survive to claim what you seek.'
'I have no fondness for these games of yours,' said Galaeron. 'If you would have something from us, then you must tell us what we need-' Melegaunt stepped in front of Galaeron. 'We have already agreed to your price, Sir Knight. If you wish to tell us what it is, we are listening.'
'1 ask little,' said Jhingleshod. 'Only your word that you will do what already you must.' 'Yes?' asked Melegaunt. 'Destroy Wulgreth, my master, as I once attempted.'
'As you once attempted?' Galaeron asked, more wary than before. 'If you betrayed your master, how are we to know you won't betray us?'
'I have no care for what you know or do not know, elf,' said Jhingleshod. 'But I tell you this: I bear no small part of the blame for the evil here, and I am damned to wander the Dire Wood until what I should have done then is done at last'
'How is Wulgreth's crime your doing?' asked Melegaunt. 'I sense no great evil in you.'
'But I relished the bounty of his shadow,' said Jhingleshod, 'and so I stood by. After Wulgreth summoned the demons to Ascalhorn, for six decades I watched their evil and did not raise my voice against them. When the demons turned on him at last, 1 followed Wulgreth into the wilderness and sat in his shadow feasting on stolen bread and drinking the wine of murdered wayfarers. And after he came here to Karse, I was waiting outside the black crypt when he returned with its dark power.' Jhingleshod let his chin fall.
'And yet, you found the strength to slay him,' prompted Melegaunt.
'It was despair, nothing more,' said Jhingleshod. 'The power was twisted and evil, and it corrupted all it touched. First, the forest died and turned to black stone, then the ruins became a city of the dead. When I begged Wulgreth to send the monsters away and build a city for the living, he struck me blows, saving he would never be avenged on the demons with a living army. Seeing that my dream was not to be, 1 felt betrayed and vowed he would never again bring ruin to any city. I killed him in his sleep that night.' 'Which proved unwise,' surmised Melegaunt.
Jhingleshod nodded. 'He caught me as 1 fled the city, a cackling dead thing of heinous power. He chased me through the forest, using his magic to flay me an inch at time, until I ran myself to death. I awoke as I am now, condemned to wander the Dire Wood until the vow 1 made is kept.' He turned to Galaeron. 'And that is why I won't betray you.'
'And if we fail you as Wulgreth did?' asked Galaeron. 'Will you turn against us, too?'
Before Jhingleshod could answer, Melegaunt said, 'What you say can't be right Wulgreth was a Netherese arcanist, killed much earlier when a magical experiment went awry and Karsus had to push an orb of heavy magic off his enclave.'
'Heavy magic?' Galaeron asked. He knew 'enclaves' to be the legendary floating cities of ancient Netheril, and Karsus was the deranged archwizard who had caused the empire's fall by trying to steal Mystryl's godhead, but Galaeron had never heard of 'heavy magic.'
'A powerful sort of magic discovered by Karsus-and nothing 1 want you playing with until you bring that shadow under control.' Melegaunt fixed Galaeron with a disapproving eye. 'It's appallingly dangerous, a force- made-tangible that Netherese archwizards once used to heighten their other magic.'
'Once used?' asked Malik. 'Then you do not have any of this 'heavy magic'?'
Melegaunt glowered at the little man. 'No. It vanished with the Netherese.' He turned back to Jhingleshod. 'But it was Karsus's heavy magic that turned Wulgreth into a lich, not your attack.'
'Netheril fell a thousand years before 1 lived,' said Jhingleshod. 'And Wulgreth was much alive when 1 served him. One does not turn from a lich into a man and back to a lich again.'
'There is no record of such a thing in the Tomb Guard chronicles,' said Galaeron. Recalling Malik's cryptic comment about what Melegaunt had told Jhingleshod before crossing the bridge, he studied the wizard with narrowed eyes. 'The Tomb Guard would have a record.' Melegaunt's eyes grew stormy 'You accuse me of lying?' 'I ask for an explanation.' 'You-or your shadow?' Melegaunt countered.
'I have my shadow in hand,' said Galaeron. 'It has not troubled me since the sunken bridge.'
'Why should it?' Melegaunt turned back to Jhingleshod. '1 am not mistaken about my dates. Wulgreth never forgave Karsus for the accident, and there are records of him plaguing Netherese enclaves for decades afterward. It's the reason Wulgreth haunts the Dire Wood at all.'
'Wulgreth haunts this wood because I killed him here,' Jhingleshod insisted. 'The Dire Wood did not exist before that.'
'But Karse did,' countered Melegaunt 'The city was founded over sixteen centuries ago, a little after Karsus brought Netheril down. A refugee group was drawn to his corpse by dream visions and began to worship his dead body-and that really angered Wulgreth. He destroyed the entire city and moved into the ruins so it would never be rebuilt.'
Jhingleshod fixed his dead eyes on the sorcerer. 'I know nothing about heavy magic and worshiping dead bodies. I killed Wulgreth, and he became a lich.'
'If I may, the answer is plain enough,' said Malik. 'In a thousand years, there were certainly many wizards named Wulgreth. Does it seem so unlikely that two ended up here?'
Melegaunt raised his brow, then nodded thoughtfully, but Jhingleshod did not seem to hear the suggestion. In fact, Galaeron realized, though Jhingleshod's gaze was fixed on the same point as Melegaunt's-Malik's face-the knight's eyes were focused on the ground behind the little man, and the slight tilt of his helmet suggested he might be wondering what the wizard was looking at. 'I think we can trust Jhingleshod's account of events.' Galaeron chose his words carefully. 'But we'd better be off before Takari and Vala get too far ahead of us.'
Jhingleshod's dead gaze shifted to Galaeron. 'Then you give your word?'
Galaeron nodded. 'I will destroy Wulgreth, if we can find him.' 'He will find you,' said Jhingleshod.
The ghoulish knight walked across Aris's sculpture, leaving the river stained with rusty footprints, into the trees. The forest here was dark, tangled, and dead-much the same as the bog, save that it stood on dry ground and did not drain their strength. The group soon caught up to Takari and Vala, and Jhingleshod took the lead, clinking and squeaking his way deeper into the tangled wood.
Huge webs of yellow-green filaments began to appear in the branches. Galaeron kept watch for ball-shaped silhouettes and sticklike legs. Instead of spiders, he started to see slender leaves and moldy pods clinging to the tendrils. As they climbed away from the river, the vines grew longer and the vegetation thicker, until it became difficult to see more than a few paces. It was impossible to walk without brushing against the vines, and soon after their hands and faces erupted into white boils. Aris used his prayer magic to powder a stone and create an ointment that reduced the sores to an itchy rash, though Malik refused the salve out of fear of offending his god. To the amazement of all, he continued at as strong a pace as anyone, even when the blisters began weeping and he had to cut his eyelids to keep them from swelling shut.
The vines began to grow in broken squares and straight meshwork, taking the shape of the ruins beneath. Jhingleshod walked more quietly and carefully now, prompting Galaeron to send Takari ahead to scout and take a position beside Vala. Malik and Melegaunt remained in the center, with Aris in the rear. As they advanced deeper into the city, the patterns grew more regular and even, arranging themselves into crooked streets and sunlit meadows that had once been plazas.
Vala kept her hand on her sword, her eyes following Takari's stealthy figure with remarkable ease for a human. After a time, she said to Galaeron, 'You shouldn't have said that to Takari. She's only trying to protect you-and me.' 'That's not what it sounded like to me.'
'Maybe not,' said Vala. 'But then, you didn't hear what she told Jhingleshod about why she wanted to cross the bridge.'
'Whatever she said, it is not her place to protect me from our relationship.' Galaeron glanced over at Vala. 'Not that there is a relationship.'
'No?' Vala glanced at him sidelong, her mouth cocked in a crooked smile. 'Then why should you care what she says about it?'
'I prefer to make those choices myself,' said Galaeron. 'As I'm sure you do.'
'We have a saying in Vaasa,' she said. 'In love and death, only the gods choose.' 'It sounds a handy excuse,' said Galaeron.
Vala gave him a roguish smile. 'One that makes life interesting.' She watched Takari poking her sword into a tangled mass of vine, then asked Galaeron, 'When you told Jhingleshod you were seeking pardon for your
