The Diamond

Chapter 3

It was funeral time. The trumpets, glauren and longhorns wailed their dirge, embroidered by the heartrending cries of mourners, both private and professional. The restored chapel gleamed in newness and teemed with dignitaries, every corner crammed with close-packed citizens.

Khelben sat on the same balcony bench as before. Madieron Sunderstone once again slumped like a sheep dog beside the glass-topped casket. Captain Rulathon occupied the same place of honor from which, by gestures and secret signs, he commanded the gathered Watchmen. Nothing had changed, despite the return of two warriors from the Utter East, the attempted escape and subsequent death of two traitors, and the report that Eidola had not yet been rescued. Nothing save golden baskets filled with flowers, resplendent where gold candlesticks enspelled by the Doegan bloodforge had been neatly sawed away.

Unfortunately, no one had told the acolytes. They were only paces away from the caskets when they realized there were no candles to light. The first of the four boys, a freckled redhead who looked at once impish and solemn in his flowing white robe, paused only a moment before continuing to his corner of the funeral dais. There, as his companions found their places, he discreetly pawed among the flowers, seeking a holder for his taper. The black-haired acolyte across from him took the motion to mean that they were supposed to light the flowers. This was harder than one might suspect, since the white sunroods and merestars were still dewy from the morning mist. He succeeded only in getting a wisp of black smoke to curl up from one sprig of fern.

The last two boys, blond twins and kin to Madieron, had by simultaneous inspiration begun dribbling wax onto the glass casket preparatory to sticking their candles to it. Piergeiron's grieving bodyguard sat within easy reach of both, but was too lost in sorrow to take notice. It wasn't until the red wax of one of their perched candles snaked down beside Madieron's face-cooling just fast enough to trap a lock of his hair against the glass-that the man lifted his head. His scalp lost the sudden tug of war for the lock of hair. He growled something to the boys, and his great armspan allowed him to deliver simultaneous cuffs to their heads.

It was at that moment, of course, that the dirge ended. In the sudden echoing hush, the private protests of the twins became all too public. "When we tell Mamma-"

Awe brought them to silence as a white-robed priest of Ao drifted across the dais, hands spread in benevolent greeting. A grim expression of collective sorrow and solemnity filled his fleshy face. Reflected candlelight glowed from his bald pate. He reached the front of the dais and halted, his raiment swaying magnificently around him.

"Come, ye mighty! Come, ye small! Come all peoples, elf and human, dwarf, halfling, and gnome! Come to gather and behold! Behold what grim truth is upon us!" The priest gestured at the two bodies lying in state before him. His eyes lit on the canted candles stuck to the glass, but his voice rolled on steadily, "Behold the end for us all!"

The priest gestured with both arms, tragedy leaking grandly into his voice. "See that heart, large enough to hold whole realms in its compass, large enough to seat the soul of this immeasurable man! Now it holds neither lands nor souls nor even blood, but nothing at all. And that breast, broad enough to breathe life into all the world, languishes now in eternal rest. Without him Faerun suffocates."

The acolytes were glaring uncomfortably at the Open Lord's chest. Why is it that if you stare at a dead body hard enough, it looks like it's breathing?

"See those fingers lying in repose, fingers that wielded pens and grasped swords, firm and sure digits of flesh and blood that cast down walls and lifted up children. See them now, still as stone."

The eyes of the congregation shifted to those folded hands. Perhaps it was the dance and play of candlelight atop the glass, or the vivid words of the priest, but more than a few watchers thought they saw fingers "still as stone" twitch. A silent thrill shivered through the crowd.

Halting in momentary fear, the priest recovered and went on. "See those very eyes that were wont to gaze upon vast Waterdeep in all its splendor, and the Sword Coast beyond, that look now down the halls of. eternal memory, as they shall forever more!"

A crease became visible across the eyelids, as if the corpse strained to draw them open. Were it not for the delicate stitchery of the funerary priests, the Open Lord might have, it almost seemed, gazed back at the crowd gathered to honor his passing.

"Our friend, our comrade, our leader…" The priest of Ao let his grand words roll down the chapel, casting an uncertain glance at the lord's casket once more. "Our Piergeiron Paladinson, the Open Lord of Waterdeep, at last is dead."

He hung his head, and the congregation hung theirs with him, looking up as the white-robed priest lifted his voice with fresh energy. "Consider his mouth, which once proclaimed law and justice to we, his people! Lips which once opened in acceptance of this woman, Shaleen, as his bride. A mouth that will nevermore open again, to guide and reass-"

Said mouth suddenly opened in a roar of terror and loss that, albeit muffled by air-tight glass, shook the chapel to its foundations. "No!"

Piergeiron's corpse sat up, whacking its head against the glass. The Open Lord fell back only momentarily onto the richly embroidered velvet before lifting those still-as-stone hands to punch awkwardly at the curved glass confining him.

"Truly he is dead!" the priest shouted, stumbling back from the horrific sight. He repeated his declaration loudly, as if hoping to convince the corpse of its demise. "Truly he is dead!"

"Truly he is alive!" someone bellowed from the balcony.

Heads snapped up, but the balcony no longer held he who'd spoken. Once more Khelben "Blackstaff" Arunsun was sailing above the heads of the cringing congregation in a flurry of black wool. Someone shrieked.

Khelben descended like a magnificent storm cloud, huge and unstoppable. Lightning seemed to dash from his furious brows. "Fools! Piergeiron lives! Open the coffin! Bring pry bars, augers and saws! Where are the crafters? Bring them here! Open that coffin!"

Khelben landed beside Madieron. The man-giant's fists were crashing like twin hammers on the glass of the Open Lord's casket; it boomed like a thunderous war drum. Piergeiron's own fists were answering, blow for blow, from within the case.

"It's no good!" Khelben shouted to Madieron, peeling the grieving giant back from the coffin by main strength. "Yon glass is hard as diamonds-impenetrable! We've got to pop the bolts!"

Craftsmen were scurrying up the aisle now, their rugged wooden toolboxes odd against the ceremonial garb they'd been given for the funeral. Horns sounded as Watch officers summoned men to run far and fast in search of tools, all the tools that could be found in the ward and beyond!

"How many bolts are there?" Khelben snarled, his eyes fairly spitting sparks.

"Fifteen hundred," a smith gulped, looking away from that fiery gaze.

"Well, drill, man! Air holes- hurry!"

As men crouched beside the coffin and lifted their tools to the task, Madieron let out a howl of despair and hammered the glass again.

"Stop!" Khelben shouted. "Give them room! You'd have to weigh ten times as much as you do to have a chance of breaking through."

Madieron stared for a frustrated moment at the mage, tears standing in his eyes. Then he let out a roar that rang around the chapel, and rushed off through the stunned crowd.

Pry bars bit along the side of the casket. Men groaned, and metal creaked. A golden bolt popped, and then another. Men and dwarves crawled forward on their elbows under those wielding the bars, to crank large drills hard and as fast. Curls of gold sheered away from whirling bits and fell. Sweat beaded hands and foreheads. More bolts popped. Auger bits gnawed and dug.

All the while that hands gripped and wrenched at the outside of the casket, the Open Lord's hands pounded against the inside. His breath had quickly frosted over the glass. Insistent fingers scratched long trails in the condensation, but each puff of the dead man's breath filled in these frantic marks.

"Faster," growled Khelben, his fingers weaving a spell. The pumping arms of gasping, groaning workmen became a sudden blur. Five more bolts. Ten more. Drill bits were smoking in their holes as gold melted away. With a sharp crack, one auger snapped. Its wielder fell back, stunned, and was flung aside like a doll by a furious figure in black robes. " Faster!" the Lord Mage bellowed. "He's dying in there!"

Hooves clattered abruptly at the rear of the chapel. Heads snapped around as Madieron charged into view astride a massive plow horse. The hooves of the great beast struck sparks from the chapel floor as it thundered through the citizenry, parting merchants and nobles in their finery as a shark parts a school of fish. One lady was too slow to leap clear, but the Champion of Waterdeep hauled expertly on the reins, and the gigantic beast reared. Its shaggy forehooves beat ominously at the air. Anxious hands plucked the moaning woman from under the very shadow of the horse, as Madieron, eyes blazing, urged it into a gallop, straight at the casket of the Open Lord.

With a sigh, Khelben stepped aside, slapping the shoulders of the frantically working crafters to get them out of the way, as the juggernaut came pelting down the aisle. Men scrambled, tools ringing on the stones.

Madieron rode clatteringly to the dais, pulling the horse up severely at the last. The massive animal reared again, its hooves lashing the air between the chandeliers. Madieron crowded his mount against the coffin, and those hooves dropped on the glass like twin mauls. "Impenetrable" glass cracked and shattered. The Champion hauled on the reins, spinning the horse around.

Piergeiron's own fists finished the job, punching glass aside in a scintillating shower of knife-edged pieces. Madieron leapt from his saddle through the flying shards, to lift Piergeiron from the riven casket.

"No!" the Open Lord cried again, his voice raw. "No!"

Bleeding and glistening with slivers of glass, Madieron bore Piergeiron to the aisle floor and laid him down. "You're all right," the giant said awkwardly. "You're free. You're alive."

"But she's not," Piergeiron gasped, clutching Sunderstone's tunic. His eyelids strained at their stitches. "She's dead!"

Madieron glanced at Shaleen's glass-topped casket. "Who? Who's dead?"

"Eidola," replied the Open Lord. He coughed, blood spattering cracked lips. "I pursued her across Faerun, and beyond… through all of time. I pursued her through life, unto death."

Madieron looked up beseechingly to the Blackstaff. Khelben crouched beside the fallen lord of Waterdeep and said, "You've had a long sleep… a short death. You've dreamed."

Piergeiron shook his head, shards of glass and drops of blood raining to the stone floor. "No. I did not dream this. She's dead. Somewhere beneath our feet, she's died."

"Don't speak," urged the Blackstaff.

"I will speak," Piergeiron snarled. "I must speak, or it'll all fade and be forgotten like a dream. It wasn't a dream!"

He struggled to sit up in Madeiron's arms. "I was dead. I've traveled the places of the dead. I've walked other worlds, and journeyed through mirror mazes to find Eidola and bring her back. I've fought tanar'ri and climbed the world tree and plunged into Lethe's waters of forgetfulness; they still cling to me. If I don't tell what befell me now, I'll nevermore remember."

Khelben raised his head to glare at the armsmen, merchants, and nobles crowding around. "I need priests- now! — to heal this man. Are there any tailors or seamstresses here? Someone with a sure hand? The Open Lord needs the stitches out of his eyelids! The rest of you, back! Officers, see to it!"

The Lord Mage leaned back over Piergeiron, shielding the wounded man against any dart or hurled dagger that might forestall the return of the Open Lord to his throne. "Let them tend you, and tell all the stories you wish. Wherever you have been, welcome home, friend."

As folk in their finery scurried to obey Khelben's orders, Piergeiron Paladinson smiled and started to speak.

He surfaced in a deep wood, leaving behind cold, still water. But he was dry, and no water stood nearby, only damp leaf mold. Somewhere beneath it, perhaps, was the deep, eternal darkness he'd ascended through… limitless depths inhabited only by the souls of the dead.

I am dead, he told himself plainly. I am dead.

There were airy dreams of elsewhere: a palace perched above a restless sea, waves as white and loud as clashing swords. Their clamor mingled with bards' songs that wove truth out of thin air. He saw again masked lords and darting daggers, a thousand shadowed conspiracies, saw bright banners fluttering, and heard armsmen shouting a name in jubilant unison-a name also shaped by the hostile lips of those conspirators. A name that belonged to him. Piergeiron. It sounded like some sort of falcon.

Something more came back to him then, lone, shining, and beautiful… a soul that sang his name, high and pure.

What was her name? It was gone with her. She was gone.

He stood alone, in this wood. It was real; the rest were but fading tatters of forgetfulness. It all meant nothing now. The cloak of scars and sorrows, woven in life to encrust and mottle old souls, making them distinct from all others, was gone. He was PierHe was a falcon. Nay, he was a Paladin.

Paladin looked about.

This was a verdant place. Trees soared to join earth and endless sky. Vines spiraled across ancient bark, leaves catching scraps of light lancing down from above. Birds coursed in silent lines among the trees. The musk of growing things hung strong in the air. The forest quivered with the tremendous murmur of the world growing. Growing.

Then, slashing through all, came a round, mournful cry, a call long unanswered and despairing. Paladin felt the longing in its haunting wail.

She. There had been a name for her in the world of contingencies and consciousness, but here she had no name save Desire, or Heart's Desire, or Broken Heart, or just… Heart.

The sound of Heart in her hopelessness sent deep sorrow through Paladin. He turned toward the song. It came from there, high above.

He was facing the greatest tree of all, its massive gnarled bole as wide as a mountain. It was the tree, whose roots plunged down through the deeps and (somehow he knew this) beyond, into and out of and through a thousand worlds. It was the tree whose crown cracked the blue shell of arching sky and whose branches held aloft a great diamond as large as worlds. The world tree. A tree that bound worlds together and was worlds altogether. The call came from its crown.

He walked to the tree that loomed like a mountain. It took days. Dreams of otherwhere-dead bodies and cold cellars and crafters with hammers and measuring tapes-intruded. He drifted down into them, and surfaced again after not a blink of time. When at last he reached the tree, he climbed.

There were whole worlds in its bark, hidden in the brown terrain of ragged mountain ridges and deep valleys. Paladin climbed tirelessly and quickly. He clambered away from strange stinging and swarming creatures who dwelt in some of the valleys, and he learned to avoid their villages but otherwise pressed on as straight as he could.

He fell thrice, and died each time, surfacing again in the strange world of gold-gilded caskets and mourning men. But what is death to a dead man? Always he resurfaced to climb on.

The fourth time he fell, Paladin fell up the tree. Its diamond crown loomed, and Paladin plunged toward it, watching brown ridges race past. The crown grew ever larger. The bark of the tree became slick black skin, and the boughs branched into massive tentacles. Where once there had been leaves, now there were suction cups, broad and oozing, gripping the great diamond. Large as worlds, the gem glittered with the tiny gleams of pinprick stars and wandering moons.

This was no world tree, but something darker and deadlier. A world in itself, huge and alive, or-no, a creature that wished to be a world. Its thousand limbs in their dark and mighty magnificence clutched the glowing diamond.

He looked at that awesome stone. It drew him up. The lady hung unseen within it, crushed on all sides by titanic, yet balanced, forces. She sang out from its bright depths.

Paladin would save her.

He was suddenly there, beside the diamond, a cage within a cage. In it, entrapped, was Heart, who called to him.

Now he saw how the stone had held so powerful and beautiful a creature as Heart captive so long: the diamond was no clear crystal, but a hall of mirrors. Reflections, semblances, illusions; the most potent of magics in a world of truth. A labyrinth of lies and deceptions, receding into endless illusions that worked with eye and mind to betray body and soul.

Truth is, in the end, powerless against dazzle and shine.

The mournful throb of Heart came distantly from within.

Mirrors can be broken. Paladin drew steel. He would smash his way into the maze and carve a path inward to Heart.

The luminous mirror before him bore his own determined features. He shattered them and stepped into the slanted space beyond. Angled planes all around gave back his appearance.

The first few reflections showed Paladin as he was, only subtly reversed. His sword arm was switched, his forward knee had been traded for the trailing one. Others held images even farther from…

Paladin gritted his teeth and swung. A delicate magic can slay if it reverses thoughts until self and purpose are lost. Ten images of swordsmen struck in unison.

The world shattered. Another passage opened. Paladin stepped through.

The mirrors he now faced showed him the snout and tusks of a boar, black lashes and snakelike, slit-pupiled eyes, a blood-gorged cockscomb and wattle. He looked like a monster. He was a monster. Monsters must die.

"You fall first," he snarled in sudden rage, and clung to what he was, naming himself aloud as he swung shattering steel. Shards boiled away before him like smoke, and suddenly that unreal and trivial world where his body lay dead swam back, overwhelming all else. Snarling silently to muster his will, he returned, seeking the cry of Heart.

Paladin strode deeper into the diamond. The next mirror held a reflection that moved like him, but had cruel eyes and olive skin-and a sword arm whose flesh gave way to bare bone. Paladin remembered this man from the world he'd left but could give him no name.

He lifted his arm. Bare bones moved in unison. "I'm no assassin," Paladin said fiercely, and heard the eerie reflection make the same resolve, the silver-slim words mocking.

"I fight for what is right. I slay for freedom." Paladin and Assassin spoke those words together. Lie and truth lay together, indistinguishable from one another. The diamond's power was deepening with each new chamber. It pressed viciously on head and heart.

Heart. Paladin's lips set in a thin line, and his blade flashed out. Assassin cracked. He stared for a moment in surprise, bony sword arm uplifted, before the cloven mirror gave way and slid tinkling to the floor.

Deeper. Up and in. Heart drew him on.

A young man's face confronted him next, full of hope, honest and determined and inexcusably innocent. Paladin swung his blade without hesitation.

It met not chill glass and uncaring silver but soft flesh. The man sobbed, staggered, and fell forward.

A real man? Another warrior seeking Heart? A comrade!

Heart's own sorrow bled into the moan that came from Paladin. He set a hand to the young man's bleeding side.

This one, too, had a name, lost in the wash of truth and illusion. He was in Paladin's mind nothing more or less than Hero. Paladin's touch closed the weeping wound. Hero rose. No apology or explanation needed to be spoken; Hero understood. Paladin drew and offered his dagger. It was accepted with the ghost of a smile. Side by side, they went on through the silvered maze.

Another young warrior appeared in a mirror, the youthful semblance of Paladin himself.

"I am Jacob. I will battle beside you."

The words bore such earnest weight that Hero motioned Jacob to step from the glass and walk shoulder to shoulder with them.

The fighter emerged. Reflected flesh became momentarily scaly, tentacular, before swimming into solid human flesh! A lie garbed in borrowed shape. Paladin's blade sundered the emerging shapeshifter, dropping him in a thousand shards of ringing glass.

Paladin and Hero nodded warily to each other and pressed on toward the sobbing lady's song. They found themselves in a wide chamber ringed with her-or varying reflections of her. One mirror showed a warrior maiden, clear-eyed and noble. The next held a pirate lass, all black leather and lascivious eyes; a third displayed a meek lady pleading from a tower window; its neighbor showed a medusa with writhing hair. Hundreds of images implored for release from the glass. Hero stood frozen, drawn to each pleading woman.

Paladin shook his head. False images, partial truths. Heart was no idealized image, but a true creature. Paladin would not be seduced by lies told about women. He would be inspired by truths told by them.

Hero nodded, understanding. Young, open, and so vulnerable, he led with his broad, brave heart.

The song rose, mournful, beyond the chamber. Paladin listened and pointed. A curving way opened, nearly hidden between alike imploring images. The two men ventured on.

Fiends lunged without invitation from the glass, a roaring menagerie of rending claws, venom-dripping stingers, scourgelike tails, twisted horns, and smoking spittle. They flooded forth as if the mirrors were portals gaping from the Abyss.

Paladin and Hero stood back to back, blades flashing among tentacles and barbed whiskers. Shrieks arose amid the battle cries. Paladin severed the head of a mantis towering over him, leaping across its carapace to slash the snarling faces of two jackal-men, and shattered the mirror behind them. Cracks segmented shadowy figures who rushed to leap the silver margin, and all collapsed in a rain of shards.

The pommel of Hero's dagger crashed into another mirror, and a dozen fiends tumbled into oblivion. He swung for the next, but flesh interposed itselfscabrous and oozing, cracked and sword-worn. Living meat barred the way to other mirrors, lifting claws and grinning with yellowed teeth.

Crying out the names of their mothers and their gods-names not so dissimilar-Paladin and Hero hacked at fiend flesh, winning through to panel after panel. Dead fiends lay heaped across the silvered floor, strange blood darkening the glass, as gate after gate fell.

Ten living fiends stood atop a hundred dead to guard the last looking glass, aflicker with emerging horrors. Hero and Paladin carved a grim path through them.

The last fiend fell, its left head laid open by Paladin's sword and its right skewered through the eye by Hero's dagger. Black blood steamed, and silence fell.

Standing exhausted, Paladin and Hero looked into the last mirror and saw themselves: two blood-soaked warriors burned by gouting acids, stabbed, slashed and bone-broken. Paladin's sword arm changed direction in two places. A severed beast claw jutted from his temple. Hero's ribs showed through a row of gaping wounds, wherein his organs pulsed through a rain of blood. The comrades were walking dead men, too busy slaying to notice that they should die. Now they had time to look.

Hero wheeled and collapsed, lifeless.

Paladin staggered. His world went black. Falling, he smashed his sword against the glass.

The riven mirror collapsed, and the false wounds it had projected onto Hero and Paladin fell away with it.

At last Paladin understood this house of mirrors. He'd thought it a mind of madness, filled with images twisted to obscure the truth, or a sorcerous cage constructed to hold Heart ever captive behind falsities. But it was neither.

The diamond was a mind but was not mad. It was the mind of a world; in any one facet of the diamond, truth was only partially reflected. Truth dwelt not in one angled view of something too large and complex to be fully seen in a thousand images. Truth dwelt beyond and beneath. It could be apprehended not by staring into one reflection but by staring into them all. Paladin would find Heart not by smashing and slaying but only by combining all reflections into the one true creature they mirrored.

He sheathed his sword, helped Hero rise, and stepped into the space beyond the last mirror they'd shattered: a mirrored passage that snaked away through deceptive turns. Its silvered panes held faces: a moon-faced sharper, a much-scarred old pirate, a pale man-giant, a black-bearded mage, a bronze-skinned man in robes of state, a pair of idiot brothers, a crooked lumber merchant…

Paladin ignored these images, grasping the corners of mirrors and pivoting them slowly, one after another. He was opening up the passage, creating a large, circular space. Hero did likewise, pushing back the mirrors on the opposite side of the passage into an inward-curving silver wall.

They worked speedily, repositioning and checking over their shoulders to match alignments. When they completed the first circle, the diffuse starlight that shone through the interior of the diamond intensified. They made a second circle beneath the first, pushing back the mirrors of the floor. When it was done, the room sparkled in warm brilliance.

When they formed the third, the light grew so intense it pushed at the silver and glass it struck, realigning the other facets of the great diamond. Not merely hundreds but thousands of mirrors were brought into focus, blazing like festival sconces, each witness to all that had happened since Heart's disappearance.

At last light surged out to every corner of the diamond-and the vision Hero and Paladin sought erupted into sizzling incandescence before them. Lightning-white the place blazed, around Heart.

She floated in beauty at the center of it all: a creature of pure light, her raiment a rainbow, her scepter a staff of lightning, her eyes twin blue flames.

Paladin and Hero fell to their faces before her.

Her song now was one of triumph as her power blazed brighter. The black tentacles clutching the diamond ignited, their flames adding to the brilliance. The globe of mirrors melted away, and a blast of pure force roared out amid the circling stars and wandering moons. With an answering roar the fire spread down the evil tree.

Freed at last, Heart would burn her former captor to oblivion. Her soul would sear the tree away. But what of the world it was rooted in? The worlds upon worlds into which it had sunk its wicked roots? Would they be destroyed, evil and good alike consumed in flames?

Paladin glanced at his comrade. Hero could do it. Hero could whelm the folk of the world below and bring their axes to bear on the base of this horrific tree.

Thousands of axes. Tens of thousands. If they chopped it through, the massive crown, a world unto itself, would pull away among the stars to erupt safely above and beyond all. Hero could do it.

But Paladin could not. This was she whom he sought, the Heart of all his world. If she was destroyed in flame, he would perish with her.

Empowered by the lightning blasts of Heart, Paladin hoisted Hero, bore him to the spinning edge, and flung him down toward the world. He shouted through the firestorm the only words they shared: "Save it!"

Hero understood. Therein lay his greatness. Despite his youth, his fumbling naivete, the heart so untried and vulnerable in his breast, in the end Hero always understood. And in worlds of truth, understanding bridged any distance.

Immediately, Hero was at the base of the tree, and at once in every farmstead and village and city clustered about it, exhorting folk to bring their axes, and save their world. He was believed and obeyed. That was the power of understanding in a world of truth.

Paladin felt the first thunderous thousand blows shiver the tree. He staggered, striding against the gale of light and power toward the blazing woman. She recognized him. Something in her knew the garment of scars that cloaked his soul. With a single finger of fire, gentle as a caress, she flung him from the inferno, down to the verdant world below.

All the while he fell, Paladin wept; he'd been so close to his love and now he was hurled farther with each breath.

Just before he reached ground, the massive tree groaned. Cut through, it swayed. The blazing bole turned listlessly once before easing up, away from the ground. It hung in the sky, engulfed in racing flames. A white-hot inferno tumbled up into the arching heavens. It was shrinking into vast distance when it blazed its last.

The flash blinded all who looked at it. It blinded Paladin, where he lay in a scorched glade, and the thunder that followed rattled the teeth in his head. A shock wave of wind slammed into him, thrusting him down through earth and bedrock beneath, whirling him through the swirling subterranean passages of Lethe. Even as he lost consciousness, falling asleep in one world to awaken in another, he knew she was dead.

His Heart's Desire was dead.

"The Tree of Illusion, grown to overbalance the real world in which it has root," mused Khelben, watching the final stitches snipped from the Open Lord's eyes. "The octopodal crown can be none other than Aetheric III. But what of this diamond?"

"Diamond be damned," hissed Piergeiron as his eyes at last struggled open, blinking into the glaring chandeliers. "Eidola is dead. The Heart is dead."

Khelben leaned over, helping the dead man up. "Perhaps not. Perhaps this glorious soul you saw wasn't Eidola, but-"

Before the Lord Mage could say more, Piergeiron saw the woman who lay in the casket beside his own. He sprawled across it and wept bitterly.