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
