Folk often called the sixth month the Time of Flowers, and even gray, desolate Thar had grudgingly put forth the occasional white or scarlet blossom. As far as Will was concerned, it might as well have spared itself the effort. The sprinkle of wildflowers did nothing to make the ruins rising by the dark, stagnant lake in the hollow among the hills look any more inviting, nor could it make the chilly, moaning wind sound cheerful. The halfling suspected that if he listened hard enough, he might catch the voices of ghosts inside that melancholy wail.

Many of the ogres gazed down at the vista of leaning towers and broken colonnades with the same uneasiness it inspired in him. In their eyes, the site had always been a forbidden place, and it still felt taboo to them even though their shaman had ordered them there.

Indeed, the only folk who actually looked eager to descend into the warren were Yagoth Devil-eye and Pavel. The former leered down at the ruins as if they were a foe sprawled helpless before him. Leaning forward on his roan horse, the priest of Lathander peered intently, already trying to glean secrets even from hundreds of yards away.

“Onward!” Yagoth said.

“The sun’s going down,” said Will. “It might make more sense to camp and start exploring in the morning.”

Yagoth laughed an ugly laugh. “I forget, you little nits are blind in the night. But don’t worry. Pavel can make light. Or one of us ogres will build a fire.”

The halfling said, “Suit yourself.”

He urged his pony down the trail, and Yagoth and Pavel followed. The giant-kin was taller shambling afoot than the lanky human was astride his steed.

Once the procession reached the broad, straight central avenue running the length of the complex, Will perceived a resemblance to places he’d visited before. To all appearances, the servants of various gods had built their temples in proximity to one another, as a lure to crowds of pilgrims who wanted to sacrifice to multiple deities, or consult more than one soothsayer.

But the shrines honored deities no halfling or human would choose to venerate. Misshapen idols crouched as if to spring, brandished severed heads, sank their fangs into hearts torn from their enemies’ breasts, or committed carnal atrocities on the bound and crippled bodies of their prisoners. Hideous faces sneered from friezes, cornices, and entablatures. Will recognized some of the deities so memorialized, including one-eyed Gruumsh, chief god of the orcs, Yurtrus of the pallid hands, their ruling power of suffering and death, and Vaprak, the ogres’ own ferocious patron.

All the stonework, though worn by wind and crumbling under the weight of time, was exquisite, and Will found himself more inclined to credit Yagoth’s claim that Thar had once been a kingdom worthy of the name. The skill manifest in the carving, however, did nothing to render the subject matter any more palatable. Indeed, to civilized eyes, it was uniquely disturbing to see exceptional craft employed to celebrate vileness and obscenity.

“This place is big,” one of the ogre females grumbled. “Where do we start?”

Pavel pointed down the avenue to the huge structure at its terminus. The building was square and black, already almost featureless in the failing light.

“In the largest and no doubt most prestigious temple of all,” he said. “If you noticed when we were looking down on it, it’s the focal point for the entire complex.”

Yagoth said, “Good, little sun priest. Find the magic. Make me happy.”

Malazan watched with mounting impatience as her minions explored the monastery grounds. The dragons stalked the battlements with surefooted grace, crouched on their bellies to peer into the doorways of the outbuildings, reared on their hind legs to peek into upper-story windows, and prowled through gardens and greenhouses sniffing for the scent of their vanished prey, treading rows of blueberry bushes and beds of yellow rosebuds beneath their feet.

Soon the gigantic red wearied of their foolishness. She roared, the bellow echoing off the castle walls and the mountains beyond, and the lesser wyrms came scrambling to attend her. She jerked her head to indicate the immense white central keep, a bewildering tangle of spires and galleries that somehow resolved itself into architectural harmony.

“Are you all idiots?’ she demanded. “You won’t find any prey out here. The monks have shut themselves away in there.”

“I agree,” said Ishenalyr. “This is how human defenders fight a siege. When they can’t hold their outermost defenses any longer, they fall back to the next ones in.”

Malazan felt a pang of annoyance that the hidecarved had presumed to explain what she could just as easily have elucidated herself. It felt like another subtle challenge to her authority. Reminding herself once again that Ishenalyr was too useful a weapon to break prematurely, she swallowed down the fire seething in her gullet.

“It seems the monks have decided to die like rats cowering in a hole. That’s fine,” she said as she swung around toward the largest set of double doors opening into the keep, a portal high and wide enough to accommodate dragons. “Somebody, open that.”

A fang dragon laughed, and like a bony-plated gray-brown battering ram, his forked tail flying out behind him, hurled himself at the doors. He rebounded with a crash and an look of surprise.

“They’re enchanted,” Ishenalyr said, “but I can wipe away the spell.”

“Don’t bother,” Malazan said.

She hurled herself at the leaves, massive constructions of hardwood reinforced with bronze and steel just as the fang had done. But she was bigger, heavier, and immeasurably stronger, and neither the ancient timbers nor the magic buttressing them could withstand her. The doors flew inward, shattered, torn from their hinges.

On the other side was an immense temple adorned with sculpture, frescos, and stained glass windows celebrating the deeds and dominion of Ilmater. Even the high, vaulted ceiling bore paintings. All the art was masterfully rendered, and despite the adoration of the god of the weak and defeated that constituted its pathetic theme, Malazan coveted it as she coveted all treasure. After she became a dracolich, she’d carry it to her lair—or leave it where it was and lay claim to the monastery to be her new palace. The notion of a red dragon occupying Ilmater’s house tickled her. That would really give the Crying God something to weep about.

But it was a pleasure for another hour. At the moment, she had monks to butcher and libraries to burn. She stalked forward down the center aisle, peering, listening, sniffing for prey, while her followers filed in behind her.

Rising from the marble floor almost to the ceiling, columns of soft white light shimmered into existence to bar the dragons’ path. In a moment or two, they resolved themselves into giants aglow with their own inner radiance. Some resembled human females in every respect except their stature and the flawless perfection of their beauty. Others were male, with feathery wings sprouting from their shoulder blades. Still others walked on two legs, gripped their swords with fingers and thumbs, but sported the heads of bears or wolves. They all regarded the wyrms with a sort of calm, cold ferocity.

“Leave this place,” said the winged colossus standing directly in front of Malazan, extending his blade of glittering diamond at her head. “Ilmater commands it.”

Without turning her head, Malazan could sense her minions hesitating. Because to all appearances, the creatures before them were archons, celestial champions of the princes of light, and huge enough to dwarf even a dragon.

Still, Malazan herself laughed. Because she could neither smell the archons, hear hearts beating and lungs pumping in their chests, nor feel any palpable force of holiness radiating from inside them. She snarled a counterspell and smeared the illusory figures into nothingness like doodles scratched in sand.

When the glamour dissolved, it revealed the monastery’s true defenders, standing in ranks at the far end of the temple. Most were monks, supported by priests and wizards who likewise served Ilmater, but the copper wyrm and the song dragon, along with the dwarf and half-golem who’d ridden them, waited there too.

Malazan still didn’t understand how that peculiar foursome had slipped into the fortress, and that irked her. But once they were dead, their trickery wouldn’t matter anymore.

As she chose a spell to soften the defenders up, Ishenalyr strode up beside her.

“Go easy,” he said.

“Are you stupid, or a coward?” she snapped. “That’s the greater part of our enemy’s strength arrayed down there, and I mean to kill them fast, before any of them has a chance to flee.”

The green hitched his wings in a shrug and said, “Very well. As you command.”

Malazan seared the defenders with a rain of conjured acid. Her followers blasted them with shadow and ice. Humans dropped, seared, withered, or shattered. Even the song drake and the copper reeled beneath the punishment.

Her scales sweating blood, Malazan charged, and her warriors plunged after her. She spat her flame, and more humans dropped, including the hulk with the iron limbs. She raced on, seized the song dragon’s neck in her jaws, and that was when she knew….

The second illusion was far more convincing than the archons had been. The monks and their allies made all the noises and gave off all the odors they should, with even the mouthwatering aromas of seared flesh and spilt blood arising at precisely the right moment. Yet now Malazan recognized that they too were merely phantoms, because the song wyrm’s crystal-blue neck was as light and insubstantial as cobwebs between her fangs.

“Watch out!” a red male cried.

Several of the columns supporting the transverse arches which in turn bore the weight of the ceiling turned brown, sagged, and flowed. The monastery’s actual spellcasters, plainly lurking somewhere close at hand, had transformed them from marble to mud. At the same time, some other mage or cleric conjured a miniature earthquake. Waves lifted the floor as if it were the surface of the sea. A chunk of painted stone plummeted from overhead to punch a hole in Malazan’s wing.

She realized the whole ceiling was going to fall. “Back!” she bellowed. “Back!”

Her followers wheeled and bolted toward the door, trampling and tearing at each other in their desperation to scramble through. She didn’t see Ishenalyr. Evidently he’d hung back when the others charged, and it had enabled him to be the first to bolt to safety.

Conversely, Malazan, who’d led the advance, had the farthest to run. A prodigious quantity of sculpted rock fell on her, one chunk bashing her spine, another shattering against the top of her skull, shards stinging and blinding her eyes.

It only seemed to take an instant for her to recover from the shock of it, but when she did, she didn’t see living dragons in front of her anymore, just a grinding, crashing chaos of disintegrating stonework. She drove forward, over the flattened, twisted body of a fang wyrm crushed under blocks of debris. Chunks of the ceiling hammered her over and over again.

But she was too angry for the punishment to stop her. As she neared the door, enough stone fell all at once to bury her entirely. Though the impact was excruciating, the weight enough to immobilize any lesser creature, she roared, heaved, lashed her wings, and exploded up out of the pile. A final spring carried her out into sunlight and safety.

Her followers gawked at her with manifest awe at her survival. Well, some of them. Though he didn’t permit it to show in his manner, she suspected Ishenalyr was regretting her escape, and taking what solace he could in the countless wounds marring her scales.

“You,” she growled to him. “You knew it was a snare, but you let me rush into it anyway.”

“I simply had a feeling something was amiss,” the green replied. “I didn’t know what, and when I tried to suggest we proceed cautiously, you rebuffed me.”

She realized it was so, but it failed to mollify her. He would have tried harder to warn her if he’d really meant to save her.

Well, it was one more offense for which he would atone in agony when the time came. At the moment, much as she loathed him, she hated the monks and their allies even more, for they were the ones who’d tricked and hurt her.

“Find another way in!” she screamed to her minions. “Fast!”

Will held forth the “torch” Pavel had made for him by kindling a magical light at the end of the stick. The warm golden glow was steadier than the wavering sheen of fire, an advantage when a thief was looking for tiny telltale signs of hidden snares and doorways.

At the moment, the light revealed a long, broad stretch of corridor leading up to an imposing stone door framed by twin statues of Vaprak of the Claws, bestial god of the ogres, brandishing his greatclub. The black and bone-colored tiles on the floor, laid out in a subtly irregular pattern, each bore an inlaid ivory rune at the center, though it was hard to make out the symbols where white lay on white.

Will turned to Pavel and Yagoth. “Can either of you read those signs?” the halfling asked.

“I believe,” Pavel said, frowning, “they represent various entities and principles of light. The idea is that we have to trample that which is good to demonstrate our fitness to enter deeper into the heart of evil.”

Some of the ogres at the rear of the process growled at the scorn in the cleric’s voice and Yagoth snarled, “That’s a weakling’s way of thinking about the gods … but you might be right.”

“The point is,” said Will, “do you read anything that suggests which symbols are safe to tread on?”

The human priest and ogre shaman pondered the question for a time.

“No,” Pavel admitted at last.

Will snorted. “Why did I even bother asking? I’ve had to do all the work so far.” As far as he was concerned, it was a fair statement, for it was he who’d discovered the hidden stairs to the crypts below the temple, and defeated the mantraps designed to kill intruders. “No point expecting either of you to prove useful at this late date.”

“Maybe,” said Yagoth, “we’ve passed the last of the traps already.”

“Or maybe,” said Will, “if you step in the wrong spot, something will pop or spray out of one of those concealed notches along the walls and kill you.” He pointed with his torch to indicate the grooves, but suspected his companions didn’t really see them even then. It needed a burglar’s eye. “You can stroll on out there and put it to the test.”

Yagoth scowled, his crimson eye glaring. “Maybe I’ll just toss you and see what happens.”

“A brilliant idea, considering you need me to find the way through.”

The shaman spat, “Be quick about it, then.”

Will squatted down and peered out across the tiles, looking for the signs of wear that would identify a true stepping stone, and the minute deviation in height, slant, or wider separation from its fellows that could betray a false one. Gradually, he distinguished the former from the latter through the first few rows, and that was enough to reveal the overall pattern.

“Your forefathers lacked subtlety,” he told Yagoth, straightening up. “They left too many triggers embedded in the floor. A truly cunning trapper wouldn’t have bothered building so many. He would have known where to lay a smaller number so they’d still catch any dunce who blundered through.”

“How do we get by?” Yagoth growled.

Will used his torch to point at a white square marked with a sigil resembling a curved trident with an axe blade mounted on the butt.

“You tread on these,” said the halfling, “and these alone.”

“Prove it,” the ogre said.

“As you wish.”

Will walked out onto the tiles.

At first Yagoth was happy to let him lead, but after a few paces, tramped out ahead of him. Maybe he thought the display of boldness necessary to safeguard his position among his fellows.

Then Will saw it.

“Freeze!” he said—and felt a certain disappointment when Yagoth chose to heed him.

“What’s wrong?” the ogre said.

“I didn’t give your ancestors enough credit,” said Will. “The other white squares with the trident mark are safe, but not the one you were about to tread on. You want the black one up cattycorner, with the sword-and-wings design.”

Yagoth closed his unblemished eye and glared at Will with the scarlet one.

“You want me to step wrong,” the ogre said.

“No,” said Will. “The white tile is offset from where it ought to be. Look, since I can’t see through walls, I can’t tell you everything about this big, intricate trap we’re standing in the middle of, but I have a sense of it because I understand that such contrivances require symmetry. The builders must distribute weight evenly, and support it properly, lest everything drop through the floor. Mechanisms need room to operate, and must stand in the right attitude to threaten a particular area. It’s plain to me where we need to step. I’ll lead again, if you want.”

Yagoth sneered and set his foot on the sword-and-wings.

“You’re welcome,” said Will.

The builders had carved still more sigils into the towering stone door, but as far as Will could tell, they were just writing, not anything dangerous. The portal wasn’t even locked in any mechanical way, but even Yagoth, shoving with all his strength, couldn’t budge it.

“Allow me,” Pavel said. He murmured a prayer, brandished his sun amulet, and for an instant, warm, red-gold light illuminated the hallway, as if the company stood beneath the open sky at dawn. “Try it now.”

Yagoth gave the door another push, and it swung easily.

Beyond the threshold was the chamber they sought, a cavernous repository of ancient lore. A single glance sufficed to reveal that those who’d amassed the knowledge hadn’t been much for paper. A few books were in evidence, standing on shelves or lying on worktables, but the greater part of the accumulated wisdom took the form of stone and clay tablets with columns of graven hen-scratchings marching down their faces. Indeed, stacks of the slabs stood everywhere, and Will winced at the thought of how long it would take Pavel to examine them all. Though maybe he wouldn’t have to. Perhaps Sammaster had left the important ones grouped together.

Yagoth growled with impatience and shoved past Will into the library. The halfling and Pavel stepped in after him, and the rest of the ogres followed. The giant-kin gawked and muttered to each other.

Then Pavel shouted, “Stand ready! Something’s going to manifest.”

Will pivoted. Saw nothing but tablets, dust, and shadows, and asked, “You’re sure?”

“Yes,” Pavel said. “I feel a balance of forces shifting. Sammaster left one of his own traps here.”

Well, thought Will, readying his warsling, at least that meant this was one of the truly important sites.

But when the air split not once but twice, and a pair of shapeless horrors, lumpy and half liquid like stew, came pouring, humping, and splashing out, the thought provided little consolation.

Dorn found Kara in the quarters the monks had assigned her, a small, sparsely furnished guestroom. The soft glow of an oil lamp gleamed on her silver-blond tresses, which had taken on a patchy appearance. The healer’s magic had washed away the burns on her scalp, but the hair she’d lost was just starting to grow back. He wondered if they’d both live long enough for him to see it restored to its former loveliness.

Supposedly the guestroom was a place for Kara to rest from her studies in the archives, but in point of fact, she’d brought a stack of ragged, stale-smelling volumes and scrolls back with her, and she sat at the desk bowed over one of them. Dorn raised his hand to rap on the half-open door, but before he could, she turned around in her chair.

She’d detected his presence with a dragon’s razor-keen senses. His muscles clenched, but she smiled at him and the welcoming light in her lavender eyes made the surge of revulsion subside.

“I take it,” she said, “you’re done drilling your troops for the night.”

“I wanted to go on, and the monks were game, but Raryn said all the training in the world won’t help them if they’re too tired to fight when the wyrms come again.”

“Raryn’s wise.”

Dorn grunted. “Anyway, with nothing better to do, I reckoned I’d sample the blueberry wine the brothers make.” He hefted the bottle, drawing attention to it. “It’s supposed to be good, and I thought you might like to try it, too.” He felt awkward then. “But you’re working. I’ll leave you to it.”

“No,” she said, rising, “please stay. The words are dancing in front of my eyes. I need a break, and I’d love some wine.” She picked up the earthenware cups the monks had provided to go with her pitcher of water. “These will do for goblets.”

He extracted the cork, then poured. His hand shook a little, and he nearly slopped wine over her fingers.

The wine was good, sweet, but not overly so. The problem was that Dorn couldn’t guzzle it without pause, and between sips, the silence ached, demanding someone fill it. He was surprised Kara didn’t. As a bard, she had a knack for small talk that he so sorely lacked, but she seemed to be waiting for him to take the lead.

“I think the drakes will attack tomorrow,” he managed eventually.

“Can we hold them?” she asked.

“I have a surprise planned for them at the next bottleneck. But if they don’t break through the first time, they will eventually. They’re going to shove us down into the cellars pretty soon.”

“And I’ve found nothing yet. Or maybe I’ve already read the right book, and didn’t realize what I had. Arcane texts are often subtle. They speak in parable and metaphor, and I feel so stupid with frenzy nibbling at my mind.”

“Your mind is fine, and you’ve got the other scholars in the stronghold to help you. You’ll find it.”

He lifted his human hand to touch her face, then hesitated.

But before he could pull back, she took his fingers in her own and said, “I appreciate your faith.”

“Of course I have faith in you,” he said. “In fact, for a while now … it’s likely foolish of me to tell you. But according to Raryn, I’m a fool if I don’t, and if one of us had died down in the caves, without me ever having said it … well, maybe that would have been bad.”

“You’re such a brave man. Why does it frighten you so to declare your feelings, even when you already know mine?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Well, perhaps it doesn’t matter. But I have another question: It no longer bothers you that I’m a dragon?”

“No.” He hoped it was true. He wanted it to be.

“Then let’s not waste any more time,” she said, and opened her arms to him.

Her kisses tasted of the blueberry wine, and he marveled at how they could be so urgent and tender at the same time, and at how many she gave and how she savored them. None of the whores who’d rented him their charms had prolonged the initial phase of coupling in so sweetly tantalizing a way. It made him realize that, in fact, he knew nothing of actual lovemaking. The gift Kara offered would be nothing like the brutish rutting he’d known before. It would be the ecstasy celebrated in a thousand songs, which, until that moment, he’d never understood.

“Unlace my gown,” Kara whispered, her voice husky.

Fumbling, trembling, he unveiled her slim white body, and she reached to undress him. For a second, he wanted to stop her. She was as beautiful as Sune Firehair, and he, with his scars and iron parts fused to flesh, was grotesquely ugly. Yet she didn’t seem to find him so.

She knelt on the oval rug in the center of the floor and tugged on his hand to guide him down beside her. Maybe she thought the weight of his half-metal body would break the cot, or perhaps she wanted more room. Either way, it was fine. Lightheaded, he simply wanted to go on touching her, and for her to continue touching him.

Apparently it still wasn’t time for the final joining. She gently pushed him down on his back, kissed his lips, then started working her way down the human half of his chest. He gasped and shivered at the pleasure of it.

Until he felt her teeth.

It surprised him, because she hadn’t done anything the slightest bit painful before. But some of the harlots had given him love bites, and Kara apparently relished the same practice. Unwilling to say or do anything to diminish her pleasure, he tried his best to enjoy the sensation even as she bit him harder and harder.

When she plunged her teeth deep into the flesh of his belly, the pain of it stabbed through him.

“No,” he said. “You’re hurting me!”

He took hold of her head and tried to lift it away from his body.

Kara snarled like an animal, and resisted. She snapped at him anew, caught more flesh between her teeth, and jerked her head back and forth as if trying to tear it free.

She was a dragon, however human she appeared, and she was trying to eat him alive. In a spasm of fury and loathing, he cocked back his iron fist for a punch that would shatter her skull.

But no. He hit her with the back of his human hand instead, and when she still wouldn’t let go, slapped her harder still.

She jerked her head up. Her pupils were diamond-shaped, and her bloody teeth, long and pointed. A wave of sparkling blue washed away the rosy flush in her cheeks. She scrambled up his body, reaching for his throat with nails extending into talons.

In another moment, she’d revert entirely to drake form, then tear him apart. He slammed an uppercut into her jaw.

The punch stunned her, and she collapsed on top of him. He tumbled her onto the floor, reared above her, reached for a choke hold, then saw the fight was over. The glittering blueness had left her skin. The wide amethyst eyes had round pupils.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

He didn’t know how to respond.

“I didn’t mean to do it,” she said. “It was the Rage. Evidently, the … the excitement gave it an opening. Do you understand?”

“I should go.” He picked up his breeches.

He dressed facing away from her. It was easier that way, though not much.

For one moment, he hadn’t felt like a freak. He’d imagined he could partake of the same joys and comforts as ordinary folk. He supposed it had needed the boundless guile and cruelty of a dragon to rekindle hopes he’d abandoned years before, then crush them once more.

Well, he wouldn’t give Kara the chance to hurt him again. He’d keep on protecting her for the mission’s sake, but let the Black Hand take him if he spent any more time blathering with her, or listening to her songs.

He strode to the door, then, when he reached it, hesitated.

Anger had been his friend for most of his life. He’d come to cherish it as armor against the grief, pain, and loneliness that might otherwise have destroyed him. Yet, the emotion twisting inside him felt contemptible and self-indulgent, an excuse to concentrate on easing his own hurts while ignoring a comrade’s injuries.

He turned around. Kara still sat on the floor where he’d dumped her, silently weeping. The sight of it wrung his heart, and he hated himself for nearly abandoning her to her shame.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I shouldn’t have taken so long, sorting my feelings out. Why don’t you get dressed, and we’ll sit, talk, and drink the rest of the wine.”

They did, and when the bottle and the well of conversation alike ran dry, they simply held hands. Raryn found them thus when he came to tell them Chatulio had disappeared.

Thrashing and writhing, Sammaster’s guardian creatures spilled from rents in the empty air. In that first instant, with only the single enchanted torch providing light, Pavel had difficulty discerning what manner of abomination they were, but then his mind made sense of them despite the gloom and their nauseating, bewildering lack of stability and symmetry.

Each was as tall as an ogre but bulkier. They looked as if a god had shaped several chromatic dragons out of mud, then, disliking his handiwork, squashed the separate figures into one lump. Their bodies were a patchwork of black, white, azure, green, and scarlet scales, with several misshapen reptilian heads protruding from the squirming central mass. They had no limbs as such, but extending and retracting, hardening and softening, their flesh, where it made contact with the floor, heaved them across the stones.

Such horrors were called squamous spewers. Having identified them, Pavel also had a good idea of what was about to happen, but not enough time to shout a warning.

One spewer roared, a thunderous sound that shook the underground chamber and made a couple of the long-armed, short-legged ogres bolt in terror. The other guardian opened the jaws of its various heads, and an eye-stinging stink suffused the air. The creature spat jets of acid, and giant-kin screamed, their warty hides sizzling and smoking.

Chanting and brandishing his sun amulet, Pavel conjured into being a floating mace of crimson light. The weapon flew at a spewer and hammered it.

Will spun his warsling and let fly. The skiprock cracked against one malformed head, then rebounded to strike another.

Yagoth charged and drove the point of his spear deep into the same creature’s rippling, amorphous form.

“Fight, curse you!” the ogre shaman bellowed.

The remaining ogres shouted their war cries, a clamor as fearsome as a spewer’s roar, and surged forward. Pavel conjured a second flying mace to fight alongside the first, ripped a spewer’s hide with a shrill whine of magical sound, then evoked a flash of golden light intended to sear a portion of the creature’s strength away.

But whatever he and his allies attempted, the spewers didn’t falter. Their snapping fangs inflicted ghastly wounds, but the real terror came when, every few seconds, one of them left off biting to spit a breath weapon from its mouths.

Pavel abruptly glimpsed brightness at the corner of his vision. He tried to fling himself aside, but the plume of flame brushed him even so. The hot pain threw him to his knees.

His body wanted to lie still, recover from the shock, but in a battle, such inertia could be fatal. He forced himself to raise his head and peer about, then gasped in dismay.

The same blast of fire that had burned him had felled several ogres. The spewer responsible crawled forward on its seething, semi-liquid base, jaws gaping to tear the life from the helpless giant-kin.

Will sprang between the creature and its intended victims. His curved hornblade slashed back and forth, splitting the creature’s hide. It snapped at him, three heads striking at almost the same instant, and he dodged frantically.

“Help me, charlatan!” he cried.

Pavel scrambled forward, rattled off a prayer of healing, and his hand glowed red. He pressed it against the grimy, mole-studded, sour-smelling flesh of one of the fallen ogres, and the creature groaned and stirred.

“Get back in the fight!” Pavel told it.

He scuttled on to heal a second one, wasting precious moments before realizing the creature wasn’t just incapacitated but dead. He prayed over a third, a female, and waking, she cringed and threw her forearm over her eyes, as if the spewer’s fiery breath was even then leaping at her.

The ogres Pavel had healed started picking themselves up. He darted forward to stand beside Will and drove in, striking with his mace, and jerking himself out of the paths of the gnashing fangs that leaped at him from every angle. The spewer stretched one of its necks like dough, arching it up over his head, and Pavel never even realized it until its fangs pierced his back. He lunged forward, and though the abomination ripped away his manta ray cloak and part of his brigandine, perhaps it hadn’t savaged his shoulder too badly.

He struck the spewer another blow, and it responded by spitting jets of pearly frost. The cold pierced him to the core, and he reeled. A dragon head reached for him, and he feared he couldn’t recover his balance in time to fend it off.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to. The female ogre he’d healed rushed the spewer and chopped at its extended neck with her flint axe. The blow nearly severed the head, and at last the foul thing hesitated.

“Now!” Will shouted. “Kill it now!”

He, Pavel, and the ogres lunged in, cutting, stabbing, and bashing. The spewer collapsed, seeming not to topple so much as dissolve.

Pavel pivoted toward the remaining guardian just in time to see it spit flares of crackling lightning at Yagoth and its other opponents.

“Now that one!” the human gasped. “Let’s finish this!”

He and his allies swarmed on the spewer. After a moment, it opened its jaws, and the cleric poised himself to dodge another blast of its breath weapon. What gushed out, though, was blood. The spewer shuddered, then slumped down as its fellow had done.

Pavel sighed, relaxing, momentarily dull-witted with relief. When Yagoth yanked the spear from the spewer’s corpse, hefited it, and cocked it back, he almost failed to register the significance.

Almost, but not quite.

“Will!” he bellowed.

The halfling had his back turned, but heeding Pavel’s warning, he tried to spin away from the spot where he was standing. But the long, heavy lance was already streaking through the air, and for once, Will’s agility wasn’t enough to snatch him out of harm’s way. The spear slammed him onto the floor.

Pavel sprang toward his friend.

Snarling, crimson eye blazing, Yagoth snatched a dead ogre’s war club from the floor and swung it in a horizontal arc.

Pavel tried to duck, but was too slow. The weapon smashed into his brow, and the world went black.

As the spear hurled Will off his feet, he was already angry with himself. He’d assumed the ogres meant to betray their civilized partners eventually, yet Yagoth had still caught him by surprise. He hadn’t expected the attack to come before Pavel identified the tablets containing the ancient elven secrets, or a second after they’d all finished fighting a difficult battle together, for that matter.

Which meant Yagoth had chosen his moment well. As a former outlaw, to whom duplicity had been a way of life, Will felt a certain grudging admiration.

Mostly, though, he was terrified. He twisted his head to see if the spear had dealt him a mortal wound. No, probably not, unless he simply bled out by and by. The weapon’s broad flint head had driven so deep into his shoulder that the tip was sticking out the other side, but it hadn’t pierced his heart or lung.

It had to come out, though, and right away—before the ogres came to finish him off. He couldn’t fight or maneuver with the long, heavy lance sticking out of his body, so he gripped the shaft with both hands, feeling how little strength remained in the one below his damaged shoulder, and pulled.

Until that moment, the injury hadn’t really hurt, but then the pain jolted him. He gasped and let go of the weapon. When he jerked his hands away, the spear bobbed slightly, producing a second flare of agony.

Footsteps slapped against the floor. The ogres were closing in.

He made himself take hold of the lance once more. Gritting his teeth, he dragged on it as hard as he could. An ogre with a face so studded with warts as to leave hardly any clear space between leered at him and raised its club.

The bludgeon hurtled down and the spear pulled free at the same instant. To avoid the giant-kin’s attack, Will had to roll onto his crippled shoulder. It hurt so badly he blacked out for a moment. Yet his body must have kept moving even while his mind was absent, for when he came to his senses, he was on his feet.

Praying that Pavel was weaving some mighty ogre-slaughtering spell, he cast about for his friend. Alas, the human sprawled motionless in the pool of blood seeping from his head.

Will was on his own. His sword arm dangled uselessly, not that he was currently in possession of his hornblade anyway. Filthy with gore, the blade lay out of reach where he’d dropped it when the spear pierced him.

He realized he had no hope of killing the surviving ogres, or of getting Pavel out of there. He’d need all his skill, and the blessing of every halfling god, just to escape by himself.

The ogres advanced, trying to encircle him. He drew his dagger with his off hand and faked a lunge to the right, then darted left instead. The trick caught the giant-kin by surprise, and he slashed a hamstring as he sprang past one of his foes. The ogre fell down howling.

Will grinned, but knew that one lucky stroke meant little. Soon, his strength would start to fail. He had to be out the door before that happened. He drew a deep, steadying breath and advanced toward the ogres barring the way.

A giant-kin aimed its spear to jab at him, and in that instant, Will sprang between its legs. That flummoxed his foes, and he was able to run another stride before two more ogres shambled into striking distance. He sidestepped so that one of his opponents was blocking the other, jumped above the low sweep of the greatclub that would otherwise have shattered his legs, and scrambled three steps nearer to the exit.

Yagoth snarled words of power, and magic filled the air with a carrion stink. Will’s muscles seized up. Caught in mid-stride, he pitched off balance and cracked his head against the floor.

He knew from watching Pavel cast similar spells that the paralysis was in his head. He could break free by exerting his will. Yet his struggle to do so produced only trembling.

An ogre loomed over him.

Brandobaris, help me! Will prayed.

Perhaps the Master of Stealth was listening. In any event, Will had control of his body once again. He flung himself sideways just in time to avoid the axe stroke that would have sheared off his head. The flint blade crashed and struck sparks against the floor.

Will scrambled up and on, zigzagging unpredictably, making the ogres flounder into one another’s way, using their hugeness against them. Yagoth snarled another incantation, and for an instant, Will’s stomach squirmed with nausea, and dizziness tilted the floor beneath his feet. But then the curse lost its grip on him, and a second after that, he reached the door. He plunged through and ran down the corridor.

The ogres scrambled after him. What had been a kind of deadly dance became a race, and no doubt they expected to win. Their legs, though stunted in proportion to their height, were nonetheless longer than his.

But if he could stay ahead of them for long enough, he hoped to prove them mistaken. It depended on whether they, in their fury, had forgotten about the trap protecting the hallway. If so, they’d tread on the triggers, and suffer the consequences.

It seemed a good notion. Until the shadows closed in.

The only light in all the crypts shined from Pavel’s enchanted torch, which Will had set down to fight Sammaster’s abominations. With every stride, the glowing stick receded farther behind him. By the time he reached the trap, the corridor would be so dark that he wouldn’t be able to distinguish the safe tiles from the others.

He felt a surge of despair, and strained to stifle it. He still had a chance. He’d studied the trap already. The layout was in his memory. If he was as cunning a thief as he’d always reckoned himself to be, he should be able to set his feet properly whether he could see the marks on the tiles or not.

Just enough faint illumination remained to indicate where the black-and-white pattern began. He sprinted out onto the tiles without hesitation, springing from one spot to the next.

Rapidly narrowing his lead, the ogres followed.

A thrown knife whizzed past Will’s head. Then the corridor shook and groaned as counterweights dropped behind the walls, and hidden mechanisms lurched into operation. He ran on, and sensed more than saw something leaping to seal the space ahead of him. He didn’t think he’d stepped on a trigger. He hadn’t felt a tile hitch down beneath his weight. But one of the ogres had, and evidently, when anybody hit one, the whole enormous trap served up all the death it had to offer, all at once.

Somehow Will managed to run even faster. Metal clashed behind him. When he was certain he’d passed beyond the array of tiles, he risked a glance back.

It was so dark that it was hard to tell exactly what had happened at his back. But it seemed as if enormous blades had sprung from the hidden notches in the wall, to stab or slice through anything in their path. Ogres hung impaled, or lay maimed and dismembered beneath the sharp metal. The smell of their blood filled the air. Those who still clung to life whimpered and shrieked.

But one voice roared and cursed in rage instead of pain. Yagoth was apparently unharmed. Fortune had placed him at the rear of the pursuit, where he was able to stop short when the mantrap began the slaughter.

Will regretted the shaman’s survival, but at least the blades still blocked the corridor. That would give him the chance to complete his escape.

If he could stay upright a while longer. Unfortunately, he felt as if the strength was draining out of him.

He had a vial of healing elixir. He would have drunk it before, except that the giant-kin hadn’t allowed him the opportunity. He fumbled the little pewter bottle out of his belt pouch and poured the lukewarm, tasteless liquid down his throat.

It helped a little; steadied him and made him more alert. It didn’t close the wound in his shoulder, though. In fact, with his mind clearer, the gaping, ragged puncture throbbed more painfully than before.

He crept onward, through absolute darkness. At least he’d deactivated all the other mantraps. He didn’t have to worry about setting them off, though getting lost was a different matter. If he blundered down the wrong hall….

No, he told himself firmly, he wouldn’t. He was a burglar, proficient at navigating in the dark and holding the floor plan of any building he explored fixed in his memory forever after. He’d find his way.

Footsteps shuffled, and deep, harsh voices growled from ahead of him. Apparently some of the ogres Yagoth had left aboveground had heard their chieftain shouting, and were coming to investigate.

Will was adept at hiding, but he wouldn’t be able to use his skill if, blind as he was, he couldn’t locate any cover. As the giant-kin drew nearer, he groped along the wall, and finally found a shallow niche with some sort of many-armed statue in it.

He squeezed in beside the sculpture, and the ogres tramped by seconds later, close enough for him to smell the sour stink of them, though he still couldn’t make them out in the gloom.

Not that he cared. What mattered was that they strode past without noticing him.

Will skulked on, and spotted light shortly thereafter, though, if he hadn’t spent the past few minutes in utter blackness, he might not have recognized it as such. The feeble gleam spilled through a broad rectangular doorway and down the flight of stairs connecting the vaults and the temple above. A pair of ogres slouched silhouetted in the space, where Yagoth had evidently instructed them to stand watch.

Will placed one of his last remaining skiprocks in his warsling. He couldn’t use the weapon as adroitly with his off hand but he was going to have to try. He spun it and let the enchanted stone fly.

The missile cracked against the head of the hulking guard on the left, and the ogre fell backward. The skiprock should also have rebounded to strike the other giant-kin, but it missed. The creature oriented on Will, hefted its axe, and charged down the stairs.

Will yelled and ran up toward his foe, stopped abruptly for just an instant, then raced on. The brief pause was supposed to throw off the ogre’s aim and timing, and maybe it did, because the creature’s weapon whizzed past Will’s head. He threw himself against the ogre’s shins.

With only a halfling’s height and weight, he could never have knocked such a huge foe off balance if it weren’t in motion. But the ogre was, and its own momentum enabled him to trip it. It flipped over him and tumbled to the bottom of the stairs.

Unfortunately, the impact also blasted pain through his crippled shoulder. For a moment, black spots swam through his vision, and he felt consciousness slipping away. He fought to hold on, and succeeded somehow.

Below him, the ogre bellowed. He supposed that was better than if it was climbing up after him, but if the clamor summoned other members of the troupe, it might still be enough to put an end to him. He scurried on to the top of the stairs.

The temple proper was an enormous hall filled with grotesque demonic statues and altars equipped with fetters placed to hold a human-sized sacrifice. Except for the hulk the skiprock had felled, no other ogres were in view. They were still in awe of the place, and none had entered but those Yagoth had ordered inside.

But that was sure to change in a matter of seconds. Will could still hear bellowing from the bottom of the stairs, which meant the creatures outside could, too.

The expedition had camped to the west, on the grand avenue leading up to the primary entrance. Will scurried toward a lesser doorway opening to the north.

As he rushed through, he heard ogres scrambling into the shrine. Had they spotted him in that final instant before he disappeared? Apparently not, for they didn’t come chasing after him.

He climbed a hillside, trying to remember that it was still vital to stay hidden. It was hard. His mind was dim, like a candle guttering out. His limbs felt like lead. It was all he could do just to set one foot in front of the other.

Soon the moment arrived when he couldn’t even do that anymore. He fell on his face, struggled, failed to rise, and finally crawled under a bush. He resolved to rest with his dagger in hand, but discovered he’d dropped it somewhere along the way. Seconds later, he passed out.