was visible beyond the rim of the opening. Tol drew his saber and climbed slowly, keeping the torch low.
The red glow was strange. It quivered like a reflection on a pool of water. A gust of air rushed by Tol’s face and, wary, he halted halfway up the steep stair.
An oozing mass of gel came out of the darkness at the top of the stair. Translucent and thick like the white of an egg, the quaking mass poured down the steps straight at him.
He dropped the torch and fled, wounded shoulder and battered ribs screaming with every hasty footfall. A faint hissing told him the wall of gel was close on his heels. He had no idea whether it was poisonous or if Mandes simply intended to drown him in a gelatinous flood.
Two steps from the bottom, Tol hurled himself into space, landing on the only statue still standing. The heavy statue rocked with the force of the impact but remained upright. Tol wrapped his arms around the headless figure. Clear gelatin, as cold as the deep sea, surged around the pedestal. The level rose higher and higher, but there was no place for Tol to go. He could only watch as waves of cloudy albumen flowed beneath him.
Fortunately, the magical flood never rose above his knees, and soon the flow down the stairs ceased, and the frigid gel vanished entirely. Neither Tol’s clothing nor the stones of the passageway around him showed any signs of dampness. It was as though the stuff had never existed at all.
Tol climbed down gingerly. He took another torch from a sconce and mounted the stairs again. This time the distant red light did not quiver; no murderous gel stood between it and him. He ascended cautiously.
The air in the chamber above was dank and chill. With his torch, he lit sconces along the near wall. Their light revealed a vast, low-ceilinged hall. In contrast to the cluttered rooms below, it was empty. The floor was covered in native slate, and an elaborate design of circles and lines had been drawn in dark red paint on the bluish-gray stone. The red light emanated from the design. In its center, facing away from Tol, sat a high-backed chair. The top of a balding pate was visible over the chair’s back.
Tol strode around the chair, eager to face his old foe, but with every step he took, the chair moved, always keeping its back to him. He picked up the pace until he was almost jogging, but he made no better headway. Halting abruptly, he realized it wasn’t the chair that moved, but rather the design on the floor-the circles within circles were rotating the chair away from him.
Furious at the childish delaying ploy, Tol drove the point of his saber into a joint between two stone slabs. The floor shuddered briefly then was still.
He took a tentative step, then another. The floor did not move. He left Number Six where it was, anchoring the room, then, moving quickly around the high chair, he came face to face with Mandes.
The sorcerer sat stiffly upright in the high-backed chair. His eyes were closed. He wore a cloth-of-gold robe much like the one Tol had seen him in at the contest on the Field of Corij. His hair, now more gray than brown, hung loose past his shoulders. His ungloved hands rested on the chair’s curving arms-the right hand was pale, the left dark.
Tol drew his dagger.
“In the name of the Emperor of Ergoth, I charge you, Mandes the Mist-Maker! Surrender at once and face the empire’s justice!”
There was no response at all. Tol moved closer. Mandes’s eyelids snapped open. In the reddish light, his pale blue eyes looked black.
“You’re a fool, Tolandruth,” he intoned. “You came despite my warnings. Even if you don’t care for your friends’ lives, I thought you did care about the empire you claim to serve!”
“I know my duty!”
Tol moved closer still, traversing the invisible protection Mandes had woven around himself. Time and again he felt the flicker of heat on his face, but the nullstone dispelled the magic as he pierced one sorcerous layer after another.
This easy, even contemptuous disregard of his spells left Mandes open-mouthed with shock. He began to tremble. Close to him now, Tol saw the whites of his eyes were completely covered with a web of fine, bloody lines. Tiny droplets of moisture gleamed on his high forehead, pinkish blood-sweat.
“This is impossible!” Mandes’s voice cracked. “What are you? No man could do what you do!”
“I’m only a man, not even nobly born, remember?” Tol pointed his dagger at the sorcerer. “Stand up, Mandes, and face what’s due you!”
When he didn’t comply, Tol raised the blade high to strike. Mandes flung out his white hand, crying, “Wait! If I am to die, at least tell me how you can withstand every spell I cast, every supernatural creature I raise to stop you?”
Tol smiled. It was not an expression of happiness, but of savage pleasure, and Mandes flinched visibly.
“I have a millstone.”
Mandes blinked, brow furrowing at the unfamiliar word. He palmed pink sweat from his face with a trembling hand.
“I’ve heard rumors… tall tales,” Mandes finally said. “Waramanthus, the elf sage, tried his entire life to fashion such a thing and failed! The great Vedvedsica wrote of such devices, but he said none had survived the Age of Dreams.”
Tol’s level gaze transfixed the shaken sorcerer. “He was wrong.”
Mandes’s chin dropped to his chest. Twisting his mismatched hands in his lap, he began to sob.
Before Tol could react, the sorcerer yanked his swarthy hand hard. The dark limb came out of its sleeve. As it rose in the air, Mandes snatched a saber from beside his chair and tossed it toward the disembodied limb. The dark hand caught the weapon deftly, fingers closing tightly on the hilt.
The muscular arm drove Tol back with viciously precise thrusts, and while he was engaged, Mandes escaped.
The levitating limb was far nimbler than any opponent Tol had ever fought, and its saber far outreached Tol’s dagger. He could do nothing but parry again and again. A precisely timed slash laid open Tol’s cheek, and the next came within a hair’s breadth of his eyes.
It required all Tol’s training and wit to hold his own. The ensorcelled arm was lightning-fast.
He had a desperate idea, and worked feverishly to retrieve the nullstone from its secret pocket while holding the arm at bay.
The limb beat him back all the way across the vast hall, to the very door through which Mandes had escaped. Tol’s ribs ached. Blood from his cheek was smeared across his face, mixing with sweat, stinging his eyes-
The arm made a simple but shockingly fast lunge at the spot between Tol’s eyes. Tol dropped, and the curved iron blade slid through his hair. The sword tip pierced the door panel behind and hung up there, just for a instant.
That was all the time Tol needed. From below, he rammed his dagger through the palm of the flying limb. There was a momentary tug of resistance, then the point passed through. He had the hand!
He continued the motion, driving his dagger into the door panel. The hand dropped its sword, and the arm hung, impaled, flailing, fingers flexing madly.
The severed limb did not bleed. To Tol’s horror, the fingers ceased their furious motion and closed on the blade. The hand drew itself forward, forcing more of the iron shaft through the flesh of its palm.
Keeping pressure on the hilt, Tol touched the millstone to the dagger blade. There was no effect on the writhing hand, but when he pressed the braided metal directly on the brown fingers, the grotesque parody of life was finally over; the limb went limp.
Instantly, the stench of putrefaction filled Tol’s nostrils. He freed his blade and stepped quickly back. The years of lifelessness, held at bay by Mandes’s magic, overwhelmed the limb, and it began to decay before Tol’s eyes. In moments it was little more than bones and stray bits of rotted flesh.
He flung open the door to follow the sorcerer.
Although Mandes had fled the hall, he couldn’t easily escape this isolated peak. The corridor beyond the door was dark, but Tol felt a faint breeze on his face. The air wasn’t musty or dank, but fresh, with the tang of the mountain in it. He followed the draft.
It led him to another spiral stair, narrower but longer than the one he’d climbed earlier. He ascended cautiously. The breeze grew steadily stronger as he rose.
The stair ended on a tiny landing where a plain wooden door barred his way. Fresh air blew in through a gap between the bottom of the door and the stone floor.
