guard and advanced. The githyanki retreated a few paces, then stopped and sank into a battle stance. Though the star-forged sword in his hands was as light as a feather, the brute held it with both hands, a sure sign that he was more accustomed to fighting with force than finesse.

The Amnesian Hero stopped two paces from his foe, pretending not to notice that he was standing among the fallen githyanki. He smiled, then dipped his heavy sword in salute. The leader leapt forward, trying to catch his prey at a disadvantage. The Thrasson wrenched his heavy sword up into a high block, deliberately allowing his attacker time to dose. The gold-draped warrior sneered and threw his weight into a vicious downstroke.

The Amnesian Hero held his position until the blades clashed, then deftly danced aside as his star-forged sword sliced through the clumsy weapon he now held. The surprised leader lurched forward, stumbling over a fallen underling and landing on his knees. The Thrasson sprang on him instantly, bringing the pommel of his broken sword down on the unarmored base of the fellow's neck. The githyanki collapsed in a heap.

The Amnesian Hero retrieved his sword, then glimpsed Jayk out of the corner of his eye. He turned to find her stooping over a fallen githyanki, one foot atop his dislocated shoulder to keep him pinned to the ground while she pulled his head up by a topknot of coarse hair. Before the Thrasson could fully grasp the situation, she slipped her free hand around the warrior's neck and calmly drew a dagger across her victim's throat.

"Jayk!" the Amnesian Hero screamed. "What are you doing?"

The Thrasson's words were barely audible, of course. Jayk's spell had not yet lapsed, so all sounds in the alley remained muted. The tiefling stepped over to another of the unconscious githyanki and pulled his head up.

The Amnesian Hero rushed over and caught her dagger arm. Jayk whirled on him so quickly he thought she might be attacking, but she only tipped her head and gave him an innocent smile. A cold shudder ran down his spine. He pointed at the bloody blade and shook his head to indicate there was no need to slay their foes. The tiefling thrust her bottom lip out, then stuck her knife into her belt without cleaning off the blood.

The Thrasson released her, then saw that she had already slashed the throats of four warriors. A fifth hung motionless in the razorvine, the hilt of a baroque throwing knife lodged between his eyes. Sickened by the needless killing, the Amnesian Hero cleaned his blade and thrust it into his scabbard, then retrieved his amphora and turned to leave.

The Thrasson found the tiefling in front of him, using the stump of a broken githyanki sword to hack through the leader's neck. This one was the last to die; she had already decapitated the other survivor.

The sight stunned the Amnesian Hero so badly that he could not quite believe what he was seeing. The other attacks could be excused by the heat of battle; it was not unreasonable to slay disabled foes to prevent them from rejoining the fray later-but this was murder. The Thrasson lay the amphora aside, then caught Jayk's arm and wrenched the bloody sword from her grasp.

"You're a maniac!"

The only sound to pass between the Thrasson and the tiefling was a muted drone. Jayk ran her red-stained fingers through the flickering motions of a counterspell, at the same time raising her gaze to meet that of the Amnesian Hero. Her black eyes were large and round, and her mouth was shaped into a small, astonished O. On her shadowy face, the expression seemed more a parody of innocence than one of innocence itself, but neither did she show any sign of guilt or remorse.

The tiefling gestured at the fallen githyanki. "You think I kill them, yes?"

"You did kill them." The Amnesian Hero's stomach began to chum, and he had the sick feeling that taking Jayk as his guide had been a terrible mistake. "Tessali was right. You belong in a locked cell."

The tiefling's face grew even darker. "Me? I do not think the Lady of Pain lives in a barmyhouse, huh?" She spun on her heel and started toward the back of the alley, limping because of a slashed thigh she had suffered when the githyanki first ambushed them. "You know nothing!"

The Amnesian Hero glanced over the dead githyanki. "I know that I had disabled these warriors." His voice was hard with reproach. "There was no reason to kill them."

"There was reason-good reason." Jayk stopped at the back of the alley and flashed a smile. "Besides, life, she is only an illusion."

"Illusion or not, there's no glory in killing helpless foes." The Amnesian Hero fixed her with a stony glare. "It's better to let them live, so they can describe the battle and sing your fame."

"Pah! Fame is delusion."

"To those who lack it, perhaps." The Thrasson picked up his amphora and gestured up the alley. "Let's go. You promised to show me to the Lady of Pain."

"No. It is better to hide here." She waved at the back of the alley, where the razorvine was so dense it hid the walls of the surrounding buildings. "If someone comes because of the fighting, they will not look for us in there."

The Thrasson scowled. "There's no use stalling. If you lied to me…"

Jayk raised a hand. "I do not stall." She motioned at the githyanki. "We should not show ourselves. The bounty hunters, they already look for us in all the streets and alleys of the Hive, yes? But they do not expect to find us here. It is much better to wait, you will see-but hurry!"

Deciding that the murderous tiefling was bound to be more experienced in such matters than he, the Amnesian Hero reluctantly nodded. While he cut a swath through the razorvine, she used a saw-toothed githyanki sword to drag the severed stems aside. It took only a moment to clear their cubby hole, then they took the amphora inside and pulled the stalks back over the entrance. The hollow was just large enough for them to squat side-by-side without brushing against the surrounding vines, and the light filtering in from outside was dim and spotty. The Thrasson knew the hiding place would not stand up to a close inspection, but he had also seen enough of Sigil to realize its residents instinctively shied away from razorvine; if someone came to investigate the fighting, the last place they would search for victors was among the black-leaved tangles.

The Amnesian Hero used his sword to clear a small viewing hole. "I trust you know what you're doing, Jayk."

"I cannot walk far with this." Jayk gestured at her wounded thigh. "And if you were to help me, people would notice and call Tessali's netflingers, yes?"

The Thrasson nodded. "I suppose so."

The netflingers had attacked as they straggled to push their way through the Salvation Line outside the Gatehouse. The steel mesh nets were surprisingly effective; as soon as they settled over a victim's torso, the flinger pulled a draw cord that tightened the outer loop and pinned the captive's arms to his ribs. Despite his enchanted armor, the Amnesian Hero had been temporarily caught in one. He would have been dragged back to Tessali, had Jayk not saved him by creating a cloud of stinking magic gas that had sickened his attacker and sent the entire Salvation Line scurrying for cover. The two escapees had joined the resulting stampede and fled the Marble District, then ducked into the back alleys to avoid Gatehouse search parties. Had they not stumbled into the githyanki bounty hunters, they might well have escaped the Hive entirely undetected.

Noticing that Jayk had made no move to stanch her bleeding, the Amnesian Hero gestured at her wound. "Aren't you going to do anything about that?"

Jayk kept her dark gaze fixed on her leg, watching with a peculiar fascination as the blood bubbled from the slash. "Why?"

The Amnesian Hero rolled his eyes. "So you don't bleed to death before I see the Lady of Pain."

He pulled his dagger and cut her trousers away from her wound. As he worked, the murmur of soft voices began to rustle down the alley. The Amnesian Hero peered through the viewing hole he had cut and saw a pack of wild-haired urchins pulling a wobble-wheeled cart around the comer. None of them looked to be more than eight or nine years old, though they were so scrawny and sunken-eyed that it was difficult to tell.

When they saw the dead githyanki, the eldest, or at least the largest, raised a hand to stop the procession. He performed a cursory scan of the area, then sent a single sentry up the alley to keep watch. The rest, he led forward to the corpses.

As they approached, the Amnesian Hero saw no sign of shock or fear on the faces of the children, or even of distaste. The youngest, a soot-faced waif no taller than the Thrasson's sword, was smiling and strutting proudly along at the leader's side.

"See, Spider?" Only after he heard her voice could the Amnesian Hero tell that she was a girl. "I telled ya they ran down here. I heard a clank!"

"Aye, you did well, Sally." Spider ran a wary eye back up the alley, pausing to study each bricked-over window and vine-choked doorway. "But I'd like to know what happened to that tiefling and her blood. They might not like us scraggin' their kill."

Disgusted by the thought of children robbing the dead, the Amnesian Hero started to rise. Jayk caught his arm and shook her head. The Thrasson reluctantly remained were he was and continued to watch. When no one appeared to chase them off, Spider waved the other children to the corpses.

"Let's nick 'em! And be sure to check their teeth."

The leader and another boy used a githyanki sword to drag free the warrior in the razorvine, then the entire pack set to work stripping the bodies. They took the corpses' armor and weapons, then their boots, purses, and underclothes as well. They ripped rings from earlobes and fingers, they tore studs from noses, lips, and tongues, they knocked out teeth and cracked them for the fillings, they harvested the githyankis' coarse topknots for rope-making; young Sally even cut the tattoo of a snake from the leader's arm, claiming to her disgusted comrades that she could sell it for two coppers. By the time the urchins had packed their cart, taking care to secure the best treasures in secret pockets inside their rags, the bodies lay naked and even more mangled than before.

Stomach churning with both revulsion and pity, the Amnesian Hero watched the waifs until their cart wheeled around the comer.

"What place is this?" He whirled on Jayk, searching for some hint of emotion in the delicate features of her shadowed face. "Did I wander through a portal and fall into the Abyss?"

"Do not be so silly." Jayk slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow and gave him a beguiling half-smile. "You would know it if you were in the Abyss. This is still Sigil."

"That is what I feared." The Amnesian Hero shook his head, then started to push open their door of vines. "I can wait in this place no longer. Take me to the Lady of Pain."

Jayk pulled him back to his knees. "Be patient. Those bodies, they are worth seven coppers. The children will report them, and our ride will come soon. While we wait, you can tell me about yourself, yes? Who you are, and why you wish to fight the Lady of Pain?"

"Who said I want to fight her?"

The tiefling shrugged. "It does not matter. You will lose anyway."

"I'm only trying to deliver a gift." The Thrasson gestured at the amphora. "Why should that offend her?"

"Who is to say it will?" Jayk asked. "Now, tell me about yourself. If I am prepared, things will go faster at the Mortuary."

"Mortuary?"

"Did you not say you wanted to see the Lady of Pain?"

"Of course, but-"

"Then I must know more about you."

The Amnesian Hero frowned. "You can take me to the Lady of Pain? If you're another of Sigil's tricksters-"

"I will show you how to find the Lady! But first, we make the preparations, yes? Tell me who you are."

The Amnesian Hero hesitated, then forced himself to lift his chin proudly. "I am the slayer of the Hydra of Thrassos, the tamer of the Hebron Crocodile, the bane of Abudrian Dragons, the savior of the Virgins of Marmara, the champion of the Dyrian Kings, the killer of the Chakedon Lion…"

Jayk grasped his forearm. "I am already impressed with your swordsmanship. Only your name, yes?"

The Thrasson's gaze dropped. "I don't know it."

Jayk's shadowy face rippled with confusion. "How can that be? Your mother, she could not speak?"

"Of course she could!" The Amnesian Hero flushed, then amended, "At least I assume she could. I can't remember."

Jayk's dark eyes widened. She stared at the Thrasson and said nothing.

"I awoke on the shore near Thrassos, on the first layer of Arborea. I recall nothing before that."

Jayk seemed unable to take her dark eyes off him. "You have no link to your past?"

The Amnesian Hero looked away. "Sometimes I glimpse the face of a woman I think I once knew, but she always disappears before I can speak with her." He did not add that he was usually drinking at the time. "But I am sure I am a man of renown. That much is obvious from my bearing."

"And your skill with a sword, yes?"

"Yes." The Thrasson smiled, wanning to the tiefling. "I must have lost my memory battling one of Poseidon's sea monsters. That would explain why I was found on the shore of an Arborean sea, and why he promised to restore my memories in return for delivering this."

He thumped the amphora.

Jayk's jaw dropped. "You want your memories back? But you arc halfway to the next stage!"

"Stage?"

"Of death! To remember is to go backward! You are like the zombie." She pronounced it zoombee. "He cannot recall the light at his back, yet he is afraid to face the dark truth ahead."

"Jayk, the light is still real for me. I am no zombie."

"You are, my dear. That is what I shall call you, yes?"

"No!"

"Zoombee! It sounds so nice, so… enticing."

Jayk's face drifted toward his, her dark lips parting ever so slightly. The Amnesian Hero had tasted the mouths of many Arborean women, of course, but he could feel something more powerful, far deeper and brutally primal, drawing his head toward hers. Men of renown were not expected to forgo the pleasures of the flesh – some of their greatest feats came from yielding to such temptations – but the Thrasson could not forget how the tiefling's pupils had a habit of narrowing to black diamonds, nor the fangs that he had seen folding down from the roof of her mouth.

"Later." He abruptly pulled back. "Perhaps when the light isn't so bright."

Jayk inclined her head, her eyelids lowered too far for the Thrasson to see whether her pupils were shaped like circles or diamonds.

"Whenever you are ready, Zoombee." She gave him a knowing smile. "I will be ready too."

The Amnesian Hero-Zoombee-swallowed nervously, then turned away. "You are beautiful, Jayk, but I do not think it is our destiny to… make kisses."

"But why not, Zoombee? Because I am tiefling?"

"You must not think that." The Thrasson looked back to Jayk and found her lips bowed into a coy grin. He felt himself flush, angry at being mocked. "Because you arc a murderess – and because I must think of other business. Remember the Lady of Pain?"

The tiefling's face drooped into an insincere sulk. "Soon, Zoombee. I think that is our ride coming now."

The Amnesian Hero looked through his viewing hole. He saw only the dead bounty hunters, but he did notice a foul odor building in the alley. At first, he thought the stink was coming from the githyanki corpses, hut as the fetor grew stronger, he realized that could not be so. Even in Sigil, seven bodies could not rot fast enough to emit such a stench so soon. The Thrasson rubbed his hand in the mordant dirt, then covered his mouth and nose to mask the awful reek.

Jayk yanked his hand away from his face. "It is better to grow accustomed to the smell now. If you retch later, someone will hear you, yes?"

A pattern of slow, rhythmic creaks began to echo off the tenement walls, underscored by the rising drone of an insect cloud. The Amnesian Hero did his best to breathe through his mouth and keep his nostrils closed, but the effort was doomed to failure. Every time he inhaled, he found himself fighting to hold his gorge down, and every time he exhaled, he begged Apollo to keep him from drawing another breath. His prayer went unanswered, for this is Sigil, and the gods have no power here. The Thrasson continued to breathe the rancid air. He began to feel hot and queasy; he grew sicker with every lungful, and soon his legs trembled with weakness.

A cloud of black flies drifted around the comer, swirling over what appeared to be a jumbled, floating mountain of corpses. The Amnesian Hero gasped at the sight and, gagging on the stench, wished he hadn't. Then he noticed a pair of high sideboards holding the pile in check and realized the bodies lay heaped on the bed of a mighty barrow. So enormous was the wagon that it brushed the tenements on both-sides of the alley, dragging long tangles of razorvine free of the mud brick walls.

Standing high atop the hill of rotting flesh, his shape blurred by the haze of flies whirling around him, was a single figure in a black cape similar to Jayk's. He glanced over his shoulder and called something to the driver. A huge, creaking wheel rolled into sight, and the wagon began to swing around. The back comer pushed through a tangle of razorvine and crunched against the building beneath, then the guide snapped a sharp command. The barrow lurched to a halt.

"This is our ride7" The Amnesian Hero did his best to sound more curious than repulsed; this simple errand was becoming something of a feat, and during feats, true men of renown accepted even the most loathsome events with good grace. "I notice the man wears a cape similar to yours."

"Yes, we are both Dustmen." Jayk leaned close and peered through the viewing hole as the guide and driver scrambled down to retrieve the githyanki. "But we must not let him see us when we climb aboard."

The Amnesian Hero scowled. "How will we do that? Won't he notice us… sitting on… the…" The Thrasson let the question trail off, barely managing to keep from retching as he realized where they would be riding. "We can find a disguise for me somewhere in that mess. I'd much rather ride in front."

"That is not possible, dear Zoombee. You must be strong and ride with me, yes?"

"Surely, they'll let you ride in front! Perhaps one of them is a friend of yours."

"Friendship is a delusion!" Jayk hissed the words, never taking her dark eyes off the two Dustmen, who were already dragging the second pair of githyanki back to the wagon. "Besides, we must think of the Mercykillers. If the driver does not know about us, it is easier for him to lie, yes?"

"Yes." The Amnesian Hero sighed, remembering how the Mercykiller guard at the Hall of Information had invaded his mind to verify his statements. "I trust I'll have a chance to wash the stink off before my audience with the Lady of Pain?"

"But why, Zoombee? She will like the smell of death!"

They watched the Dustmen throw the last of the githyanki onto the wagon. Then, as the pair climbed over the heap toward the front of the huge barrow, the Amnesian Hero used the amphora to push the razorvine out of their way. By the time he and Jayk had crawled from their hiding place, the crack of the driver's whip was echoing down the alley. The Thrasson threw the amphora onto bis shoulder, then, trying to ignore the indignity of what he was doing, ran for the death wagon. Rivergate

They had entered the Mortuary District, the Amnesian Hero could tell. He knew by the steady trundle of the death wagon, by how it no longer veered down every side street in search of unclaimed corpses, by the way its axles groaned under its burden of spent lives. The barrow was overloaded, bodies heaped higher than the side slats, and the driver was heading for home. Through a tangle of arms and necks and dead, bulging eyes, the Thrasson could see a long file of somber monuments drifting past the wagon: granite balls clutched in rusty iron claws, soaring obelisks of white marble, black walls etched with a thousand names, a hundred worthless stones erected to the memories of someone whom someone else had once thought worth remembering. Jayk lay next to him, breathing fast and shallow and hot; his own heart was beating like a sword against a shield. Soon, the wagon would enter the Mortuary proper, the true palace of the Lady of Pain, and he would present her with Poseidon's amphora.

The wagon lumbered past another dozen monuments, then the driver suddenly drew rein. The Amnesian Hero thought they were slowing to pass through the Mortuary's gate, until a gruff voice barked "Halt!"

As the barrow creaked to a stop, Jayk cursed softly and began to fumble through her pockets. The Amnesian Hero pushed his hand through the tangle of slimy bodies to clutch her arm, then squeezed until she stopped moving. Unless the unpredictable tiefling did something to attract attention, they would avoid detection. They were buried under several layers of corpses and had already escaped notice many times as the Dustmen clambered over the pile above.

The wagon rocked, and through the jumble of bodies, the Amnesian Hero glimpsed a stem-jawed man peering over the side slats. His helmet was orange instead of crimson, but his brown eyes were every bit as stony as those of the Mercykillers who had escorted the Thrasson to the Gatehouse. Jayk must have been able to see the man also, for she tried to twist her arm free. The Amnesian Hero held her fast. The guard could not see them buried so deeply in the shadowy tangle of bodies, and the Thrasson would not let the tiefling cause another bloodletting.

From the front of the wagon came a familiar voice. "We had an escape at the Gatehouse today." It was the elf, Tessali. "I assume you know Jayk the Snake?"

"Of course." The driver's tone was flat and uninterested. "Everyone in the Mortuary knows her."

"We think she'll come back for her spellbook."

The Amnesian Hero's stomach turned, and he found himself gagging on the rancid closeness of the corpses. The skin of the cadavers felt cold and slimy against his own, the fly drone grew dizzying in its volume, and he found himself considering the possibility that Jayk had brought him here solely to recover her lost property.

Tessali continued, "She'll be with another barmy, a Menace in bronze armor." As the elf spoke, die guard peering over the side slats probed the pile of corpses with a steel-tipped spear. "Her companion is tall and swarthy, and more dangerous than she."

"Danger is an illusion." It was the assistant Dustman who answered, and he sounded as apathetic as the driver. "But we haven't seen them."

"That so?" growled another voice. "Look at me and say that"

"That won't be necessary, Raq," said Tessali. "He has no reason to lie."

"Everyone has reason to lie," growled the Mercykiller.

"Not about this. Secretary Trevant had her committed in the first place."

A burning feeling welled up inside the Amnesian Hero, and he found himself squeezing Jayk's willowy arm so hard he thought it would break. Any doubt about the tiefling's motives vanished; given her thirst for blood, it seemed clear enough that she was more interested in taking vengeance on Secretary Trevant than helping him find the Lady of Pain. Had it not been for the likelihood of landing in the Gatehouse alongside her, the Thrasson would have reported Jayk himself.

The orange-helmeted guard used his spear to push a githyanki off the pile over their heads, then thrust the tip down through the tangle of bodies. The point struck the Amnesian Hero's forearm and chipped against his vambrace. The guard stirred his weapon around, catching some of Jayk's shadowy hair and twining it about the shaft.

"Have you found anything, Mateus?" called Tessali.

The guard shook his head. "Worms and stink." He withdrew his weapon, ripping a tress of hair from Jayk's head. The Amnesian Hero felt her arm tense, but the tiefling did not ciy out "If your barmies are in there, they're as dead as everyone else."

"We'll let this one go, then." To the Dustmen, Tessali said, "I apologize for wasting your time."

"The dead need no apologies." The driver cracked his whip, and the wheels began to creak. "And time is an illusion."

Mateus jumped off the wagon, a lock of shadowy hair waving from the head of his spear. The Amnesian Hero released the tiefling's arm and quietly straggled toward the surface, kicking and pushing to free himself of the bodies. He could not be certain Tessali would recognize the tress as Jayk's, but he wanted to be ready.

"What are you doing, Zoombee?" Jayk hissed. "They hear you!"

The Amnesian Hero ignored the tiefling and pushed past a decomposing bariaur, smearing his bronze armor with some sort of brown ichor that might once have been skin. He came up amidst a cloud of whirring flies, then craned his neck toward the wagon's tailgate. Through the droning black haze, he saw Tessali's slender figure standing in the middle street, pulling a strand of shadow off the head of Mateus's spear. The elf was surrounded by two more of the orange-helmeted guards, another pair of men armored in Mercykiller crimson, and a spangle-robed Bleaker with a bucket of sand in her hands.

The Thrasson reached down and pulled Jayk up through the heap of bodies. "Prepare your magic-but don't kill anyone, or I'll throw you to the elf!"

"If you do that, how will you find-"

"I know why you brought me to the Mortuary, tiefling!" The Amnesian Hero worked his arms to the top of the pile. "Don't insult me further, or I'll throw you out now!"

Jayk pushed out her dark lip. "You misjudge me, Zoombee. Just because I get what I want-"

The tiefling was interrupted by Tessali's cry. "Wait! Stop the wagon!"

The Amnesian Hero pulled himself free and spun toward the front of the barrow. The assistant Dustman was peering over the mound of bodies toward Tessali, but his gaze quickly fell on the Thrasson. The fellow's drab eyes lit with surprise, then he dropped out of sight and began to jabber about what was rising from the dead.

The Amnesian Hero jumped to his feet and clambered up the body heap, slipping and sliding on the glairy flesh underfoot. With each step, the flies rose around him in geysers.

They felt like chiffon against his face and tickled his eyes with the beating of their tiny wings. He cringed and breathed through clenched teeth to avoid swallowing any of the gruesome creatures, and he suffered one of those vague sensations of familiarity that sometimes troubled him. The Thrasson shuddered to think of where he might have done this before; short of Hades's realm, he could not imagine another place where he might have climbed a mountain of-decaying corpses.

The wagon lurched to a stop. Behind the Amnesian Hero, a growing clamor heralded the pursuit of Tessali and his guards. Whatever Jayk was doing, she was not casting a spell. The Thrasson could hear a muffled thumping as she kicked at a side slat somewhere back near the tailgate.

The Amnesian Hero crested the pile to find the two Dustmen waiting in the driver's box. The assistant held a simple wooden club, while the driver was armed with a long, coiled whip.

"S-stand fast, you barmy." The driver raised his whip toward the Thrasson. "We are n-not afraid of you."

Deciding that the Dustman was lying, the Amnesian Hero sprang into the driver's box. The assistant leapt off the wagon without bothering to raise his club. The driver was a little more courageous, at once sidestepping the attack and striking at his foe's unarmored face. The Thrasson caught the blow on his forearm. He hooked a hand over the whip handle and jerked it free, then shoved the Dustman off the high barrow.

A loud crunch sounded from the rear of the wagon. Jayk cursed and hissed a wicked-sounding incantation. Several men shrieked in fear, and Tessali barked, "Don't stand in the street dancing! Cut their heads off!"

Taking no time to look back and see what Jayk had done, the Amnesian Hero cracked his newfound whip over the four haggard dray horses. The beasts leaned into their harnesses and raised their hooves as though to step forward, but the barrow did not budge. They snorted in irritation and calmly placed their feet back on the street.

"Hey, Zoombee! Do you think a few snakes will stop these sods for long?" The muffled thumping resumed at the back of the wagon. "If you don't want me to hurt them, then we go, yes?"

The Thrasson took a moment to examine the driver's box and found the reins wrapped around a tall wooden lever rising alongside the footboard. He pulled the straps free, then jerked the shaft back. Something clunked down near the wheels. The horses snorted wearily and started to pull without being urged.

The Amnesian Hero cracked the whip over their heads, then cracked it again. The startled beasts whinnied in surprise and broke into a fall walk.

"Run, you poor beasts!" The Thrasson snapped the rump of a horse in front, then did the same to the animal's partner. "Run as though across the Elysian Fields!"

The horses broke into a ragged trot The Amnesian Hero continued to pop the whip frantically, urging them into an awkward canter. Knowing better than to think the haggard beasts could pull the heavy barrow any faster, or for very long, he tossed the whip aside. He took up the reins and, shouting for the pedestrians ahead to clear the way, did what he could to guide the rumbling wagon down the center of the street.

The avenue ahead was broad but crowded, with a long row of somber stone monuments standing along each side. Behind each rank of memorials ran a narrow gallery crowded with shabby stalls selling dried flowers, small flasks of inebriants, boiled rats, and other offerings for the dead. These markets were bordered by the district's drab, onion-domed tenements, most with thick growths of razorvine covering their roofs. A hundred paces down the lane, the street ran under a high arch of ragged stone, then ended in the courtyard of a low, menacing dome surrounded by a cluster of windowless towers. Despite the lack of a sign, the gloomy aura of the place left no doubt that it was the Mortuary.

"Turn right!" Jayk's voice was barely audible over the rumble and groan of the careening wagon. "Turn sharp!"

The Amnesian Hero scanned the right side of the avenue, looking for a large street. He found nothing wider than an alley. Under the best of conditions, guiding the wagon into the narrow lane would have been a harrowing task. With the barrow thundering along faster than most men could sprint and the malnourished horses already beginning to stumble, his chances of wrecking seemed far greater than those of making the comer.

"Turn now, Zoombee!" Jayk yelled. "The elf, he is too fast!"

The Amnesian Hero scowled, but began to ease the wagon toward the alley's fast-approaching mouth. "How is turning-"

"Do it, or I help Tessali to the next stage!"

The Amnesian Hero cursed, then braced himself and pulled hard on the reins. The inside horses turned almost gracefully, but the outside lead could not keep up. He stumbled and would have gone down, had the others not pulled him along by his harness. The team angled toward the only possible opening, the dark-shadowed alley the Thrasson had been watching.

The front wheels turned, then the barrow's momentum seemed to catch up all at once. The Amnesian Hero felt the bench tilting beneath him and dropped the reins to grab for the high side. A tremendous splintering sounded from the rear of the wagon, followed by the soft rumble of shifting bodies and Jayk's wild, exhilarated scream. The Thrasson found himself holding onto the edge of the seat and pulling himself upward, praying that somehow his small mass would be enough to keep the barrow from tipping. Corpses began to tumble out, lightening the high side and shifting more weight to the low.

The wagon flashed past a gray obelisk, striking it with a wheel. There was a tremendous clunk, then the barrow rocked away. The Amnesian Hero thought they were going over, but the horses, feeling their impending doom, screamed and bolted forward. The wagon accelerated through the turn and into the narrow alley, two wheels still spinning in the air.

A deafening crash shook the alley. The Thrasson felt his hands lose their hold on the seat, then he bounced off the footboard and tumbled down through the reins and harness lines to land on the hauling rod. The horses were shrieking in panic, their whinnies echoing off the walls like the voices of so many banshees. The wagon was trembling with their efforts to drag it forward, but it had gotten lodged between the tenement walls and would not budge.

The Amnesian Hero disentangled his body, then pulled himself back into the driver's box. Ahead of him, the horses stood scraping at the dirt in the dark alley, forced by the hauling rod to lean against each other at a cockeyed angle. On the high side of the wagon, the wheels were braced against a tenement wall; on the low side, one of posts to which the side-slats were fastened had become lodged in a narrow doorway, preventing the barrow from moving forward. The cargo bed was two-thirds empty; most of the corpses lay scattered at the mouth of the alley behind them, piled four and five bodies deep. Tessali was in the street beyond, just starting to pick his way through the tangle, with his crew rushing up behind him.

"You call that driving a wagon, Zoombee?" In the wagon's rear corner, near the broken side-slats she had kicked out, Jayk pushed her head up between two corpses. "I know skeletons who do better'"

"And I wish you good luck with them – after we part." The Amnesian Hero climbed into the cargo bed and began to kick corpses about. "Where is my amphora – or did you dump that over the side as well?"

"No, of course. I know you need it to see the Lady of Pain, yes?" Jayk rose and tugged the neck of the jar into view. "I hold it very tight for you."

"Then I thank you for that much, at least"

The Amnesian Hero clambered back to take the amphora, but Jayk let it slip back into the bodies.

"Worry about your jar later, Zoombee." She pointed at the slat-post lodged in the doorway. "Now you must cut us free. I will slow our pursuers."

Jayk plucked the finger off a decomposing corpse. She turned and casually tossed it in Tessali's direction, belting out a wicked-sounding incantation. The elf cringed and raised an arm as though to ward off a blow, but no black bolts of lightning or noxious clouds of gas appeared to strike him down. Nothing happened except that a cadaver's arm flopped across his feet.

Tessali wiped his brow and lifted a foot to start forward again-then fell to his face as the corpse's hand clutched at his ankle. Several assistants rushed into the tangle of bodies to help him up and met the same fate when the limbs of other cadavers began to flail at their feet. Only the woman in the spangled robe was wise enough to stand her ground and avoid the gruesome mess.

"Come on, Zoombee, cut us free!" Jayk clambered forward to take the wagon's reins. "I thought you wanted to see the Lady of Pain!"

The Amnesian Hero had his doubts about Jayk's true intentions-he was beginning to wonder if even she knew how to find the Lady-but at least the tiefling had a plan for escaping Tessali. He drew his sword and hacked off the offending post with a single blow. As the wagon lurched forward, he took the precaution of cutting off the other slat-posts as well. Jayk turned the horses toward the barrow's low side, and the wagon began to right itself.

The Thrasson waded forward and grabbed hold of the driver's box, but stopped short of climbing over when a female voice began to echo down the alley behind them. Jayk slapped the reins, urging the exhausted dray horses into a trot. The Amnesian Hero dropped into a crouch and spun around, expecting to find a ball of fire or bolt of lighting arcing through the air. Instead, he saw the spangle-cloaked woman, still standing outside the alley, reaching into her sand bucket. Tessali and his assistants were still struggling to crawl free of the corpse field.

"There's no need to worry," the Amnesian Hero reported. "Tessali and his men have yet to escape the corpses, and the woman-"

"You mustn't look, Zoombee!" Jayk cried. "She's a…"

The tiefling's warning came too late. Tessali's sleepcaster had already pulled her hand from the sand bucket and flung it in the Thrasson's direction. Something stung his eyes. The creaking of the wagon's wheels grew distant, then his vision narrowed and became dim. He yawned and felt his legs melting beneath him. A dark fog filled his head, and, as he sank into oblivion, he found himself hoping no one would mistake him for a corpse and steal his god-forged armor. The Thrasson dreams of mazes, of the many kinds of mazes.

Out of the darkness skips a column of soot-faced urchins, holding hands and chanting a dismal, deep-voiced dirge. As the line weaves past, it suddenly breaks, and two hands reach out to take his. He finds himself between Spider and Sally, the body robbers from the alley. Their faces have the somber, expressionless aspect of Dustmen, their hands the glairy feel of dead flesh.

The line follows, he sees, a pattern traced in the dust The path meanders back and forth past itself, sometimes running for long stretches before reversing course and sometimes not, but always bending inward, following the curve of a bordering circle. The air grows thick and hot. The dirge builds to a roar; Sally's hand trembles in his, and he knows they are dancing toward a grim center of darkness and loss and despair. The Thrasson, ever the hero, rubs his foot across the boundary in the dust, then steps across and drags the children after him.

A pair of distant, anguished wails sound behind him, then he finds himself holding hands with the stumps of two small arms. He spins in horror and discovers that he is alone, standing upon a black mirror that reflects all the stars in the heavens. The flickering pinpoints are connected by twinkling threads of silver that light the way to any place in the multiverse. He still hears the shrieking of the children, bemoaning their lost arms. He tries to follow one of the silver strands to them. With each step, their voices change position and grow more distant. He turns toward them and steps across the line.

Now he stands between two hedges of razorvine, and he can no longer hear the urchins at all. The Thrasson calls after them. There is a long silence. After a time, a deep growl rumbles down the pathway. He has yet to meet the monster he cannot kill, so he drops the children's severed arms and draws his sword. Only then does he recognize his own voice in the rumbling thunder, calling the names of Spider and Sally.

A riddle player and an untangler of enigmas and a man of no small wit, the Thrasson grasps at once what he has become: orphan torturer and stealer of arms. A true monster. He bellows in rage and slashes at the razorvine with that star-forged sword of his, chopping and slicing and pulling aside the severed stalks with no regard for his bloodied flesh. When at last he hacks through the hedge, he finds that he has come to a cave darkly. He stands alone in hollow gloom, with the sound of his own breath whispering down unseen passages ahead and behind and to both sides, wondering how he stumbled into this blackest of all labyrinths.

He entered by choice. We all do. Whether we are mapping the heavens or skulking the lanes of the underworld, whether we are hunting the imprisoned fiend or have ourselves become the monster, whether we are searching for what is lost or hiding what must never be found, we all round that first comer by choice-and by then, we are lost.

You too. You must decide what is false and what is true, and what is tme for me but not for you. We are wandering the mazes, all of us, and we cannot hope to escape until we learn to tell between what is real and what is real for someone else. There lies the madness, and the truth as well.

But now the dream is done. It ended back in the cavern, when the Amnesian Hero slammed down on a bed of hard cobblestones and awoke to find himself crumpled at the base of a squalid hut of unmortared stones. His body was still covered by his bronze armor, and he felt remarkably refreshed, as though he had just awakened from a long and profound sleep. For a moment, the unexpected vigor confused him. He thought that perhaps his whole miserable trip to Sigil – better yet, his life since awakening on the shores of Thrassos – had been an unpleasant dream.

The horrid stench of decay quickly dashed his hopes, however, as did the fading ramble of the death wagon. The Thrasson pushed himself upright and saw that he was in a district of shabby gray huts similar to the one at his back. A few stooped forms were scurrying along from one shadow to the next, bare blades flashing in their hands. Otherwise, the street was largely deserted. Jayk the Snake stood a few steps away, cracking the long driver's whip over the heads of the stumbling dray horses.

"Wait!" The Amnesian Hero leapt to his feet and started after the wagon. "The amphora!"

Jayk caught his arm. "I have it, Zoombeel"

The tiefling gestured toward the squalid hut's entryway, where the shadows were too deep to reveal what might be leaning against the wall. As she turned, the Amnesian Hero glimpsed the familiar pearly flash of an abalone comb in her hair. He dropped a hand to his belt and discovered that his coin purse was gone.

"And my coin sack?"

"That, too."

If the tiefling was disappointed that he had noticed, her tone did not betray it. She reached under her cape and produced the purse, now heavily soiled by blood and ichor. He snatched it from her and opened it to peer inside. He still saw plenty of gold, but three other items were missing.

"You are such a berk, Zoombee! The sack, it fell off in the wagon. I do not covet your gold. It is nothing but an illusion."

Jayk turned toward the entryway, but the Amnesian Hero caught her by the arm. He gestured at the comb in her hair.

"Give it back."

The tiefling rolled her eyes, but reluctantly removed the comb and returned it.

"The thread and the mirror, too," he said.

"These are women's things, yes?" Despite her objection, Jayk reached into her robe, producing the silver palm mirror and the spool of golden thread she had taken from his purse. "Why does a man like you cany them?"

"I don't know." The Amnesian Hero returned the objects to his purse and drew it closed. "They were all I had when I awoke on the shores of Thrassos."

Jayk considered this a moment, then said, "So they have no meaning to you. It would have been better to let me keep them."

With that, she stepped through the entrance and instantly disappeared into the shadows. The Amnesian Hero paused long enough to tie his purse onto his belt with a double knot.

"Are you coming, Zoombee? Or do you wait for Tessali and his sleepcaster? You like that mindrest, yes?"

Before he could reply, a door creaked open, spilling a sliver of dark purple light into the doorway, barely illuminating the amphora leaning against the wall. The Thrasson grabbed the jar and followed the tiefling into a windowless chamber that was lit-barely-by three damson-flamed tapers. Unable to see anything except the flickering candles, the Amnesian Hero stood in the doorway, listening as the clatter of a slovenly feast rattled to a stop. The room reeked of charred meat, sulfur-burning pipes, and some rancid swill that smelled like moldy copper.

"What you got there, Jayk?"

The speaker seemed to be somewhere ahead and to one side of the doorway, though it was impossible to be certain. The fellow's voice was so deep and raspy that it croaked out of the darkness from all directions.

"Two silver's the best I'll go," the speaker croaked. "Maybe one more, if you throw in all his goods."

"You think me clueless?" Jayk started forward, vanishing into the purple darkness like a ghost. "Even without his goods, this one goes two gold at least!"

Cursing the tiefling's treachery, the Amnesian Hero reached for his sword, at the same time stooping down to put the amphora on the floor. From the darkness ahead came the sound of chair legs scraping across wet wood.

"Sit, my friends." Jayk's tone was amused. "This one, he would be more trouble than he is worth. I keep him for myself."

The Amnesian Hero felt more than heard the sigh that rustled through the room. A few chairs clattered, and, growing more accustomed to the darkness, he glimpsed a dozen dark shapes returning to their seats. They had high, pointy heads and humped backs, and several seemed to be holding large bone clubs in their gnarled hands. Although many of them sat facing each other at the same tables, not a word passed among the entire group.

The voice that had welcomed Jayk chuckled merrily, then asked, "You got jink?"

"But of course, Brill."

From the darkness ahead came the chime of a thumbnail striking metal, then the Thrasson saw a flash of gold arcing through the darkness. There was a sharp crack, and the coin disappeared in midair. The Amnesian Hero saw a black tendril curling back toward the wall, where a hulking, round-headed silhouette stood behind a chest-high curtain of darkness that was probably a serving counter.

The round-headed figure, presumably Brill, spat the gold into a small spindly-fingered hand. He stowed the coin – the Thrasson's, no doubt – somewhere under his counter.

"Your friend got a name?"

"Zoombee. And we have trouble close behind."

" 'Course," Brill grumbled. "Why else come around when you got jink?"

With a great groan, the silhouette heaved his bulk up and lumbered along to one of the purple tapers. He fumbled beneath his counter a moment, then held a second candle to the damson flame. The wick caught fire, flooding the chamber with a flickering yellow light that gave the Amnesian Hero his first good look at Brill and the room's other occupants. He nearly dropped the amphora.

Brill was a slaad, one of the massive, froglike beings reputed to scavenge the battlefields of the Lower Planes. The Amnesian Hero had never before seen one in the flesh – at least that he could recall-but he had heard many accounts of their taste for blood. This one was a Green, with a flat pate, scalloped brows jutting over wide-set eyes, and a mouth large enough to swallow a swine.

The Amnesian Hero could not identify the race of Brill's customers, but they were uglier than the tavern keeper himself.

They did not bother to cover their leathery nakedness, perhaps because of their sparse covering of wiry bristles, which would have torn most garments to shreds. The shape of their bodies bore a remote semblance to that of a human, though too skeletal, somehow twisted. They had waspish waists showing ugly grates of ribs, knobby-jointed limbs much too long for their bodies, and gnarled, yellow-taloned fingers that looked as though they could dig a bear from its cave. The tables before them were piled high with charred haunches and shoulders, many of which looked human.

As one, the customers swung their gray eyes toward the Amnesian Hero and burst into fits of hissing, as though laughing at some joke he had not heard.

"What manner of place is this?" the Thrasson gasped, wondering again if perhaps he had not lost his way and tumbled into the Abyss. He turned to Jayk. "Where have you taken me?"

It was Brill who answered. "I call the place Rivergate." The slaad passed the candle in his hand to Jayk, then said, "You know where to hide."

The tiefling nodded, then stretched over the counter and brought her mouth close to Brill's. To the Thrasson's surprise, the slaad let her kiss him upon the lips long and hard. They remained coupled for several moments. When she finally drew back, her pupils remained round, and there was no sign that her fangs had dropped. The Amnesian Hero •could not help thinking of their own near kiss and wondering if he, too, would have been spared her bite.

"Zoombee, don't be jealous," Jayk chided. "You won't make kiss with me."

Brill placed a dusty jug and two black mugs on the counter. "Go on, then – before your trouble walks in the door. You know what a mess these rutterkin make when they get to killing."

Jayk filled both mugs, then corked the jug and tucked it under her arm. Leaving one cup on the counter, she moved deeper into the tavern, joking and flirting as she danced past the tables of rutterkin. Though they never made any reply the Amnesian Hero could hear, twice she pinched long-lobed ears and threw back her head to laugh. The Thrasson followed without picking up the cup she had left for him. He loved wine as much as the next man – perhaps even a bit more – but he had no stomach for the coppery vinegar he smelled in this place.

The Amnesian Hero had barely worked his way past the first table when something snapped his backplate and jerked him onto his heels. Shifting the amphora's weight to one arm, he spun around to see a long, slender tongue curling back toward Brill's mouth.

The slaad gestured at the mug on the counter. "Forgot your drink."

The Amnesian Hero tried not to make a distasteful face. "I'm, uh… not thirsty."

Brill croaked what seemed to be a laugh. "I wouldn't waste blood port on no human, but I expect you'd rather have Arborean ruby anyway. Take it and drink up, or you'll have reason to wish you had."

Deciding to accept Brill's threat as the price of a good hiding place, the Amnesian Hero retrieved his mug and joined Jayk at the back of the room, where wisps of black mist were pouring through the cracks of a badly warped door. The tiefling shouldered the portal open and stepped through, already quaffing down the contents of her mug. The Thrasson started to follow, still holding his cup in hand.

"Drink, Zoombee!" Jayk urged. "Otherwise, you find yourself swimming in the River Styx."

The Amnesian Hero paused with one foot over the threshold. "This is a portal?"

"Yes. If you step through without drinking, then splash," she explained. "The key is backwards. That is why it is a good place to hide, you see?"

The Thrasson did not see, but he was too proud to admit it. He raised his mug and stepped into the room. The wine proved to be somewhat tangier and more fruity than his Arborean favorites, but it was at least palatable. He drained the entire cup in a single gulp, then licked his lips clean.

"I had no idea how thirsty I had become."

He thrust the cup at Jayk to be refilled, then found a safe comer in which to place the amphora. The storeroom stank of mildew and sour coppery wine, which, from all appearances, was the rutterkins' preference in drink. Casks and boxes stood against every wall, stacked to the ceiling and more often than not barely visible behind silky veils of spider webs. In the center of the room sat several stools and a barrel with a set of knucklebones etched for gambling.

The Amnesian Hero closed the door and pulled a stool over, then sat down and pressed his eye to a crack. Without Jayk's candle, the main room had again grown gloomy and purple. Brill and the rutterkin were no more than vague black shapes, more imagined than seen unless they happened to be silhouetted against a taper's damson flame. Save for the constant sound of gnawing and an occasional sniggering hiss, the tavern remained quiet.

Jayk placed the Thrasson's cup in his hand. "When Tessali comes, you must tell me so I can put out the candle. Otherwise, he sees the light through the cracks, yes?"

The Amnesian Hero did not bother to ask why she thought Tessali would look for them in Rivergate. The Thrasson had met enough elves in Arborea to know that tracking ran in their blood. He took a long swallow from his mug, then smacked his lips and took another one.

"What is to prevent Tessali from tracking us from Rivergate's door into this storeroom? I worry that he'll have us cornered."

"There is no need for that." Jayk sounded amused. "Brill and the rutterkin have a certain, how do I say…fondness for elves and humans. Tessali and his guards will not linger."

"As long as there is no killing. They may be chasing us, but the misunderstanding is more our fault than theirs." The Amnesian Hero did not add that in Jayk's case, the pursuit was entirely justified. "They don't deserve to land on a rutterkin's plate."

"Why do you fret so much about this 'killing' all the time?" Jayk demanded. "Even if you believe life is genuine, why does it make you so envious to see others advance toward the One Death?"

"It does not make me envious!" He turned away from his peephole and looked at the tiefling, who sat on a stool, absently rolling the knucklebones between her fingers. "But murder, and especially senseless murder, is the enemy of civilization. Even your Dustmen understand that, or I doubt they would have committed you to the Gatehouse."

"My work had nothing to do with it!" Jayk hurled the knucklebones into a web-filled comer. "That was Komosahl Trevant! He's jealous of my gifts."

"Your gifts?"

Jayk's eyes grew narrow and sly. "I know you have seen them, Zoombee. That's why you won't make kiss with me, yes?"

"You mean your fangs?" He hid his expression by draining his mug, but as he drank, he kept a wary eye on the tiefling's shadowy face. "And the way your pupils change into diamonds?"

"Of course." Jayk smiled, then came over and pulled his empty mug from his mouth. "It only happens when I am excited. Frightened or angry, you know, but especially when I am amorous, Zoombee."

The Thrasson's mouth grew dry. "And you c-call this a gift?"

"But yes!" Jayk took his empty mug and returned to the center of the room. "My destiny, it is to help people reach the One Death. But Trevant, he does not understand this. He says I have too much excitement to be a Dustman."

Jayk whirled back toward the Thrasson, sloshing wine as she poured. "I ask you, how can I have too much excitement? That is how I help others, is it not?"

"Well…"

"But Trevant is a coward. He says the other factions will drive the Dustmen from the city if I give so much help." She thrust the wine back into the Thrasson's hand. "I say he is a fraud. How can he claim to know the One Death and fear anything? It is impossible!"

"And that's the real reason you were taking me to the Mortuary," the Amnesian Hero surmised. "You wanted me to avenge Trevant's betrayal."

"You will do that, Zoombee?" The tiefling dropped beside his stool and, resting her arms in his lap, gazed up at him. She did not quite flutter her eyelashes. "For me?"

"Maybe-er, not" Always vulnerable to adoration, the Amnesian Hero barely caught himself. "Weren't you supposed to be taking me to the Lady of Pain?"

Jayk rose and backed away, her dark eyes now as cold and hard as obsidian. "I mean to do both, Zoombee. We can summon her whenever we like." Her lips curled into a cunning smile, then she shrugged. "So what is the harm if we do it in Secretary Trevant's office?"

The Amnesian Hero scowled. "I don't see how that avenges you."

Jayk raised her mug to her lips and took a long swallow, staring at him over the rim.

"I'm sure others can tell me how to summon her," the Thrasson warned.

"But will they? You have wondered why everyone thinks you are barmy for wanting to see her?" Jayk sal her mug on the barrel and met the Thrasson's gaze. "The Lady, she does not deal kindly with those who summon her-or those who help. That is why you need me. Only I will show you. I ask – no, I demand-one thing in return: Komosahl Trevant must be near, yes?"

"We struck our bargain in the Gatehouse." The Amnesian Hero turned back to his peephole, already beginning to feel the wine. "You said nothing about Trevant then."

"Exactly."

Though he could not quite figure out why, the Thrasson had the unpleasant feeling Jayk had just declared herself winner of the argument. He swallowed another mouthful of wine and silently cursed Rivergate's darkness. Staring into the murky room gave him an uneasy feeling, as though he were spying upon the realm of Hades itself and might be caught at any moment.

An irritating creak sounded across the room, then a beam of gray light shot through the purple murk. Squinting against its unexpected brilliance, the Amnesian Hero saw the blocky shape of an armored man silhouetted in the doorway. The warrior glanced back over his shoulder.

"We'll need the torches." The voice was that of Mateus.

The Amnesian Hero glanced in Jayk's direction, whispering, "Put out the candle. They're here."

By the time he looked back through his peephole, Mateus was leading the rest of the party into Rivergate. A Mercykiller followed close behind with a lit torch, then came Tessali, the sleepcaster, and the other guards.

They advanced just far enough so that the torch lit the dark comers of the room. Tessali braced his hands on his hips and, being careful to avoid looking at what lay piled on the tables, stood in the heart of the light.

"We're pursuing a tiefling sorceress and a bronze-armored warrior."

A rutterkin stood, ripping a hunk of meat from a haunch of flesh that looked slender enough to be elven, and glared directly into Tessali's eyes. There was no other response.

"If you'll tell us where they are, we'll retrieve them and be gone," Tessali said. "They're barmies, both of them, and quite dangerous."

This drew a chorus of wispy teeters. One of the Mercykillers drew his sword and stepped in front of Tessali, pressing the blade to the throat of the rutterkin who had risen to mock the elf.

"The Factor asked you a question, berk."

The rutterkin calmly raised a misshaped arm and placed his bare hand over the blade. "Uh… et ur… mood air… ut brey… feast."

The rutterkin's words were so slow and thick that it took the Amnesian Hero a moment to puzzle them out. By the time the Mercykiller had done likewise, Tessali had pulled the fellow away and pushed him back toward the door.

"We're here for everyone's good," the elf said. "We are not looking for a fight."

"Then leave," croaked Brill.

Mateus whirled on the slaad. "At first glance, some of that meat seems human. You wouldn't want me to take a closer look, would you?"

Brill squared his massive shoulders. "Imported. Scavenge it from the Blood War myself."

"And I suppose you have the permits to prove that?"

Brill's gulp was audible even. through the storeroom door. His beady eyes darted toward the tiny chamber. Mateus took the torch and began to lead the procession toward the storeroom.

The Amnesian Hero hissed a quiet curse.

"What is it?" Jayk whispered.

"Brill betrayed us," the Thrasson whispered. "Get ready."

He reached for his sword and felt Jayk's hand on his arm. "Brill did not turn stag. It is part of the bob."

The tiefling pulled him through the darkness to the back comer of the room, guiding him into a hiding place between two large casks. In the next instant, the warped door flew open and Mateus, with one of the Mercykillers close behind, charged across the threshold.

Their torch hissed and went out at once. The Amnesian Hero heard a brief purl of water, then two splashes and a pair of gurgling screams. A musky river smell filled the storeroom, but even that faded almost before the Thrasson had identified it.

"What happened?" It was Tessali. "Light!"

The sleepcaster uttered a brief incantation, then the tavern was flooded with a brilliant sapphire light that shone from the blade of her dagger. It was difficult to say whether Tessali or the Amnesian Hero was more surprised to find the rutterkin surrounding what remained of the elf's party.

"Lut… toe… bite!"

A rutterkin snatched the glowing dagger from the sleepcaster's hand, then tossed it into the storeroom. This time, the doorway filled briefly with swirling black currents, and again the purl and musky smell of a river suffused the air.

"Time for you to leave, elf," croaked Brill.

The Amnesian Hero peered over a cask and saw the murky outlines of the rutterkin stepping aside to let Tessali pass. The elf led his party back to the door, then managed to garner his courage and stop. His face was barely visible in the purple candlelight.

"I know they came in here – a human and a tiefling. I'm not leaving until I know what happened to them."

Brill's arm arced through the dim light, swinging toward the storeroom. "They went through that door, just like your guards." He croaked several times, chuckling. "Go ahead. Take a look."

A wave of sibilant snickers rustled through the tavern.

"Your humor is not appreciated." Despite his words, the elf turned a thoughtful eye toward the storeroom. "And you may be assured the Harmonium will return to inspect your licenses."

"There is no reason for that." The voice, that of a human female, triggered one of those vague sensations of familiarity that sometimes troubled the Amnesian Hero. A chair scraped in a dark corner, then the woman continued, "I have been sitting here for several hours, and I can assure you that the ones you seek are not here."

Tessali turned toward the voice, which seemed to be approaching the counter. "And who are you, milady?"

"A woman alone and in distress."

A tall, statuesque beauty clothed in a simple white gown walked into the dim light. With glistening olive skin, high cheeks, and proud emerald eyes, her face was as regal as it was stunning – and it was one the Amnesian Hero knew as well as he knew his own.

"Perhaps you would be kind enough to escort me to a safer part of the city?" The woman glanced around the dark room as though surprised to find herself in such a place. "I seem to have lost my way."

The Amnesian Hero slipped from his hiding place and crept forward, barely able to hold his tongue. Jayk grabbed his arm and pulled him back, then gently closed the storeroom door.

"Zoombee, what has happened to you?" she hissed. "We're almost safe!"

The Thrasson pressed his eye to the peephole. "It's her! The woman who appears-" He almost whispered 'when I drink wine,' but caught himself and said instead, "The one I know from before!"

"Pah! That cannot be."

In the main room, Tessali was rubbing his chin and studying the woman with a thoughtful air. "This is a bad district for a woman of your… appearances. How did you come to be here?"

The woman shook her head, her expression dazed. "I cannot – I honestly don't know. I was at home, then this."

"Yes, perhaps you should come with me." Tessali wrapped an arm around her shoulder, then glanced at Brill. "Is her account settled?"

Even the slaad could not think quickly enough to make a profit from her unexpected appearance. He only shook his head, croaking, "Didn't know she was here."

"Good." Tessali motioned for his remaining guard to open the door. "We'll be going."

"No," gasped the Amnesian Hero.

He tried to pull the door open, but found it blocked by Jayk.

"Zoombee, don't be a fool!"

"I can't let him take her!" the Thrasson whispered. "She knows who I am!"

"What is she doing here? How did she find you?" Jayk demanded. "This woman, she must be a sleepcaster's trick."

"Out of my way!"

The Thrasson pushed Jayk away, then remembered the portal and fumbled around in the darkness until he found the wine. He returned to the door and jerked it open, but by then Tessali had already taken the woman and left. The Amnesian Hero raised the jug to his lips, then rushed across the threshold, leaving both the amphora and his tiefling guide behind. Dabus

Dim has fallen over the city. It would be wrong to call it dusk; there are no rays of sunlight fanning up from the skyline, no silverlit clouds hanging low over the horizon, no deepening hues of blue spreading across the heavenly vault. There is only the waxing gray gloom, spilling from the alcoves and niches of the city's hundred-thousand hovels, spreading over the scum-coated cobblestones, rising like a ground fog to fill the avenues with a thickening ashen murk. In Sigil, we have no twilights before the dawns, no endings presaging fresh beginnings, no deaths begetting new births; we have only that eternal ashen instant that follows what was and precedes what will be, that wavering gray span that separates the dying and the death.

Once the Amnesian Hero has dodged past the rutterkin tables and dashed by Brill's gloomy counter and burst from Rivergate's doors, it is into this gray eventide that he stumbles. Already has the street filled with the scuttling denizens of the night: bustling, dark-cloaked figures who melt into the shadows as suddenly as they emerge. Already has the throng swallowed Tessali and the white-gowned beauty, carried them into the ashen gloom and swept clean their trail. Already has the Thrasson lost his quarry and his good sense as well; he will go after the woman, search her out in winding lanes he has never walked.

Still clutching the jug of Rivergate wine and watching for a flash of white dress in the dimness ahead, the Amnesian Hero raced down the street. When he found only skulking figures camouflaged in night-gray cloaks or armored in spiked plate, he turned and rushed in the opposite direction. The cobblestones rattled with the sound of claws on stone, and the air stank of acrid, lower-planar sweat. Sporadic screams of anguish rose and fell in the distant darkness; the clamor of clashing steel grew common, and the din of growling voices became a constant rumble. Twilight had fallen in the district of blood.

Realizing that he was in danger of losing his way back to Rivergate, the Thrasson ceased his running. "Tessali!"

Had the elf actually answered, the Amnesian Hero might have come to his senses and given some thought to his actions. What would he do? Try to explain that he was not "barmy," then demand the return of a woman whose name he could not recall? As it was, the Thrasson's voice merely vanished into the general roar. He found himself standing alone and ignored in a street bustling with brutish beings, his mind still clouded by Rivergate's powerful libation, not quite able to comprehend how he had again lost the one woman who could possibly tell him his name.

The Amnesian Hero fixed a wary gaze on the dark figures streaming past. Had he seen one of the ghastly brutes skulking the streets of Thrassos, he would have drawn his sword on the spot and driven it from the city. Now, he found himself in need of their aid and ready to ask it. Wondering how he had fallen so low, he took another swig from his jug and stepped into the path of an ember-eyed shadow.

"If you would be kind enough to offer your indulgence…"

"Out the way, bubber!" As the creature spoke, its lips were illuminated by a faint, fiery glow deep in its gullet. "I'll scorch ya!"

It sidestepped the Thrasson, buffeting him with a murky wing that suddenly unfolded from its back. The Amnesian Hero accepted the indignity with atypical restraint, more interested in finding his white-gowned woman than teaching proper manners. He grabbed the next figure in line, a lanky slope-shouldered brute in scale armor, and dragged him to a stop.

"A moment of your-"

Something long and snaky lashed over the fellow's shoulder and pinged off the Amnesian Hero's bronze armor. The Thrasson glimpsed the form of a thick scaly tail arcing away, then felt the tip of a dagger pressed up beneath his jaw.

"Le'go-n-step'way, berk." The voice was raspy, the breath foul. "Maybe I don' killya."

The Amnesian Hero calmly released the brute's arm and grabbed his knife hand instead. With a quick twist against the joint, the Thrasson turned the dagger away and, in the same motion, forced his adversary to his knees. He found himself looking down at a gaunt, scaled face with sunken eyes, an arrow-shaped nose, and a row of tiny tusks rising from behind a pouting lower lip. The fellow was one of the barbazu, a race of minor fiends the Thrasson had encountered when Apollo sent him to deliver a message to the Lord of the Stinking Mire.

"You have no cause for alarm." The Amnesian Hero twisted the barbazu's wrist until the dagger came free and clattered onto the cobblestones. "Nor do you have need of weapons."

The crowd parted and continued to scurry past, giving wide berth to the confrontation. Any human that could drop a barbazu to his knees was not to be bothered – especially in this part of Sigil, where strength was the only law.

The Amnesian Hero said, "I only want to ask about Tessali."

"Who?" The fiend's tail appeared above his shoulder, but hovered there and did not strike; there would have been no purpose, as the bony end-barb had broken off the first time it hit the Thrasson's armor. "D'ya think I know every…"

"An elf. He has a human with him, a beautiful woman."

The barbazu's gaze flickered to the wine jug, which the Amnesian Hero still held in his free hand, then over the rest of the Thrasson's body.

"The elf's armor red?" The fiend's speech was still raspy, but less urgent now.

"I fear not." The Thrasson was disappointed; there could not be many elves in this squalid district, and it was just his luck the barbazu had seen the wrong one. "He was wearing a spangled cloak. The woman was in white."

"Oh yeah, a tasty scrap." The barbazu glanced over his shoulder. "I seen 'em. Hangin' all over that elf, she was."

"Where?" The Thrasson peered past the fiend into the deepening gloom. "How long ago?"

"Five gold," the barbazu replied. "Worth 'at much jink, by the look o'er."

"The question is a simple one." The Amnesian Hero wrenched his captive's wrist further and pivoted away, forcing the fiend facedown on the cobblestones. "Answer it, and I won't break your wrist. That should be payment enough."

The barbazu bobbed his head. "Two alleys back, on the right." His voice grew spiteful. "Lookin' for a place to do him. Hope she does."

The Amnesian Hero pivoted away from the barbazu, at the same time savagely twisting the fellow's wrist around. The brute had no.choice but to start rolling. The Thrasson could easily have broken his captive's arm, but he settled instead for smashing his wine jug over the fiend's thick skull.

"You should be more cordial in what you wish for others." The Thrasson placed one hand on the hilt of his sword, then, wondering at the depth of his rage, cautiously backed away. "In the future, I suggest you curb your tongue."

"Pike it, bubber." The barbazu gathered himself up and, just as cautiously as the Thrasson, backed away in the opposite direction. "You already got yours. That tasty morsel, she ain't never going back to no vinegar-swillin' sod like you." •

With that, the fiend melted into the crowd and was gone. The Amnesian Hero turned toward the alley, convinced by his strong emotions that the woman had indeed been someone special to him. When he found her – and liberated her from Tessali's tender care – he would certainly find his past Unfortunately, he would still be honor-bound to deliver the amphora. No matter how badly Poseidon had understated the errand's difficulty, for a man of renown to renege on a promise to the Cleaver of Lands would be as unfitting as it would be foolish.

The Thrasson reached the mouth of the second alley and paused to get his bearings. Although he remembered which way to turn, finding Rivergate again would be difficult. He could not tell the difference between any of the huts in the district. They were all windowless heaps of stone, unmortared and accessible only by tunnel-like entryways. After he rescued the mysterious woman, he would need to ask directions, which meant he would need to incapacitate his pursuers, at least temporarily.

Hoping he would not be forced to kill anyone, the Amnesian Hero drew his sword and started down the murky passage. Like many of Sign's back lanes, this one appeared quiet and deserted; most people avoided such places as a matter of course, and those who did not preferred leaving or hiding to being noticed. The alley was littered with flat stones that had fallen from the tumbledown walls that formed its looming sides. The musty smell of clay hung heavy in the moist air. A few paces ahead, a large mud puddle glimmered faintly in the gray gloom.

Thinking to pick up a trail of wet footprints on the far side, the Amnesian Hero dashed forward and leapt over the muck hole. Though his god-forged armor weighed little more than a leather jerkin, the puddle was a large one; his rear foot fell a little short, sinking into the slime with a long slurp. Before he could pull free, the mud compressed around his ankle and clamped it in place. He lost his balance and fell flat. The Thrasson cursed his clumsiness and tried to bring his leg forward.

He found himself sliding back toward the puddle. Digging the fingertips of his free hand deep into the dirt, the Amnesian Hero pulled forward and tugged harder on his leg. He felt warm mud slithering up his calf. An unfamiliar pounding erupted in his ears; could he actually he frightened? The Thrasson craned his neck to look over his shoulder, found that he could see nothing, then peered beneath his arm and decided he had good reason to be alarmed. A snaky tendril of mud had engulfed his foot, and even now it was stretching out of the puddle, writhing like an eel and steadily working its mouth up his leg.

The Amnesian Hero pushed his torso up, then swung his sword around to attack. To his horror, he could barely touch the strange creature. His leg seemed to be stretching toward the puddle, and, at least where it was not covered by bronze armor, his flesh was turning as gray as the muck itself. He could no longer see the difference between the tendril and his own knee; the mud had already claimed everything below that, and he had a dead, tingling feeling in his toes.

The Thrasson thrust the tip of his sword, all that could reach, into the muck. The star-forged steel cut through the tendril easily enough, but the mud simply oozed back behind the blade. He rolled onto his side, then curled toward his feet and attacked the base of the appendage. The blow severed it cleanly, but his foot remained bound to the puddle by a curtain of mud dribbling from his shin. By the time he cut through this, the base of the tentacle had reattached itself.

The Amnesian Hero could no longer feel his toes. His thigh had turned as gray as pearls, and his knee had become an amorphous mass of muck. He could not believe that a simple mud puddle would accomplish what the Hydra of Thrassos and the Acherian Giant had not.

The Thrasson looked down the dark alley, straining to see his quarry. "Help! Tessali!"

No answer.

"Tessali, this is the Amnesian Hero! I won't harm you. Perhaps I will even surrender!"

Nothing stirred in the darkness. The Thrasson felt himself sliding back toward the puddle, and that was when he realized he had seen no footprints in the dirt before him.

The puddle had swallowed Tessali's party, too.

The Amnesian Hero wedged his sword between the stones of the alley wall, anchoring himself in place. Any normal weapon would have snapped, but it would take a far greater strain to break – or even bend – his star-forged blade.

The mud reached the hem of the Thrasson's loin tasset. He felt as though his ankle, all he could still sense of his foot, lay twice a leg's length from his hip. He might save himself by using his star-forged blade to cut off his own leg, but he refused to consider such a cowardly act. Who had ever heard of a one-legged man of renown? Better to suffer an ignoble death now.

The Amnesian Hero turned his face groundward. "How have I offended you, 0 Great and Wicked Hades, that you treat me thus? I deserve a death more glorious than this!"

"But Zoombee, I have told you-you are dead already."

"Jayk?" The Amnesian Hero craned his neck around to see the tiefling carrying his amphora down the alley. "Truly, the gods are watching out for me."

"You must not be so absurd, Zoombee!" Jayk scoffed. "I heard you when you called to Tessali."

The Thrasson flushed. "You do realize I had no true intention of surrendering?"

"But of course, Zoombee." Jayk smirked, then leaned the heavy amphora against a nearby wall. "Who would surrender when he can let an ooze portal suck him into a Paraelemental Plane?"

One of the stones anchoring the Thrasson in place popped free. He resumed his steady slide toward the puddle. "Jayk, will you please free me from this mud?"

"I will try, Zoombee." The tiefling reached under her cape. "It can be very difficult. Perhaps my magic works better if you help me with Trevant, yes?"

The Thrasson felt his free foot brush the puddle's surface. He tried to lift it free, but he was too late; a long cord of mud rose with his toes.

The Amnesian Hero returned his gaze to the tiefling. "If you think I'll buy my own life at the expense of an innocent…"

"How can you say Trevant is innocent? He betrayed me!"

"Be that as it may, I won't help you." Caught by both legs now, the Amnesian Hero began to slide more rapidly toward the puddle. He stared into the mud. "Will you help me or not?"

"I suppose I must." Jayk's voice was both sharp and resigned. "You are too handsome to become one with Ooze."

The tiefling threw a small sliver of glass into the mud, at the same time speaking the words of a simple incantation. The ooze started to stiffen, the writhing of the tendrils slowed, and a glassy sheen spread over the surface of the puddle. A deep, penetrating cold pierced the Thrasson's leg, then he ceased sliding.

"Why do you wait, Zoombee? Cut yourself free!"

With both legs caught, the Amnesian Hero found it much more difficult to reach the mud. When he did slice into the icy muck, however, it stayed cut, and he soon freed the newly caught foot. After that, it was a simple matter to hack a large block from the puddle. Dragging a leg twice its normal length behind him, he crawled a short distance down the alley and began to hammer at the frozen sludge.

A few blows later, he had knocked the worst of the icy mud off his legs. In the dim light, he could not tell how quickly the color was returning to his chilly flesh. He felt a slight, aching bum as his elongated leg resumed its normal proportions, then his skin began to nettle as it does after being extremely cold. He still had no feeling below the ankle, and the foot itself gleamed with the same faint glow he had earlier observed on the surface of the mud.

The Thrasson rose and limped along the edge of the puddle, both testing his legs and searching for clues as to the fate of Tessali and the white-gowned woman.

"Zoombee, what are you looking for?"

"Signs of Tessali and the woman we saw in Rivergate. They were supposed to have come down this alley."

"Who tells you a thing like that?"

The Amnesian Hero stopped and looked up. "A barbazu."

"And you believe him? I see Tessali in the street-searching for that glitter girl in white." Jayk shook her head sadly. "Poor Zoombee, he even trusts fiends."

The Thrasson flushed again, feeling foolish for allowing his enthusiasm to overcome his judgment. "I did have him at a disadvantage." Still, he sheathed his sword and, seeing no other way back to Jayk, went to the edge of the ooze portal. "Can I walk on this?"

"Until it thaws."

The Amnesian Hero limped across the ice, then stopped at Jayk's side. "I am in your debt. Perhaps I can help you recover your spellbooks, but I won't-"

"Harm Trevant, I know. That is fine. You must live by the rules of your delusions." Jayk looked at his sandaled foot, then added, "Now we must go. We must find a healer before your foot thaws."

The Thrasson scowled at his glimmering foot. "What happens then?"

"It probably does not matter, if you still wish to see the Lady of Pain." Jayk turned toward the mouth of the alley. "But you were in the ooze too long; it has taken your foot. If a healer does not restore it before the mud thaws, the portal will finish its work."

The Amnesian Hero cast an uneasy glance at his glimmering foot, then picked up the amphora and turned to limp after Jayk.

Two paces away, the tiefling had stopped to stare at four slender figures with clouds of white hair piled high atop their heads. They had small coin-shaped noses, deep-set eyes, and squat brows with two sets of horns – one pair straight and one pair curled. All four beings were calmly stacking stones across the mouth of the alley, an activity strangely at odds with their flowing, elaborately embroidered robes.

Jayk raised a hand to her mouth and retreated, backing into the Amnesian Hero. She stopped, but did not turn around or speak.

"What's happening here?" the Thrasson asked. "Why are you so afraid?"

"Dabus!"

When Jayk offered no further explanation, the Amnesian Hero pushed the amphora into her arms. Placing one hand on the hilt of his sword, he stepped forward and pointed at the wall.

"What are you doing here?"

In unison, the dabus stooped over as though to pick up something. Although the Amnesian Hero could see no loose stones on the ground, when they rose again, each held a flat rock in his hands. They placed the stones on the wall, then bent down to get another.

"Answer me."

The Thrasson stepped forward and thrust his heel against the wall, kicking a small gap open. Normally, he would never have been so rude, but he was alarmed by Jayk's reaction. The dabus merely picked up the dislodged stones and returned them to their places.

The Amnesian Hero kicked the stones again. "Answer me."

The dabus stopped working and, still ignoring the Thrasson, turned to each other. Their mouths began to work, spewing long streams of symbols into the air. There were no sounds, merely strange combinations of pictures and signs that hung about their heads like hummingbirds.

After a brief consultation, two dabus bent down and retrieved a pair of war-axes from the same mysterious place they retched the stones. As they stepped over the wall, the Amnesian Hero noticed for the first time that their feet – if the dabus had any beneath the hems of their long robes – did not touch the street.

The Thrasson stepped back and drew his sword.

Jayk was at his side instantly. "No, Zoombee! You mustn't strike them!" She thrust the amphora into his arms, precluding any chance that he would. "We are in enough trouble!"

"Trouble?"

"They are building a maze. You should summon the Lady of Pain now, while you still can."

The Amnesian Hero ran his gaze around the alley. "Then she's near?"

"The Lady is always near," Jayk replied. "All you need do is pray to her."

"Pray?"

"Yes. She always appears to those who pray to her."

"And then what?"

Jayk's face paled to a pearly gray. "Then she flays us – alive, yes?"

"No, not us." The Amnesian Hero did not bother to ask why the Lady would want to flay them. Having explained many times that he had only come to deliver a gift, he was beginning to realize that Sigil's residents did not understand their queen. "There's no reason for you to be here. I'll pray alone. This armor was forged by Hephaestus himself, and even Apollo's arrows cannot pierce it. I doubt the Lady of Pain's wrath will rend it."

The shadow returned to Jayk's face, but she made no move to leave. "It is better to accept our pain here than to be trapped in the mazes forever."

"Phah! In Arborea, we play mazes for fun." The Thrasson leaned the amphora against the alley wall. "And there is no reason for you to stay. This is not your doing."

Jayk smiled and glanced toward the mouth of the alley, where the dabus had already raised their wall to waist height. She shook her head. "That is not for you to decide."

"Perhaps not, but the Lady already intends to imprison me. What do I have to lose by forcing her dabus to release you?"

The Thrasson strode forward and faced the two armed dabus. He gestured at Jayk with his sword. "She has no part in this. As men – er, beings – of honor, I ask you to release her."

The dabus held their axes at port arms and watched him carefully, but made no other response. The Amnesian Hero waved Jayk forward. When the expressions of the Lady's servants did not change, he sheathed his sword and turned his back on them.

"Wait for me outside." The Amnesian Hero leaned close to embrace Jayk, at the same time slipping the golden thread from his purse. He pressed it into her palm and whispered, "When you hear me praying, hold the end and throw the spool over the wall. It will not be long before I return to help you retrieve your spellbooks."

"Zoombee!"

Jayk pulled away and tipped her chin back, her lips barely parted. Tempted as he was, the Amnesian Hero did not accept the invitation. The tiefling's eyes were closed, and her mouth was not open far enough to see whether her fangs had descended. He grabbed her by the waist and spun her toward the wall, lifting her over in one swift motion. Without breaking rhythm, one of the dabus builders took her from the Thrasson and set her on the ground.

The Amnesian Hero sighed in relief. Before undertaking a feat so perilous as summoning the Lady of Pain, true men of renown always saw their beautiful maidens to safety. He retrieved the amphora, then went to the center of the alley and kneeled in meditation, trying to think of a proper prayer for Sigil's ruler.

Because he knew so little about her, the task was a difficult one. Beseeching her for mercy was out of the question, of course, as was singing the praises of pain; in his experience, the worst kind of supplication was an insincere one.

By the time he recalled the strange riddles from the Gatehouse and realized what to say, the dabus had raised their wall to chest height. The Amnesian Hero laid the amphora on the ground before him, carefully arranging it so that it lay exactly parallel to the walls, then sat back on his haunches and crossed his arms over his chest.

By the hunger of change and emotion,

By the thirst of unbearable things,

By despair, the twin-born of devotion,

By the pleasure that winces and stings,

The delight that consumes the desire,

The desire that outruns the delight,

By the cruelty deaf as a fire

And blind as the night,

By the ravenous teeth that have smitten

Through the kisses that blossom and bud,

By the lips intertwisted and bitten

Till the foam has a savor of blood,

By the pulse as it rises and falters,

By the hands as they slacken and strain,

I adjure thee, respond from thine altars,

Our Lady of Pain.

The prayer is, I think, the most beautiful ever uttered in Sigil. How it speaks to me! Of reckless yearnings pursued unto misery, of secret lusts that are themselves unbearable torments. Pleasure and pain, they are one; hope nurtures despair, love breeds loss, joy begets sorrow-this Thrasson, he knows me for the thing I am. His fine words I would forgive, if I could.

But this is Sigil. Here, no god may enter – and if the Thrasson prays to me, what do I become but a god?

It must not be. The doors would open; the city itself would crumble, and there I would stand, one alone against all the gods of the multiverse. With chains of starlight and axes of fire, they would come for me, the bad and the good, and make a war to sunder the planes themselves.

What then? With Pain caged in the deepest Abyss and bound to the will of Demogorgon or Diinkarazan or some other god of wickedness, what then? I will tell you: tyranny and cowardice, darkness in every plane, and fear in every breath; a single foul ruler himself ruled by hungers foul beyond imagining, all the multiverse his to pillage and to ravish as he desires.

And worse still, if good prevails: endless worlds of endless ease, with no suffering to build strength, no anguish to breed courage, no fear to foster cunning; a multiverse of middling passions and bland hungers, where nothing is ventured because nothing can be lost, where no anger is consuming, no love passionate, and no life worth living.

I have no choice in the matter. For the good of the multiverse, I must punish the Thrasson – but do not think I have forgotten the tiefling. She taught him to pray, and for that I will be avenged.

I open my eyes, and the Lady of Pain is there before him, her feet still touching the dirt so he cannot see her. He waits with his arms crossed over his chest and that amphora lying on the ground before him. He is a clever one, this Hunter. If I forgive his prayer-still the most beautiful ever spoken in Sigil-his master will be the first to storm my doors; yet, the instant I punish him, he will open his jar and release that enchanted net it carries.

But he has forgotten my children. I have but to desire and the dabus perform. Already, the two axe-bearers have drifted forward to remove the amphora. They stop beside it.

"Leave that be!" The Amnesian Hero's eyes grow as round as coins. "Poseidon sent it for the Lady of Pain!"

My children honor him with a reply, but if the Thrasson can read their rebuses, he does not care that they are acting on my wishes. He stands and reaches for his sword. One dabus picks up the amphora, and the other raises his axe to do battle. I lift one foot off the ground, then the other, and-

– suddenly the Lady of Pain was there. Like the dabus, she hung a little in the air, the hem of her long, brocaded gown hovering just inches above the dirt. The Amnesian Hero forgot about his sword – and the dabus and his amphora as well – and let his jaw drop. The Lady was a striking beauty, tall and slender, with classic features and an aura of inviolable' serenity. She had a halo of steel blades instead of hair, lips as black as kohl, and unflinching yellow eyes that kindled a sick, feverish fear in the Thrasson's breast.

Still kneeling, the Amnesian Hero placed his hands on his thighs and bowed deeply. His palms felt hot and wet against his bronze cuisses.

"Greetings. I am the Amnesian Hero of Thrassos, bearing a gift from the god Poseidon, K-king of Seas and C-cleaver of Lands." He gestured behind him, where the dabus had retreated to the wall with the amphora. "With your p-permission-"

The Lady raised her hand, and the Amnesian Hero stopped talking. She fixed her sulfurous gaze on him and, for the first time, truly seemed to see him. Thinking she was about to speak, the Thrasson held his bow. Though he remained absolutely motionless, he kept his toes bent, so that he could spring to his feet quickly. If she attacked, as everyone seemed to believe she would, he had every intention of defending himself.

The Lady curled her fingers into a black-nailed claw, which she dragged downward through the air. A loud, metallic squeal arose behind the Thrasson, and something shoved his face toward the ground. He caught himself on his hands, then glanced over his shoulder. There was no one behind him save the dabus guards, standing several paces away, as motionless as statues and still holding the amphora. Their two companions had nearly completed the wall; the crest stood only a row short of a man's height.

The Amnesian Hero felt several ridges of bronze pressing into his back, then realized that his god-forged armor had actually been dented. He looked back to the Lady of Pain. Several of her fingernails were broken, and her brow was raised ever so slightly. It occurred to the Thrasson that he had just survived an assault by Sigil's fearsome ruler. To his surprise, he found that he was less terrified than confused about what to do next.

As the Lady showed no sign of continuing her attack, he elected to turn his palms up and spread them wide to show he meant no harm. "Please, milady, do not fear me."

The shadow of a smirk flashed across her mouth. She extended a single finger.

"I come in peace." Again, the Thrasson gestured at the amphora. "I only want to deliver this gift from Poseidon."

The Lady drew her finger through the air, and again the creak of folding metal rang off the alley walls. The Thrasson rocked backward, giving way to a terrific pressure against his chest. He looked down to see a long groove running the length of his breastplate, as though some enchanted weapon had struck him a mighty blow. Despite the amicable nature of his mission, a seething anger began to build in his stomach.

"Until now, I have tried to comport myself peacefully." The Thrasson sprang to his feet, dropping a hand to the hilt of his star-forged sword. "But I warn you, this armor was made by Hephaestus himself. I will suffer no further damage to it."

The Lady slightly narrowed her eyes, then curled her hand into a fist. The screech of crumpling metal rang in the Thrasson's ears. His chest filled with shooting pains, and he looked down to see his corselet reshaping itself into the figure of an hourglass. Only the anguish in his body convinced him that he was seeing something real. No foe had ever dented his god-forged armor, and he could scarcely believe the Lady of Pain was crashing it without so much as a blow.

The Thrasson's body believed. His aching ribs made soft popping sounds, and his breath left him and would not return. Hurting too much to scream, he dropped to his knees and fumbled his dagger from its sheath. He jammed the tip beneath the first buckle and cut the strap. His lungs filled with air, but the crashing anguish in his stomach deepened. Not worrying that the blade might slip and cut him, the Amnesian Hero shoved the knife down the crooked seam and severed the other two straps. The armor fell away, clanging softly into the dirt.

Even before the pain began to recede, the Amnesian Hero was on his feet and reaching for his sword. He would win no combats against the Lady of Pain-or anyone who, like the gods themselves, used magic without casting spells – but Hades had heard his prayer for a glorious death, and the Thrasson would not squander the honor by dying poorly. In fact, he found himself looking forward to the battle; a valiant effort would secure his name – or rather his legend – a place in the songs of bards throughout the multiverse.

It was not to be. His sword had not even cleared its scabbard before a loud clatter erupted from the far side of the wall.

"Zoombee!" The golden thread came arcing into the alley, unspooling as it flew, then the stones in the dabus' wall began to tremble.

The Lady of Pain pivoted her blade-haloed head toward the sound. The Thrasson drew his sword, but resisted the urge to attack. Despite appearances, he was quite certain that his powerful foe had not forgotten about him.

Jayk pulled her torso atop the wall, then froze in shock as she found herself looking down at the Lady of Pain. "By the One Death!"

The Lady raised a hand, as though to help the tiefling over.

Jayk's face went as pale as pearls, then the stones resumed their trembling. She glanced behind her and frowned, then granted and began to flail her legs at something.

"Don't fight me!" The voice was Tessali's. "This is for your own – huh!"

Jayk landed a kick, then hoisted herself entirely onto the wall and, like a rope-dancer, ran along the crest. The long-fingered hand of an elf caught her ankle, and she pitched headlong off the wall, crashing down upon the two dabus guards. The amphora came free of their grasp and thudded to the ground, rolling clear as a tangled heap of tiefling and dabus crashed down behind it.

The Amnesian Hero rushed over to the jar, silently thanking Apollo for not letting it shatter-then he noticed the crack in its neck. A loop of fine golden thread had pushed through the tiny fissure and seemed to be writhing out. The Thrasson kneeled down and clamped his free hand over the crevice. The filament pushed its way between his fingers and continued to work free.

"I fear your gift has been damaged." Still holding his sword, he turned to the Lady of Pain. "Whatever your intentions for me, perhaps you should open it now."

The hem of the Lady's gown billowed outward, as though she were walking forward. She seemed to step downward, then her dress fluttered again, and she vanished from sight.

"Milady?"

Another clatter sounded from the wall, then Tessali's voice called, "I need another net. They're both here!"

The Amnesian Hero turned to see a barmy net spinning through the air toward his head. He reached up and caught several strands in his hand, then, before Tessali could pull the draw cord, yanked his attacker from the wall. The elf had barely hit the ground before the Thrasson's sword was slashing back and forth through the net, cutting it to pieces.

By the time he turned back to the amphora, the golden thread had worked completely free of the crack. It rose into the air and began to circle. Pains Of The Flesh

Against that golden strand, there is no slip.

Still as stone, I stand before the Amnesian Hero, both feet smooth upon the ground. The Thrasson and his ilk call me gone, but not so that flaxen thread. Like a worm to a corpse, it comes to me and scribes its circle.

There is time yet, I think. I steal forward, feet as soft as feathers upon the haze-brown sky. The Thrasson's supplication, those divine lines, cannot stand: he must recant. He must disavow, he must renounce, he must curse my name and sob, wail, and beg for death. He must suffer for what he has done; for the good of the multiverse, he must rue the hour he uttered that beautiful prayer.

I do not reach him.

Once more the filament circles me, and something – I cannot say what – stirs in that void where I once had a heart. It is nothing I have ever felt before: a fluttering, a feeling as gentle and lonely as a mourning dove's lament; it is like a lover's hand: warm, comforting, and somehow familiar, so very inviting and so very dangerous.

Daedalus himself, most cunning of men, spun that golden fiber. It is sturdier than any chain Hephaestus ever forged. To pull against that filament is to make it stronger; to cut it is to braid it double, to untwine it is to spread it in an inescapable mesh. The Thrasson has cast Poseidon's net, if a single strand can a net make, and I dare not give it the touch.

I close my eyes, and when the thread circles the third time, no fiber drags across my skin, no filament tightens around my throat, no string binds my wrists. The Lady has gone from that dim alley.

The Thrasson stands unrepentant, the tiefling unpunished beside him. A key has turned, a lock has clicked; a door hangs unlatched and the treasure sits unguarded. I could go into the mazes after them, but there are dark things in the labyrinth, and corridors innumerable, branching and twisting and feeding into themselves in an irreducible tangle. In those passages all wanderers perish, by bloody claw or upon tottering legs, but always with the certain knowledge that the exit lay just beyond the next corner. Perhaps that is punishment enough.

And, in truth, I dare not allow the Thrasson to open the amphora and cast at me more strands from Poseidon's net. Already, the first has found me again. I feel a growing surge in that void where I once had a heart, a rhythmic roar that builds and fades, then rises again more powerful than before. The smell of brine and the salt sea pervades the air, and a stiff breeze whispers across the water. Hard as I try, I cannot shut off the sounds or ignore the scents; they are inside, like nightmares gushing from that dark well in my chest.

Standing above white-crested waves I see the Lady of Pain, gowned in white cloud and belted in golden light, her lips the same turquoise as the Arborean Sea. A string of pearls, black and lustrous like succubi tears, hangs around her neck. About her head flashes a diadem of blue lightning, while in place of her red-stained blade halo waves a flyaway mane of yellow hair: The strands vanish into the air and have no ends; they are a hundred thousand golden threads that lead to a hundred thousand of the multiverse's infinite planes.

In the air beside her – me? – hangs a ghostly visage made of the wind itself and as huge as the sun: the Elemental Queen of Air. Though her features are as translucent and shifting as a breeze, I see something in the shape of her face, in the angle of her oval eyes, and in the set of her high cheeks: a certain motherly semblance to the Lady of Pain.

On my other side stands a trident-wielding giant, waist-deep in waves, reeking of kelp and salt air, sea-foam for hair, sparkling skin like moonlight on water. Upon his lips, a father's miserly smile. He is stretching an upturned palm toward me and looking out to sea.

This cannot be! If I had parents, I would remember. This memory – this illusion-is some trick of Poseidon's, a ruse to win my trust and nothing more.

A black-sailed dhow approaches, steered by a single black-hooded helmsman. On the deck rest four black coffers, the bride price mighty Poseidon demands for the heart of his golden-haired daughter. The boxes hold agony, anguish, misery, and despair-the four Pains that rule the multiverse – but how I know, I do not know; that is as dark to me as the face beneath the hood.

And now the tide turns; the surf roars more softly each time it rises, the smell of brine grows sour and distant, the face of the Elemental Queen vanishes in a shimmer of still, hot air. Poseidon sinks beneath the waves; the whitecaps subside, the sea calms to a turquoise mirror and the air spills from the dhow's black sail. The helmsman turns his hooded face toward me, and a whirlpool opens beneath his vessel; down he is drawn, down into that void in my chest he whirls, this night-cloaked stranger who paid the bride's price for my heart. City Of Iron

The Amnesian Hero stood in the charcoal dimness, cautiously awaiting the pleasure of the Lady of Pain. Although she had disappeared a moment earlier, a certain disturbing stillness continued to hang in the air. The alley had suddenly grown hot and muggy, and the musty smell of clay seemed stronger, perhaps because Sigil's other fetid odors had vanished. Even the murky light looked somehow deeper – not darker, but heavier and more enduring. From the wall behind him came a frightened gasp and the rasp of boot heels kicking for purchase in the dirt. Thinking the Lady of Pain had finally shown herself, the Thrasson raised his sword and spun.

He found Jayk stooped over Tessali, trying to dodge past the elf's kicking legs and catch hold of a flailing arm. The Thrasson stepped over, grabbing the tiefling's collar and throwing her against a hut wall. Her pupils were diamonds and her fangs were folded completely down.

"Have I not warned you about this, Jayk?"

Before Jayk could answer, Tessali was on his feet and climbing the wall. "Over here! Helpl"

One-handed, the Amnesian Hero jerked the elf down and pushed him to the ground. "You, be silent!"

Tessali's eyes darted to the crest of the wall, then half closed in disappointment. "What's taking so long?" he yelled. "I'm all alone with these bar-arrrgh!"

The complaint came to an abmpt end as the Amnesian Hero placed his foot across Tessali's throat. The Thrasson glanced toward the wall, but saw no sign of anyone coming to aid the elf.

Jayk gathered herself up, still staring at Tessali through her diamond-shaped pupils. "I make kiss with him, yes? When he reaches the next stage, he is not so much trouble."

"No," the Amnesian Hero said. "We need him alive, to trade for my wine woman."

"Wine woman?" Tessali asked.

"The one in white." The Amnesian Hero did not explain that he called her wine woman because she only appeared when he drank wine. "She approached you in Rivergate."

Tessali knitted his brows. "You were there!"

"She will be your ransom." The Thrasson did not bother to confirm the elf's deduction.

"But Zoombee! Did you not hear me? I told you he was looking for this'wine woman'!"

Tessali nodded. "That's right. We lost her."

"Lost her? How?" The Thrasson put a little more weight on the elf's throat. "If something happened to her…"

"I can't say what became of her," gasped Tessali. "We were barely a dozen paces out the door when she escape- er, when she disappeared."

The Amnesian Hero had no need to ask for details. The same thing had happened to him a dozen times; he would be crossing a room toward the woman, or perhaps pursuing her down a crowded lane, when his view was blocked by a pillar or a comer. In that instant, she always vanished.

"I'm sorry," Tessali said, seeming to sense the Thrasson's disappointment. "But if she's important to you, come back to the Gatehouse. Sooner or later, we will-"

"You will not catch her," said the Amnesian Hero. "No matter how hard you search, you will not even see her."

"Then the elf, he is worthless." Jayk started toward Tessali, the tips of her needlelike fangs showing beneath her cupid's bow lip. "I make kiss with him, yes?"

"No." The Amnesian Hero started to rebuke the tiefling, then thought better of it and glared down at Tessali. He removed his foot from the prisoner's throat, then said, "Your life rests in your own hands. If you make any more trouble, I'll let her do as she pleases."

Tessali paled, then glanced in the tiefling's direction. She gave him a coy smile, but the Amnesian Hero resisted the urge to warn her against being too hasty in judgment. For now at least, the more frightened the elf was, the less likely he would be to cause trouble.

The Amnesian Hero stepped away from Tessali and positioned himself near the middle of the newly erected wall. He could not see into the murky comers where it connected to the huts, but there was enough light to spy anyone clambering over the top. No one came. The street on the other side had fallen ominously silent, and the ground had ceased to reverberate beneath the endless file of feet. The Thrasson sheathed his sword.

"We appear to be alone."

Jayk groaned. "Yes. The wall, it is finished. Now we are trapped."

"Trapped?" Keeping a wary eye on the tiefling, Tessali rose. "That can't be!"

A shadowy sneer creased Jayk's lips. "Why not? The Lady, she never sends Bleakers to the mazes?"

Tessali scowled. "Of course she does." He studied the stone wall, as though considering what lay on the other side. His face suddenly seemed to light, then he said, "In fact, I've been in the mazes several times myself."

The Amnesian Hero raised his brow. "The Bleakers play at mazes?"

"Not play." Tessali's expression was guarded. "But people sometimes find themselves caught in a labyrinth through no fault of their own. The Bleak Cabal tries to help them find their way."

"And the Bleak Cabal does not become lost?" the Thrasson demanded.

Tessali shook his head. "We have freed our minds of delusion; we are not fooled by false paths." The elf's expression was smug. "If you will let me, I will guide you out of the mazes."

"And straight into one of your cells, no?"

Tessali received Jayk's skepticism with a smile. "Surely, that is better than remaining lost in the mazes?" He gestured at the dim walls around them. "And your constraint would not be permanent. You will be released when we have freed you of delusion."

"When we are barmy as you, yes?" Jayk shook her head violently, flinging golden drops of venom from her fang tips. "You do not even know when you have hit the blinds. You are such a berk!"

Tessali received this insult with a look of infinite patience. He turned to the Amnesian Hero, spreading his hands in entreaty.

"You two are the ones who have hit the blinds. Won't you let me show you the way out?"

The Amnesian Hero pointed at the wall the dabus had built. "That looks real to me."

"It is real, but not every wall is a maze wall. Some are just walls."

"Why would the dabus build a new wall here?" The Thrasson asked.

Tessali pulled a stone loose and tossed it on the ground. "This wall does not look so new to me."

"It is. The dabus built it as I tried to present Poseidon's gift to the Lady of Pain."

Tessali's brow arched in compassion. "There were no dabus."

"I saw them." The Amnesian Hero pointed at Jayk. "As did she."

The elf shook his head sadly. "But I didn't. When two troubled people spend time together, they often feed off each other's delusions."

The Amnesian Hero cast a questioning glance at Jayk, who was quick to explain, "He did not see the dabus. They were gone before he came."

Tessali gave her a patronizing smile. "You can fashion an explanation for everything. That is the nature of delusions."

The Amnesian Hero pointed at his crumpled corselet. "What of that? Did I imagine the Lady of Pain crushing that, too?"