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
