'Midnight,' a familiar voice cried. 'I need your help to save Cyric and Adon!'
'Kel!' Midnight cried. 'Sunlar, I must help him.'
'Ignore his petty concerns,' Sunlar said. 'Better still solve his problems by helping all the Realms.'
'Wait, Sunlar. I cannot forsake everything that makes up my life, everyone that I care about, on a moment's notice. I need more time!'
'That is the one thing you don't have,' Sunlar said softly.
Eternity vanished. The weave was gone. Only the temple remained. Midnight looked down at her hands and saw that they were flesh and blood once again. She felt the sting of tears on her cheek and almost laughed.
One of Mystra's worshipers moved forward. It was a man, and she recognized his face.
Kelemvor.
The fighter held out his hand. 'Come back,' he said. 'The others need you. I need you.'
Sunlar grasped her shoulder and turned her to face him. 'Don't listen to him. You have a duty to your goddess! You have a duty to the Realms!'
'No!' Midnight shouted as she pulled herself free from Sunlar's grasp. Mystra's followers froze in mid-motion, and Kelemvor, now dressed in his fighting gear, stood before her.
'You have dishonored yourself and your goddess,' Sunlar said, his face fading into the shadows that fell upon the throne room like curtains, darkening the illusions. Then he was gone. In moments only scattered patches of illusion remained, and Midnight saw Kelemvor crawling on the floor of a room that once might have been an audience hall. A large, overturned chair that bore a striking resemblance to the throne she had sat upon lay in the corner. The musty chamber was domed, just as it had been in her illusion.
Midnight looked down and saw that the pendant was still there, still grafted to her skin.
'What's going on here? One minute I'm opening a door, the next I'm floating above the world, now I'm in a ruined throne room.'
Then Midnight noticed that Kelemvor appeared wounded. She ran to his side as he collapsed, but saw that his face and body were unscarred. Still, the fighter was sweating and seemed very frightened.
'Offer me something!' he snarled, his voice low and very menacing.
'What? What are you talking about?'
Kelemvor flinched and his ribs seemed to move of their own accord. Midnight looked at him warily.
'A reward!' he said, and his flesh began to darken. 'For helping to free you from the illusion and for going on with the quest. We abandoned it, Cyric and I — '
The fighter shuddered and turned away from Midnight. 'Hurry!'
'A kiss,' she said softly. 'Your reward will be a kiss from my lips.'
Kelemvor collapsed on the floor, out of breath. When he rose, his skin had returned to its natural complexion.
'What was that all about?' Midnight said.
Kelemvor shook his head. 'We have to find the others.'
'But I — '
'We can't possibly make it out of here alive without them,' Kelemvor yelled. 'So, for our own good, we have to do it now!'
Midnight did not move.
'We were separated,' Kelemvor said. 'Sent to different parts of the castle. I awoke in a library on the first floor. I followed the noise until I found you.'
'Noise? Then you saw and heard — '
'Very little. I heard your voice and followed it until I found you. But we'll have more time to figure this out later. Now, help me find the others!'
Midnight followed the fighter down the darkened corridors.
After Kelemvor escaped through the tear in the carpet, it started to close in around Cyric, and it dwindled until it was the size of a large chest. The thief tried to slice the rug with his sword, but it was no use; the blade simply bounced off each time he struck at the trap. The carpet continued to shrink until Cyric felt it conform to the shape of his body and squeeze with such pressure that he blacked out. When he awoke, he was in one of the back alleys of Zhentil Keep, being kicked awake by a watchman, just as he had been regularly in his childhood.
'Move along,' one of the Black Guard said. 'Or else nothing but steel will fill your gut this day.'
Cyric fended off the blows and rose to his feet.
'Stinking vagrants,' the guard said, and spat at the ground near Cyric's feet. The thief moved forward to attack the man, but something reached out from the shadows behind him. Hands were pressed against Cyric's mouth, others held his arms. He fought against the pull of the hands but there was nothing he could do. He was dragged into the side alley as the watchman stood and laughed.
'Calm down, boy,' an all too familiar voice said.
Cyric watched as the guard walked to the end of the alley and turned off onto the street, vanishing from sight.
The thief allowed his body to relax, and the iron grip that held him loosened. Cyric turned and faced the shadows. Even before his eyes adjusted to the darkness he knew the identity of the men before him.
One was known as Quicksal, an evil little thief who took great pleasure in killing his victims. Just as Cyric remembered it, Quicksal's fine, golden hair was unwashed, and traces of dyes of every type could be found within it, as he generally tried to disguise himself. False beards, age make up, strange accents, odd personality traits — all these were part of an ever growing repertoire that Quicksal called upon to create vivid characters for potential witnesses to remember. His face was thin and hawklike, and his fingers were extremely long. Strangely, Quicksal still appeared to be in his teens, though Cyric knew he had to be at least twenty-five years old.
The other man was Marek, and when Cyric examined the face of his mentor, he did not find the aging, hard- lined visage he had looked upon just the other night, when Marek ambushed him at the inn. This Marek was younger, and the tight, curly hair upon his head was jet-black, not the salt-and-pepper-gray it should have been. His skin had only just begun to show a hint of the wrinkles that would one day develop. His piercing blue eyes had not surrendered any of their earlier fires, and the man's large frame no longer displayed any trace of flabbiness. This was the man Cyric had studied under, had robbed and committed now unthinkable acts for without hesitation. Cyric had been an orphan, and in many ways, Marek was the only father he ever knew.
'Come with us,' Marek said, and Cyric obeyed, allowing himself to be led through a set of doorways into the kitchen of an inn that Cyric did not recognize. Cyric had always allowed himself to be led, it seemed, and when they passed into the lighted hallway, Cyric noticed his own reflection in a nearby mirror. More than ten years had been taken from his face — the crow's feet were gone from around his eyes; his skin seemed more resilient, less hardened by the passage of time and the hardships he had endured.
'You're probably wondering why we're here,' Marek said to the grotesquely fat cook who stood near a curtain at the other end of the kitchen.
'No, not al all,' the fat man said, a broad smile holding up his blubbery cheeks. He pointed to the curtain and said, 'She's right in here.'
Marek grabbed Cyric by the arm and led him to the curtain. 'Look,' Marek said and drew open the curtains very slightly. 'There's our next victim, and your ride to freedom, Cyric.'
Cyric looked out. Only a few tables in the taproom were visible from his vantage, and only one of those was occupied. A handsome middle-aged woman, dressed in fine silks and carrying a purse filled to overflowing sat at the table, sipping a bowl of soup that had just been brought to her by an attractive serving girl. She stopped the girl.
'This soup is not piping hot!' the woman shrieked in a voice that made Cyric's teeth hurt. 'I asked that my soup be piping hot, not merely warm!'
'But ma'am — '
The woman grasped the serving girl's hand. 'See for yourself!' the woman cried, and thrust the girl's hand into the steaming bowl of soup. The girl bit back a scream, and managed to wrench her hand free without spilling the contents of the bowl upon the middle-aged woman. The flesh of the girl's hand was bright red. The soup had been scalding.
'If you cannot meet my needs, I will have to take my business elsewhere!' the woman said. She rolled her
