at the net and pushed off the ground, praying this place did not absorb magic as did the keep. Much to his relief, he rose into the air and bounced lightly off the ceiling.
“Magic will not save you, old fool,” Xanthon said, allowing a stream of excess fire to spill down his chin. “Come down here, and we will settle this like men.”
“One of us is no longer a man. One of us is a traitor… and not only to his country.”
Xanthon shrugged. “I am what the king made me.”
The ghazneth started forward. Vangerdahast raised his iron dagger and, blood boiling in anger, began the enchantment that would send it streaking into the traitor’s eye.
This time, Xanthon was ready for him. The ghazneth dived into one of the little tunnels opening off the plaza and disappeared, leaving the wizard with no target. The royal magician let the incantation trail off half-finished, then cursed profanely. He could use this spell only three times a day, and he had just wasted a casting.
Vangerdahast pulled the mace from his belt and spent the next quarter hour circling the plaza, waiting for Xanthon to return. Finally, he realized the ghazneth’s earlier challenge had been an empty taunt and grew more confident about his chances of success. The traitor was frightened, or he would have returned to finish the battle. The wizard spent another quarter hour finding the sliver he had been using to track his prey, then floated down and followed it into the same cockeyed passage through which the phantom had fled.
The portal led into the confines of a goblin street-a crooked little tunnel not much wider than Vangerdahast’s shoulders and barely half his height. He had to float through the passage headfirst, ribbons of yellow fume streaming past so thick he could see only a few paces ahead. The floor stank of mildew and mud, and the walls resonated with scurrying insects. The wizard tried not to think about the red stuff that dangled down from the ceiling and brushed over his back.
Vangerdahast pursued his quarry around a dozen corners and past a hundred cockeyed doorways, then came to another plaza and realized he did not need to watch his sliver quite so carefully. Unable to fly, Xanthon was leaving a clear trail in the mud. Moreover, some unfelt breeze was drawing the yellow fume through a particular set of tunnels, and the ghazneth seemed to be following the fume. The wizard put the sliver away and crossed the circle into the next passage, holding a wand of repulsion in one hand and his iron dagger in the other.
Xanthon tried to ambush him three plazas later, dropping off a wall to land on Vangerdahast’s back as he exited a tunnel. The wizard simply touched the tip of his wand to the ghazneth’s flank and sent him flying, then followed behind. The second time, he landed a bone-crushing blow with his borrowed mace.
Xanthon barely managed to scuttle into the next tunnel. After that, Vangerdahast was able to remain within earshot of his quarry, following the ghazneth by the slurping sounds he made crawling through the muddy passages. As the chase continued, the sound grew slower and less steady. Finally, it ceased altogether, and when the wizard stopped to consult his magic sliver, the ghazneth’s arm came snaking out of a nearby door and snatched the wand of repulsion from his hand.
Vangerdahast was so startled that he flew backward half a dozen paces. By the time he finally comprehended that the ghazneth was not attacking, Xanthon was slurping down the tunnel again, now moving faster. The wizard found his wand a few hundred paces later, lying dull and brittle in the mud. All the magic was gone, and the phantom was no longer close enough to hear.
After that, the wizard left his magic tucked safely inside his cloak, and the chase continued. Eventually, Vangerdahast had to renew his flying spell, then his protection enchantments, and he realized the hunt was turning into a trek. He almost decided to give up and teleport back to the mud keep, but he could not allow Xanthon to go unpunished for such a vile betrayal.
The pursuit continued until Xanthon began to tire again and Vangerdahast began to hear slurping steps once more. Determined not to make the same mistake twice, the wizard took the initiative and streaked up the passage behind the crawling phantom. He slammed down on its back and reached around to draw his iron dagger across its throat.
As weary as Xanthon was, he was still far faster than the royal magician. He clamped down on Vangerdahast’s arm and dropped face first into the mud, driving the dagger deep into his own collar, but sparing himself the fatal slash across the throat.
A strange tingling came over Vangerdahast as the magic began to leave his protective enchantments. He grabbed Xanthon’s hair and tried to pull the traitor’s head up to free his arm, but his strength was no match for a ghazneth’s. A pair of jaws closed around his forearm, then clamped down. The phantom’s teeth could not penetrate his protective spells, but the wizard knew that would change once his spells were drained.
Vangerdahast rolled to the side, relieving some of the strain on his trapped arm and giving himself room to maneuver. He slipped his hand into his cloak and grabbed a small rod from a pocket, then pressed the tip to the ghazneth’s head and spoke a single mystic word.
A silent flash of golden magic filled the air, momentarily blinding Vangerdahast and hurling him against the tunnel wall. He felt the ghazneth go slack and jerked his arm loose, opening a long gash along Xanthon’s collarbone as he ripped the iron dagger free. Praying that his flying spell had enough magic to hold one more instant, he pushed himself up to the ceiling.
Still trying to shake the magic from his vision, Xanthon rolled onto his back, his arms weaving a black blur as he lashed out blindly mere inches under Vangerdahast’s nose. The phantom’s new wounds were already beginning to heal-thanks, no doubt, to the glut of magic he had just absorbed. Vangerdahast’s protective enchantments were fading fast and his flying spell would soon follow, and he would not be able to renew those particular spells until he had rested and studied his spellbook. Realizing he had lost all hope of defeating the phantom in physical combat Vangerdahast decided the time had come to declare wisdom the better part of valor.
He closed his eyes and brought to mind an image of the courtyard in the Arabellan Palace. Tomorrow he would return for Alaphondar and Owden, then resume his hunt with a fresh company of Purple Dragons. It was sometimes possible to delay the King’s Justice, but never to escape it-not when the royal magician had decided it was his business to dispense it. A little growl of astonishment suggested that Xanthon’s vision had finally cleared, and Vangerdahast cast his teleport spell.
He experienced that familiar sensation of timeless falling, then felt something soft and squishy around his boot soles. The air seemed remarkably stale and musty, and he had a terrible suspicion that he knew the source of that irritating drone in his ears. The wizard shook his head clear and found himself standing in a muddy depression, looking across a dark, stagnant pool of water toward the shadowy facade of a ramshackle goblin building. He thought for a moment he had returned to the same plaza through which he had entered the abandoned city, but a quick circuit of the area revealed no sign of the wall through which he had blasted Xanthon. The royal magician was lost.
“Many ways to enter, but only one to leave.” The ghazneth’s voice rasped out from all the tunnels ringing the plaza, as soft and sibilant as a snake’s hiss. “It is you or me, old fool… and now I am the hunter.”
From somewhere inside the marble keep came a muted thud, then the iron-clad gate swirled open, spinning little whirlpools into the fetid water and sweeping aside the bloated corpses of half a dozen Purple Dragons. The smell of mildew and stale stone filled Tanalasta’s nostrils, giving rise to an unexpected urge to vomit. The need had been coming over her at the oddest times for the last two days-when they found Alaphondar’s horse tethered behind the hill, for instance, but not when they waded into a marsh full of stinking corpses. The princess was beginning to think that lying to Alusair had affected her nerves more than she realized. Despite the return of the fever, no one else in the company seemed to be experiencing such odd bouts of queasiness.
Alusair appeared in the gateway, standing atop a short flight of black stairs and silhouetted in gleaming silver against the tower’s murky interior. “Nothing they’re not in here.”
“Empty?” Tanalasta slapped Alaphondar’s broken spyglass against the surface of the marsh, then said, “None of this makes any sense.”
They had found the spyglass on a boulder not far from Alaphondar’s hungry horse, the broken halves lying neatly side-by-side. It appeared the sage had been watching the keep, which stood not quite a mile from shore, half sunken in the marsh and surrounded by the floating corpses of Vangerdahast’s rescue company. A lengthy examination of the surrounding area had produced no hint of what killed them. Almost as puzzling, the search had failed to produce the bodies of either Vangerdahast, Alaphondar, or Owden. It was as if the trio had simply vanished.
Tanalasta climbed the stairs into the keep and found the mossy, dank place she had expected, with a cramped staircase ascending to the left and a narrow corridor turning a corner to the right. There were plenty of
