Pages of Pain

At last, the sizzling died away, and the sick acid stench faded from the Thrasson's nostrils. The burning agony drained from his arm, and Karfhud released his wrist. The Amnesian Hero turned his hand into the light and, tattooed onto his palm, he saw the ruby-eyed semblance of a slender, wicked-homed tanar'ri.

"That was before the blight." Karfhud sounded almost wistful. "But that was many centuries ago – and we have more immediate concerns, do we not? Gather up your sword, and let us be on our way."

Seeing nothing else to do, the Amnesian Hero did as the fiend instructed. "And where are we going?"

"To collect our supplies, of course 1" Karfhud seemed genuinely surprised by the Thrasson's question. "And then we shall return you to your friendsl"

"My friends?" The Thrasson did not relish the thought of returning to his companions in the company of a Maze-Blighted tanar'ri. "It might be better if I returned alone."

"In your condition? You would never succeed!" Karfhud swept the Amnesian Hero up in a single arm. "And did I not swear to aid you any way I can?" Hands

She stalks the mazes like a bloodblade on the prowl, shambling around comers, skulking along walls, squinting into the windblown ash. Faint as it is, the smell of wine and sour sweat and crusted blood grows more distinct with every step. She stops, sucks down a chest full of gritty air, turns her maw skyward; from her throat rumbles a low growl that rises to a deep rolling bellow and spreads like thunder across the dark sky. The winds grow still in the fury of the roar. Cascades of ash boil down the walls, the ground goes soft with trembling – and the echoes boom back to her bland and hollow, with no resonance of terror. She is alone in this maze; the prey has abandoned her to its spoor. Her matted fur bristles with cold ire, and her craving grows worse for its denial.

We have the same dark hungers, you and I and the monster. We all ache to sate the same appetites we dare not name. It is the same emptiness inside us all; we stare into that same darkness, we fling our treasures into that same unfathomable pit, and, in the end, we all come to that same scant solace: the comfort of warm blood, the fellowship of a groaning voice, the intimacy of the death rattle. Do not damn the monster; until we look to ourselves, we do not dare.

She is only searching, and no matter that she will never find what she seeks in Poseidon's amphora; it suits me that she thinks she might. She is kneeling before the jar now, her flat and shaggy face pressed close to the neck, her cavernous nostrils flaring as she sniffs at the ashen patch. It smells of blood and fear and pain, which sate her appetites as well as anything, but also of something more, pride and hope and even, well-masked beneath the rest, treachery. The amphora is not likely to flail or shriek or dash away when she begins to play, but it may offer some new kind of fun-if not, she will return later for the prey. They cannot roam far.

The monster tucks the amphora under her arm-the same one that was lopped off earlier-then steps into the billowing dross, and by the time the Amnesian Hero directs Karfhud into the blind, she has left the ashen maze and turned toward her lair.

The Thrasson was sitting in the crook of the tanar'ri's elbow, with one arm wrapped around the fiend's spongy neck and the other pinned against the brute's enormous biceps. The fever had not broken, but the Amnesian Hero felt well enough now. Shortly after allowing his palm to be marked with Karfhud's blood, his dizziness had faded, the fog had evaporated from his mind, even his fatigue had vanished. Save for his unrelenting thirst and the throbbing of his infected scratch-and the uneasy suspicion that he owed his fitness to the fiend's mark-he had no complaints whatsoever. In fact, he was allowing himself to be carried only because his brick foot made it impossible to keep pace with the tanar'ri's ground-swallowing stride.

Karfhud turned the comer and stopped in the mouth of the blind. The dead-end passage ahead looked like the place where the Thrasson had left his companions. The same ash eddies swirled about the entrance, it was the same thirty paces deep, and it had the same ash walls rising along its sides. The only difference was its emptiness; Jayk and Tessali and Silverwind were missing, and so was the amphora.

"Put… put me down!" The Thrasson's gasping tone had less to do with thirst than with shock.

Karfhud straightened his arm, allowing the Amnesian Hero to drop to the ground. "You're certain this is where you left them? In the mazes, many places can look the same."

"I am no stranger to mazes!"

Karfhud narrowed his eyes, hiding his maroon pupils between the folds of his sagging face, and made no reply. Tanar'ri lords were not known for their forbearance, but the Amnesian Hero was more worried about his missing companions than angering the fiend. He clumped over to the wall where he had left the amphora. In the powdery ground, he found the shallow basin where he had worked the bottom into the dross. In front of this depression, a pair of hollows had been pressed into the ash. The craters were the size of a man's chest, slightly elongated, and almost two paces apart. Something had kneeled there-something larger than Karfhud.

"The monster was here," said the tanar'ri, voicing the Thrasson's conclusion even as he reached it. "And she took your amphora."

"She?"

Karfhud nodded. "The monster is female-is that not always the way? I wonder what your jar contained to interest her?"

"So do I." For once, the Amnesian Hero had no answer for the tanar'ri to pluck from his mind.

The ground was not churned up, as was to be expected after a fight, and, while the eddies had dusted the entire area with ash, the two depressions where the Amnesian Hero and Jayk had sat talking were completely filled, yet the basins where the amphora had rested and the monster's knees had pressed down were covered by only a light coating.

"You are right, Thrasson." Karfhud gazed up and down the blind. "This battle site makes no sense."

"Will you allow me the privacy of my own thoughts?"

"Why do you need privacy – unless you're trying to hide something?" Karfhud hung his sagging face over the Thrasson, curling the swollen black lips of his muzzle just enough to bare the tips of his yellow fangs. "Certainly, you do not concern yourself with proprieties. The thought has not crossed a human mind that could offend tanar'ri sensibilities."

"I doubt the tanar'ri have sensibilities," grumbled the Thrasson. "And I certainly have nothing to hide. You can read minds. You must know my opinion of you by now."

The Amnesian Hero turned away to see if he could learn more about what had happened to his companions. Given how often eddies spun into the blind to coat everything with a fresh layer of ash, he knew better than to think he would find many hints on the ground. Instead, he walked along the wall in both directions, searching for anything to suggest there had been a battle: stray weapon marks, blood-soaked clods, indentations left by huried bodies.

The Amnesian Hero found nothing, which, he decided, meant nothing. The battle could easily have been fought without leaving its mark on the wall. His companions might have escaped without a fight. Or, when they reached the mouth of the blind and found him missing, they might have fled before the monster arrived.

"No, that cannot be what happened."

Karfhud's intrusion startled the Amnesian Hero so badly he jumped. He landed with his sword half-drawn and spun on the fiend, angry enough that he felt flames licking in his eyes.

Karfhud showed no sign that he noticed the Thrasson's fury. "Your friends were in a hurry, or they would have taken the amphora with them."

"Not necessarily." The Amnesian Hero did not know why he bothered speaking, except that it made him feel a little less like a fiend in the making. "To them, the amphora was nothing but trouble."

Although the Thrasson did not bother to elaborate, Karfhud nodded. "Ah, yes: the giant."

The Amnesian Hero grated his teeth, but dropped to his hands and knees near the place he and Jayk had been sitting. Karfhud had given him an idea. He began to sweep his hands through the ash, searching for the wineskin he had left lying on the ground. Presumably, the skin would still be there if his companions had left in a hurry.

The Thrasson brushed something cold and much too smooth to be Silverwind's wineskin. He lost contact with it, then spread his fingers and raked both hands deeply through the ash. This time, he caught the thing squarely. His pulse raced in his ears. He half-expected whatever it was to bite him and squirm away, but the object remained dead in his grasp. It had a strange texture, with a soft exterior wrapped over a hard, lumpy core. From one side protruded several long, flexible appendages…

The Amnesian Hero's stomach went hollow and qualmish, then he found himself shouting in revulsion as he pulled a rather fine-boned hand from deep beneath the ash.

"Foul Hades!" The Thrasson dangled the thing by its thumb. "There was a fight!"

A sick, guilty feeling welled up inside him; while he was off chasing his wine woman, the monster had come and devoured his companions.

"Do you have to be so maudlin? It is only a hand!"

The tanar'ri snatched the thing from the Thrasson's grasp, then wiped the ash off the severed wrist and raised it to his muzzle. From the fiend's mouth snaked a long, pointed tongue coated in white fungus. The tip flickered over the stump several times and when Karfhud began to rub it back and forth over his taste buds, the Amnesian Hero forced himself not to look away. The cut was uncommonly clean; even his star-forged blade could not have cleaved the bone so smoothly.

Several nauseating moments later, Karfhud lowered the hand and sighed, deeply satisfied. "Elf – a little old, but elf nonetheless."

The Amnesian Hero nodded. "Tessali. One of our party."

Karfhud dropped to all fours and snuffled along the ground, allowing the Thrasson his first good look at the enormous back-satchel the fiend had fetched after their exchange of oaths. Secured snugly by heavy leather straps buckled around the tanar'ri's powerful wing joints, the sack was fashioned of some smooth, lightly colored hide that might have once belonged to either a pig or a man. It was large enough that the Amnesian Hero could have stood inside with Tessali at his side, although they would have been covered only to their chests. The top was drawn closed by a sturdy cinch strap, but several open pockets had been sewn onto the side to hold odds and ends.

"If you find my rucksack interesting, you would do well to remember that it is my rucksack." Karfhud pushed himself into a kneeling position and, before the Amnesian Hero could ask the reason for the threat, displayed Tessali's second hand. "This is not the doing of the monster."

The Amnesian Hero had already reached the same conclusion. The cut was far too clean, and, cunning as the beast was, the Thrasson could not imagine why she would leave both hands behind. "Then who?"

Karfhud shrugged, then lowered his face into the ash again. Still carrying Tessali's hands, he began to snuffle toward the back of the blind, raising a great cloud of gray dross each time he exhaled. The Amnesian Hero limped along behind, trying to puzzle out what had happened. Something-he could not even guess what-had come along and cut off Tessali's hands, then chased away the elf and the others. Sometime later – and not long ago, judging by the thin coating of dust in the knee depressions – something else, probably the monster, had come along and taken the amphora.

Karfhud reached the back of the blind and started to sniff up the wall, then suddenly stopped and cocked his head, nearly hooking the Thrasson's cheek with a black horn. "You have a marilith in your party?"

"Marilith?"

"Female tanar'ri! Six arms, serpent's tail." Karfhud cupped his hands beneath his chest. "Three or four big-"

"No! Not among my companions."

Karfhud managed a real smile. "Well then, I think we know who cut off these." He displayed Tessali's hands, then reached around behind his wing, bent his arm in a direction it should not have bent, and slipped the appendages into one of his rucksack's exterior pockets. "I am fortunate indeed."

"Fortunate?"

Karfhud attempted a wink, momentarily hiding one maroon eye between the folds of his blighted face. "You cannot imagine the centuries that have passed since last I did the fray upon a female tanar'ri!"

With that, the fiend grabbed the crest of the wall and pulled himself up. The Amnesian Hero looked back toward the mouth of the blind, torn between following Karfhud and going back to search for the amphora. His promise to Poseidon – and, in truth, his curiosity about his own past – obliged him to pursue the jar; his duty to his companions obligated him to go after them. He could not do both. Once he climbed over the wall, it would prove difficult to find his way back here, and every minute that passed before he started hunting the amphora slashed his chances of success.

"I may have misjudged you, Thrasson. I took you for the sort of fool who might regard the lives of his companions more highly than his own desires." Karfhud, already sitting atop the wall, swung his legs to the other side. "Make your decision soon. I won't wait for you."

The fiend pushed off and, even before he dropped down the other side, vanished from sight. The Amnesian Hero snorted his frustration, then jumped up, caught hold of the crest of the wall, and pulled himself to the top. As much as he relished the thought of being free of Karfhud – though he suspected that could not truly be while the tanar'ri's heinous face remained tattooed on his palm – the Thrasson knew the fiend had judged him correctly. No man of renown could abandon his companions in a time of such dire need-even if it meant breaking his word to a god. He pulled his chest atop the wall, then swung his legs to the other side and pushed off.

It is not like passing through a conjunction.

The Thrasson's stomach does a flip. His body rotates, his feet drifting up over his head. He is falling, he thinks; then no, he realizes, he is floating; an instant later, he decides he is suspended like a beetle in amber, in the syrup of nothingness. In his nostrils, there is nothing, not even the reek of his own unwashed body. His ears roar with silence, his skin prickles with the touch of emptiness, his tongue craves the taste of his own teeth. He sees what dead men see: not darkness, but an ocean of endless, colorless depths. Something goes slack, and the Thrasson feels himself uncoiling inside; his spirit and his mind and his body all drift toward their own separate peace.

Then a terrific jolt drives his knees up to his chin. He finds himself squatting on his heels, his ears ringing as though someone had boxed them, his bones shuddering from the impact. It would be wrong to say the Thrasson has landed; that would imply falling in the first place. It is closer to the truth to say his paradigm has shifted. Now he sees himself crouching between two rows of brambly hedges with dagger-length thorns, watching in morbid astonishment as Karfhud snuffles about searching for the marilith, harrowing the sandy floor with his blighted face.

It is clever, is it not, how the Amnesian Hero avoids thinking, even to himself, what a buffoon is that lust-struck tanar'ri? The Thrasson knows, better than any of us, that there is no marilith; would not his Hunter's nose have scented her spoor back in the blind? Would not those special eyes have seen beneath the top layer of ash to pick out her slithering trail, or those fingers have sensed the slimy dampness of her passing? The blood that has so roused Karfhud's passions belongs to Jayk, who was conceived at death and spawned from a marilith's leathery egg, but the Amnesian Hero is careful to think of none of this. He watches the tanar'ri sniff, his thoughts full of concern for his companions and strategies for fighting snake-women. Wiser to play the fool, to hide his nature until the time comes to betray his new keeper and make the fiend his.

A dangerous game, to be certain – and the only way to defeat the monster of the labyrinth – but how does the Thrasson know all this? Certainly, I did not tell him. And who else could, but you? Someone has a loose tongue, I fear, and they will pay.

But do not trouble yourself now. It will change nothing in the end, and what good is punishment if it comes expected? Even now, Karfhud has changed directions. The fiend is sniffing back toward the Amnesian Hero, who stands in the middle of the passage, somehow not thinking about the faint rasp of Jayk's breath whispering down the passage from the intersection, somehow pretending that his Hunter's ears don't hear a thing. What happens when Karfhud stops at the Thrasson's feet, it would not do to miss.

"This cannot be right!" The fiend has jerked his face from the sand and pointed down the passage, away from the intersection. "The blood trail leads around that comer, but the marilith went the other way – with a human!"

The Amnesian Hero scowled. "That can't be. I was the only human in our party."

"My nose may look blighted, Thrasson, but it does not lie."

Karfhud turned to stomp up the passage, leaving the Amnesian Hero to clump behind as best he could. Though it was only a short distance to the intersection, the tanar'ri reached it several paces ahead of the Thrasson. The fiend stopped and looked first left, then right. His great wings flared, drawing a curtain of darkness across the corridor; from his throat rumbled a sonorous growl, so low it felt like an earth tremor.

"Tiefling!"

Jayk's voice came around the corner high and shrill, cracking with fear as she uttered her incantation. A tremendous crackling bounced down the passage, and Karfhud's huge wings folded over his back satchel just as a cloud of fire boiled out of the side corridor to swallow him. The passage filled with a yellow smoke that stank of brimstone and charred flesh. The Thrasson stopped and turned away, shielding his face, daring to hope the tiefling had freed him from the fiend.

The heat of the flames continued to build. The Amnesian Hero flattened himself on the sand and tried to hold his breath. The foul smoke had already filled his longs, and he could not keep from coughing; with each gasp, he swallowed more of the fiery fumes, which caused more convulsions, and he thought he would suffocate.

Though a lifetime seemed to pass, it did not take more than a few seconds for the.flames to die down. Still coughing, the Amnesian Hero pushed himself off the scorching sands and peered up the passage. Karfhud looked a little blacker than usual, as if that were possible, but stood exactly as he had before the fireball engulfed him.

"Now will you have reason to lament, tiefling!" The fiend unfolded his great wings, revealing the blackened exterior of his back-satchel. There was a wisp of brownish smoke rising from the pockets where he had stored Tessali's hands, but otherwise the sack appeared intact "For that fireball, and for raising my appetites with that false smell of yours!"

"Karfhud, wait!" The Amnesian Hero started up the passage, but the fiend was already rounding the corner. "It's not her fault!"

"Zoombee?" cried Jayk. "Help me!"

The Amnesian Hero drew his sword and clumped around the comer. Karfhud's wings blocked the passage from one side to the other. Between the fiend's feet, the Thrasson could see Jayk lying on her back, frantically trying to push herself up the passage. She flung a handful of sand toward the fiend's face and ran her fingers through the gestures of a spell, but she was so badly frightened that she could not choke out the incantation.

"Karfhud, stop!" When the fiend did not obey, the Amnesian Hero rushed forward, sword raised to strike.

As soon as the Thrasson started to bring the blade down, the weapon slipped from his grasp. He could not violate his oath to the tanar'ri.

Karfhud stooped down to grasp Jayk in his clawed hands. She shot a frightened glance through the fiend's legs, then tried to call out to the Thrasson. She managed little more than a croak.

The Amnesian Hero dropped to his knees and snatched up his sword. Then, hoping he had guessed correctly about how to free himself from the fiend, laid his tattooed hand in the sand. He raised the star-forged blade above the wrist, took a deep breath, and started to bring the weapon down.

A huge, black-taloned hand caught the Thrasson's wrist.

The Amnesian Hero looked up to see Karfhud's massive homed head sitting backward on the fiend's hulking shoulders. The tanar'ri's maroon eyes, smoldering with suppressed fury, were glaring down over his scorched back-satchel.

"She is yours?"

"She is my friend." The Amnesian Hero twisted his sword arm free, still determined to strike off his tattooed hand-if that was necessary to defend Jayk. "But harm to her is harm to me."

"So you have proven." Karfhud reeled the rest of his body around to match the direction he was looking. "You could have mentioned this before I became so… fervent."

"You hardly gave me the chance! Besides, you should have known – unless Jayk's smell interferes with your thought-reading as well as your judgment." The Amnesian Hero hoped it did.

"You should be so lucky," Karfhud remarked.

Resigning himself to disappointment, the tanar'ri bent his arm around in that impossible manner and plucked one of Tessali's hands from his back satchel. Jayk's fireball had left the appendage dark and crispy, but the charring did not bother the fiend, who bit off a blackened finger and began to crunch.

"It is just as well." The fiend spoke around his snack. "As small as she is, the fray would not have lasted long."

Though he had managed an indifferent tone, Karfhud's tense bearing betrayed his true feelings. He shouldered past the Amnesian Hero, nearly shoving the Thrasson into a thorn hedge, then disappeared around the comer. He was still chewing Tessali's charred finger.

As soon as the Fiend was gone, Jayk spread her hands and flung herself at the Amnesian Hero. "Zoombee! You saved my life!"

The Thrasson caught a glimpse of her diamond-shaped pupils, then dropped his sword and caught her at arm's length. Her broad smile was rained, for him at least, by the two curved fangs hanging over her lower lip.

"I may look bad, Jayk, but I'm hardly ready for your kiss."

"Zoombee, you are never ready!" The tiefling pushed her lip into an exaggerated pout, which quickly converted itself back to a sly smile. "And you are wrong to be afraid. You are already-"

"Already dead – I know." The Amnesian Hero released Jayk, then retrieved his sword. "But it seems to me I'm not the only one who fears death. Did you not just thank me for saving your life?"

Jayk's face grew as dark as Karfhud's. "It was only an expression, Zoombee." She raised her chin. "I think he meant to steal my spirit, yes? That is why I thanked you."

"I have not met the tiefling yet that is not a liar." Karfhud's voice rumbled around the comer, putting an end to the Amnesian Hero's vague hope that the fiend needed to see a person to read his thoughts. "You thought I was going to kill you, and you were afraid of dying."

The Amnesian Hero cocked an eyebrow. "Karfhud does read minds, Jayk."

The Thrasson regretted the comment the instant it left his mouth. The tiefling's jaw worked silently, trying to find the words to deny what they all knew to be true. Finally, she gave up and spun away, burying her face in her hands.

"No, don't cry, Jayk." The Amnesian Hero sheathed his sword, then took her in his arms. "It is not wrong to love life."

The tiefling tried to pull away, but the Amnesian Hero held tight.

"If I were you, Thrasson, I would release her," warned Karfhud. "You are very near to discovering the truth about the One Death."

The Amnesian Hero continued to hold Jayk, confident that even for her, there was a difference between thought and action. "Jayk, you were terrified-and with good reason. Don't blame yourself for one moment of doubt."

Karfhud leaned around the comer, his folded brow lifted as far above his maroon eyes as the Amnesian Hero had seen. The fiend was holding his charred back-satchel in hand, cinching the top strap after having checked on the contents. Given that his face looked no angrier than usual, it appeared the sack's load had survived Jayk's firestorm intact.

"Thrasson," Karfhud rumbled. "I warn you, she-"

A whimper of terror tumbled from Jayk's lips, then she slipped around behind the Amnesian Hero.

The Thrasson reached around to pat her hand. "There is no reason to hide now, Jayk. He won't hurt you while I am here."

"That is true, tiefling." Karfhud knotted the satchel draw-string, then heaved the sack between his wings and bent his arms back at those impossible angles to buckle it in place. "As long as the Thrasson lives, you are safe enough."

Jayk slipped from behind her shield. "He… Zoombee is dead already… as we all are." The tiefling's voice had the desperate, soft quality of words that had misplaced their meaning. "But why should it matter to me? I… I do not fear death-or you."

"Good, as it appears we are to wander together." Karfhud pulled his cracked lips back in a gruesome smirk. A few tendrils of Tessali's charred hand had gotten stuck between his fangs. "Let us leave on this instant; catching the bariaur will prove difficult enough without giving him more of a start." Hands

Karfhud has led them back to the city of iron. Though thunder rolls somewhere in the distant sky, there is no hail to allay the scorching heat that pours off the rusty walls, nor steam to dampen the parching air that whispers down the crooked passages. The searing dryness draws beads of inky dew to the surface of the tiefling's dark complexion; the Thrasson's skin bums and itches and stays dry as salt; he has not lost a drop of fluid since striking his bargain with the fiend. That should worry him, but in truth he is relieved at this new harmony with heat. No longer does it sap his strength or make his joints ache, nor fill his mind with clouding steam; now it nourishes him, bums away his pain, even gorges his weary muscles with vigor long spent.

Thus does the defilement begin, not with the terrible act itself, but with a gift, freely given, and the offer of more. There is no coercion, no force, no one to blame; the victim makes her choice, thinks she will be the smart one, the strong one, the lucky one who sees the brink looming ahead and… But another time, perhaps. This has nothing to do with the Thrasson, and he has come to a crossroads. One branch leads into a warren of narrow, crooked alleyways where the heat bends and blurs the air like poorly blown glass; the other runs only a few paces before intersecting an avenue so broad and inviting that the far wall seems but a mirage.

Karfhud has stopped in the passage leading to the broad avenue, squatted down to scrape a circle of crusty brown mucilage off the paving bricks, licked the stuff from his black talon.

"Elf." The fiend smacked his lips and, not rising, turned his head backward to stare at Jayk. "Did you not say Silverwind was returning to the ash maze?"

Jayk nodded and stumbled one step back. "Silverwind, he says he needs Tessali's hands to fix things right. So they go back."

The Amnesian Hero did not know whether Jayk had noticed Karfhud eating the charred hand earlier-or if she connected it with the elf – but he saw no use in pointing out the relationship now. She still seemed shocked by the Fiend's near-assault, and he did not want to do anything to make her more fearful of their new companion.

Karfhud's maroon eyes continued to glare at Jayk from beneath his sagging brow, but he said nothing. The Amnesian Hero stepped forward, blocking the fiend's line of sight.

"Stop staring. She answered your question."

"I beg her forgiveness; it was not my intention to seem menacing." The shadow of a sneer flashed across Karfhud's muzzle. "I was only wondering why, if they wanted to return to the ash maze, they turned away from the entrance."

"Silverwind, he does not know how to find it!" The quickness of Jayk's explanation betrayed her anxiety. "He said they could only-"

"Turn around." Karfhud rose and bent his arms back to undo his satchel straps. "You, too, Thrasson."

Jayk's hand dropped toward her dagger, her fear broadcast by a sharp intake of breath. The Amnesian Hero caught her wrist, then wrapped an arm around her shoulders and turned her around.

"Don't worry. Karfhud's not going to hurt us."

"How can you know that, Zoombee?"

"Because if that was what he wanted, we would be…" The Thrasson almost said 'dead', then caught himself. Given Jayk's crisis of faith, it might be better not to talk about death. "Because if Karfhud wanted to hurt us, he would have done it by now."

Behind them, there was a sharp thump as Karfhud dropped his satchel to the ground. Jayk flinched and would probably have taken off running, had the Thrasson's hand not been grasping her shoulder.

"Zoombee, what is it he wants from us?" Jayk whispered, apparently forgetting that the fiend could hear every thought that flashed through her head. "It is not natural, this friendship he has made with you."

"I'd hardly call it friendship!" It affronted the Amnesian Hero that Jayk could even think he would be friends with something so wicked as a tanar'ri. "It's more of an arrangement. He claims that all he wants is my sword."

"And you believe him?"

The Thrasson cringed, for that was the one question he had tried to avoid asking himself until he could figure out how to shield his thoughts from Karfhud. Still, there was no use dodging it now; the answer had already flashed through his mind.

"Only a fool would trust anything a tanar'ri says."

The Amnesian Hero heard a soft shuffling sound, as though Karfhud were paging through a stack of parchment sheets.

"Thrasson, you would be wise to keep your thoughts on the tiefling's question. I have warned you about my satchel."

"I can't figure out what Karfhud really wants." The Amnesian Hero spoke rapidly, attempting to keep his curious mind from speculating about the shuffling sound. "If it was my sword, he could have had it easily enough. As weak as I was, he would not have had to trouble himself with killing me."

"Then what he wants is something from you, Zoombee."

From behind them came the soft rustle of a parchment being unrolled. Without even trying, the Amnesian Hero realized what the fiend had in his satchel: maps. A chill tickled down the Thrasson's spine, and he wondered if the realization would provoke Karfhud into attacking. He would have reached for his sword, save that he knew it would only slip from his hand.

When no assault came, the Amnesian Hero dared to glance over his shoulder. As expected, he saw Karfhud kneeling over an unrolled parchment. The fiend had tongues of white flame flickering in the pupils of his maroon eyes, and he was glaring at the Thrasson. They locked gazes for an instant, then the tanar'ri returned his attention to his map.

The Amnesian Hero looked back to Jayk. "Whatever Karfhud wants, I think it is from us. He seems rather determined to track down Silverwind and Tessali."

"Yes, and is that not your fault as well?" Jayk pushed his arm off her shoulder. "Or maybe you think they deserve to have a fiend hunting them, yes?"

"No!" he said. "Why would I think that?"

"Because they abandoned your amphora, of course!" Jayk's voice became more shrill with each word. "What happened to Tessali, that does not matter to you! You only wanted him to save your amphora, even if it cost him his hands!"

This was the first the Amnesian Hero had heard about how the elf lost his hands or what had happened to the amphora. The Thrasson had avoided asking about the matter, fearing his questions would further disrupt Jayk's fragile state. He took no comfort in knowing he had been right.

"Jayk, I don't blame Tessali for losing the amphora." He clasped the tiefling by the shoulders and spun her around to face him. "I don't blame you, either. When the monster came…"

"What monster? It was the Lady! You go off to chase your wine woman and leave us to save your amphora from the Lady of Pain!" Jayk spat at his feet. "I spit on your amphora; it is your own fault if you lose it!"

Though the tiefling's version of events did not match the evidence the Amnesian Hero had found in the blind, he thought it wisest not to press the matter. "Jayk, if the Lady came while I was gone, I'm sorry-but I don't blame anyone for leaving the amphora. I came to Sigil to deliver it to her. Don't you remember?"

The tiefling's jaw dropped, then she took a sharp breath and allowed her eyes to roll up. "Yes… I forget!"

"Be that as it may, Thrasson," said Karfhud, still speaking from behind them, "it surprises me to hear you lying. You and I both know the amphora was-"

"That's enough!" The Amnesian Hero released Jayk and turned to glare at the fiend. "Jayk's right No matter what happened to the amphora, I have no one to blame but myself."

A deep chuckle rumbled from Karfhud's throat. "Come now, Thrasson. You know it is no good to swallow your feelings! The amphora was your best hope of learning who you are, and now you feel betrayed because your companions abandoned it."

"Zoombee! This is true?" Jayk's pupils were elongating into diamonds, and her fangs were folding down from the roof of her mouth. "When you reach the One Death, you will have no use for memories!"

"Calm yourself, Jayk," said the Amnesian Hero.

He began to back away, casting an angry glance past the tiefling toward Karfhud, who was laughing so hard that his face had melted into an undulating mass of wrinkles.

"There is a difference between sentiment and reason," the Thrasson continued. "I am disappointed, but…"

Jayk leapt, fangs bared and hands clawing at his face.

The Thrasson sidestepped her rush, at the same time curling his hands into fists. He was spared the necessity of knocking the tiefling unconscious when Karfhud caught her from behind.

"That is enough, Little Shadow!" The fiend lifted her off the ground, still cackling in delight. "I cannot let you bite the Thrasson! He and I have sworn an oath of blood."

Instantly, Jayk went as still as a statue-save for her trembling muscles and her quivering lip.

"There," said Karfhud. "It always helps to understand the situation completely, does it not?"

Saying nothing more, the tanar'ri put Jayk down and returned to his maps.

The tiefling remained very still until her pupils had become round again, then fixed an angry glare on the Thrasson's face. "What were you thinking, Zoombee, to lead a tanar'ri back to us?" She jerked her chin back over her shoulder, though she was careful to avoid actually looking in the fiend's direction. "You will discover what he wants before he finds it, yes?"

"What I want is to save your friends." Karfhud's parchment rattled as he rolled it up. "And, at the moment, the reason is not so important as the need to hurry. If Sheba-"

"Who?" the Amnesian Hero asked.

"The queen of the labyrinth-the one who attacked you and your companions," Karfhud said. "If Sheba took the amphora-"

"No, I told you!" Jayk whirled around. "It was the Lady who came for it!"

The Amnesian Hero turned to see Karfhud stuffing the rolled parchment down among the many dozens in his satchel. The tanar'ri had apparently resigned himself to letting the pair in on his secret, for he showed no irritation at having the contents viewed – which worried the Thrasson more than any fiendish glowering would have. The tanar'ri would not take them into his confidence unless he meant to kill them later.

If Karfhud was aware of the Thrasson's thoughts, his disfigured face did not betray it as he fixed his attention on Jayk. "It may have been the Lady who chased you and the others away from the amphora, but it was someone much larger who took it" The fiend pulled the satchel drawstrings tight and, with a clumsy flutter of his blight-gnarled talons, knotted them closed. "We found a pair of large depressions where someone had kneeled to pick up the amphora – and, as I'm sure you know, the Lady of Pain leaves no sign of her passing."

When Jayk made no further protests, Karfhud hoisted his satchel onto his back and began buckling the straps. "If I am guessing correctly, this Silverwind intends to follow the Great Way down to the alley of the ash window-"

"Ash window?" asked the Thrasson.

"Surely, you remember it? You had to go through it to reach the maze of ash I"

The Amnesian Hero nodded. "Silverwind called it a conjunction."

"That is a peculiar way to describe it." Karfhud's folded brow dipped in the middle, then he shook his head. "But it matters not; it is more important that they are likely to meet Sheba coming the other way. You must catch up to them before she does-then stop her."

"Why us?" Jayk demanded. The prospect of confronting the monster again seemed to make her less afraid of the fiend. "What about you?"

The tanar'ri bared a long row of fangs. "I will be behind her." He pointed up the short alley toward the broad avenue. "When you reach the Great Way, you must see it as a straight line. Ignore the corners, whichever way they turn, and count only the intersections. Go down twenty-eight alleys, counting only those on your right, and turn into the twenty-ninth-which will be on your left. Go down this lane until you reach a 'T' and turn to the left, then go eleven more intersections, counting only those on the left, and turn into the twelfth, which will be on the right. The fourth window on the left leads to the ash maze, but by then you will meet either Sheba or me."

"What if we lose our way?" asked Jayk.

"Then I will be very angry-but you may always summon me by speaking my name." The tanar'ri looked to the Amnesian Hero. "Repeat my directions."

"Count twenty-eight alleys on the right and enter the twenty-ninth, which will be on the left. Follow it to a 'T' and turn left, then count eleven passages on the left and turn into the twelfth, which will be on the right. The fourth window on the left leads to the ash maze, but we don't really need to know that. By then, we will either be dead or reunited with you."

Karfhud nodded approvingly. "For a man who cannot recall his own name, you have a most excellent memory."

"I suppose that is because it is not cluttered," the Thrasson said. "But I do have a question."

"You may ask."

The Amnesian Hero looked up the passage toward the broad avenue. "Do we turn left or right onto the Great Way?"

Karfhud scowled. "Which way do you think?" He turned away, entering the hot, crooked alleys that opened beside them. "Left!"

The fiend departed at a lope, leaving the Amnesian Hero alone with Jayk and his instructions. The Thrasson started up the alley, clumping half a dozen paces before he noticed the tiefling was not following. He stopped and looked back to see her studying the direction from which they had just come.

"Jayk?"

The tiefling glanced at him only briefly, her eyes filled with fear, then looked back the way she had been staring. For a moment, the Thrasson thought she would bolt, but then her shoulders slumped and she started up the alley toward him.

"Zoombee, how does he know?"

"Know what, Jayk?"

"That we will do what he orders." She passed the Amnesian Hero without stopping, then stepped into the Great Way. "I think we will never be free of him."

Her name is not Sheba, of course. Karfhud calls her that because she reminds him of a succubus who once bested him in the fray. But the monster of the labyrinth has no name; she would not even understand what a name is, for it is beyond her to think of others apart from herself. She is like Silverwind that way-or any of us, if we look deeply enough – except that she never despairs, and that makes her ever so much stronger-strong enough, even, to defeat a tanar'ri lord.

That is what the Amnesian Hero is thinking as he clumps down the Great Way, trying to keep pace with Jayk. Unlike the tiefling, he is losing his fear of Karfhud, for he has begun to understand what the tanar'ri wants from them. For centuries – it has been millennia, but no mortal can truly conceive of such a time – for countless ages, the fiend has been lost in the labyrinths. The Thrasson is no tanar'ri, but he knows enough about the wicked race to understand that to a powerful lord like Karfhud, being trapped is less an abuse than not being master of the prison.

What the fiend wants is to kill the monster. The Thrasson begins to form his plan; he is thinking of the amphora, of course, and of Karfhud's maps, and he is wise enough to know that the tanar'ri knows what he is thinking. But there will be a battle, and battles breed confusion, and when the confusion passes, it will be the one who still stands that has the amphora and the maps and his life.

And so, leaving it to Jayk to ignore the comers and see the Great Way as a straight line and count the alleys on the right and guide them into the twenty-ninth on the left, the Amnesian Hero plots and schemes and falls so deeply into thought that he does not notice as Jayk guides them to the left at the "T" intersection, and he does not mark the growing ramble of thunder or the rising steam-laden breeze, and he does not hear the clatter of galloping hooves reverberating off the iron walls, or heed even the monster's sonorous roar until it breaks over the maze like Hephaestus's mighty hammer knelling upon its anvil.

By the time the Amnesian Hero has realized what is happening and draws his sword, Silverwind has rounded the corner ahead at a full gallop. With Tessali's gruesome stumps wrapped around his waist and the roar of a hailstorm echoing close on his tail, the bariaur glances at Jayk and the Thrasson only briefly, as though he has expected all along to meet them in precisely that spot, and continues on.

"Flee for your lives!" Silverwind veered toward one side of the passage. "Oh, I have recalled you at a bad time!"

"The monster's hard behind us!" Tessali looked far too frightened to be surprised by the Amnesian Hero's return. "Run!"

Seeing that there was no time to convince his companions to stay and fight, the Amnesian Hero extended his brick foot and caught Silverwind's front hooves. The bariaur bleated and pitched forward, then he and Tessali bounced off the hot iron wall and went tumbling across the bricks together.

"Zoombee?" Jayk sounded more curious than alarmed. "Why do you-"

The Amnesian Hero pushed her behind him. "Prepare your spells – and tell Silverwind to do the same." A cloud of rust-colored steam boiled around the corner ahead, followed closely by a wall of driving hail. "Maybe you have something to clear the storm?"

Behind him rose Tessali's voice, groaning and cursing the Thrasson for a menace and a berk. The Amnesian Hero ignored the insults and clumped forward, veering toward the inside wall of the comer. He knew better than to think he would surprise the monster – Sheba was much too cunning to round a blind corner on the inside – but he only needed to stall her long enough for Karfhud to arrive.

The Amnesian Hero stopped two paces shy of the comer. He took his sword in both hands and pressed as close to the scorching iron as he could bear. Behind him, his companions, mere silhouettes in the curtain of hail, were standing close together. Both Jayk and Silverwind were fumbling for spell components, but their attention seemed alarmingly divided. Tessali was leaning across the bariaur's back, gesturing wildly with his wrist stumps and hurling questions at Jayk. The tiefling shrugged and shook her head in disavowal, less concerned with the coming battle than with appeasing the elf. She was still in shock from Karfhud's attack; certainly, she would never have worried about such a thing before.

The Amnesian Hero felt a cold prickle between his shoulder blades. He looked across the passage to see an ice-gray blur rounding the comer. Her long mats of fur rendered her almost invisible in the driving hail; she seemed a mere deepening of the storm, a ghostly mass drifting slowly forward through the orange steam. Only the neck of the amphora, protruding on the far side of her body, looked at all solid.

The Thrasson cursed his bad luck that the jar was on the other side of the monster, then sprang across the passage to slash at Sheba's leg. If he could strike her lame, he would be free to stall until Karfhud arrived to finish the kill. After that, surviving-and laying claim to the fiend's maps – would become a simple matter of keeping his head while the tanar'ri and the monster killed each other.

The Amnesian Hero thumped down beside Sheba, his star-forged blade already biting into her leg. In the next instant, a deafening bellow reverberated down the iron passage, then a huge hand came from nowhere to crash into the Thrasson's shoulder. He lost his sword and went tumbling across the bricks and, three somersaults later, slammed into a scorching wall. There was a loud sizzle and the smell of burnt flesh, yet the Amnesian Hero felt only a faint nettling where his bare flesh touched the blistering metal. He pushed off the wall and tumbled to his knees, then found himself staring up at a curtain of matted fur. A huge, black-taloned mitt was reaching down to clutch him.

The Amnesian Hero ducked his shoulder and rolled, only to have Sheba pivot around before he could get his feet under him. He glimpsed a stripe of oozing black sap where his star-forged blade had bit into the knee, but the limb appeared discouragingly whole. He saw no sign of his weapon; the sword lay lost somewhere in the steam. The monster reached for him again, and the Thrasson began to wonder if his companions had abandoned him.

"Jayk?"

His scream was answered by the hail-muffled syllables of the tiefling's incantation. A pair of yellow streaks flashed through the orange steam, pulsing into the monster's shoulder, then bursting in a spray of golden light and silver fur. Sheba grunted and stumbled a single step back.

The Amnesian Hero crab-scrambled around behind the monster, frantically sweeping his hands across the bricks in search of his sword-and hoping he would not find it by slicing his fingers off. Sheba gave a baffled growl, then her head began to pendulum back and forth as she searched for him.

Silverwind cast his spell, filling the passage with a booming incantation even louder than the pounding hail. A roaring wind came blasting down the corridor to sweep the steam around the comer and blow the hailstorm back the way it had come.

When the tempest cleared, Sheba was staring directly at the Thrasson's sword, which lay less than three paces in front of her foot. The Amnesian Hero, slightly behind her and off to one side, found himself well beyond the limit of her peripheral vision – at least that was what he hoped. The amphora was tucked beneath the monster's arm on his side of her body. He considered trying to knock it free and dive for his sword, but decided that he had a better chance of getting stuck in her gummy fur than coming up with either his weapon or the jar.

The monster pivoted, her head tipped forward to search for her foe. The Amnesian Hero started to crab-walk around behind her, hoping to complete the circle and grab his sword – and that was when he noticed a huge black shadow slipping around the comer.

At last.

The Amnesian Hero let his brick foot clatter on the ground behind the monster, then he threw himself in the opposite direction, diving for his sword. Sheba was already spinning; her talons raked furrows of cold pain down his spine, but he was much lower than she had expected and going in the opposite direction. He belly-flopped onto the bricks and crawled to his sword, then whirled onto his mangled back, bringing the blade around just in case she attacked him instead of switching to Karfhud,

Sheba was nowhere in sight.

The Thrasson found himself staring directly up at the fiend, whose smoldering eyes were focused somewhere up the passage. The Amnesian Hero rolled once more and saw the monster, with the amphora tucked beneath her arm, loping past his companions. They were so terrified that they did not seem to notice their backs pressed tight against the scorching iron walls. The Thrasson hoisted himself to his feet and clumped up the corridor in his best imitation of a sprint. Karfhud's massive hand caught him by the shoulder. "It is too late." The evenness of the fiend's tone was surprising; certainly, the mind-reading tanar'ri knew how the Thrasson had tried to play Sheba off against him, yet his voice betrayed no ill will. "Now we must do this the hard way."

"Do what the hard way?" the Amnesian Hero asked.

"Only what we both wish to do – hunt down Sheba."

Karfhud watched the monster disappear around a comer, then turned his gaze upon Tessali and Silverwind. The pair were staring at him and looking even more frightened than they had when Sheba was chasing them.

"But first, Thrasson, we must do something about your brick foot," said Karfhud. "We will both need to be at our best Call your friends; they will be of use."

"You won't hurt them?"

Karfhud shook his head. "I told you, they will be of use."

Thus reassured, more or less, the Amnesian Hero waved his companions down the passage. Led by Jayk, they approached to within a few paces and stopped. Silverwind promptly began to chastise himself for failing to retain better control over his evil side.

"We are all tired." Karfhud spoke over Silverwind's rantings, at once silencing the old cleric and taking command of the little company. "We will rest here."

Always one to challenge another's authority, Tessali shook his head. "We must reach the ash maze as quickly as possible." He raised his arms, displaying the bandaged wrist stumps. "My hands were cut off, and we must-"

"Your hands are not there. I have already eaten one." Karfhud reached into his back satchel and produced the elf's remaining hand. "And I fear your tiefling friend overcooked the other one."

Tessali stared at the charred hand for a full twenty heartbeats before uttering a sound. Then he let out such a shriek that it sounded as though he was dying of shock. At length, it became clear that he was actually screeching a question.

"You what?'

Karfhud shrugged. "It was a mistake – but I warn you, I will eat the other one if you do not quiet yourself."

Tessali fell silent, but made the mistake of reaching for the charred hand. Karfhud pushed the elf to the ground, then stuffed the appendage back into his satchel.

"I will keep this one, to insure your cooperation – and your silence." Without awaiting a reply, the fiend turned to Silverwind. "Bariaur, you will prepare your healing magic."

The fiend's command seemed to jolt Silverwind out of his confusion, at least for the moment. "Healing magic – for what?"

"We must change the Thrasson's brick foot for a flesh one." Karfhud removed his back satchel, then opened it and pulled an enormous wineskin from inside. This he held out to the Amnesian Hero. "You may drink your fill."

Jayk quickly intercepted the skin. "That idea, she is a very bad one. When he drinks-"

"I know what happens." Karfhud jerked the wineskin away, then thrust it into the Thrasson's hands. "Drink. I will clean your sword for you."

The Amnesian Hero accepted the skin and yielded his sword, which was still coated with Sheba's saplike blood. The Thrasson pulled the stopper from the wine sack and took a long swallow. The stuff tasted like stump water, but it was powerful, and it quenched his thirst. Without asking the fiend's permission, he poured a long draught into Tessali's mouth, then passed the sack to Jayk and Silverwind.

Karfhud made no comment on the Amnesian Hero's generosity. Instead, the fiend slashed open one of his own veins, then dribbled his blood over the Thrasson's star-forged sword. The foul-smelling stuff hissed and bubbled and instantly dissolved the sticky black gunk that Sheba's wound had left smeared over the blade.

"Tanar'ri blood: the best cleansing agent in the multiverse." Karfhud dried the star-forged blade, then took the wineskin from Jayk's hands and passed it back to the Amnesian Hero. "Drink; this will hurt."

"What?" The Thrasson demanded.

Karfhud ignored him, instead motioning Jayk to sit down in the middle of the passage. "Tiefling, you will hold the Thrasson – and no biting."

The Amnesian Hero was beginning to understand the fiend's plan. "Karfhud, I am not going to-"

The fiend whirled on him. "Did I not swear I would cause you no harm?"

"Yes, but-"

"I warn you, if you are lame when you enter Sheba's lair, you will not leave again." Karfhud let out a long breath, then calmed himself and stepped back. "But the choice is yours. I will not force you."

The Amnesian Hero thought for a moment, then lifted the wineskin and began to drink.

"Good." Karfhud turned to Silverwind. "Are you ready?"

The bariaur nodded, then kneeled close to Jayk and began to lay out the components of his healing spells.

"Is there anything I can do?" Tessali cast a glum look at his wrist stumps, then added, "I used to be a healer."

Karfhud studied the elf for a moment, then motioned him over. "Perhaps you would do me the honor of standing at my side. I may have need of advice."

The fiend spoke with such compassion that, had he not been a tanar'ri, the Amnesian Hero would have sworn he was trying to make Tessali feel better. As it was, Karfhud's kind words only puzzled-and worried-the Thrasson.

"Karfhud, I'm sure you know-"

"Drink up, Thrasson!" Karfhud's eyes flashed like forge flames. "And do not worry about Tessali. Helping will do him good."

"Indeed it will." The elf went to the fiend's side. "I am glad to offer what little I can."

The Amnesian Hero raised the skin and took another drink. The wine had already filled his head with sweet clouds, but not so thickly that it had befuddled him as much as the fiend's flattery seemed to befuddle the elf. Karfhud kneeled beside the Thrasson. Then, when Tessali had come over to stand at his side, he grabbed the brick foot and, without ceremony, brought the sword down.

The Amnesian Hero had not expected it to hurt – not really – but he had never been so wrong in his life. Even before his brick foot had clattered to the ground, a ferocious ache was shooting up his leg to his very heart, so paralyzingly painful he could not even scream. He noticed Jayk's fingernails digging into his shoulders, then felt his own fingernails clawing at the ground, then began to yell for more wine.

Silverwind picked up the skin and poured a long draught down his throat, and that was when Karfhud grabbed Tessali's ankle. With a quick yank, the fiend jerked the elf off his legs, then raised the Thrasson's star-forged sword to strike off a foot.

The Amnesian Hero pushed the wineskin aside. "No!"

Karfhud's head snapped around. "You must have a foot!"

"Not… not someone else's!" The Thrasson shook himself free of Jayk's grasp and sat up-then nearly blacked out when he saw the muddy slime oozing from his ankle stump. "Not… Tessali's!"

"But he will be no use in Sheba's lair!" Karfhud objected. "He cannot fight. He can cast no spells. He cannot even cany our weapons."

Tessali, lying on the ground very still, said nothing.

"I won't… have it!" The Thrasson turned his tattooed palm toward the fiend. "I… will… die first."

For once, Jayk did not inform the Amnesian Hero that he was already dead. Instead, she leaned forward and placed her lips upon the Thrasson's throat, then whispered, "We die together, Zoombee."

"That won't be necessary." Karfhud released his terrified captive, then pulled his back-satchel over and removed the elf's blackened hand from a side pocket. "We can make do with this."

"A hand?" gasped Silverwind.

"It seems to be all we have." Karfhud tossed the appendage to the bariaur. "I suppose you have a spell of enlargement?" Name

In the Thrasson's sleep, two disembodied hands-charred hands, with long black talons and black flakes peeling off to expose the mottled pink flesh beneath-brush along his naked body. They are cold against his skin, and scaly, and they leave a trail of moldering reek wherever they touch: his cheeks, his neck and shoulders, his armpits, down to his stomach, over his hips and back again to that area of dark tangles and darker cravings, along his thighs, past his knees to his feet, even to his toes; wherever they roam, he feels his flesh rising up in welts, swelling into thumb-shaped lumps that sprout tiny hooked spines and start to pulse. The blisters grow large as melons. They turn emerald and gold and ruby and jet, and ooze ichor, and throb like hearts, and so heavily do they weigh upon the Amnesian Hero that he cannot me. He cannot sit upright to look at his pod-palled body; he cannot lift so much as his finger to flick the fetid husks away.

It is the beauty of dreams to reveal what is true without betraying what is real-or so I have heard. In truth, unless this endless watching is a nightmare, I cannot say. It has been so long since I dared to sleep that I have forgotten what it is to dream, or even to rest. Always must I be on guard, lest some god think to storm my ramparts; always must I survey those who come and those who go, lest one is the spy who leaves open the gate. To slumber is to surrender, for then my enemies will surely come and prevail.

And it is the same for the Thrasson. As he slept away the wine and the pain. Ruin has come stealing along, to hold his head in her lap and tickle her soft touch over his body high and low; she has folded him gently in her arms and hugged him close, and it is her hands that he dreams of even now, each caress drawing forth another of the heaving pods that have been slowly ripening since first he entered Sigil.

In his dream, the disembodied black hands sprout a pair of ivory arms from their severed wrists; the arms begin to grow, slowly stretching up to connect with the shoulders and torso of a naked woman. This is all the Thrasson can see, for he remains pinned beneath the heavy, throbbing husks-but it is enough. The woman has the full figure of a goddess and the smooth skin of a statue, and her humming voice is as sweet as a trilling flute.

Slowly, it returns to him: the terrible shock of Karfhud lopping away his brick foot, the horrid searing of Silverwind melting the huge blackened hand onto his ankle, the dark sick tide rising up to swallow him, the shadowy fingers digging into his shoulders as Jayk struggles to hold him down.

"J-Jayk." He tries to crane his neck back to see her face, but the bloated throbbing husks hold him down. Still, through the lingering haze of wine and pain, it seems to him something is wrong with the color of her skin. "Jayk? It's me-Zoombee."

"Zombie? You mustn't say such things." The voice is female and familiar, but it does not belong to the tiefling. "You're far from dead, my love."

His wine woman!

She lays her palms upon the Thrasson's cheeks; her hands still feel scaly and charred. Her lap shifts beneath his head. She leans down, bringing her face close to his, her bosom flattening the bloated pods that cover his chest. The Amnesian Hero sees a visage classic and narrow, an aquiline nose, a cold, callous gaze – a halo of many-styled blades.

He dreams the woman is me.

An emerald husk, squeezed too tightly between their close-pressed bodies, bursts; green ichor oozes down his flank, oily and full of bitter stink. Wherever the stuff touches, he bristles with a chill nettling; cold needles of agony pierce his skin, then drive deeper with agonizing languor. So slowly do they sink that he suffers before he suffers. His dread deepens faster than the anguish itself.

The Thrasson tries to push the woman away, but he cannot raise his arms. He screams, frightened by his immobility. All of the green pods burst, and the ichor paints him emerald head to foot; he burns with that slow, terrible scalding and shrieks and wails, anguished more by what he fears than by what he feels. The Amnesian Hero has succumbed to the first Pain.

"Sssshhhh! You mustn't draw the others to us! I have waited too long for this." The voice remains that of his wine woman. She smothers his cries with a kiss, then whispers a trio of soft syllables: "Theseus."

The word plucks a harp string inside the Thrasson's breast, sets his whole being to thrumming. Suddenly, he stops dreaming. Theseus was somebody's name, he remembers.

It was his name.

His eyes snapped open, and the Thrasson found himself lying on the hard brick pavement, looking up not at the Lady of Pain's face, but at that of his wine woman. She was beautiful as ever, with olive skin and emerald eyes and high, proud cheeks.

"Theseus?" he croaked. "I am Theseus?"

"You remember!"

The wine woman gave him a moon-bright smile and hugged him close to her breast, and that was when the Thrasson – no, Theseus-that was when Theseus remembered the throbbing husks of ichor dinging to his breast.

"No, wait…"

A trio of yellow pods burst, filling the air with the stench of spoiled meat. A pasty yellow ichor spread down the Thrasson's breast Belts of crushing agony tightened around his chest; the pain began to sink, dropping through his sternum and slipping down between his ribs, settling deep into his torso. A blanket of grim wet pain fell over his lungs, and Theseus found himself fighting to draw every anguished breath. He felt cold fingers around his heart, not squeezing so much as holding, thwarting the swell of each beat so that his entire chest cramped with every pulse.

As the pain deepened, the reek of the yellow ichor grew stronger and more bitter, until the smell grew so overwhelming that Theseus could not prevent himself from gagging. The convulsion caused more yellow pods to burst; more golden ichor spilled over his body, and crushing bands of agony began to tighten around his stomach, his legs, even his throat. The rancid rotten-meat stench grew overwhelming, and he knew he could not keep himself from retching.

The wine woman barely had time to push Theseus's head off her lap. She jumped up and glared down at him, her mouth twisted into an expression of distaste.

"Is the scent of my bosom so sickening to you, Theseus?" Her emerald eyes" betrayed no hint that she smelled the stench of the awful ichor that covered his body, nor that she saw the bloated pods clinging to it. "Has our love grown so repulsive to you?"

Theseus shook his head, and a painful ringing echoed through his skull. "No. Our love is well – I am sure."

"Then prove it." The woman raised her chin. "Tell me."

Now that the green and yellow pods had burst, Theseus was not so heavily burdened. He managed to raise his head so that he could look his wine woman directly in the face. "I love you."

Tears welled in her eyes. "You're lying! How can you declare your love without even knowing my name?" She began to back away, her lips trembling. "I thought you would remember if I told you your name-but you've forgotten me!"

"No!" Theseus stretched a hand toward her, causing the last yellow husk to burst. His arm went limp and dropped to the ground, feeling as though Karfhud had stomped on his elbow. "Can't you see? I'm in pain!"

"So am I!"

With that, the woman spun and ran out of sight.

"Wait!"

Theseus gathered his strength and rolled onto his side, intending to rise and go after her. Instead, he smashed two red pods clinging to his flank. The husks burst, filling the air with a smell so cloying and sweet it dizzied him. The red ichor did not spill over the ground, but spread upward over his body, drawn into his flesh as lamp oil is drawn into the wick. His skin began to bum, then went strangely numb. He suddenly felt hollow and broken inside. A vague nausea welled up someplace deep in his belly, and what little strength he had been able to muster abruptly drained from his limbs. He rolled onto his back, crushing more red pods; he felt the ruby ichor rising into his flesh, stinging his skin with that strange burning numbness.

Theseus thought the hollow feeling would start expanding again; he expected to grow weaker, to feel even more broken within. Instead, he experienced a fierce longing to hold the wine woman in his arms, to fill the emptiness inside him and feel her lips pressed to his, her bosom crushed against his chest, her loins grinding into his own. He could think of nothing but her, of his desire for her and how unfair she was to desert him. He would have her; he would hunt her down and seize her and make her understand that he had forgotten her through no fault of his own.

The Thrasson's strength rushed back to his limbs. He pushed himself upright and saw that the wine woman had dragged him away from his companions. The passage was flanked by the rusty red walls of the iron maze and paved with the same dark bricks, but he was sitting in a small dogleg passage he did not recognize, and there were no signs of his four companions.

It did not matter; nothing mattered except catching his wine woman. Theseus started to draw his legs up, and that was when he saw the hand.

The thing was flopping there at the end of his leg, just below the inflamed, crudely stitched seam where it joined his ankle. About twice the size of a normal hand, the appendage was still ugly and charred and covered with scaly black flakes and mottled patches of bare skin. The pinky was where his big toe should have been, and the thumb was on the outside where the little toe should have been. The long fingers, seared and slender as they were, made the thing look more like a fiend's claw than a man's foot.

Theseus tried to bend his big toe. The blackened pinky started to curl, and that was when his last red pod burst He had done nothing to squeeze the husk or jar it. The thing had just grown too full and split, spilling ruby ichor down his breast.

Again, there was that cloying sweet smell and the strange numbness sinking into his skin. Something shattered inside, and a terrible, overwhelming grief filled Theseus. He would never catch the wine woman with that ghastly thing on his foot! And, even if he did, how could she ever return his love? If not a monster, he had become at least a monstrosity – hardly worthy of the adoration of someone so beautiful as his wine woman!

Theseus let his body slam back to the ground, barely noticing as his skull smashed onto the hard bricks.

"Karfhud," he cried, "what have you done to me?"

The Thrasson had barely uttered the fiend's name before a blocky, homed shadow fell over his face.

"There you are. I was beginning to fear you would not think to call my name." The ground shuddered beneath the fiend's steps, then Karfhud's yellow-fanged muzzle appeared over Theseus. "I cannot imagine how you wandered this far. Silverwind said you would be in too much pain to walk."

"It was my beloved," the Thrasson explained. "She brought me here."

"That cannot be. Jayk is still-" Karfhud stopped in mid sentence, reading the Thrasson's next thought even as it formed itself. "I shall have to keep a careful watch for this wine woman. It is a rare kidnapper who can steal a caper – comrade while my back is turned."

"She did not steal me." As the Thrasson stared up at Karfhud's face, he was surprised to notice a thick coating of yellow ichor and a golden, goiterlike pod throbbing on the fiend's neck. "Had I been awake, I would certainly have gone willingly. I would do it now."

"And miss the battle with Sheba?" Karfhud scoffed. "I thought you wanted to recover your amphora and steal my maps-or have you lost your ambition, now that you recall your name?"

"There is still enough I do not recall." Theseus was surprised to notice another yellow pod, much smaller, dangling beneath the fiend's pointed ear. He wondered if Karfhud was aware of the two husks. "And whether I recover the amphora or not, I will never lose interest in finding the exit to this place."

"Then let us return to the others; Silverwind must ready you for battle, and then we will attack."

Karfhud stepped around to Theseus's side and kneeled down to pick him up. The fiend's body was coated in yellow ichor, and there were at least ten golden pods, ranging in size from no larger than a thumb to as big as Sheba's head, dangling from his body. The Thrasson saw no husks of any other color hanging on the tanar'ri.

Before taking Theseus into his arms, Karfhud hesitated and glanced down at his body. "What are you looking at? I see no pods!"

"Here."

Theseus tried to pluck a husk off the fiend's body. He might as well have tried to grab a bubble; the pod burst the instant his fingers touched it, and a fresh wave of golden ichor spilled down the tanar'ri's chest.

Karfhud hissed in pain, then glared at the Thrasson with yellow flames licking in the pupils of his maroon eyes. "Whatever you did, do not do it again!"

With that, the tanar'ri snatched the Thrasson into his arms and turned up the passage. Theseus smiled at his newfound weapon, then glanced over his own body and frowned. He still had twice as many pods as Karfhud, and all of them were black. Pains Of The Spirit

The fog drags across my face, coarse and sour as damp wool, heavy with the smell of blood and cleaved bone and entrails strewn across gray waters. The streets murmur with the sound of whimpering children and the rasp of tiny claws scraping raw bone, with the disbelieving groans of the slow and the foolish and the unlucky. The night air is cold for Sigil; my breath shoots yellow and steamy from my mouth, and from the tips of my steel halo depend crimson icicles.

I am disappointed-1 admit that, and freely-but only in myself, only in my failure to see what is obvious. The wine woman has been helping him all along: it was she who lured Tessali and his guards out of Rivergate, it was she who led him to Karfhud, and – though I need not tell you – it can only be the wine woman who revealed the pods to him. Wine has that power over men, I know; it makes clear to them what they otherwise do not see at all.

Still, I must ask you why.

Sympathy for the Thrasson, I understand. He is the Amnesian Hero, and ever are you mortals searching for heroes. But what of Poseidon? Is not aid to this battered castaway…

(Do not think me fool enough to call him Theseus, for well do I know the legend: how he was gotten on Aethra by two fathers at once, King Aegeus and the god Poseidon; how he found Aegeus's sandals and sword beneath a boulder and cleared the road of robbers as he walked to Athens to claim his birthright; how he narrowly escaped death at the poisoning hands of his father's jealous queen; how he sailed to the land of King Minos and, with the aid of the king's own daughter Ariadne, entered the labyrinth and slew the terrible Minotaur; how he forgot Ariadne on the isle of Naxos and in his distress neglected to signal his safe return, so grieving his father that the king threw himself off a cliff – a clever way to usurp a throne, was it not? How he bequeathed democracy upon his city… I know the whole legend, this and much more, so do not think to fool me into calling this addle-brained, hand-footed castaway Theseus!)

…aid to the King of Seas? If the Amnesian Hero and Theseus are the same, then is his mother not Aethra? Are the memories in the amphora not tme, and if true for him, then not also true for me? You must see where that will lead: back to the banks of the River Lethe, to the dark thieving waters and the question that must not be answered.

So I must ask again, did you send her, and why? Gray Waters

Bruised palm slapping stony ground and leg still throbbing from ankle to hip, the Thrasson hobbles through the rocky gorge as best he can, hissing his breath between clenched teeth and clutching his star-forged sword tightly in his hand. On all his companions he sees pods and ichor: green ooze dripping from Tessali's stumps, emerald and ruby husks throbbing on Jayk's shadowy breast, ebony slime and white blisters clinging everywhere to Silverwind, yellow hulls squeezing out beneath Karfhud's back-satchel, black burrs cleaving to his own breast. Despite his pain, despite all the pain clinging to his companions, he thinks of nothing but the fiend's bitter wine, of the wine woman's return, of folding her into his arms and…

First, there is a battle to win, an amphora to recover, memories to reclaim, a woman's name to recall, a fiend to fell, and maps to steal. After the victory, there will time for drinking and celebrating and lovemaking, the Thrasson is quite certain. To best a tanar'ri lord, to rescue a lost love, to escape the Lady's mazes, all in one day, all with a hand for a foot and only cripples and barmies for a war party, will be his greatest feat yet. The gods themselves will sing praises to the name of Theseus!

A hero's spirit, they say, never breaks.

But will it shatter?

Karfhud's pace has been slowing for some time, and now he has stopped before an irregular circle of darkness hanging on the side of the gorge. The blackened area could have been a cave, save for the scorch marks on the opposite wall of the passage. The fiend has furled his map, bent his arm around at that impossible angle and stuffed the roll into his satchel.

"Prepare yourselves," he said, pulling out an unmarked parchment. "We are entering Sheba's lair."

With that, the tanar'ri stepped into the mouth of the blackness. A tongue of flame lashed out to lick briefly at the gorge's opposite wall, then died away. Theseus moved forward, blocking the conjunction, and faced his remaining companions.

"This is your chance to escape the tanar'ri, my friends." Theseus ran an uneasy gaze over the pods on his companions' bodies, wondering if he could prevent the husks from bursting by sparing his friends the battle to come. "The fighting will begin soon, and then Karfhud will be too busy to come back for you."

"What about you, Zoombee?"

The question took Theseus by surprise. Since departing the iron maze, Jayk and Tessali had been hanging back together, quietly whispering back and forth so intensely they had nearly gotten lost several times. The Thrasson had assumed – perhaps even hoped – that the tiefling's crisis of faith had caused a transfer of affections. Apparently, the conversation had been less romantic than he imagined.

"For my own reasons, I'm as eager as the tanar'ri to kill the monster." Theseus raised his hand, displaying the gruesome face tattooed on his palm. "Besides, as long as I have this, the choice is not truly in my… hands."

Jayk stepped forward. "Then I am going too, Zoombee."

"It would be sa-" The Thrasson caught himself and did not say "safe," unsure how Jayk might react to the suggestion that she feared for her life. "It might be better to wait here."

The tiefling shook her head stubbornly. "My place is with you."

"And I certainly have no intention of letting you slip my thoughts again," said Silverwind. "You are the thread that will lead me out of here."

Theseus looked to Tessali, who now stood at the back of the line looking disgruntled and more than a little frightened.

"I have no intention of staying here alone, if that's what you're hoping. You'll just have to keep an eye out for me." The elf glanced at the Thrasson's feet. "After all, that's my hand you have there."

"As you wish." Theseus was addressing all three of his companions. "But don't be afraid to turn and run. It will be easier to kill the monster if I know you are safe."

Theseus raised his sword to a middle guard, then turned and leapt through the conjunction. There was no splash, and no ripples spreading across the silvery surface away from where he stood. The Thrasson simply found himself standing chest-deep in the cloudy gray waters of a narrow swamp channel, the fingers of his new foot curling into the silky mud bottom. A pearly fog lay upon the water like smoke, so thick that he could barely make out tangled webs of prop roots rising along the banks to support impenetrable thickets of vine-choked bog trees.

About four paces down the passage stood Karfhud, a black silhouette rising from the water like a great cypress. He was looking down one of the passages of a four-way intersection, holding his map in one hand and tracing a line upon its surface with a talon of the other. The air was still and hot, and so quiet Theseus could hear the rasp of the fiend's claw on the parchment.

"The others did not want to wait." Karfhud was not asking a question. "They think you will be their salvation, but you must not let them distract you. In the mazes, each must look out for himself."

"I expect you to protect them as you would me." Theseus remained near the conjunction, so that the flames shooting from the other side would prevent his companions from coming through until he was more familiar with the area. "If you fail, don't expect any help from me."

"What makes you think I expect help now?" Karfhud dipped his talon into the wound he had opened on his opposite wrist, then used the blood to draw a line on his parchment. "You will find it necessary to defend yourself, and that is enough."

"Enough for what?"

Instead of answering, Karfhud motioned the Thrasson forward. "Let your friends in. The longer we tarry, the less I map before Sheba attacks."

Theseus remained where he stood, wondering if he could force the fiend to tell him what was so important about mapping the monster's lair.

"I would tell you," Karfhud said, reading his thoughts. "But then I would have to kill you, and I have already sworn not to do that"

"We both know the value of that oath."

Karfhud's head snapped around, his maroon eyes flashing so hotly that little beams of scarlet seemed to shoot through the fog. "That is the trouble with you honorable types. In your arrogance, you presume to know the tanar'ri mind. You know nothing. If you did, you would think less highly of yourselves."

"Perhaps – but it does not change our circumstance. We both know that one of us, at least, will perish before this battle is done."

A low rumble began to echo out of the sky, quickly building to a tremendous bellow that set the tree leaves to quivering and the surface of the water to shuddering. Karfhud cast a nervous glance down each of the passages around him, then looked back to Theseus.

"There is no need for matters to end as you say. My maps will not lead you out of the mazes."

"Perhaps I would believe you if you told me why you're making them."

The fog began to thicken, and Karfhud hissed a curse. "Release me from my oath, and I will tell you."

Theseus raised his brow, shocked by the fiend's demand. Why would the tanar'ri want his oath released, unless he was bound to keep it?

"Or unless I wanted you to think I was bound." Karfhud peered into the thickening fog, pretending to study a side passage. "Your arrogance is a pity, really. Once you know what I am doing, you will lose interest."

"That is for me to decide."

Another bellow rumbled over the swamp, this time shaking the trees so hard that several dead branches cracked and fell. Karfhud glanced up at the leafy canopy, which was nearly concealed in the dense fog, then shrugged.

"I will tell you this much: this is the last one."

"The last what?"

"Labyrinth," the fiend replied. "I have plotted all the others. Once I have done with this one, my maps will be complete."

"That's not possible. You're lying."

Karfhud dipped his homed head in the Thrasson's direction. "Your arrogance is beyond imagining."

"You can't map all of the mazes. Silverwind says that a new one is created for every person who-"

"Silverwind is correct," Karfhud interrupted. "But you entered the mazes in the company of Tessali and Jayk, and you are all together. If Silverwind is right, should you not each be in a separate labyrinth?"

Theseus frowned, trying to find the string that would help him unravel this riddle.

"A millennium would not be time enough for you to solve this enigma," Karfhud said. "You honorable types have no grasp of the Plurality. The answer is simple: there is only one maze, and there are many mazes."

The Thrasson scowled. "Now you arc talking nonsense."

"Am I?" Karfhud glanced down a side passage, then turned away and started to wade in the opposite direction. "I will explain as I work, if you wish, but I have done with waiting. You are no good to me if Sheba kills you here. I'll only have to retreat again."

The fiend vanished around the corner, leaving Theseus alone at the end of the channel. The Thrasson quickly waded forward, for he needed Karihud's help as much as the tanar'ri needed his. Only together could they hope to slay the monster of the labyrinth-or at least to keep her at bay long enough to recover the amphora and map the maze.

Theseus had barely reached the intersection before Silverwind came through the conjunction with Tessali on his back and Jayk in his arms. There was a loud splash as the bariaur dropped the tiefling's legs into the water. An instant later, another of Sheba's thunderous bellows reverberated through the swamp.

"Zoombee!" Jayk threw herself into the channel and began to swim after Theseus.

Silverwind, still carrying Tessali on his back, plowed through the water close behind. The Thrasson waited for the others to catch up, unsettled by the tiefling's uncharacteristic display of rear. As happy as he was to see that she valued her life, he had the uncomfortable feeling that she had attributed that value to him – and he had the wine woman to think of.

Jayk stopped at his side and set her feet on the bottom. "Zoombee, you stayed very long in front of the conjunction." She reached for his arm. "The fight, we thought she had already started!"

"Without you? Never!" Theseus freed his arm from the tiefling's grasp, then glanced at Silverwind and Tessali. "Prepare yourselves, and keep a sharp watch."

The Thrasson turned and led the way after Karfhud.

They caught the tanar'ri at the next intersection, where the fiend had stopped to make some more scratchings. Theseus quickly assigned each of his other companions to watch in a separate direction, taking forward for himself.

He slipped past the tanar'ri to assume his post. "Karfhud, you were going to explain?"

The fiend looked up and cocked his head. "Very quiet." He started down one of the passages he had just marked. "She is coming for us."

"Don't change the subject." Theseus glanced back to make certain the others were following, then positioned himself ahead of the fiend. "How can one maze-"

"What is it you seek?" Karfhud interrupted. "In the mazes, I mean to say."

"Only one thing: the exit."

"And that is why you will never find it." They waded around a gentle curve and entered a long, snaking channel where the bog trees hung so low that Karfhud's horns ticked against the boughs as they moved forward. "You are also seeking something else – something for which you are willing to fight Sheba. Think."

"That requires no thought." Craning his neck back so he could keep watch on the low-hanging canopy, Theseus relied on the charred hand sewn onto his ankle to feel his way through the water. "I want the amphora."

"Because?"

"Because I promised to deliver it to the Lady of Pain."

"I am done wasting my breath on you!" Karfhud growled. "I could give you my maps, and you would never find your exit!"

Theseus glared over his shoulder at the fiend's maze-blighted face. "If you are so wise, why are you still here? Why haven't you found your own way out?"

Karfhud's maroon eyes deepened to black. "What makes you think I want to?"

A distant sloshing sounded someplace ahead, eliciting a startled gasp from both Jayk and Tessali.

Theseus turned his attention forward. "Maybe we should try another passage."

"That is what she wants," said Karfhud. "Otherwise, we would have heard nothing. We are doing better than I had hoped."

"Better?"

Instead of replying, Karfhud slipped past the Thrasson and continued up the passage, using his own blood to carefully trace each bend and curve on the parchment Happy to let the fiend assume the risk of leading the way, Theseus waded along behind, periodically glancing back. to check on his companions. It was hardly necessary; Jayk and Silverwind did not look away from the channel banks for so much as a second, while Tessali, reverse-mounted on the bariaur's back, was gazing holes through the fog behind them.

Sheba was far too cunning to attack while the party remained so alert. Aside from the recurrent rumble of her bellowing and an occasional slosh in the distance, she did little to trouble the odd company. Karfhud was able to map more of the swamp than he had hoped, and Theseus had plenty of time to consider their earlier conversation. The Thrasson's true reason for wanting the amphora was to learn more about his past. Regardless of his promise to Poseidon, the memories in the jar were his, and by rights he should have them. Even if he were to happen upon the exit at that very moment, he doubted he would leave without the amphora's treasure.

See how gently the rot steals into the soul? How smoothly the wish unfulfilled becomes the right withheld? Show me the heart that is pure, and I will show you the heart that is stone. We all have our Karfhuds, our unquenchable thirsts, our secret treasons; we all have our reasonable excuses and our tempering cases, but that cannot change what we have done. We have all struck our bargains. Pretending that we had no choice does not make us tragic or noble or virtuous-it only makes us weak.

"Deeper."

Karfhud had stopped in the confluence of five channels, and he was carefully peering down each one and marking it with his own blood.

Theseus scanned the area. The silvery waters still rose only to Karfhud's waist, the channels ahead remained as placid and smooth as a mirror, and the tangled roots of bog-trees continued to flank the passages. He saw no signs at all that the swamp was deepening.

"Not the swamp – you." Karfhud selected one of the side passages, seemingly at random, and started forward again. "Look deeper."

Theseus frowned, reluctant to trust Karfhud, yet uncertain of how the tanar'ri's simple advice could be dangerous. "Why are you helping me?"

"Did I not swear to aid you in any way I can?"

"You can do that by finding the amphora."

"What do you suppose I am doing now?" Karfhud turned down a side passage the Thrasson had not even noticed. The fog was growing thicker. "But finding the amphora will do you no good if you do not know what you are looking for."

Theseus followed the fiend into the narrowing channel, then glanced over his shoulder to make certain his other companions also made the turn. Jayk rounded the comer less than three paces behind him, a shadowy head and shoulders plowing along the surface of the silvery water. A moment later came Silverwind's much larger silhouette, his fog-blurred torso looming almost as high above the channel as Karfhud. Tessali was a hazy blotch on the bariaur's back.

"Close up the line some more," Theseus ordered. "I can hardly see you back there."

He turned forward again, only to discover that Karfhud had nearly vanished into the mists ahead. The Thrasson sloshed ahead, the fingers of his makeshift foot digging deep into the canal's silky bottom.

When he caught the fiend, he said, "I'm looking for my memories. What else could it be?"

"Only you can determine the answer to that."

"Why don't you help me?" Theseus's voice was more bitter than challenging. "You can read minds."

"Even I cannot read what is not there. You have forgotten what it is you seek." Karfhud raised his muzzle, as though sniffing the air, then motioned the Thrasson closer. "Let me see your sword. I have something that will keep Sheba's fur from stealing it out of your hands."

Remembering how the tanar'ri had used his own blood to clean the monster's black sap off the blade earlier, Theseus waded to Karfhud's side. He did not yield the weapon, however, but simply raised it high enough so the fiend could swab the steel.

Karfhud clucked at the Thrasson's suspicions, but made no other complaint. He switched his map to his free hand, then ran his slashed wrist up and down the flat of the blade, smearing a thick coat of black, acrid-smelling blood over both sides.

"Dip the blade into the water now and then to slow the drying," the fiend advised. "But even so, it will not last long. Tell me if it begins to crust before Sheba attacks."

"Then she is close?"

Karfhud stared past Silverwind into the thickening mists. "She has never been far. But she has grown quiet."

Theseus cocked his brow, for the fiend was right. The monster had not bellowed, or even made any splashing sounds, since they had entered this narrow passage. He started to mention this, but Karfhud abruptly turned away and started down the passage, no longer bothering to trace its course on his parchment. Clearly, he expected Sheba's attack soon.

Karfhud lowered his hand and quietly waved Theseus up. "But perhaps I can be of some help to you, Thrasson. Knowing what the others seek may help you discover what you must find."

Theseus waded to the fiend's side. "I am listening." It was a half-truth; he was much more intent on searching the fog ahead, but he saw the wisdom in carrying on as they had been. A sudden silence would alert the monster to their vigilance, and he was anxious to have the battle done before the company grew even more weary than it was now. "Still, I fail to see how an exit can serve one person and not another."

"The Plurality." Karfhud answered. "Is it not a law of the multiverse that there are a thousand meanings for every fact?"

"No!" The answer came from the rear of the line, where Silverwind had apparently been paying more attention than Theseus realized. "That is not the way I imagined it, not at all! What you're talking about would be chaos-"

"Precisely. Chaos!" Karfhud stopped and turned around, rolling up his new map as he spoke. "That is the way of the multiverse! No one is right, and everyone is right."

Tessali groaned. "A Xaositect." The elf peered over Silverwind's shoulder at Theseus, then added, "I should have known better than to trust you to pick a guide."

"Keep your watch!" Theseus pointed his sword at the elf. "This is no time to get into an argument about-"

Karfhud's talons pinched the Thrasson's shoulder. "Did you not ask for my help, Theseus?"

"Yes, but…"

"Then listen – and learn." Karfhud slipped past Jayk and went to Silverwind, who stood his ground and looked the fiend squarely in the eye. "Are you not the imaginer of the mazes?"

The bariaur nodded. "I am the imaginer of all things."

The haze had thickened to the point where the Thrasson could barely make out their two looming shapes. The bog trees flanking the channel were little more than dark, hulking shadows, and it was no longer possible to tell the surface of the water from the fog floating upon it. Karfhud's arm snaked back to stuff his map into his satchel, and Theseus thought he understood why the fiend had picked that moment to start a debate with Silverwind.

Sheba was coming up from the rear.

Karfhud continued to speak with the bariaur. "You made the mazes, and yet you cannot find a way out?"

Silverwind shook his head. "No. I am as lost as you."

Theseus slipped by Jayk, gently nudging her and fluttering his fingers in the semblance of a spellcasting. She grabbed his arm and refused to let him pass. He scowled, then pried his arm loose and waved his fingers again. The tiefling bit her lip, but reluctantly nodded and plunged her hands into the water to retrieve the necessary ingredients. The Thrasson continued toward the others.

Karfhud was continuing to debate Silverwind, as though the differences in their particular creeds were more important than any monster stalking the party. "You are the imaginer of the mazes, yet you are lost in them," the fiend was saying. "So, your search for an exit is really a search for the inner truth of your own being, is it not?"

Silverwind's eyes lit up. "Why-why, yes it is!" The bariaur suddenly looked half a century younger, but it did not escape Theseus's notice that a pair of the old fellow's pods had stopped throbbing and grown quite firm, like melons about to burst. "I have been looking at this all wrong – I'm not trapped in the mazes at all!"

Karfhud nodded gravely. "Then you are looking for-"

"The reality of my own being!"

So excited was Silverwind that he kicked his heels up, dumping Tessali into the water. Theseus eased his way close to the bariaur's flank and, doing his best to keep an unobtrusive watch down the channel, reached for the elf.

Tessali came up sputtering and glaring at Karfhud. "The barmies in my ward speak better sense than that!"

"No doubt," Karfhud agreed. "In your wisdom, you have already discovered the essential meaning of the multiverse, have you not-that it has no meaning?"

This seemed to calm Tessali, if not Theseus. The argument was just the distraction the monster had been waiting for.

"Try not to be so overwrought, Theseus," said the fiend. "Sometimes, the only thing we can do is be patient."

Karfhud cast a cautionary glance at the Thrasson, then looked back to Tessali, who, now that his wisdom had been acknowledged, seemed to regard the tanar'ri with newfound respect.

"Tessali," the fiend continued, "I can see that you are one of those rare elves who has a true understanding of himself – and I have read enough thoughts to know. Let us describe life as a maze, and your salvation as the exit; I am sure you can tell me what you are searching for."

"Certainly." Tessali's gaze grew uneasy and shifted away from Karfhud. "But I don't see what this has to do with the plurality of the multiverse."

Karfhud's voice grew stem. "I am not explaining chaos; I am honoring my oath to the Thrasson. Given your trade, I should think you would want to help."

The tanar'ri was acting more like a celestial seraphim than an Abyssal fiend, and that made Theseus's spine creep.

Karfhud's puffy lips began to twitch – no doubt with the effort of not smirking at the Thrasson's absurd thought – but the fiend kept his attention fixed firmly on Tessali.

"Well, elf? Will you help this man or not?"

"That won't be needed," Theseus interjected. "Whatever Karfhud is playing at, it can only lead to harm."

"No, he's right," said Tessali. "I should know myself well enough to answer his question."

Tessali fell deep into thought, leaving it to Theseus alone to watch for Sheba. Karfhud's maroon eyes remained fixed on the elf, as though he had completely forgotten about the monster. Silverwind was mumbling to himself about essential realities and knowing his own mind, and Jayk was off hiding in the fog somewhere. A disturbing thought occurred to the Thrasson, and he slowly turned in a circle, searching the channel's haze-shrouded surface for the dark silhouette of the tiefling's head and shoulders. He saw nothing but gray.

Theseus was about to call her name when Tessali looked up, raising the stumps at the ends of his arms. "For too long have I let my hands dictate the meaning of my life!" His eyes were flashing with excitement, and, as with Silverwind, one of the husks hanging from his body had stopped throbbing and looked ready to burst. "But there is no meaning outside ourselves! My healing hands have only been distracting me; without them I am free to look inward."

"Then you are better off without your hands than we are without Jayk," Theseus said. He dipped his sword into the water to wet Karfhud's blood, then called, "Jayk?"

"The tiefling knows how to find her exit," Karfhud said. "She has always known, but she doesn't want to leave yet." Theseus whirled on the fiend. "What are you saying?" "I think you know." Karfhud's eyes glimmered crimson. "What is it she's always saying? 'Life is an illusion'?"

As badly as he wished that he did not, the Thrasson understood Karfhud's meaning. As a Dustman, Jayk sought the path to the One Death.

"Yes." Karfhud was smiling now. "But she is afraid to reach the end, because she knows you won't go with her."

"Where is she?" Theseus glared into the fog. "If you've let anything happen to her-"

"Me?" scoffed Karfhud. "You are the one who turned his back on her."

Theseus pushed past the tanar'ri. "Jayk!"

"She will not answer. The monster is too close upon her."

Theseus rushed into the fog, pushing through the waters and making a great splashing – loud, but not so loud that it drowned out Karfhud's wheezy snickering. The Thrasson's chest tightened with anger, though less at the fiend than at himself for allowing Jayk and the others to come with him into Sheba's lair. It was one thing to strike bargains with tanar'ri on his own behalf, and quite another to drag his friends into the quagmire with him.

When he did not find the tiefling within a dozen steps, Theseus stopped to study the area. Although the channel was no more than four arm-spans wide, he could barely see the tangled banks; they were little more than a slight darkening in the fog. Behind him, the pearly haze had swallowed Karfhud and the others entirely. It was as if he had passed through a conjunction and entered a different maze.

"Jayk?"

His answer came from the channel behind him, in the form of a startled shout that instantly intensified to a shriek of anguish. Before Theseus could identify the voice, a deafening bellow crashed through the fog, drowning out the scream and driving spikes of pain through his eardrums. He whirled around and splashed down the passage, cursing Karfhud's treachery in not telling him from which direction the monster was approaching.

By the time the ringing in Theseus's ears began to die down, he could see the fiend's black, blurry silhouette in the center of the passage. The tanar'ri was writhing about madly, his claws flinging snarled tangles of fur through the haze, his wings beating the water into a silver froth. The Thrasson angled toward the bank so he would enter the fray on the monster's flank. Even after moving past the flailing black wall of Karfhud's wings, he had trouble finding Sheba herself. So closely did her color match the pearly fog that, save for the snarl of flailing arms and hooves tucked under her far arm, Theseus would not have seen the beast at all.

Was Karfhud fighting to save Silverwind? It could not be possible.

A sharp crackle hissed up the channel. A brilliant flash lit the fog behind the monster, creating a spectacular halo around her shaggy figure. A spray of smoking fur and black drops empted from behind her shoulder. Sheba suddenly lurched forward, her face and chest slapping the water like the flat of a paddle. Karfhud leapt on her, tearing into the wound with both claws and burying his fangs deep into her collarbone.

Theseus brushed past Tessali, who was standing helpless and gape-mouthed several paces shy of the battle, and waded into a churning cloud of smoke that stank of scorched fur and rotten, charred meat. The Thrasson saw Silverwind's face and arms bob above the water, only to disappear an instant later as Karfhud pushed the monster's head beneath the surface. Jayk was nowhere to be seen; she was somewhere behind the monster, no doubt preparing more magic.

Theseus hoped the spell would not strike him by mistake. There was nothing but three paces of water between him and a clear strike at Sheba's head. He raised his sword, already imagining the gurgling pop it would cause as the blade cleaved the monster's neck.

Silverwind suddenly came out of the water, still tucked beneath Sheba's arm. The monster's head came up next, spewing a huge piece of Karfhud's wing from her mouth. Though Theseus was only two steps away, the monster did not even seem to see him as she spun half away. There was a sharp crackle, then her shoulder, now caught in the clutches of Karfhud's hands and teeth, slipped from its joint. Sheba threw her head back and loosed another deafening bellow, this one all the more terrifying because of the anguish in her voice.

Theseus sidestepped to avoid hitting Karfhud-he would not have bothered, save that experience had taught him that his sword would slip from his grasp-then pushed forward, drawing that star-forged blade down across the frost of Sheba's shoulder. The steel, still black with Karfhud's blood, sliced through the monster's hide and thick gristle as though it were mere silk.

Sheba's bellow did not resound in Theseus's ears so much as pummel them. Everything went black, and something cool and wet splattered his face. The Thrasson ducked instinctively, but no crushing counterattack came. When his vision cleared, he saw the monster's arm floating in the water, with Karfhud, also stunned by tile bellow, still clinging to it

Sheba was a blurry gray shape retreating through the fog. Theseus drove forward after her, his eyes fixed on the black circle of sap oozing from her cleaved shoulder. Beneath her good arm, Silverwind's struggles were growing more feeble by the second – though, thankfully, the bariaur was trailing no red drops to match the black string of blood beads that the monster left bobbing on the channel surface.

To Theseus's surprise, the wall of bog trees ahead of his quany seemed to be growing darker and more distinct with each step. Already, he could make out the shapes of individual limbs and, lower down, the web of tangle roots. The Thrasson hoped Sheba was heading for some hidden passage he could not yet see; if she climbed over the wall, he would have to choose between abandoning Silverwind or jumping into an unknown maze with no guarantee that Karfhud-or even Jayk-would follow.

Theseus's concerns changed when he heard the tiefling's frightened voice stuttering out an incantation. Sheba was not fleeing, he realized; she was only covering her flank.

The monster let out another bellow, then stopped before a snarl of vine-draped bog trees. Theseus pushed through the water as fast as he could, tempted to try swimming but knowing that, with his sword in hand, it would probably be even slower than wading. Jayk finished her spell. There was a sharp crackle, then a long spray of matted fur and black, sticky blood shot from Sheba's side to splash into the channel. She did not fall.

The monster raised one leg out of the water, then leaned slightly away from the bank, preparing to deliver a stomp kick. Theseus considered throwing his sword, but that was a desperation move, to be attempted only as a last resort, and only when the blow would be a killing one. If the monster could be killed at all, he knew a single strike would not do it. Besides, only two more steps…

Sheba lowered her foot, smashing through a tangle of prop roots. From somewhere distant, somewhere beyond the Thrasson's ringing ears, came a single, strangled cry – then he was on the monster. Theseus swung, burying his sword deep where a human's kidney would be. In the same motion, he drew the blade free and reversed his attack, striking upward into her ribs, trying to reach her lungs.

As Theseus wrenched his steel free to try for a third strike, Sheba spun, smashing Silverwind's rear quarters into his shoulder pauldron. The Thrasson's god-forged bronze absorbed the worst of the blow, but the impact still knocked him off his feet and sent him sinking toward the channel bottom. His first and only thought was of his sword. He still felt the hilt in his hand, and he concentrated on nothing except making certain it stayed there. No matter what else happened, he would be lost without his weapon.

When Theseus settled into the mud an instant later, the entire side of his body ached. His head throbbed, his chest was convulsing, and his lungs were burning for air-but the sword remained in his hand. He gathered his legs beneath him and pushed off the bottom, shoving his head above water.

Directly ahead of him lay a broken tangle of prop-roots, a hole the size of a man's chest smashed through the center. A small, shadowy hand had risen out of the great jumble to clutch at a low hanging vine, and a red slick was already spreading out into the channel. Still coughing up water, Theseus rushed over.

Jayk lay deep inside the snarl, her head propped against the bank and her shattered body half-submerged. The silvery water was smeared with green and red ichor from burst pods. Down near her hip, a single red husk was still bobbing just beneath the surface. The tiefling was bleeding from her nose, mouth, and half a dozen holes where broken ribs had pushed through her torso. Her pupils were narrow and shaped like diamonds, and the tips of her long fangs were dribbling blood onto her chin.

"Zoo… bee."

She released the vine and reached for Theseus, then slipped a little farther into the water. The Thrasson tried to make the stretch, but the tangle was too deep, and he did not want to crawl inside for fear of jostling her. He quickly used his sword to cut an opening into the snarl, then started to ease inside.

A huge taloned hand caught him by the shoulder. "Leave her," said Karfhud. "The tiefling has found what she seeks. You have not."

Theseus tried to pull free, but Karfhud held him tight.

"Tessali will stay with her," said the fiend. "We have a monster to track."

"Look at her!" Theseus hissed. "This won't take long."

"It would take longer than you know, Thrasson."

Karfhud forcibly pulled him back, then pointed at the string of black blood beads bobbing in the water. One of the globules sank as they watched.

"Besides, her blood trail will not last long," the fiend said. "Even if you do not care to save Silverwind, there is still your amphora to consider."

"Zoombee, you… stay with me… no?"

"No, Jayk… I can't."

When Theseus turned away, he did not see that last red husk burst. He felt it. Isle Of Despair

Down the twining canals they push, the Thrasson and the fiend, down the purling alleys between leafy walls looming dark and nebulous in the fog, down the meandering silver ribbons where sticky strings of black beads lie bobbing upon the waters. Thick in the air hangs the monster's stench: the acrid reek of her dark blood and the musty fetor of her matted fur. All around, the white haze sizzles with her quick, shallow breath. They see her flight in the arrow of ripples spreading across the channel; her fear, they taste in the sour bile of their own growing thirst. The Thrasson's zeal pounds heavy and hard inside his skull; they will run the monster down and save Silverwind – if Silverwind can be saved – but what of Jayk? Her heart has stilled, her blood has grown purple and settled into her haunches, all her Pains have passed.

There is an anger down in the Thrasson's stomach, sour and boiling hot and black as pitch. He would have us believe he rages at Karfhud, or even at himself, but who is fooled by that? His wrath is a lie – a foul perjury, a stain upon his name so shameful he will not concede it even to himself – and I know the truth. The Lady always knows.

He is no man of renown, this Thrasson; he is too selfish, too jealous by far. Rather than begrudge Jayk her freedom, he should rejoice in her going; he should celebrate the unraveling of her labyrinth and be light of heart – and so should you. There is no reason to lament, no cause for outrage. I have not betrayed my pledge. It is true that the tiefling has suffered torment unimaginable and endured anguish enough to crush a giant and borne grief that would shatter a god, all as I promised she would, but has she not also run her maze and found her prize? If the One Death is not the triumph for which you hoped, I am not to blame. I said she was a Dustman, and it is no concern of mine if you harbor a secret taste for the dead.

Down a haze-crashed canal they turn, the Thrasson and the fiend, still following that floating string of black blood and that arrow of spreading ripples, still breathing the monster's stink and still searching the pearl-white fog for her gray shape. The looming bog-trees have given way to walls of ash-drab granite, hardly discernible from the hanging still mist, and the channel's silty bottom has grown hard and rugged beneath the palm of the Amnesian Hero's gruesome foot. A low rampart has appeared at the end of the passage, visible in the fog only because of the dark cracks between its great limestone blocks and the small archway at its center.

Without a moment's pause, Karfhud sloshed up the channel to the gate.

"A sinking palace." He ducked under the lintel and pushed forward. The silver waters drained from his battered wings as he ascended a submerged stairway. "How I wish we had time to map."

"There will be time later-after we slay Sheba." Silently, Theseus added, if you don't make me kill you, too.

"You are very confident of yourself." The tanar'ri reached the top of the stairway, where the water was only ankle deep, and stopped. "That is good-especially if we are to defeat her trap."

Karfhud flattened himself against the wall and motioned Theseus up beside him. Pressing tighter to the fiend's maze-blighted chest than he would have liked, the Thrasson squeezed into the opening and found himself staring down a narrow passage. The water was flowing away from him ever so gently, swirling over a layer of stone shards broken loose from the palace's ancient walls. The fog was thinner here. He could see a dozen paces down the corridor, to where a long pivoting gate stood edge-on in the center of a four-way junction. The Thrasson had stormed enough fortresses to recognize the ironclad gate as a manstile, designed to funnel attackers into a confusing labyrinth of side passages and deadly cross fire.

To one side of the manstile lay Silverwind, bloodied and motionless, save for his heaving ribs. Against the other side leaned the amphora. Sheba was lurking at the stile's far end, her matted bulk spilling past both sides of the thick gate. She was squirming restlessly, and she had a black-oozing circle where the Thrasson's blade had cleaved off her arm.

"She's trying to separate us."

Karfhud shook his head. "No doubt that would make her happy enough, but that is not what is in her mind. She is offering you a choice: the bariaur or the amphora." The fiend lowered his gaze and curled his muzzle up in a yellow-fanged sneer. "Now you must decide whether you are a hero. Will you choose your friend's life, or your lost memories?"

"Any man can choose; a hero takes both." Theseus scraped a handful of dark blood from one of the many scratches on Karfhud's body, then smeared it over his sword btede. "I'll rescue Silverwind. You retrieve the amphora."

A red gleam shot from Karfhud's beady eyes. "If you think to give me orders-"

Theseus squeezed past the fiend, at the same time striking a sharp blow to one of the golden husks dangling from the tanar'ri's blighted flank. The pod burst, spilling a stream of yellow ichor over the fiend's immense hip. Karfhud dropped to one knee, a long sizzle of pain hissing from between his lips.

"I don't want to waste time arguing." The Thrasson laid his hand on another of the yellow husks. "We are going-"

"Pain me all you wish," Karfhud growled. "If we separate, it will be as nothing to your suffering. Even lacking an arm, Sheba would flay you alive – and, were I to escape, I would do the same to your friends."

The fiend glared at the Thrasson's hand, but made no attempt to remove it. Theseus scowled. Could Sheba truly be so terrible that, even one-armed, she struck fear into the heart of a tanar'ri lord?

"Tanar'ri hearts do not fear." Karfhud slowly drew himself to his full height, then glanced down the passage. "If you have no care about your friend, then let us make use of him. If we do not retrieve the amphora before he dies, Sheba will change her mind about letting us take it."

"I will have both."

Theseus used his makeshift foot to feel under the water for a throwing stone, then shifted his sword to his left hand and took the rock in his right. Not so long ago, he would have wasted valuable time debating the honor of what he was about to do. He would have agonized over his obligation to Poseidon, asking himself if it had been discharged when the Lady of Pain chased his friends away from the amphora. He would have spent precious minutes wondering if she had meant to abandon the jar, and, if so, whether that gave him a right to its contents.

Now, the Thrasson simply assumed all those things.

"My friend, you are beginning to think like a tanar'ri," said Karfhud. If the fiend fostered any ill will over the pain Theseus had caused him earlier, his voice did not betray it. "I like that."

"Then I am certainly in danger of losing my honor."

Theseus turned and splashed down the corridor, Karfhud following close behind. They ran straight down the center of the passage, giving no hint as to which side of the stile they would choose.

As they drew near the gate, a bank of white fog began to rise about Sheba's ankles. She continued to squirm, but made no move to turn and watch them approach. Her restraint troubled the Thrasson; she was too cunning to think herself well hidden.

By the time Theseus closed to within a pace of the gate, the fog bank had risen as high as the monster's knees and was spilling into the rest of the passage. The Thrasson feigned a lunge for Silverwind, then abruptly danced back to the other side of the corridor. Karfhud, reading his mind as always, squeezed past to rush the bariaur's side of the stile. Sheba remained at the end of the gate.

The Thrasson whipped his throwing arm forward. The stone struck the amphora with a loud, hollow clunk, then disappeared through a jagged hole. A spray of tattered black ribbons and silky golden threads sprouted from the break, writhing and fluttering like a tangle of young snakes struggling from their brood den. Across the intersection, Sheba's matted flank still showed around the edge of the gate.

"By all the darkness!" Karfhud's curse was followed by a loud ripping sound, then a fiendish roar of pain. "She-"

The rest of the sentence was swallowed by a loud gurgling roar. Theseus gawked at the monster ahead, then saw that she still had not moved and began to realize what was happening. He started to round the gate to help Karfhud, then thought better of it and rushed forward into the intersection.

A tremendous knell reverberated through the gate as a heavy body slammed into it. Theseus reached the amphora, the bottom quarter now hidden in the rising fog. Tempted as he was to retrieve it and flee, he could not betray Karfhud. So far, the fiend had done exactly as he had pledged, and the Thrasson still had enough pride of honor that he would not lower himself beneath a tanar'ri. He settled for kicking the jar as he passed.

Instead of shattering, the sturdy vessel merely tipped over. A scrap of coarse black cloth rose from the new hole that Theseus's foot had opened and caught hold of his ankle. The Thrasson tried to shake the thing off, but the ribbon only tightened its hold and began to circle up his leg.

On the other side of the gate, the clamor of battle – the roaring and the hissing and the pounding-continued unabated. Theseus splashed out of the intersection, giving wide berth to the hulking gray shape writhing at the end of the stile. As he passed by, he saw that the figure was indeed Sheba – or rather, Sheba's snarled pelt. The hide was hanging from the gate, held in place by its own sticky fur, looking rather empty but still squirming. The eyes and mouth were empty voids, and the hole left by the loss of her arm had been carefully pinched shut.

Though the Thrasson knew what he would find inside, he did not pause to slice the thing open. Already, the air reeked with the brimstone stench of tanar'ri blood, and Karfhud's bellows sounded less angry than desperate. The last thing Theseus wanted was to battle the monster by himself.

The Thrasson rounded the stile at a sprint, then stumbled over a leathery mantle floating upon the water. He put a hand down to catch himself and saw that the thing was one of Karfhud's great wings. Save that it no longer hung upon the fiend's back, the appendage was remarkably intact.

A tremendous crash reverberated through the passage. Theseus looked up to see the huge tanar'ri lord being slammed into the gate by a slimy red… there was no way to describe the beast except as a thing. The creature had only one arm, was about the right size to be Sheba, and looked more or less bipedal-but any semblance to what they had been battling so far ended there. The thing was all raw tendon and muscle, with a web of black veins lacing its body and a skin of clear mucous membrane. Its entire figure pulsed with a rapid, strong-soft beat that seemed to set the air itself throbbing.

Theseus gathered himself up and charged across the floating wing, praying that Karfhud would survive long enough to hold their foe's attention until he attacked. The tanar'ri, as usual, knew exactly what the Thrasson was thinking. As Sheba slammed him into the gate yet again – the muffled crack of a breaking rib echoed down the passage – the fiend found the strength to bring his hands up and bury his talons into the monster's gristly head. She whipped her neck around. The motion tore long strips of red sinew from the sides of her face, but freed her head. She leaned forward and sank her maw into the tanar'ri's throat.

It was all the distraction Theseus needed. Had he been tall enough, he would have lopped the monster's head off her shoulders and been done with it. As it was, he had no choice except to go for a heart kill. He flipped his blade around for an overhand strike, then plunged it into the middle of Sheba's back, driving it clear to the hilt. A geyser of hot, gummy sap bubbled from the wound to coat his face. He barely managed to turn his head aside in time to keep from being blinded.

At a minimum, Sheba should have given a startled gurgle and fallen to her knees. Karfhud should have slipped free of her grasp and staggered away coughing and choking, one hand clutched to his bruised throat. The monster should have pitched forward and lain facedown in the shallow water, her spinal cord severed and her heart burst by the Thrasson's star-forged blade.

Instead, Theseus glimpsed her elbow swinging around toward his head. He had just enough time to wrap his second hand around his sword hilt and duck behind his shoulder pauldron. He felt the armor strap break, then his body exploded in pain, and he sensed that he was flying away from Sheba.

His arms were nearly jerked from their sockets, but he did not release his sword. He felt the star-forged blade pivoting on the edge of the wound, slashing through Sheba's chest, and he wondered how she could still be standing. By now, he had surely cut through half the breadth of her torso.

The Thrasson's sword slipped free of the monster. He slammed into the ironclad gate; the breath left his chest in a sharp cry. He crumpled into the water, groaning, too stunned to ache; then saw a tornado of flailing black talons driving Sheba away from the stile. The monster, oozing cascades of dark sap from the long gash Theseus had opened across her back, was hard pressed to defend herself. It was all her single arm could do to keep swinging back and forth between Karfhud's slashing claws and prevent her head from being swiped off her shoulders.

Sensing that any attack would overwhelm her defenses, Theseus rolled onto his knees – and that was when he noticed the black cloth from the amphora rounding his chest. He could not say how many times the ribbon had circled him already, but he did know that any distraction at the moment might well prove fatal. Still aching from the monster's first blow, he leapt to his feet – or rather, to his foot and his hand – and rushed into battle.

Sheba saw him coming and launched a lightning kick at Karfhud's midsection. When the fiend lowered his arms to block, she pulled her foot back and stepped toward the far end of the stile, keeping the tanar'ri neatly between herself and the Thrasson. She began to retreat out of the intersection.

The black ribbon circled Theseus a second time. He ignored it and, realizing what Sheba was trying to do, sprinted forward. On his mind was one thought: Dive for her legs!

It took Karfhudjust an instant to realize the thought was directed at him, but by the time he threw himself at Sheba's legs, Theseus was already upon him. Before flinging himself into the air, the Thrasson had to hesitate a single heartbeat, and that was too much.

The monster jumped back, well out of Karfhud's reach. Then, when Theseus and his star-forged sword came flying over the fiend's back, she snapped a slimy red foot up from the shallow water. The blow caught the Thrasson square in the chest. He saw the black ribbon flash past one more time, and then he saw nothing at all. Woegate

The growl of the surf is gentle in his ears, the touch of sea air cool upon his skin, the stars sweet upon his eyes; a woman – the woman, a tall beauty with olive skin and emerald eyes – lies youthful and naked in the crook of his arm. The world is as it should be for young heroes and their maidens: battles won, wine drunk, slumber taken – but they have erred, and grievously. They have lain naked beneath the craving eyes of the gods, and what the gods see, the gods will have.

Gentle as a kiss, a rivulet of wine tickles the Thrasson's lips, trickles sweet onto his tongue, runs warm and welcome as ambrosia down his throat; he dreams, and he does not dream: above him stands a handsome youth, pouring the sweet nectar upon his lips from a silver ewer. The young man's face is no mere flesh stretched over bone; it is chiseled from marble, with features balanced more perfectly than those of any mortal and skin that shines like pearls. The god's eyes are purple as grapes; upon his head he wears a laurel of growing vines, upon his lips a broad grin of flashing mischief.

"Great Theseus, know you who honors you with this libation?"

The Thrasson nods. "Dionysus." The god of vines, the embodiment of joy, mirth, camaraderie-also madness, delirium, and hallucination. "I do you praise."

The god's purple eyes sparkle. "As the gods will you, Theseus – if you do as I charge."

The Thrasson says nothing, for he knows the danger to those who follow the ways of Dionysus-as he also knows the folly of those who refuse the gods.

"Well have you done to rescue the daughters of King Minos." Dionysus glances into the distance, where a small ship sits beached upon the sand, its single black sail furled upon the spar. "Their father was a tyrant even to his children, and all we gods have longed to see them free."

"May I always please the gods."

"Then must you yield your prize, great Theseus." A crooked smile creeps across Dionysus's lips. He shifts his gaze to the beauty who sleeps secure in the crook of the Thrasson's arm. "Leave her on these shores, and I will watch over her. It is the younger princess, Phaedra, that we mean for you."

"Never! I will not abandon-"

"Take Phaedra, and my blessing with her." The god grabbed a handful of shore sand and held it before him. "Though you plant your vines on the salty beach, ever will they droop with the best fruit in the land. In wealth, your wine will buy you more palaces than you can number and fill them all with your treasures; in war, your treasures will buy you the finest weapons in the land and you will never know defeat; in fame, your name will be spoken upon the tongues of men as long as men have tongues to speak."

"And if I refuse?"

Dionysus let the sand trickle from his hand. "Then your vines will wither though you plant them on the hills of Olympus itself; your people will know thirst and starvation; your enemies will slay your hungry warriors; your name will be a curse upon the tongues of your people, to be gladly forgotten after they have dumped your naked corpse into the sea."

It is the last threat, I am sure, that makes the Thrasson abandon his princess. He loves nothing so much as fame – and for that, must we all suffer:

Have I not seen the broken amphora, the ribbons of black sail and the strands of my golden hair fluttering from the jagged hole? What choice now but to call them real?

Too much is explained, too many bricks stacked and mortared for me to deny the wall. Poseidon sends the memories, but Dionysus sends the woman, and those – two would no sooner share a victory than a bed. There is a weight in the sky, a low rumbling beneath the streets like the growl of the leviathan. The air has the feel of an epoch grinding to an end, and I am all that stands before the crashing wheel.

Dionysus tips his silver ewer, and the wine falls again upon the Thrasson's lips. This time the taste is foul and moldy, but Theseus drinks; he knows better than to offend a deity, and he has a thirst as great as a lake. The god's purple eyes change to burning maroon; his brow grows wrinkled and heavy, his face dark as a shadow and brutal as a beast's. A pair of long curving horns sprouts from his head, and his mouth pushes out to form an apelike muzzle.

"This is no time for your dreams!" growled Karfhud's angry voice. "Wake yourself, or I swear I'll leave you to drown!"

The threat did not move Theseus, who was beginning to feel the cold serpent of guilt writhing in his stomach. No matter what Dionysus threatened, he could not have abandoned his beloved on that lonely shore! He was a man of renown, and men of renown always found the clever way to evade the dire choice. Surely, he had swum back ashore after dark, or bested the god in a drinking contest, or tried something to win her back!

"How will you ever know, Theseus?" The wine continued to pour, not from Dionysus's silver ewer, but from Karfhud's filthy wineskin. "If you will stop feeling guilty and rise, we can still recover the amphora. Sheba is on the run, and we have but to catch her."

"And then what?" Theseus pushed the wineskin away. He was lying upon the fiend's dismembered wing, which was still floating in the junction where they had fought Sheba. The manstile had been pushed shut, creating a single angled passage where there had been a four-way intersection before. "If we couldn't kill her-"

"Kill her?" Karfhud stood, wincing in pain. His body was laced with gashes and covered in golden ichor, but several small husks of pain had somehow survived the battle without bursting; with each pulse of the fiend's heart, they grew a little larger. "How can we kill her? It would be easier to flatten the mazes themselves!"

Theseus scowled. If the fiend did not want to slay the monster, then why was he chasing her?

"I have my reasons, and so do you-or are you afraid to recall what you did on that island?" The fiend pulled Theseus to his feet, then thrust the Thrasson's star-forged sword into his hands. "Now help me with the gate. If we hurry, we will catch Sheba and end this thing."

As the tanar'ri turned toward the ironclad manstile, Theseus recalled Sheba's decoy. He had a sinking feeling, then turned and saw the matted pelt lying in the shallow water at the far end of the gate. It was no longer squirming.

"Karfhud, we've forgotten about Silverwind."

The fiend glanced down the length of the gate. "We have no time to waste on the dead. Minutes have passed already since she escaped^"

"If Sllverwind is truly dead, this won't take long." Theseus wetted his sword with the fiend's blood, then sloshed over to the sticky pelt and stuck the tip into the empty mouth hole. "Silverwind? Are you in there?"

When he teceived no answer and the pelt did not move, he carefully sliced it open. Inside, eyes closed and curled into a tight fetal ball, lay the old bariaur. His brief captivity had left him covered with slime and filth, but his chest was rising at regular intervals, his hooves were twitching as in a dream, and he was still covered with throbbing husks of pain.

"Silverwind, wake up." Theseus reached down and gently shook him. "We've got to hurry."

Silverwind's eyes snapped open, and he gave a start of surprise. "Theseus?" The old bariaur raised his head and took in his surroundings. "I thought I had imploded! Can you imagine? I would have had to imagine it all again – the whole thing!"

"You may yet," growled Karfhud, waiting at the far end of the gate. The fiend shifted his gaze to Theseus. "Have you done with this stalling?"

Theseus helped Silverwind out of the monster's empty hide, then the two of them joined Karfhud. Sometime earlier, no doubt before deciding that he still had need of the Thrasson's help, the fiend had tried to push aside the heavy gate and managed only to crack it open – this despite the fact that Sheba, sorely wounded and in a huny, had closed the thing with only one arm. Theseus began to wonder who was hunting whom.

"Does it matter?" Karfhud laid his hands on the iron sheathing and leaned into the stile. "She has your amphora."

Theseus pressed his shoulder to the gate. "And what do you want from her, if you cannot hope to slay her?"

Karfhud gave him a sidelong glance. "I am surprised you have not guessed that by now, Thrasson."

From the gate's center pivot rose a loud grating noise. The heavy stile slowly started to open. A moment later, Silverwind butted into it at a full sprint; there was a loud bang, and Theseus and Karfhud nearly fell as the gate bucked forward. They pumped their legs to catch up, then smoothly pushed the stile back to its original position.

In the adjacent passage stood Tessali, Jayk's limp body resting across his handless arms. Theseus's heart jumped; for a moment, he thought she might still be alive – then he noticed how her spine bent in the wrong direction, and how the ends of her broken ribs formed a ring around the sunken hollow in the center of her chest The Thrasson saw no ichor on her body; at least her pain was gone.

"Theseus, she died with your name on her lips." Tessali shuffled forward, his accusing gaze fixed on the Thrasson. "She asked that you bum her body and cany the ashes with you."

Theseus moved forward to take the corpse, but Karfhud shoved in front of him.

"We have no time for pyres, Thrasson. If we let Sheba put herself back together, more of us will die."

Theseus glared into the fiend's fiery eyes, knowing that he spoke the truth and silently cursing him for it.

"I am not to blame. You are the hero, Theseus; you must bear the burden: will you risk the lives of four to grant the wish of one?" Karfhud paused, gently scratching his broken talons along his chin. "It occurs to me that your choice is similar to the one Dionysus presented you; either way, you betray someone. How unfortunate that you cannot recall how you resolved that dilemma."

"Damn you, Karfhud!"

The fiend cocked a wrinkled brow and gazed around the narrow passage. "This? Hardly." He chuckled and shook his head. "The mazes are as nothing to the Abyss."

Theseus scowled at the tanar'ri's mocking snicker, but motioned to Tessali. "Come with me. We can wrap her in Karfhud's wing until after the battle."

The elf glanced at the dark wound where the fiend's wing had been ripped from his shoulder blade, then grimaced and looked back to the Thrasson.

"What if we don't-"

"Then we will rot with her!" Theseus snapped. "I don't suppose she could blame us for that."

The Thrasson paused just long enough to scan the area and make certain the monster had taken the amphora – she had – before leading the way back around the stile. He pulled Karfhud's tattered wing from the water and swaddled Jayk's body inside, then laid the bundle back in Tessali's arms and went to cut some long mats from Sheba's discarded pelt. The elf followed close behind, holding the cocoon as Theseus wrapped it in gummy tangles of fur.

"I would have cured her, you know," Tessali said. "Even without my hands and my spells, I was beginning to make her understand. I don't think she wanted to die, there at the last"

Theseus suspected that Jayk's change of heart had more to do with her dose call with Karfhud than any Bleaker wisdom Tessali had imparted to her, but he held his tongue. The elf had lost enough already; if he found comfort in such delusions, it was not the Thrasson's place to disabuse him.

After encasing Jayk's cocoon in the monster's gummy fur, Theseus took the bundle and stuck it to the stile, affixing it as high as he could reach. Though he had seen no scavengers in the mazes, neither had he seen any untended carcasses or skeletons, and the dead bodies had to be going somewhere.

By the time Theseus and Tessali returned to the others, Karfhud had already taken a mapping parchment from his battered back-satchel and marked the locations of the adjoining passages. He motioned the Thrasson to follow close behind, then set off down the opposite corridor without a word. Despite Karfhud's condition-he was limping badly and hunched over a broken rib-he moved through the crooked, narrow passages in near silence, sketching in junctions and side-corridors as he went. There was no fog, so they could see that the walls were lined by arrow loops and murder holes, all located well above the reach of even Karfhud. Every so often, they would glimpse a heavy wooden shutter or an oaken door guarding some portal far above their heads, but there were never any such entryways down in the bottom of the labyrinth.

As before, they had little trouble following the monster. Although there were ankle-deep streams in all the corridors, the currents were gentle and slow. Sheba's black blood marked her path as clearly as it had in the swamp; the companions found beads of the gummy stuff everywhere: clinging to the walls, bobbing in the comers, stuck on the jagged stones that littered the passage floors.

Sheba also seemed to be having trouble containing the contents of the broken amphora. Every now and then, they ran across strands of golden hair hovering in the damp air, and twice they met scraps of black sail cloth wafting up the passage. The first ribbon circled Theseus three times: he saw himself running a golden comb – the same one he had with him when he washed ashore near Thrassos-through the auburn hair of his dead wife Antiope, who had perished at the hands of her own people for loving him.

When the second ribbon circled him, the Thrasson saw himself, much older, holding a silver palm mirror – the same one that had been in his satchel with the golden comb-over the mouth and nose of another dead wife, Phaedra. This memory troubled him more than the first, for Phaedra was sister to… even now, Theseus could not remember the name of his beloved princess, only Dionysus's voice urging him to abandon her.

Theseus tried to calm himself, noting how much older he had been in that second memory than when the god had spoken to him. Many years had passed between the two events; because he had married Phaedra, it did not necessarily follow that he had abandoned her sister.

As they followed Sheba's dark trail deeper into the palace, a soft slurping sound, muffled by distance and the crooked passages of the labyrinth, began to echo off the stone walls. Karfhud cocked his head and waved Theseus into the lead, but the fiend continued to dip his talon into his own dark blood and trace the maze on his parchment. High up on the walls, they started to see more doors and shutters, many of them hanging half open and askew. The water began to flow more rapidly, making it more difficult to follow the monster. Several times, they had to stop at intersections while the Thrasson searched the side corridors for her blood trail. At least they were catching up; each dark bead seemed a little wanner and stickier.

The echoes of the slurping sound grew steadily louder, and the water flowed ever faster. Soon, the current was swirling around their ankles, tugging at their feet and making a hazard of each step over the rubble-strewn floor. Sheba's blood trail vanished, though it hardly mattered. Theseus had already realized that the monster was traveling with the water, which had become a gurgling stream gushing along a single course through the labyrinth.

After a time, they rounded a comer and entered a small vestibule where half a dozen smaller corridors came together. At one end of the enclosure, a pair of huge oaken gates hung cockeyed and half-open beneath a great stone arch. The bottom third of each gate had long since rotted away, allowing the waters to rush unimpeded into a large courtyard beyond. The slurping sound had ceased to be an echo; it was now a steady, half-muffled sucking noise just loud enough to drown out the purling of the stream. Karfhud slipped into the vestibule beside Theseus, and together they crept forward to peer past the oaken gates.

They found themselves looking across a flooded courtyard at an immense, dark-windowed palace with a flat roof and the vestiges of elaborate, brightly painted patterns flaking off the pale limestone walls. The courtyard itself had probably once been a magnificent sunken garden, for the surface of the water was broken everywhere by the heads of ancient statues and the spandrels of decorative arches. Near the center of the square pond swirled the cause of the slurping sound, a silvery whirlpool nearly as broad as the span of Karfhud's wings-had the fiend still had both of them to stretch.

It took Theseus a moment to notice Sheba, not far from the whirlpool's edge. She was lurking beneath the spandrel of a sunken arch, up to her neck in water and surrounded by a stringy slick of her black blood. Her red, sinewy head, laced with black veins and still gleaming with mucous slime, remained as motionless as that of a statue. The Thrasson groaned inwardly. The water would be above his head, and he truly hated having to swim while he fought.

Sheba backed out from beneath the arch. Then, keeping her dark eyes fixed on the gate where her hunters were hiding, she began to float on her back. She held the amphora in the crook of her arm, her massive hand covering both holes Theseus had made. For a moment, the Thrasson thought she was merely taunting them, then she began to kick her legs, pushing herself toward the whirlpool.

"I cannot believe what I am imagining!" gasped Silverwind.

"She knows she is defeated," said Tessali. "She's drowning herself."

"I should be so fortunate as you are foolish, elf." Karfhud rolled the parchment he had been working on. "She is escaping into another maze-and I am out of mapping skins."

The fiend bent his arm back to stuff his furled map into his satchel, at the same time running a sidelong glance over the elf's pale skin.

"Karfhud, you know better," Theseus warned.

"So now you too can read minds?"

Out in the pond, Sheba began to move in a circle as the currents at the edge of the whirlpool caught her. Karfhud stepped through the arch and began to wade down the submerged stairs. Theseus started to follow, then stopped and looked up at the heavy oaken gates. He rapped on the wood. It sounded solid enough, at least near the height of his chest "Karfhud, can you take one of these gates off?" The fiend turned to glare at the rusty hinges, then bared his yellow fangs and came back up the stairs. He took hold of the one on the right, which was hanging by a single strap of twisted metal, and braced his foot against the wall.

"You're not thinking of riding that thing down the whirlpool!" Tessali gasped.

Theseus nodded. "I am." He backed away from Karfhud, who was struggling to pull the gate free and shaking the entire vestibule with his rumbling grunts. "In the past, I've found it easier than swimming."

"Don't you think we'll drown?" Silverwind's question was more of an inquiry than an objection.

Theseus glanced toward the center of the pond, where Sheba was disappearing into the heart of the whirlpool. "Only if the monster drowns first."

Karfhud gave a final sonorous groan, and, amidst a great crackling of wood, the gate came free. The fiend staggered under its weight, barely managing to face the pond before his heavy toad began to tip away. He let go and stepped back, allowing the gate to splash down with a loud, cracking slap. Their new raft instantly started to drift away, so Theseus sheathed his sword and clambered down the submerged stairs to grab hold.

So heavy was the gate that it began to pull the Thrasson away from the shore. He managed to slow the raft by digging his fingernails into its ancient wood and jamming the fingers of his improvised foot into a silty crack in the step. Even then, he found himself inexorably drawn toward the center of the pond, until he was half-floating in the water, his pain pods bobbing around him like a swarm of spiny black sponges.

Theseus heard a sharp crackling behind him, then craned his neck around to see Karfhud ripping a long plank from the edge of the other gate. Silverwind and Tessali were standing a short distance up the passage, their eyes gaping at this demonstration of the fiend's strength.

"Perhaps a little help would not be too much to ask for?" the Thrasson called.

All three of Theseus's companions swung their heads around. Tessali" stepped to the edge of the stairs, but seemed at a loss as to what he could do, while Silverwind galloped forward and jumped onto the gate – nearly dislodging the Thrasson as he landed. Karfhud simply jerked his plank the rest of the way off the gate, then tossed it onto the raft and waded into the water.

"Perhaps we should change places." The fiend reached past Theseus and sank his talons into the gate, then pulled it back toward shore. "You help the elf."

Tessali backed away. "You can't be serious. Riding a raft down a whirlpool is madness!"

"It's a small whirlpool." Theseus climbed out of the water, but did not reach for the elf's arm. "Still, you can wait here if you like."

"Of course!" Karfhud's voice contained only a hint of mockery. "We'll fetch you when we come back to burn the tiefling."

Tessali shot the fiend a look as sharp as an arrow, but shrugged and reluctantly stepped to the edge of the stairs. Theseus helped the elf leap onto the raft, then picked up the long plank Karfhud had tossed aboard and thrust the end into the water, holding the vessel in place while the fiend boarded. They arranged themselves to distribute tile weight evenly – the massive tanar'ri had the front of the gate all to himself – and Theseus shoved off.

Karfhud pulled off his back satchel and busied himself cinching it tightly dosed. The others simply waited, listening to the slurp of the whirlpool grow increasingly louder. Their wait was not a long one. The current caught the cumbersome raft and whisked it toward the center of the pond. When it became apparent that he would not need to do much pushing, Theseus laid the plank down on the back edge of the raft – where he could kick it away if need be – and drew his sword. Though he had no idea where the whirlpool would come out, he felt certain Sheba would be Waiting for them on the other side. She wanted them to follow, or she would not have waited before going down the whirlpool.

The raft slid past the spandrel where the monster had been lurking, then picked up speed. It began to curve toward the whirlpool, and that was when, barely audible above the slurping din ahead, Theseus heard a faint, familiar cry from behind.

"Theseus, my love!" As muted as it was, he recognized the voice as that of his beloved wine woman. "Have you forgotten me?"

The Thrasson spun and looked toward the great entry arch. There, standing upon the submerged stairs, hip-deep in water, was the white-cloaked figure of his wine woman. Her dark hair hung loose about her shoulders, and, beneath her emerald eyes, he could just make out the tear-trails glistening down her cheeks.

Theseus sheathed his sword. "We must go back!"

"Good thought," gasped Tessali. "Blessed be the Great Meaninglessness!"

Theseus stooped down to reach for the plank, then felt the raft pitching as Karfhud started toward him.

"No – you made your decision," the fiend rumbled. "You cannot take it back now."

On the steps, the wine woman stretched out her arms. "My love, what have I done to offend you? Why do you abandon me?"

Theseus snatched the plank up and shoved the end into the water, leaning into it with all Iris weight "We're going back."

The raft pivoted around the plank, then curved along the whirlpool's edge facing backward. Without the fiend's weight to hold down the front, the surface was pitching toward the Thrasson at a dangerously steep angle.

"The current has us." Karfhud eased back toward his end of the gate. "There is nothing you can do."

Theseus looked back to the stairs. The wine woman was growing smaller by the instant, but he could see her well enough to tell she was tearing her clothes and hair in grief.

"I must try."

Theseus plunged the plank into the water, pushing against the current with all his strength. This time, the raft pivoted away from him, swinging toward the heart of the whirlpool. The swirling Waters fell away, curling downward in a wild, rushing spiral. The nose of the raft hung above the slope for a moment, then suddenly dipped and caught.

The deck bucked under Theseus's feet. He dropped the plank and threw himself down, trying to grab hold of the high side of the raft. The surface rose up to meet him, slamming into his face and flipping him onto his back. He started to slide into the whirlpool, then the fingers of his makeshift foot caught the edge of the gate. He clamped them down and held on for his life.

Theseus looked toward the front of the raft and saw Silverwind lying next to him, eyes closed and clinging to the edge of the gate with both hands. On the other side of the bariaur was Karfhud, the talons of one claw driven deep into the oaken deck, the other hand clamped tight around one of Tessali's wrist stumps.

The tanar'ri raised his chin and locked gazes with the Thrasson, then his maroon eyes flashed scarlet. He sneered and let go of the elf's wrist.

If Tessali screamed, Theseus never knew it. The elf simply vanished into the whirlpool, then the raft tipped onto its side and followed the Bleaker into the swirling waters. The Heart Of The Matter

Round and round and down they twirl, pressed flat as crabs to the raft, arching spandrels and half-sunken pillars and screeching wine woman flashing past: arch-pillar-woman arch-pillar-woman, hearts in their throats like throbbing stones, rushing gray funnel rising up past their heads, ears ringing with the whirlpool's roaring, gloomy maw below, yawning wide, wide, wider until in they go-where only the Lady knows.

She will be waiting, there in the darkness below. There was never any sense of plunging. Theseus's stomach went qualmish with dizziness and rage, and his pulse drummed in his temples, but he never had that light, upside-down feeling in his belly. The raft only continued to whirl around and around until the vertigo became too much and he shut his eyes. An instant later, the waters bubbled up to swallow the raft and still they swirled, not through the currents, but with them. The Thrasson felt his body starting to float; he clamped the fingers on his foot more tightly onto the edge of the raft and dug the fingers of his own hands into the tiny fissures between the gate's oaken planks. His lungs began to bum for air. He opened his eyes and saw nothing but darkness.

The twirling seemed to slow, then they burst through the surface. Theseus felt the damp air spiralling past his face and his body longing to fly off the raft, but he could make no sense of what his senses told him. Now it felt like they were spinning on the outside of a swirling column of water, as though they had passed through the whirlpool and emerged in a waterspout. Thinking some light would help matters, he reached for his sword – and was nearly hurled from the raft the instant his fingers left their crevices. He dug in again and waited.

The air spiralled past his face more slowly, and the force threatening to hurt his body from the raft grew steadily less powerful. At length, the strange current slowed to the point where Theseus heard the purl of water echoing off stony walls he could not see. The sound seemed to be coming from all around, as though they were spinning through a long, dark tunnel. Finally, the Thrasson could draw his sword without being thrown from the raft. He raised the blade over his head and called upon its star-forged steel to light the darkness.

As the sapphire radiance burst from the tip, Theseus saw that they were indeed floating upon the surface of a swirling column of water, which was spinning like a carpenter's auger down the center of a dark round tunnel. There were no shores or banks; the stream was swirling through midair. At first, the Thrasson thought they must be spiralling straight down a pit, then he saw a side passage drift languidly past. They were moving far too slowly to be plunging straight down.

"Now what have I done?" Silverwind gasped. "I have envisioned certain principles, certain laws to govern the multiverse. This makes no sense!"

"It makes as much sense as anything. We have entered the heart of the mazes – the very birthplace of the Plurality!" Karfhud was staring around in wide-eyed amazement, peering longingly into each side tunnel they passed. "How I need a mapping skin!"

Theseus swung around just in time to see the fiend reaching toward Silverwind. "Leave him alone," the Thrasson warned. "If you harm another of my friends, I swear on my life I'll find a way to kill you."

"Another?" Karfhud snorted. He expelled a cloud of red steam from one of his grotesque nostrils, but withdrew his hand. "I have done no harm to any of them."

"You let the whirlpool take Tessali!"

Karfhud shrugged and looked away. "I thought he no longer mattered to you."

Theseus scowled, too angered by the tanar'ri's obvious lie to reply.

"Tmly!" Karfhud protested. "If you had been thinking of him-or any of us-you would not have tried to go back for the wine woman."

"You expected me to abandon her?"

Karfhud rolled his eyes. "We tanar'ri are wiser than to expect – especially from humans. I am only saying that you cannot have matters both ways, hero." He spoke this last word as though it were an obscenity. "You tried that back at the palace gate, and it cost me a wing. From this moment forward, you must choose whether you will please yourself, or do what is best for your companions. I have no care which, but I will have nothing to do with this trying to have things both ways."

"If that means you'll have no more to do with me, I welcome it," Theseus growled.

"Truly?" Karfhud glanced back up the tunnel. "Then you have no wish for my help against Sheba? Or have you decided to abandon Tessali, too?"

"He's alive?"

"Do you wish my help or not?" Karfhud spoke with an exaggerated air of impatience. "The longer it takes to decide, the more difficult it will be to track her. We are already quite far from where I saw them."

Theseus thought the fiend might be bluffing, but the claim did make a certain amount of sense. Without a raft to cling to, both the elf and the monster would have been hurled free of the stream soon after emerging from the whirlpool-long before he had managed to light his sword. Assuming Karfhud could see in the dark-

"I can," the fiend interrupted. "Just the warmth of bodies, of course-but Tessali and Sheba were almost fiery. The excitement of the hunt, I imagine."

"If this is a trick…"

"Theseus! Have I ever lied to you?"

Without awaiting a reply, Karfhud pushed off the raft and landed gently on what Theseus had at first taken to be a wall. Silverwind quickly followed, alighting opposite the fiend on what should have been the ceiling. With the bariaur standing upon it, the surface looked as much like a floor as where the tanar'ri stood. The Thrasson pushed off the raft and landed between them. The stone beneath his feet certainly felt like "down." By all appearances, both his companions were standing on the walls, while the stream was running through the air above his head – which made no sense at all. Even if "down" happened to be wherever one's feet were planted, the water should have been coursing along the walls instead of flowing through the center of the passage.

"Just accept what you see." Karfhud started up the tunnel, spiralling around the river as he walked. "If you try to figure out the Plurality, you will go as mad as – but I suppose that is not possible. You could never truly be as mad as a baatezu."

"I fear I already am," whispered Silverwind.

Theseus followed his companions up the tunnel, twining around the gaping side passages and trying to swallow his anger. Tanar'ri lord or not, Karfhud had no business making lectures. Had the fiend held onto Tessali, the attempt to turn back for the wine woman would have caused no harm to anyone. As far as the Thrasson was concerned, the blame for the elf's misfortune lay not on his own shoulders, but squarely on those of Karfhud.

Of course, Theseus did not expect the tanar'ri to repent his treachery. Karfhud had his own reasons for hunting Sheba, and no doubt releasing Tessali had somehow furthered the fiend's cause. That Theseus did not understand how only underscored his need to discover what the fiend was really doing: mapping the mazes, certainly, but why?

If Karfhud was eavesdropping, he neglected his usual admonition for Theseus to mind his own business. Instead, the fiend stopped at a side passage. A faint odor of rotting meat exuded from the dank tunnel, and there were strings of sticky black blood smeared just inside the mouth.

"I believe this is the one." Karfhud sat down on the edge of the passage and dangled his legs inside, then cast a wistful glance toward the swirling waters above his head. Although the stream was spinning past at breathtaking speed, it made only a soft gurgling and did not interfere with the fiend's voice. "How I wish I had a mapping skin!"

With that, he stepped onto the wall of the side passage – and promptly plunged headlong into the darkness. A short, gravelly curse rumbled up the shaft, then he was gone.

Theseus dropped to his belly, reaching down with his sword to illuminate the pit. Perhaps ten paces below, the shaft started to bend away, but he could not see where it went.

"Karfhud?"

When no answer came, Silverwind suggested, "Maybe he was killed."

Theseus shook his head. "We can't be that lucky."

The Thrasson tried again to call the fiend. When he received no answer, he dangled his own feet over the edge, then turned around and slowly lowered himself into the pit. The passage walls were as rough as those of any cavern; he had little trouble finding a foothold, and, having found it, even less difficulty dinging to it with the fingers of his borrowed foot. Although the stones were damp and slimy in his grasp, Tessali's hand made Theseus feel so secure that he did not even bother to pass his sword to Silverwind before descending the shaft.

With four split hooves and two hands, the bariaur was even more sure-footed than the Thrasson, and he followed close behind. The damp air grew thick with the reek of decay and spoiled meat. Theseus knew the stench well enough; he had smelled it in the lairs of more man-eating monsters than he could recall.

At the bottom of the shaft, they found Karfhud waiting just beyond the bend. The fiend's maze-blighted flesh looked rather scuffed and his remaining wing hung crumpled and broken on his back, but the fall seemed to have caused him no other harm.

"Why didn't you-"

The fiend spun around, one talon pressed to his black cracked lips. "I see a heat glimmer up ahead." So low was the tanar'ri's whisper that Theseus had trouble hearing it over the rush of blood in his ears. "About ten paces away. It's coming from around a comer."

"Then she's seen our light by now." Theseus twisted his sword hand back and forth, sending rays of sapphire radiance dancing across the entrances of half a dozen adjoining passages. "We may as well go."

Silverwind pulled a handful of white sand from his satchel. "I am ready."

Karfhud nodded and started up the passage, but the Thrasson caught hold of the fiend's shoulder and took the lead himself. In the cramped confines, it would be easier for the tanar'ri to reach over his head than for him to strike around the fiend's dark bulk. Theseus sprinted ten paces up the tunnel and turned down the first side corridor, where he stopped so suddenly that Karfhud slammed into his back and sent him tumbling across the floor straight toward what had caused him to stop.

Me.

I am standing, as I have been since Karfhud tumbled down the chute, waiting in the darkness as I promised to wait, my halo of blades scratching at the tunnel ceiling, my gown hanging limp and still in the damp air, my feet flat on the stone, invisible, a spider awaiting her prey. He should have rushed headlong into my arms, the smell of old death thick in his nose and worry for the elf pounding in his breast, his blood boiling with battle fervor, his nerves prickling with watchfulness – but when he rounded the comer, his mouth fell open, he stopped, and the tanar'ri hit him in the back. Now here he lies, upon my very feet, gaping up at my countenance and white with fear.

How he can see me, I wish to know.

The Thrasson's mouth starts to work, and he lifts himself on his foot and three hands and scrambles away backward. "The-the-the Lady!"

The tanar'ri and the bariaur scowl at his terror and look straight through me and show no sign of fear, and so I know they cannot see me.

"She's only in your mind." The bariaur pushes past Karfhud and goes to shake the Thrasson. "Stop imagining her – before we see her too!"

The tanar'ri pulls the old cleric back. The fiend cannot see me directly, but he knows what is in the Thrasson's mind, and so he supposes me to be some new trick of Sheba's.

We know better, do we not? Someone warned the Thrasson I would be waiting, just as someone also showed him how to see the Pains. For this second betrayal, I should kill him on the instant. The matter would be simple now, with his god-forged armor lying crumpled and useless back in the mazes, with him groveling on the ground before me like any common bloodblade vain enough to think I care – and what punishment more fitting than to rob you of your hero so close to victory or defeat? To never know whether he could have slain the monster, saved Tessali, won back his memories, and – doubtful though it seems – learned the meaning of his maze? That punishment you deserve, for betraying my trust, and for so much, much more.

I push a fingernail toward his torso, and a hole the size of an arrow shaft appears in his chest; dark blood spurts out in a great, throbbing arc, spattering the walls and imparting a faint, coppery tinge to the passage's fetor. The Thrasson does not scream or thrash about in agony; all his golden husks have long since ruptured, and only the black ones remain. I have been expecting them to burst for some time now, but in that, too, I have been disappointed. He only gasps in astonishment and stanches the flow by sticking a finger into the wound.

The insolence! No mere man of renown may refute my will. I drag a finger up through the air; a red seam opens along one side of his throat, pouring a curtain of blood down over his chest.

The astonished tanar'ri grabs him under the arms, thinking to pass him back to the bariaur for healing. I step forward, lifting first one foot, then the other off the ground, and I show myself to the Thrasson's would-be rescuers.

Karfhud allows a groan to slip his cracked lips. We have met once before, longer ago than. I can count, when the Blood War spilled into Sigil and made the Slags, and I am the one thing in the multiverse he dreads more than he hates. He drops the Thrasson and sprints from the passage without looking back. What happened to the bariaur, I cannot say. He is gone even before the fiend.

The Thrasson is quick to his feet and turns to follow, but him I must show no mercy. I blink, and when he takes his first step after the fiend, it is into my arms he runs.

Angry as I am at your betrayal, I do not kill him. I have seen that the Thrasson is a man fated to cany the Pains, and it is not my place to rob destiny, only to punish you. I hug him close to my breast, as a mother would a child. He thinks to raise his star-forged sword, but he is too late; no mortal alive has the strength to free himself from my embrace. I hold him until I feel the Pains rising from that void in my chest; until my flesh tingles and flushes and shudders with delight; until my ecstasy fills me to glutting, sates me with honeyed rapture and bliss rolls into sweet agony; until my body nettles with scalding anguish; until I boil in my own sick regret, and still I hold him. The well pours forth, fills me with anguish as fire fills a forge, and still I hold him. I have but one chance, and now all Sigil's hope lies with the Amnesian Hero.

Yet, do not think I have forgiven your betrayal. You have made yourself a part of this, and so I give you the same privilege that I gave Karfhud: go and wander the mazes alone, never look upon the Thrasson again, leave him bleeding and friendless in my tender arms, the Pains rooting deep down in his soul-or remain loyal; continue along with him and suffer the same as all who call Theseus their friend. The choice belongs to you, and that is vengeance enough for me. Reprisal

Who can say how long the Thrasson has been cringing there in the fetid damp murk, his knees and his elbows and his face all cold upon the floor? Long enough for the stink of fear to fill the tunnel, long enough for the welts to become blisters, long enough for the blisters to swell into pods and the pods to start their throbbing, long enough for the husks to stretch out their black waving spines and curl their tips into barbed, man-catching hooks.

Check yourself. You know what to look for: a welt, a blister, a rising boil or red pimple, an abscess, a sore you wish you did not have. You're part of it now, one of the damned and the damning, one of the wayfarers who brings a little something extra back from his trip, one of Sigil's bright-shining angels of pain. You will ask yourself, when you happen on some glassy-eyed derelict wandering mad in the streets or hear an injured friend wailing in agony, if it was you who passed him the pod; you will suffer a little with each poor wretch; you will be quietly grateful the husk was not on you when it burst.

Blame me if you will, but these Pains you have earned. I hope you will bear your few better than the Thrasson his thousand.

Still he cringes there on the floor, a blob of spiny pulsing pods, looking more like the egg sack of a bebilith than a man. How long has it been? More than minutes, maybe more than hours, perhaps even days. He may mean to starve himself, though I doubt even he can say: never has a whirlpool spun so fast as the one in his mind is spinning now.

Because he keeps his head cold to the floor, he does not see the dark hand reaching into the tunnel. He does not behold the black ribbon slipping from between its' fingers to flutter down the passage toward him, nor does he notice the scrap circling his body, passing through the mass of clinging pods like a spear through fog. He only remembers himself, hunched and weeping, staring out his palace window toward the distant seashore. There lies his son Hippolytus, crashed beneath the wheels of a chariot when a sea monster rose and frightened the horses.

"Your son's death is my doing. King." The servant's broken voice comes from behind Theseus's back. "Had I told you how angry Phaedra became when your son rebuked her advances, you would never have called Poseidon's curse down upon him."

In his hands, Theseus holds a message, found beneath his wife Phaedra's swinging feet, accusing her stepson Hippolytus of defiling her womanly honor. The Thrasson crumples the scroll, and he feels something shrivel inside.

"No!"

At last, Theseus has lifted his head off the tunnel's cold floor. The first black pod has burst, covering his chest with a glistening cascade of ebony ichor. "I cannot bear it!"

"My gift does not please you?" Karfhud stepped into the tunnel. He was furling a new mapping parchment, and there was dark blood dripping from his index talon. "Then I apologize. I thought you wanted to recover your memories."

Theseus rose and cast a wary eye at the parchment. It looked too damp and pink to have been forgotten someplace in Karfhud's satchel. The Thrasson waved at the thing with his sword's glowing tip.

"Where did you get that?"

"I doubt you really want to know," Karfhud said. "But have no fear. I did not kill either of your friends for it."

"Where else would it come from?" the Thrasson demanded. Perhaps Karfhud had not seen Sheba at all. "Is that what you were thinking of when you let Tessali drown?"

Karfhud shook his head. "Tessali is not drowned – and your friends are not the only prey in the mazes."

"But they are the only prey likely to be down here." Theseus sniffed at the rotten air, then added, "At least the only prey whose skin might still be usable."

"Now you are becoming like Silverwind. Your imagination has taken the place of your wits."

"Then put my imagination to rest." Theseus stretched his hand out. "Let me see the parchment."

Karfhud jerked the skin away, orange flames flickering in his maroon eyes. "No one may touch my maps!"

Theseus's rage welled up, burning like bile in his throat. Had he not known the hilt would slip from his grasp the instant he raised his sword, he would have rushed the fiend and attacked. The Thrasson fixed his eye on the two yellow pods still hanging from the fiend's body, contemplating whether to take what vengeance he could. When he looked down at his own body and saw the mass of husks hanging from it, however, he decided that it might be wiser to forego the reprisal. Simply hurting Karfhud would neither avenge Tessali nor bring him back

"A wise choice." Karfhud stepped forward and glared down at the Thrasson. "I am certain we could cause each other a great deal of pain and never violate our oaths, but that would neither save Tessali nor help you recover your memories."

Theseus scowled. "Are you saying-"

"Yes." Karfhud raised his map. "I have found Sheba's den."

"And Tessali is inside? Alive?"

The fiend shrugged. "I would be lying if I claimed to have looked inside. But I saw no sign of him elsewhere – and this is not his." Karfhud waved his new parchment. "But I do feel certain the monster has your amphora. That memory I gave you slipped free of her den as she entered it."

Theseus regarded the tanar'ri cautiously. "How do I know this isn't a trick?"

"You are the only one who has ever thought of tricks between us," countered Karfhud.

"I have no way of knowing that." Theseus was silent for a moment, then said, "I'll go with you after you tell me why you want to attack Sheba."

Karfhud shook his parchment at Theseus. "Because I need time to complete these!" The fiend's voice was almost fanatical. "And, until she is scattered to the four comers of the mazes, I will not have it."

"That, I can see already. But surely you have found a way out of the mazes by now?"

"Of course. Do you think no one in the Abyss has called my name in these many thousand years?"

"Then why haven't you answered their summons?" Theseus asked. "What can be so important about completing the maps?"

The fiend looked away. "You would do better to worry about finding your own meaning." He folded his arms, then slumped to the floor. "But if you will not go until I answer that question, we will wait here. It makes no difference to me. Sheba will come for us eventually – when she has done with her other prey."

A cold tremor ran down Theseus's limbs, then he suddenly felt tight in the chest and more than a little sick to his stomach. He had experienced such sensations a few times before, often enough to recognize them as symptoms of a deep, visceral emotion few men could truly control.

"You are frightened?" Karfhud gasped. "Of the monster?"

"Terrified," Theseus admitted. It was the husks, he realized, that truly frightened him. He had faced death more times than he could recall without flinching, but the mere memory of the last time his pods had burst was enough to make him go weak in the knees. He clenched his teeth and motioned Karfhud to stand. "Let's get this done."

Battered as he was, the fiend leapt to his feet as graces fully as an acrobat. "I have always said the gods hate a coward." He glanced around the tunnel, then added, "Though I suppose that hardly matters here."

Karfhud unfurled his map and started down the corridor, his muzzle twisting into an anxious.grin. As the tanar'ri pushed past, Theseus tried to sneak a closer look at the parchment. He saw nothing but a section of straight line and a string of fresh gristle.

"What about Silverwind?"

Karfhud did not even look up. "If you want to save Tessali, I suggest we waste no time looking for the bariaur."

Trying not to think about what he could not do if the fiend's reply meant what he thought it did, Theseus followed Karfhud through a long, winding array of cavern passages. Every now and again, the tanar'ri would stop at an intersection to twist his map this way and that and mutter to himself. Most of the time, he barely looked up as he rounded comer after corner and strode one dank tunnel after another. The Thrasson made little effort to keep track of where they were going; even if he somehow found his way back to the whirlpool later, he would have no way to climb up the water spout – and no idea where to go even if he reached the flooded garden.

Theseus spent much of the walk trying to puzzle out what Karfhud was looking for. The fiend wanted to complete the seemingly impossible task of mapping the ever-expanding mazes, yet he claimed his escape did not depend on success. Only one thing would elicit such devotion from a tanar'ri: power. But how? Was he trying to map a route for an invasion force? Were the mazes somehow tied to the countless number of portals that connected Sigil to the rest of the multiverce? The Thrasson puffed out a breath of exasperation; the mere fact that Karfhud had not complained about his line of thought meant he was not even close to the truth.

"Of course, my silence could also be misleading." Karfhud looked up from his map and sneered at the Thrasson. "But I doubt it. You would spend your time better worrying about yourself."

"My thanks for the advice." Theseus nearly gagged as he spoke. Though he had noticed the stench of rotten flesh growing steadily stronger as they advanced into the warren, he had not expected to actually taste the stuff when he opened his mouth. "But we both know what I'm looking for."

Karfhud raised his pleated brow. "Do we?"

The fiend turned down a crooked corridor, leaving Theseus to contemplate his question. The Thrasson could not imagine what he might possibly discover in the mazes that he would not stand a better chance of finding back in Arborea. Despite what Karfhud had said in the swamp, it seemed to him he could only be searching for his memories. Better than anyone, the Thrasson knew that someone without a past was a hollow crust, a brittle shell of habit laid over a skeleton of animal instinct.

Karfhud bent his arm back at that impossible angle, stuffing his map into his satchel, then pointed at the floor ahead. Across the gray stone lay a carpet of bones, some old and powdery, some with smears of blood and bits of sinew still clinging to the joints – though none looked fresh enough to have provided the fiend's new parchment. Theseus flushed, and his stomach began to writhe. The dank air grew unbearably close, whether because of the horrid stench or because of his own mounting fear, he could not say. To be rid of the clinging mass of husks, he would have peeled off his own skin. Only the thought that they would burst prevented him from trying.

"Can you do this thing?" Karfhud asked.

"If I can't, kill me here."

"If you cannot, I will not have the chance."

Carefully picking his way.through the bones, the fiend led Theseus to where a small fissure opened into the wall. Taking the crooked gap to be the entrance to Sheba's lair, the Thrasson slipped forward and peered into the cramped passage – then Karfhud quietly grasped his head and redirected his gaze up the passage.

About three paces ahead, the tunnel opened into a large, serpentine chamber coiled around an immense pillar of natural stone. The column was square and nearly as broad as a house, the top so high that it was lost in the vaulted darkness above. Aside from a mat of tangled bones strewn about its base, the shaft's only adornment was a decorative post carved into each of its comers. There was no entrance, at least on the two sides the Thrasson could see.

After allowing the Thrasson to inspect the battle arena, Karfhud waved a claw at the fissure. "Wait in there – with your sword sheathed; it would not do for Sheba to notice its light before you strike."

Theseus peered again into the cramped passage. It was half filled with the powdering skeletons of those who had perished before in its tight confines, no doubt with the monster lurking just outside. The Thrasson could squeeze his body into the crack easily enough, but his bulky jacket of pods would never fit.

"What are you frightened of?" Karfhud growled, noticing his hesitation. "Just imagine these pods of yours are soft enough not to break. They are all in your mind anyway."

"If so, you have imagined them too – or have you forgotten their bite?"

The fiend snorted in disgust. "We could trade places, but you can hardly be the bait. Sheba would catch you in an instant."

Theseus glanced into the serpentine chamber and saw the wisdom of what Karfhud said. The fiend's legs, both longer and more powerful than those of any human, were more suitable to plowing through the jumble of bones.

The Thrasson took a deep breath, then gingerly squeezed into the fissure. Most of the pods, still pulsing in time to his heart, simply passed ghostlike through the stone. A few of the larger husks, squeezed like grapes between fingers, stopped throbbing and rolled along his body. But only one broke. It was a big emerald one that filled his mind with a nettling green fog; as the ichor spilled down his arm, his heart began to race, and his jaws ached with the urge to vomit. He clamped his mouth shut and tried to tell himself it was only the smell of moldy bones troubling him.

Karfhud stuck his dark head into the fissure and fixed his red eyes on Theseus's face. "It is a mystery to me, this insanity that has come over you – but know this, Thrasson: Karfhud delga' Talator does not give his blood bond to cowards or sods." Compared to the rancid fetor of the cavern, the brimstone stink of the fiend's breath was almost a relief. "When the time comes, you will act like what you are-or we both shall perish."

Theseus nodded-though not too much, as he did not want to burst any more of his pods. "You may count on it."

"Good." Karfhud pulled his head from the fissure, then glanced toward the pillar. "Stay hidden until you hear us pass this tunnel. I'll stop just beyond the mouth and drive Sheba back toward you. I am in no condition for a long battle, so take her legs from behind, and quickly. After that, we can scatter her at leisure."

Karfhud picked the scab on his wrist and offered his blood to dress the Thrasson's star-forged blade. Then, with one last exhortation to be ready, the fiend turned away. Though the bones lay knee-deep in the next chamber, the tanar'ri moved through them in utter silence. Theseus slipped his sword into its scabbard, plunging the fissure into utter darkness, and tried not to think about what would happen when he leapt from his cranny. Perhaps the tanar'ri was right; perhaps he was only imagining the husks – but if so, then he was also imagining the Lady of Pain, and nobody seemed to doubt her existence.

Theseus was careful to keep his mind off Karfhud until the battle began, which happened soon enough. It started softly, with a low, sonorous growl that rumbled through the cave like an earthquake, making the bones dance, filling the passages with the eerie chatter of a thousand ribs knocking together. Next, the tanar'ri let loose with a deafening bellow – it sounded as terrified as it did angry – and the Thrasson knew the time had come to make his plans.

There were a couple of muffled thuds somewhere deep in the serpentine chamber, then the distant crackling of Karfhud's heavy feet stomping through the bone pile. Theseus did not consider, even for a moment, the possibility that the fiend intended to let him live after the battle. As little as the Thrasson knew about the maps, he was sure the tanar'ri would have liked it better if he did not know anything-and lords of the Abyss had a habit of getting exactly what they liked.

A sharp tearing sound rasped up the passage, followed by a tanar'ri curse and a loud, wet slap. The monster roared, leaving Theseus's ears ringing and making it nearly impossible to hear the bones crackling under the feet of the two enormous brutes. The Thrasson began to ease out of the fissure, praying he would not burst too many of the husks. He would not be much use lying on the ground writhing in pain. And, whatever Karfhud was planning for after the battle, the fiend was telling the truth about one thing, at least: if they did not destroy the monster together, they would perish together.

Karfhud's heavy steps splintered past the mouth of the passage, with Sheba's close behind. Theseus pushed a leg free of the fissure-and felt a pop. Something warm and sticky oozed down his thigh. He nearly bit his tongue in.two to keep from screaming, then his leg went dead and useless, a scalding wave of anguish seething down its length. His knee buckled, and he tumbled out of the fissure onto the dark, bone-strewn floor.

How many pods burst, or which ones, Theseus could not say. He simply fell into a boiling ocean of pain. For an instant-it could have been no longer than that, though it seemed an hour to him-he lay there trying not to scream, not to writhe or beat his feet against the floor, or to do anything that would draw the monster's attention. Half a dozen paces away, he could hear the battle raging: growling, pounding, tearing, snorting, popping, snapping, splintering, and muffled shattering. Karfhud growled, Sheba roared, he screeched, she wailed. The smell of sulfur and ash, tanar'ri gore and monster blood, filled the passage.

Theseus pushed himself to his feet. The effort sent rivers of molten slag boiling through his veins, but he forced himself to stumble toward the din. He did not ran; if he ran, he might fall. If he fell, more husks would spill their ichor, and then he would be done. As it was, every throbbing, raw nerve in his body was begging him to turn away from the maelstrom, to flee into the darkness; he kept them at bay only by concentrating on the pain he would feel if Sheba survived to catch him alone later.

Something wet and foul-smelling swept through the darkness, so close to Theseus's face that he felt the air stir across his' cheeks. Karfhud let out a low, deep groan, then countered with a terrific, wet-sounding blow. Sheba's sticky blood spattered the Thrasson's brow.

As Theseus started to pull his bright-shining sword, he heard Karfhud clatter a single step backward. The battle lapsed for just an instant Sheba stood wheezing in the darkness, no doubt trying to puzzle out the cause of the strange lull, and then the Thrasson understood Karfhud's plan.

"Why do you wait?" the tanar'ri yelled. "Strike!"

And Sheba did, launching such a furious assault that it sent the tanar'ri crashing to the floor in a thundering din of old crackling skeletons and fiendish bones breaking anew. Karfhud shrieked in pain, and the monster roared in glee.

Theseus leapt into the darkness, whispering a single word as he drew his sword: "Darkstar."

The star-forged blade came out of its scabbard black as ebony, then slashed through something the thickness of an olive tree. Sheba howled and crashed to the ground. Theseus, attacking blindly, struck again. This time, his steel bit deep into the monster's thick midsection. She hissed in pain and rolled across the jumble of skeletons. The Thrasson followed by sound, swinging blindly into the darkness and cleaving nothing but bones. Still, he did not light his weapon; wife the tip of his sword glowing bright as a moon, he would have drawn the monster's attention straight to himself, leaving Karfhud free to clean up the mess at his leisure.

Theseus, still chopping his way across the cavern floor, much preferred things as they were now-especially when he heard the clamor of rattling bones and snarling throats off to his left. He stumbled over and began hacking into the darkness, taking no care what he struck so long as the blow landed on something live. Three times, he felt that star-forged steel slice through something as big around as his waist, and three times he heard the monster roar. He heard Karfhud, too, but groaning, and that only softly. The Thrasson took no care; he continued to swing until, at last, a claw lashed out of the darkness to send him crashing to the cluttered floor.

Theseus felt the husks bursting one after the other, and now he could not stop himself from screaming. Still, he rolled to his feet, lost his legs and plunged through a vat of boiling, seething anguish. He began crawling back toward the battle.

It took Theseus a moment to realize he had no idea where he was going. His own screams were drowning out any cries he might have heard from Karfhud or the monster, and his nose was too full of his own blood to find them by scent. Slowly, he managed to thread the thought through his tormented mind that he needed to be silent, that if he kept screaming he would summon his enemies to him like scavengers to the battle dead. The Thrasson closed his mouth, and that was when he heard the awful stillness.

The chamber was quiet, but not quite silent. Somewhere ahead, there was Karfhud's groaning, low and steady. All around the fiend, there seemed to be a soft scrabble, as though the rats had already come out to gnaw at his fingers. There was a terrible, howling wheeze-it took Theseus a moment to identify it as his own labored breath.

"Star… light…" It seemed difficult to believe the frail voice struggling to issue the command belonged to Karfhud. "Cleave the… night."

The sapphire light glimmered to life on the tip of Theseus's sword, revealing a sight only slightly more gruesome than before the battle had begun. One of Sheba's black-veined legs lay at his feet, the toes still twitching, the ankle and the knees still working – the thing slowly inched its way toward the den. Scattered around the chamber, wherever they happened to have landed after the Thrasson's sword hacked them away, were other pieces of the monster: an ear, a wedge of torso, the matted hand from the arm that had been cleaved back in the swamp maze. Like the teg, they were all writhing back toward the central pillar.

A few paces away, Karfhud lay in a hollow of smashed bones, soaking in a pool of his own bubbling blood, his blighted face torn half off, and his black ribs shoving up through his chest in a dozen places. Though his maroon eyes had faded to mere orange embers, they looked no less hateful than ever, and they were fixed on Theseus's face.

"Coward."

Theseus shook his head. "Treacherous, perhaps."

The tanar'ri shook his head. "Can't… fool… me." The fiend raised a broken talon, beckoning the Thrasson closer. "Give me… a little blood."

Theseus stayed where he was.

"Last.;. request," Karfhud said. "I'll… tell…"