The Ghoul

When the six of us departed Castellandria, we did not know we were stepping into someone else's story. Two someones, in point of fact. There was the one we knew: Black Mira Sauret. The former companion of Ulrika and Mallathar from their years in the Swiftblades, I had joined them for the exploration of a single barrow in my youth. In the annals of the Swiftblades, it was not worth mentioning, but for me, it was everything.

That barrow had been my first taste of adventuring, done while I was still a mere apprentice from an unremarkable stretch of rocky coastline in western Chassudor. The night after we returned, Mira had come to me in my bedchambers, and ushered me into the pleasures of loveplay. She had schooled me in the knight's kiss and taught how I might utilize my gifts to please my partners. Her instruction was far from exhaustive, but it was the fertile soil from which my carnal life sprang.

I loved Mira as one can only love one's first. It was not precisely romantic, for I never harbored fantasies of taking her into my household and making of her a concubine. It was more that she had lit a flame inside me that could never be quenched. It was a glowing sort of gratitude, a place inside me that only she would ever hold.

And she was dead.

She had gone into the Caster Mountains hunting a man, and had vanished. Only one of her companions ever returned. He emerged long after and shortly died, his body incapable of accepting what his mind now knew. Her quarry was Thabban, a ghoul who shepherded evil cults, and was somehow connected to Diotenah the Shadow's Daughter, a powerful necromancer I had slain and whose ring I now wore.

We went forth to finish Mira's quest, and perhaps exact some measure of vengeance. Three of us had known and loved her, and we would not allow such malice to stand.

The authoritative chronicle of this adventure can be found in the early pages of Palireen's The Dance of Shadows, one of the first great histories of the birthing pangs of the Sixth Strata. I had been fluttering at the edges of a flame I could not understand for some time, like a moth wary of setting its wings ablaze.

We christened our party the Night Delvers. Mallathar wanted to call us the Rusted Blades, as a joke about his and Ulrika's age, but Ulrika refused so ill an omen. We set out from Castellandria on foot, traveling from standing stones to standing stones into northern Esmia where the snowcapped Casters waited.

Ulrika Karksdóttir was our leader. A svarl and priestess of Umione, she was in her late middle age and should be retired from this life. She was tall and broad, a handsome woman, her age showing in the deepening lines of her face. Her blond hair was long, worn in a single braid, and generously threaded with silver. She wore a breastplate over mail, her tabard decorated with the sunburst of her deity. She carried a heavy warhammer, and was as fearsome with it as she was with her holy power.

Mallathar was her oldest ally. A bard, he had put on some weight since his prime, but he was still a formidable opponent. He was square-jawed, and wore his hair short, his temples and beard gray. He wore enchanted leather armor, and fought with a rapier and main gauche. His lute, also enchanted, was most often in his hands as he strummed and sang on our journey or even in the heat of combat. I had not thought much of him until the recent siege on Castellandria, when he had proven his worth many times over.

Framzet was our guide. A gnome in the latter parts of his second century, his hair had faded to a strawberry blond and noticeably retreated from his forehead. He wore motley in deep blues, grays, and black. His features were sharp, and often looked young at first glance, but a change in his expression showed the manifold wrinkles. He fought with a crank-operated gnomish crossbow, though his real skill was in a form of gnomish hedge magic, and the shadows were his allies.

My son Threch was our warrior. He wore the mail he had obtained during the siege, and still fought with the orcish sword and axe he'd had in his youth. He had grown his dark hair long, and now it fell about his shoulders in an unruly mane. Once he had been known as Threch the Bastard, but his time on the walls of Castellandria had given him a new name, Threch the Bold, which he wore proudly.

Quiyahui, my familiar, would not have stayed home. She had grown since my return from exile, and could not imagine she would get any bigger. Considering her vastness as I write, this is a silly thought. A feathered serpent from the interior of the Ocaital, she was white, but where the light touched her, the feathers shone with the iridescence of a rainbow. Her eyes were lightning blue, and she most often traveled by slithering through the air as easily as if it were water.

Lastly, I was their wizard. I wore my elven robes, a gift from my paramour Tarasynora. I carried in my hand Ur-Anu, the godslaying spear known as Fate. The shaft was covered in reliefs depicting significant moments of my life, and the most recent addition placed me atop the walls of Castellandria, hurling a storm into a horde of enemies.

Esmia was cold, and as we made our way into the Caster Mountains, the winter turned bitter. When we located an entrance into the caves beneath the range, it was a relief, though the shadowy places were scarcely warmer. Discomfort was part of the life of an adventurer. We all had reasons to go into the dark, though all of us knew the terrifying vastness that awaited us.

It is hard for those who never leave the surface world to understand, but beneath our feet lies an entire world. Whole kingdoms, empires even, rise and fall in the deep places without the surface folk ever knowing. Dwarves, gnomes, ghouls, goblins, and other, stranger races make their homes in these places, and the communities we encounter on the surface are always the barest tip of them.

The dark also reckons its time differently. There are kinds of fungus that only glow when the mysterious subterranean winds kiss them. There are tides in the great underground seas that shift for reasons I cannot guess. There animals that migrate with seasons only they can detect. Do not mistake me for an expert. Though I had delved into the lightless places with the Mythseekers, I had barely scratched the surface.

I believe it was a month or perhaps two when our story met the epic tale unfolding, and the brave young woman in the middle of it.

A tribe of hobgoblins had been preying upon the local towns of dwarves and gnomes, striking out from an old fortress. I recognized their symbol from Zaqhat's cult in Xoc-Nehar, the same cult that had been established by Thabban. We attacked the fortress and my suspicions were confirmed when we reached the keep. The doors opened and a horde of rotkin spilled forth.

The others had never seen these loathsome creatures before, but I had. In distant Uazica, in a lost city taken over by their foulness. My companions initially panicked in the face of the abominations, but I stood my ground. This would not be the first time Ur-Anu had tasted the foul ichor of the rotkin, nor would it be the last. I still had no word for the creatures, but I hated them on an instinctual level.

Each one was more than a head taller than me, and had the bulk of a gladiator, with a body heavily laden with both fat and muscle. Their flesh was wet and glabrous, pale as death with the green undertones of decay. Bristly hairs erupted in irregular patches. Each sported four powerful arms with three fingered hands, tipped with hard black claws. They wore harnesses of leather, but no other armor, as their bulk served admirably to protect them from injuries that would slay another race. They carried two-handed battle axes in their upper arms, and fighting hooks in their lower.

As nauseating as their bodies were, their faces were what truly inspired revulsion. Round and hideous, they had multiple eyes, one pair huge and insect-like, the other three pairs, arranged about the larger, looked almost human. The only other feature on the face was a circular mouth that unfolded into a meaty sphincter ringed with jointed chelicerae.

"By the sun's light!" Ulrika swore.

Mallathar was not nearly so delicate in his curses.

"Fear not! They can die as easily as any!" I cried, springing into battle. My magic forgotten for the moment, I followed the threads of my weapon in an elaborate dance of death. Ur-Anu dismembered the creatures, impaled them, beheaded them. I was once again the savage Blackspear of the Uazican jungle, the boldisar of the Red Wastes.

Ulrika was the first to throw herself into combat, followed by Threch and Framzet, and finally Mallathar. Quiyahui stayed back, and I could hardly blame her. If biting was my primary method of attack, I would not fight these foul creatures either. We cut our way below, and when we found the heart of the keep, its commander, a robed ghoul, lay on the altar with his throat already cut.

"After all that, a dead end," whined Mallathar.

"You did not think they would make it easy," said Ulrika.

At the time, I believed that what followed was thanks to my jungle-honed senses, bolstered by those of my familiar. I thought I had detected a change in the air, a subtle alteration in the subterranean climate I had only just begun to understand. The truth was that she let me detect her.

We were being watched.

My hackles rose and I clutched my spear, hunting for the thread to my attacker. Yet Ur-Anu's threads, writhing like serpents, found no immanent assault. I stood with the others, in a pool of light spilling from the head of Ulrika's enchanted warhammer. Beyond its reach, the darkness loomed deep and sticky.

"Bel?" Ulrika said, watching me with concern.

"Something is here."

"Nonsense," said Mallathar. "You're just jumpy."

"The wizard is right," Framzet said, sniffing the air. The gnome's senses were keener than a blade, and he knew the dark well.

"As I was saying, good show, Bel."

"Show yourself," I ordered the dark.

She stepped from the thickest shadows. She was a ghoul, a young woman, fresh-faced and beautiful in that funeral way of her people. Her skin was smooth and a pale blue-gray, the color of a full moon. She was entirely bald, lacking even eyebrows, and I knew that her hairlessness was complete. Her ears came to sharp points, and her large eyes were pure, oily black orbs. Her teeth were like razors, perfect for stripping rotten meat from bones. Her face, though, had a girlish roundness to it, her nose small and upturned, her mouth generous and warm. She was slender, edging to skinny, a fact displayed by her skintight costume of deep grays. She was absolutely covered in daggers of varying lengths, some almost shortswords, others that could vanish in a palm.

"I am not your enemy," she said in the soft accent of the ghouls. Her people communicated in whispers, swallowing the harder and hissing sounds. Such noises could easily carry to unfriendly ears. She pointed to the dead man. "I am his."

"We wanted to speak to him," Ulrika said.

"He would have told you nothing. The Rising Shadow does not betray its own."

"It is the same," I said. "I heard that name, Rising Shadow, from the lips of a Kharsoomian wizard."

She cocked her head, her black-in-black eyes boring into me. "You are known to me. How are you known to me?"

"I am Belromanazar of Thunderhead."

Her eyes widened. "The wizard? You cannot be!"

"The same. Do we know each other?"

She approached, and Quiyahui reared up from her coils, the feathers about her neck opening in a hood. I held out a hand, stilling my familiar. The ghoul paused, watching the coatl warily. She touched her chest. "We have met once. I am Maireili."

I whispered the name as it danced through my memories.

"Leagues underground and you find a woman," Mallathar said. "I should be learning from you."

"I saw her maybe twenty years ago," I explained, not quite able to believe she was the same individual as the little girl I had known so briefly. "She was a child then. She saved my life."

"You battled the Shadow's Daughter," she said. "You saved my people from her evil. On that day, you gave me strength to fight that war. I have been enemy to the Rising Shadow since I could use a blade. I hunt one acolyte, Thabban the Subtle Fang."

"Thabban, yes. We seek him too."

She broke into a sharp toothed smile. Though many find ghouls to be unnerving, I could not help but be charmed. She had, after all, already saved my life. "Praise Dharai. I seek an enemy and I find you." She knelt before me. "I pledge myself to you, Belromanazar. I will be your blade."

I helped her rise. "Please, Maireili, this is unnecessary. We are comrades in this."

Her cheeks glowed with the blue blush of the ghouls. "I cannot believe my good fortune! To find the brave wizard who defeated Diotenah."

"Please, this is... let me introduce you to my companions."

Maireili was suitably impressed. When she reached Threch, her eyes widened. "Your son! He is handsome. He looks like you."

Now it was Threch's turn to blush. "I don't know about that," he said.

"Did I say the word wrong? I learn Eomet to talk to surface dwellers. I mean pretty, but for a man."

"Handsome is the right word," I said, beaming at my son.

"Maireili," Ulrika said. "You described Thabban as an acolyte. An acolyte to whom?"

"The Rising Shadow worships Ughor, known as the Shadow, the Unholy, the Devourer, the End of All Things. Thabban follows..." she trailed off, and said something in the ghoulish tongue, frowning. Then, in cautious Eomet, said, "The Sovereign of Decay? No, that is wrong. The King of Maggots."

"What is that?" Framzet asked.

"He is one face of Ughor the Devourer. Thabban is a..." another pause as she searched. "A heretic? Even for the Rising Shadow. The chaldum serve him as the children of the King of Maggots."

"Chaldum?" Ulrika asked.

She pointed to the corpses of the grub creatures. "These beasts. From the deep. The word is... brother of decay?"

"Rotkin?" I managed.

She nodded. "Yes, rotkin. They are footsoldiers? Yes, they serve the Shadow in his form as the Devourer. The closer we draw to Thabban, the more of them we will find."

Ulrika looked at us, seeing assent for the unspoken question her eyes asked. "Maireili, we would like to offer you a place in the Night Delvers. That means a share of all treasure, a vote in our decisions, and whatever protection and aid we can provide."

"I need no treasure," she said, "but I will go where Belromanazar goes. He is a Night Delver, then I am a Night Delver."

Ulrika smirked. "Good enough. Welcome to the Night Delvers, Maireili."

Framzet was an able guide when it came to surviving underground, but Maireili could put us on the trail of our quarry. She had been on this quest since she had saved my life, and she had turned herself into a terrifying adversary for the Rising Shadow. In the dark, she was nearly invisible, her breathing and heartbeat almost completely silent. She was a master of her blades, distributing death as though it were flowers. After a battle, she would go from body to body, collecting each and every one of her spent blades, cleaning it and resheathing it. She was fastidious with her weapons, with an intuitive knowledge of where each was.

I caught Threch looking at Maireili from time to time. I couldn't blame him. She was a comely lass. Many humans find ghouls frightening, but I enjoy their strange beauty. I still thought of her as that little girl, and was content, even pleased, that it appeared my son would woo such a magnificent woman.

We had found a dwarven village on the banks of an underground stream, our first civilization in many days. They welcomed us as dwarves do, and we found their inn, a stone structure overlooking a fast-moving section of the stream. A roaring fire lit the interior of the common room, while outside a few firestones shined their sullen light upon an expansive balcony. I ate my fill of dwarven food, and with a mug of their beer, I went outside to find my son leaning on the railing, looking out over the stream. I stepped up next to him.

"This is adventuring," he said.

"Not as you expected?"

He shrugged. "Orcs, we look at it as something humans do. Making trouble for oneself. I mocked it too, but I always thought it would be nice, going far away."

"A lot of it means you are either too cold or too hot." I chuckled to myself. "I can't imagine this is what your mother wanted for you when she sent you with me."

"She wanted me to make my way in the world. This is one way. I think she would find it funny."

"I wish I knew her better."

"You know her well enough."

I looked back into the tavern. "Maireili."

He colored. "What of her?"

"She's a fine woman."

"I don't need your blessing."

"No, you don't. I'm pleased that you've chosen well. You had not brought anyone home, and you are of course welcome to have paramours."

"Oh. Yes. Well," he muttered.

"What?"

"Ku-Aya," he blurted.

"What about... You've been laying with her?"

"She wanted to! She has been teaching me. How. You know."

"You'll not find a better teacher."

"You've..." he trailed off and shuddered. "Of course you've had her."

"It was but once, and it was a Kharsoomian wedding tradition. They call it the Gauntlet of Silk. The groom must please the bride's three handmaids--"

"Father!" he barked. Just stop."

I fell silent. Then, quietly, "Father."

"It made you stop."

"That it did." I paused. "I have not lain with Maireili."

"Good."

I left my boy to his musings, and returned to the inn where Ulrika, Framzet, and Maireili ate at one table. At another, Mallathar spoke with a trio of comely dwarven women.

"Bel!" he called, beckoning me over.

"I am going to get some sleep," I called back. Quiyahui was already in our room. Her slumber bled into me and the prospect of rest was my highest hope. Unfortunately, she could not see the moon, and this was long before she learned to control her transformations, so we had no other way to entertain ourselves. She remained a serpent for our entire sojourn underground.

Mallathar got up, coming to my side and throwing an arm around my neck. "Bel, these ladies here," he waved to them, and they waved back, batting their eyes, "are eager to try a man from the surface. I think I can bed two of them, but three tests my skills. Pick one, and she is yours. I'll take the other two."

I considered it before shaking my head. "No, Mallathar, I'm tired."

"Have you ever bedded a dwarf? Endurance, Bel! She'll have you going for days!"

"Further cementing my desire to sleep. Try Framzet or Ulrika. Or Threch for that matter."

"Threch! Yes, strapping lad he is, he'll not let me down." Mallathar clapped me on the arm, held up a finger for the ladies and scurried out to fetch my son.

I laughed to myself, going upstairs to my room. Quiyahui roused herself when I entered only long enough to uncoil and recoil. The light was dim, the firestones nearly dark. I undressed, climbing onto the hard dwarven bed and pulled the blanket over me.

"Belromanazar?" I will admit, I have always loved the way my name sounds in a ghoulish accent. I sat up in time to see Maireili melt from the shadows.

"Maireili, how did you get in this room before me?"

"I moved faster."

I chuckled. "Very well. Why are you here?"

"To talk to you. I think of you for many years and you are here."

I gestured to the foot of the bed and she sat. I was acutely aware of the fact that I was nude beneath the single blanket. I wondered how long she had been there. Had she watched me? I found I didn't mind the attention. She was lovely, after all. I reminded myself that my son had eyes for her, but that didn't matter when she chose to be with me, and I could smell her soft scent.

"You saved my life. I'm pleased to speak to you whenever you like."

She smiled shyly, a strange expression on one whose teeth can so readily flense flesh. "I thought I remembered you well."

"What do you mean?"

"I remember you carried a staff, had a small creature. You are bigger now. You carry a spear, have a serpent."

"A lot has changed since last you saw me."

"Yes." She stared at her hands. Maireili has such elegant hands, the hands of a musician or a sculptress. In the fullness of time, she would be both. At that moment, she was but a killer. "You give me hope. When Diotenah took our home, I thought we were lost forever, but then you came and you slew her. I follow in your footsteps. Sometimes I would imagine I talked to you, that you gave me words of encouragement. Now you are here. It is like a dream."

"Maireili, I have been wandering aimlessly. I stumbled upon Diotenah, and then echoes of Thabban when I was in far Kharsoom. I have been lost. You are the one who understands. You are the one who saw their trail. You are the hunter. In this, I am your servant."

"Oh no," she said, shaking her head emphatically. "You are the great wizard. I am nothing. A girl."

"Never think you are less than me," I said sternly, and a yawn forced its way from me. "Forgive me, Maireili, I was ready to sleep when you arrived."

"I will leave you," she said, standing.

"Threch was hoping to talk to you," I said, settling down in bed.

"He was speaking with a dwarf," she said with finality. "Good night, Belromanazar."

"Good night, Maireili."

I fell into sleep swiftly. A scent lingered in the room, twining into my senses. It was the aroma of fallen leaves that escorted me gently into my dreams.

Maireili guided us to the fortress of Stugzon, one of Thabban's lieutenants and a necromancer of Diotenah's ilk. She had been unable to attack it alone, but with us she believed we could slay Stugzon and rob Thabban of an important ally.

Palireen describes the raid upon Stugzon's citadel ably, though she spares only half a page on it. She gets no pertinent details wrong. Maireili penetrated the defenses first, and stole among the warlord's guard like the avatar of death itself. They were far too concerned with my assault at his gates. That day I made not stormwights but stormghasts. The ghouls, undergoing that strange metamorphosis after death, were admirable talons for the Dreadstorm.

While the air swirled with rumbling clouds and we strode through the front gates, I remember reflecting that this was likely the first true rain these people had ever experienced. Stugzon waited with his personal bodyguard, hurling creatures made of animate shadow at us. This is where Palireen fails. She claims it was Maireili who knew how to defeat these. It was Framzet, whose own power was the perfect countermeasure. I suppose it doesn't matter because it was Maireili who slew Stugzon, slipping a dagger into his spine while he battled Framzet and me.

Exhausted, we decided the fortress would be the safest place to rest. I found my way into the larder, the old instincts from surviving Kharsoom unwilling to let me rest without scrounging for supplies. I should have realized what I was in for. I knew the ghoul people only casually then. Now, a ghoulish bride by my side, I know far more. But I knew enough to know what they preferred to eat. Ghouls, as I believe nearly any who read this will know, do not cook their food. They season, they pickle, they occasionally jelly, but they do not cook.

The larder was a chamber carved out of the living rock, and carcasses of underground fauna, butchered and ripe, hung from racks affixed to the ceiling. Piles of unidentifiable offal cultivated mushrooms that glowed every color of the rainbow. Barrels leaking foul smells were stacked high. I retreated in the face of the miasma.

"You do not like it?"

I jumped. Maireili was silent, and if one wasn't alert, she was utterly invisible. "No. The ghoulish palate is... different than mine."

"It is why the skyfolk find us disgusting."

Skyfolk?"

"Those who live beneath the sky." She looked up superstitiously and shuddered.

"Have you ever seen the sky?"

"Once. It was empty and terrible." She stared at me. "What?"

"Forgive me, I never thought of the sky that way."

She looked away, a soft blue creeping into her cheeks.

"I do not find you disgusting," I said, falling back to the other line of our conversation.

"You are not most skyfolk. You are a friend to my people."

"I helped you once."

"You are helping me now."

I could not protest that skyfolk did not find ghouls disgusting. They were, perhaps, the only race more widely despised than darklings. Lurid descriptions of their dietary habits were often behind such hatred. Adventurers were more open minded than most, and more than one ghoul had found their way into a party.

"I was hoping for something I could eat."

"I would like to offer you something, but I know not what skyfolk eat."

"If a dwarf or gnome could eat it, I could eat it." I paused. "Probably."

"Probably?"

"Ulrika should be able to cure me of any poisons."

"You do not prefer seasoned meat?" she asked, pointing to a carcass writhing with maggots.

I shook my head, trying to fight the gorge. "No."

She pointed to the fungus. "What is your word?"

"Mushroom."

"Mushroom," she agreed, tasting the syllables. She plucked one from the mound and brought it to me. The smell was complex, a sting of decay but underneath something meaty and beautiful.

She brought it up, and with only the barest moment of hesitation, put it to my lips. I opened my mouth, and accepted the morsel. I tasted not only it, but the spice of the soil. I'd had aged meat before, and this held a touch of that. The mushroom at first tasted like an aged steak, but beneath it had notes of wine, of berries, of something more complex that I longed to identify.

"This is good."

She smiled, her teeth killing weapons. "It is the lumasz," she said.

I tried the word now. "I like it."

"I will gather them."

"What of those?" I gestured to the barrels.

"No. Those are... I think you would call them maggot slurry?" I retreated from the room, fighting my gorge as it climbed my throat. Maireili followed. "It is quite flavorful. Sometimes it still wriggles."

I looked into the shining black orbs of her eyes, and caught the flicker of mischief. "You're teasing me."

She muffled a giggle with her mouth. It made not a sound. "Forgive me. It is only fermented eel. I do not think you would like it."

I chuckled, shaking my head. "I suppose I had that coming."

"You go upstairs. I will collect the lumasz, maybe some others to taste. You don't want to smell them."

"Thank you."

"Forgive me for the joke?"

"There's nothing to forgive. It was a good joke."

She beamed at me and I went upstairs to find the rest of the party. They had gathered in the keep's common room. "Where is Maireili?" Threch asked, slipping his freshly-oiled blade back into its sheath.

"Down in the larder." Threch got up. "Ask her about the maggot slurry."

My son frowned, unable to tell if I was joking, and left.

"Still trying to play matchmaker?" Ulrika asked.

"She's a fine girl. He's a fine lad."

Mallathar plucked at his lute. "He is not the one she wants."

I sat down, and Quiyahui came to my side, putting her head in my lap. "I suppose she wants a bard?"

Mallathar laughed. "If I were so inclined, I could usher her into a garden of carnal delights."

Ulrika scowled. "Please never use that turn of phrase again."

"But," said the bard, "she only has eyes for you, Bel."

"A youthful infatuation," I said.

"No," Framzet said. "I know the ghoulish people. They are focused. Outsiders would call them single-minded, but it is merely a strength of will."

"You admire them," Ulrika said.

"I believe any who spend significant time with the ghouls will grow to admire them."

"Not these cultists," Mallathar said.

"Well, no. Not them. Judging a ghoul by them would be like judging every orc by the warlords, or every human by the..."

"By the warlords," Mallathar finished.

"Too many warlords in this world," I muttered.

"Keeps us employed." Mallathar plucked out the beginning of a tune.

"A ghoul's love is a powerful thing," Framzet said, fixing me with his gaze.

I dismissed it, thinking that Threch would take her away from me.

We drew ever closer to Thabban. I do not believe we would have found him so swiftly, or even at all, without Maireili. She had spent her life hunting him, even before she knew his name. We were poised for the final stretch of our hunt, ready to confront Thabban in his lair.

We arrived in Ghorn Nunkhan, a small dwarven kingdom, at the edge of the abyss. Beset with threats from deeper within the earth, they were acutely aware of the threat we sought and were pleased to host before we began our final push. Dwarven hospitality is at once an ironclad tradition and deeply staid. It meant we would be treated to feasts, comfortable beds, copious provisions, and as much awkward, drawn-out silence as we could possibly desire. Our first night, they hosted us in one of their great halls. They set an extravagant table, and brought out great barrels of their beers. As we sat at one end, feasting, I knew that this was the final night of comfort before we would face our enemies.

Our hosts were as silent as monks, eating and drinking with us, but making no attempt to commune with us socially. After the complex social rules of Castellandria, I was glad for a place that allowed me to rest in a social setting. After our meal, we had gathered at one end of the hall, not quite ready for the meal to end. For my part, I nursed my beer, thinking of my wives at home. Periodically, I would look over at Maireili and find her eyes upon me. Then she would look away, and that fetching blue would rise to her cheeks.

Mallathar looked over the faces of the dwarves, not a few of which inspected him just as closely. "A whole kingdom of dwarves! Imagine the possibilities."

"You seem to have developed a taste for our shorter brethren," Ulrika observed.

"The endurance, my love! Not inventive, but then, I am inventive enough for both." He threw an arm around Threch's shoulders. "How about it, my lad? You've had one dwarf, yes, but did you know that it is their custom to mate in pairs?"

Threch's cheeks turned green as he glanced guiltily at Maireili. She seemed entirely unaware. "No, it was only the one night."

"Traditional dwarven marriages are sisters. Did you know that? Some more modern dwarves will allow close friends in the place of sisters. I think I need a traditional pair."

"I did not know that."

"Let the lad alone," Framzet scolded.

"His father does not take issue," Mallathar protested.

"My son is a man, and never would listen to me anyway," I said. "If he wants a pair of dwarven lasses, he is free to woo them. If he would rather a woman of more subtle virtue, he can do that as well."

"Then it's settled,' Mallathar said, clapping the young man on the shoulder. "I don't know what I would have done on this adventure without you, Threch. I knew Ulrika was a lost cause for this sort of thing, Framzet does not appear to have such urges at all. I had high hopes for your father, what with him keeping four concubines and still siring you, but there are times he's worse than Ulrika."

I shook my head in amusement. "I always thought I was the goat here."

Mallathar put his fingers on his forehead like horns. "I will always be the goat, my friend. Always."

I laughed as he led my son off to the nearest gathering of dwarves. My son would one day marry a pair of dwarven sisters from a fine family. My grandchildren from this union would prove instrumental in my days as tyrant, but that story was yet to come. They were lovely women, my daughters-in-law, and though they outlived my son by centuries, they spent their time without him in widow's weeds.

I went to the barrels for another mug of thick dwarven porter. As I opened the spigot, I noted Maireili was next to me. I no longer was startled when she simply appeared someplace. I had grown used to her preternatural abilities of stealth. She was no threat to me, and in fact I enjoyed her company. Quiyahui reflected my ease, coiled amongst the chamber's rafters, never even bothering to move.

"Another?" I asked, gesturing to the barrel.

She handed me the stone mug. "I like dwarven beer."

"You're a strange woman."

"I am strange?"

"Your taste in food is... unlike mine. Yet your taste in beverage has much in common."

"I like rotten things. You do not like rotten things, except for this one."

"You know what? You're right." I filled her mug and then mine. I toasted her. "To you being right."

"To friendship."

"How close to Thabban are we?"

"Very. Come."

She took me out of the dwarven hall, glowing with the fires of home. Outside was a balcony overlooking what would be a prairie on the surface, but was a great cave. The grass was a gently waving mat of fungus that reacted to the mysterious winds far below the surface. Light gathered in strange places here, caught as though lost from its source.

Maireili pointed, her graceful finger tipped with its black claw. "Past the Plains of Duhr-Mhorzu, on the leeward coast of the Ebony Sea."

"One of these days you will need to show me a map."

"I will show you. The dark is more expansive than the light."

"You would know better than I." I looked upon her with affection. "I still cannot believe you are the same little girl I met in Gurghann Urad."

Her face was serious. I had seen this expression before, on her face before battle. "I am not a little girl, Belromanazar."

"No, you are not. You've proven yourself a hundred times over."

"Do you see me as I am?"

"You are a woman. A warrior. A friend and companion."

She stepped to me. The scent of her breath touched me, the edge of the beer we had both been drinking. "Do you see me?"

"I see you, Maireili. I don't understand what I am supposed to be seeing."

"I am a ghoul. I know that to you, I am hideous."

"You are the furthest thing from hideous. You are a beautiful young woman."

"Do you truly believe this?"

"Of course I do."

"Thabban is a dangerous enemy. He has made foul pacts with the King of Maggots, and he will use his power against us. We may die."

"I know. I also know that we have all faced powerful enemies before and prevailed."

"We will face him in the seat of his power." She took a deep breath. I realized then she was steeling herself against fear. Fool that I was, I assumed it was for our coming battle. To think she would fear death when rejection was a far more terrifying foe, was too mad a thought to entertain.

"Maireili, what are you not saying?"

She swallowed, blurting the words that had piled up behind her teeth. "I love you. Since the first time we met. I have never loved another. Never wanted another. When I was old enough to think such things, I pledged myself to you. I have... saved myself. For you. If you want me. Belromanazar, I want to be loved before I die. For one night, I want to be as your concubine."

"Maireili, we won't die."

"You cannot promise that. Do you find me ugly?"

"No, as I said, I find you beautiful."

"Then take me. I am yours."

I stared into her black-in-black eyes. Whatever I had wanted for her was immaterial. She had told me what she wanted, and it was upon me to grant it or not. I had not been fair, thinking of her as a little girl. She was a full-fledged companion, a woman grown. And she was so very beautiful. I found my need for her as strong as hers had been for me. She was offering me a great gift. I could be to her what Mira was to me, but I could stay. I could show her what love and warmth she would allow. I took her hand in mine. "Come."

I took her to the chambers that the dwarves had given us without a backward look at our companions. Quiyahui remained coiled in the ceiling, but I felt her approval, and a sense of relief. As though I had finally done something right.

Dwarven chambers were right angles, carved from stone. A firestone heated the room, glowing redly and throwing dim shadows about. So much was shadow, but over the course of the year I had spent below ground, I had grown used to the dark. I stepped to her, and found she was trembling.

"Are you well?"

She nodded. "I have thought of this moment many times. I cannot believe it is happening."

"Do you know what we will do?"

"I have seen books. The Rising Shadow has rites that I have observed."

"Yes, I am familiar with those." I touched her shoulder, my hands moving down her arms, over her tight costume. "I don't know how to get you out of this."

"Oh, it is..." she reached for one buckle swiftly.

I put a hand over hers, leaning in and kissing her lip. "Allow me." Another kiss. "You are mine, are you not?"

She nodded, her trembling increasing. "Since I could make such a vow."

"I would like to see what is mine."

She kissed me then, clumsily. Her passion was undeniable, but she was unskilled. I undid the buckle she showed me and peeled the costume away from her skin. The material was from a waraat, an animal the ghouls used to keep before coming to the surface. A remarkable animal, they now move in great feral herds underground. It had the appearance of leather, but warmed when it was cold and cooled when it was warm. It was soft, feeling like the brush of a breeze over an underground lake.

I eased the panel of material back over her shoulder, revealing her flesh. Her skin was smooth, stark white with undertones of blue. I kissed what I found, wanting to taste every inch of her body. She shivered, tipping her head back. I undid another buckle, exposing her neck. As with most ghouls, she was slender, her neck graceful. I found her pulse, teasing the sensitive flesh with my mouth.

"Do you find me beautiful?" she asked again. She needed to hear it, and it was as though a dam broke inside of me. I had been holding back my attraction, my gratitude, and my love for her. Now I could feel them. I could express them on the canvas of her bliss.

I met her black-in-black eyes, caressing her cheek. "More than you know."

Her mouth attacked mine. Her teeth sliced along my lip, and a flood of copper flowed into our mouths.

"Forgive me!" she gasped.

"Nothing to forgive," I said, kissing her again. When we parted, a smear of my blood decorated her lips. Perhaps this makes me mad, but she had never looked more alluring to me. I had wanted her before, but I needed her then.

I undid a third buckle, and this one opened down over her torso, revealing a single breast. They were tiny, barely swellings, her nipples small. I covered one with my mouth, caressing her pebbled flesh with my tongue. She sighed, holding my head as I suckled. Her trembling had deepened.

Each panel I peeled from her body, more of her scent bloomed. Ghouls smell of decay and deep places, and Maireili is no exception. Perhaps this is love speaking, but to me, she has always smelled of fallen leaves, right as the moisture takes them and begins their transformation into a fertile bed of life. An autumnal scent that signals not merely death, but the gateway of rebirth.

My mouth followed every panel, every revelation of her silvery-blue skin. I wanted to consume her, to know every delicious inch of her body. To give her the experience she had been dreaming of. With each new removal, I only wanted her more. Her slender body, with her taut muscles, her sweet trembling, was a gift that I desperately needed to be worthy of. She was almost as new to me as I was to her, as I had only lain with one ghoul, and that had been a strange sort of combat. This was love.

Her torso was exposed now. I explored around the contours of her abdomen, falling to my knees before her. I would worship her flesh as she had once worshiped her memories of me. Another panel, and her scent boiled from her in a delicious miasma. The shadows pooled about her delicate mound, shy and pouting and waiting for me. The hood of her pearl peeked from its apex, the blue of her innerfolds a hint at the beauty within.

My breath caressed it, and she moaned, pushing it to me, but I refused to take the bait. I continued to undress her, my mouth exploring her thighs, her calves, even her feet. I would take all of her, and I would bring her to an irresistible need before I finally took her. This moment had to rise to the height of dream, to satisfy years of privation. It was a challenge I eagerly accepted.

Maireili was nearly silent in her arousal. Ghouls are a quiet people by nature, and what would be rattling moans and broken whimpers were for my ghoulish paramour barely audible squeaks. I grew to relish these tiny noises, to take them as a badge of honor.

I kissed, licked, and nibbled everywhere. I thought not of Diotenah then, but of Mira, who had first taught me the knight's kiss in that delirious night in my bedchamber at Thunderhead. Though it was virginal Maireili who was a stranger in these lands of bliss, I felt as the one barely learning.

My lips finally met hers. The squeak she made then bordered upon a cry. Her hairless lips parted, and her taste, that wonderful, autumnal flavor, flowed over my tongue. I explored the lacy folds of her sex with the care of one who wanted to know her intimately, who wanted every delicious secret from her orchid. She moved her pearl to me, but I danced away each time, building the delirious need in my sweet paramour.

Ghouls are cooler than humans, scarcely warmer than the air about them. I must have felt like an inferno to her. I wanted my heat to take her to the edge of sensation, to help drive her to the very height of need. I ran a blazing finger of my right hand up her cleft, and she parted, her body greasy with need. I eased it into her, and she gave another squeak and that vanished into a soundless gasp as I lashed her pearl for the first time.

She was little more than a mass of quivering desire then. I wanted to finish her. Her pearl was mine, and a second finger joined the first. Her body bent like a bow, and though she made no sound form her lips, her nectar gushed from her sex as the explosive bliss ripped through her body.

Shivering, she hunched over me, her senses returning with each shuddering breath. I lifted her in my arms easily. She touched my face, staring at me in wonder. I kissed her softly once, and she sucked my lips hard, her kiss more confident now. I lay her on the bed, and swiftly divested myself of my clothing.

She stared at me, the liquid black orbs of her eyes hiding the subtleties of her emotions. I knelt on the bed, kissing her smooth belly once. Her hands came to my cheeks, her claws only brushing my skin. She drew me up. I kissed her lips, spreading her easily.

"Maireili," I whispered as I slid the first of myself into her. She was so tight, her cool body constricting about me. Her head went back, her mouth opening, her sharp teeth bared. Her sex was a velvet vise, her pulse pounding in the place we were joined. Her arms wrapped about my back, the burning points where her claws dug into my flesh a counterpoint to the bliss encircling my staff.

I kissed her neck, caressed her body, let her grow accustomed to me. I knew at that moment this would not be the last time I took her. She was too sweet, too beautiful, to leave behind. My mouth found hers and I eased more of myself into her.

She squeaked again, the claws digging deeper. "Hurts," she managed.

"Do you want me to stop?"

"Please do not. I want to feel you." She repeated this last as a mantra, her soft breath tickling my neck. "I am yours."

"You are a vision, Maireili. You are beauty." She gripped me as I slid deeper into her. Her brow furrowed, her alien eyes shut. Warm lines fell down my back in those delicious points of agony. I took her slowly, each new intrusion sparking fresh waves of pleasure and pain. I craved both from her. I wanted everything.

When I had fully sheathed myself in her, I kissed her face. Her mouth hung open. Her eyes had been squeezed closed, but she was relaxing, the furrows in her brow going from discomfort to pleasure. Her body was covered in cold sweat, trembling helplessly. I let her feel me. Her orchid moved against me, gripping, retreating, trying to accustom itself to the intrusion. The movement radiated from her sex. Then it was her hips beginning to work, then her torso. She wanted to take me. So I would give.

I began with rocking, touching the back of her, retreating, again and again. Kissing, murmuring her name, nibbling at her neck. Her ardor only grew, her legs that had merely been spread were now raised up. I hooked my arms beneath her thighs and drove myself deeper.

"More," she said.

"Would you like to try another position?" She hesitated, her black-in-black eyes probing mine. Then she nodded shyly.

I pulled from her, and she grimaced in a momentary ache. I gently turned her over, pulling her onto all fours. I slid into her easily and pushed a squeak from her as I found a new depth. She had no hair to pull, merely a slender body that looked like moonlight made flesh. Her buttocks, small and well-muscled, was spread, and I noted the dark blue ring staring back at me. Later, I assured myself.

This position gave me what I wanted, and she seemed to appreciate it. She was already quaking in bliss once again. I was alive with sensation, my body on fire against the coolness of her flesh. My thrusts grew quicker, and I buried myself into her with each one. The bliss tore its way from me. A single spurt flooded her before I could react, and frantically, I pulled from her body, the rest of my seed spilling over her back in molten pearl. The sight of her flesh decorated with me was beautiful in its tawdry way, and it only reinforced the love I felt for her.

We fell to the bed, and I turned us on our sides, holding her about her waist. She shivered as I held her closely.

"Was that as you dreamed?" I murmured into her ear.

"Better," she said. "Why did you not spend in me?"

"I don't have night tea. You would not want to fall pregnant."

"A ghoul conceives when she wishes," she said seriously. "You did not know this?"

"I have not known many ghouls."

She turned her head to look into my eyes. "I want more."

"If you give me a moment. There are more positions."

"No," she said. "I am sore just now. I want..." She trailed off, turning about and kissing my lips. Gently, she kissed her way down me, finding my staff beginning to rouse itself for another session. I was slick with the both of us. She gave me a lick. "The taste is.. not like what I know."

"You will grow used to it."

"I like it," she said.

"Would you like to learn to give me the knight's kiss?"

"I want you to spill in my mouth," she said with great solemnity.

"We should begin your instruction then."

She finished me with her mouth that night, though it took painstaking effort on her part. She had to be taught, as Mira once taught me. Maireili took her instruction seriously, and when I finally flooded her mouth with my seed, she swallowed eagerly, a triumphant look upon her sweet face.

"I hurt you," Maireili said. It was morning, though I wondered how such words had meaning in a place without the sun. She gestured at the blood on the sheets where my bleeding back had rested.

"It was a price I was happy to pay."

She was still nude, and her slender body, by the light of the room, I was once again inflamed with desire. Her claw traced one of the bloodstains on the blanket. "Mallathar said you have concubines at home."

"Wives, concubines, yes."

"Do they miss you?"

"I hope so. I miss them."

"Thank you for giving me last night."

I took her hands. "Maireili, it is I who should thank you."

"You were skilled. I was not."

"Your skills will grow. I'm eager to help you practice."

Blue rose to her cheeks. "You would have me again?"

"I will have you as many times as you let me. I'm thinking of having you right now."

She grinned shyly. "I would like that."

I took her once again, gently, and this time when I spilled it was deep inside of her.

We rejoined the others later, and Mallathar laughed when he saw us walking together with the closeness of two who have just consummated. "She's been staring at you long enough. Glad you finally had mercy on the poor girl."

Maireili blushed furiously. I glanced at Threch, who was studiously looking anywhere but at the two of us. "I'll thank you not to mention it."

"No matter. I have another tale to tell. Of a noble bard and the bliss he brought a pair of dwarves, who while not sisters, could be mistaken for such."

"We don't need another story of your conquests," sighed Ulrika.

"We don't need it, no. But I want to raise spirits."

We ate and the dwarves sent us on our way with fresh provisions, dried aurochbug and that impossibly hard bread of theirs. We were on the road through the Plains of Duhr-Mhorzu when I fell into step beside my son.

"Threch. I wanted to explain."

"There is nothing to explain. She wanted you."

"I know you had feelings for her."

"A foolish infatuation."

"Still, I did not intend for it to happen."

He gave me a grin. "If you saw the two ladies I passed the night with, you would not feel guilt."

I laughed. "Well then."

We were silent for a time.

"Threch? I am glad you're here. I don't know that I have the right to be proud of you, but I am. You're a brave lad. A true companion."

"Please tell me what I need to say that you will not say that again." Though his words were harsh, I could see the pride upon his face. Yes, Threch was a good lad, and I had very little to do with how he came to be that way. He would be a fine husband and father in the fullness of time. I let him walk with my approval upon his shoulders and spoke no more about it that day.

We crossed the plains and hugged the leeward coast of the Ebony Sea. The expanse of black water, extending far beyond the meager light of Ulrika's warhammer, felt infinite. Maireili cautioned us of the creatures that lived within.

We found Thabban's citadel, the Pit of Khazal, not long after. Palireen ably describes the following battle and I'll not repeat her words unnecessarily. This is, after all, no history of battle. It is one of love and lust. We fought our way through Thabban's hordes of cultists, widowspawn, rotkin, and ghasts. Diotenah's ring whispered her pleasure whenever I struck down the cultists with my magic and raised them as stormghasts. The ring did not understand that I battled the Rising Shadow. It cared only that I used its power.

After long hours, we battled our way into Thabban's sanctum, where he had gathered his magics. Ulrika struck the door with her glowing hammer, shattering not only the doors themselves but the enchantments that bolstered them. We strode into the great chamber beyond. Ranks of rotkin stood between us and Thabban. The ghoul stood atop a great dais, where beyond he communed with a fell power whose evil infected the very air. I knew then that I beheld my true enemy. This was the King of Maggots.

I had been in the presence of a god before, and of others who, if not precisely gods, were kith and kin to the divine. Their very presence warped reality around them the way sufficient heat can melt metal and stone. While the changes wrought by Errishti were wondrous, where the King of Maggot's shadow fell, there was only the sharp sting of decay. The great, looming power of him robbed the world of life and goodness. It was power and will shaped to a malign end. The King was nightfall with evil purpose.

I do not believe a mortal mind can hold a being like the King. I had the sense of him as a great shadow behind Thabban, the sense of a foul writhing, and of hunger that could never truly be sated. Worse, I had the sense that I was not looking upon the face of this colossal thing, but the barest edge of it, like a finger poked below the surface of a puddle. I was the terrified minnow beneath unable to imagine the great creature beyond the questing digit.

This was not the day that I fought the King. That would not come for centuries, when my power had grown. Had he stepped through then, he would have slain me where I stood. Yet gods are bound by the strangest of things. These laws keep them from striding roughshod over the lesser worlds, and for that I should be pleased.

The seven of us, at the entrance to the chamber, were held fast by the sublime terror of the god in front of us. Tendrils of evil power flowed from the shadow into Thabban. I knew that enchantment, for I had once used its light cousin when the priestess Izhapoma no Tlaoc filled me with the power of the goddess Atauchi.

Thabban, his body filled with the fell power of his malign deity, looked down upon us. His black-in-black eyes found Maireili. "Darklight," he boomed. "You bring skyfolk here to this sacred place?"

"Thabban! You will die for what you've done to my tribe and so many others!" she whispered, the words carrying through the room.

"My master will strip the meat from your bones," he said.

The shadow looming over Thabban was no longer a deity but a portal, if indeed there was a difference between them. The shape did not move or change, but rather what I perceived as an undifferentiated writhing mass was in fact a tunnel spanning between worlds. A hideous chanting rose from its maw, chanting that reverberated around the room in an evil thunder. I knew the word repeated endlessly. I had heard it before.

Mh'rohgg.

The loathsome leviathan writhed its awful way down the unholy birth canal to spill into my world. I had battled him before, in a lost city at the edges of the endless jungle of the Axoxcan. Whatever doubts I might have nursed, that this evil at the edges of my life might not be connected, were erased.

The demigod, for that was what Mh'rohgg could properly be called, was a colossal grublike creature, its maw ringed with writhing tentacles and gnashing teeth without number. Its misshapen head was covered in eyes, some like an insect, but some nearly human, filled with the howling madness of despair. The blasphemous behemoth writhed about, as though gripped by a mania of its own.

I whispered its name, a confirmation of its identity, and a vow that I would destroy it. I did not have the power of Atauchi within me, but I was stronger than before. I had Ur-Anu, a weapon made to kill gods. I had Quiyahui, I had my magic. I had Maireili, Threch, Ulrika, Framzet. I even had Mallathar. Mh'rohgg would taste death today.

I joined the foul demigod in battle. Ur-Anu bade me throw it, and now, my magic felt the weapon as a bolt. I threw. It bit deeply into Mh'rohgg's flesh, then returned to me as a bolt of lightning. I hurled again, and it returned. Soon, though, the behemoth was too close for such tricks, and I was slashing, hurling my magic, while Quiyahui flowed about me like an angry wind.

Maireili fought Thabban in single combat, and though she would modestly demur whenever I praised her courage or skill, there is no superlative too extravagant for her. Or perhaps I am merely in love.

The way Palireen tells the tale, Maireili slew the sorcerer and I merely slew the pet. Ulrika, Mallathar, Framzet, and Threch are little more than footnotes. They lived a normal span of years for their people, and were not remembered as my ghoulish bride and I. I say now that we could not have won our battle were it not for those four. Whether it was Threch battling Thabban's horde of rotkin, or Framzet's shadow magics, or Ulrika's gifts of Umione's favor, or Mallathar's songs and swordplay, they were all needed. If any one of them were not there, the day would have ended differently.

At the culmination of the battle, I was perched on Mh'rohgg's glabrous back, driving Ur-Anu's shining obsidian tip through its misshapen head, Quiyahui swirling about me like a ribbon of pure light. I hurled my power through the spear, directly into the monster's body. Lightning spidered from the weapon through its form, bursting whatever nauseating shapes lay within. It was my final gambit, before exhaustion seized me, and it was successful. The demigod crashed to the floor of the chamber, dead.

In the silence that followed, Ulrika's weeping cut like a blade. I found her cradling Mallathar. Though I was no chirurgeon, I knew that the man had suffered a mortal wound. Several, in fact, and yet he clung to life by sheer force of will. For one I had discounted for so long, Mallathar proved himself far more than he appeared initially. I admired the man, something I never thought would be true.

"Can you not heal him?" Maireili asked, kneeling beside the priestess.

"Umione's favors are exhausted for now, and this place, it is consecrated to others. She cannot hear."

"Oh, Ulrika. Don't cry," Mallathar said.

"You're dying," she said.

"Ah, but look how I died. In battle against an ancient evil."

"I thought you wanted to die in bed with a hundred maidens."

Mallathar's chuckle was barely a whisper. "This was my second choice."

I knelt by him. "We are here with you."

Threch was on the other side, his orcish face stoic, but tears fell freely. "Ulrika. Bury me beneath an apple tree. Somewhere bright. I want to see the sun again."

"You have my word," she said, kissing his forehead.

"Finally, a kiss from the fair Ulrika. All I had to do was die. If I'd known, I'd have done it sooner." He died with that same chuckle on his lips.

We wrapped him tightly in his cloak, and Threch stood with him. It was, I understand, an old orcish tradition to keep the body from scavengers so the soul had time to leave it. I was proud of my boy. He did much to make a father proud.

The rest of us searched Thabban's citadel.

"The Swiftblades are truly broken," Ulrika said as we navigated the mazelike tunnels of the Pit of Khazal. She referred to her old adventuring party, the one I had briefly joined so many years ago in Burley Shoal for the space of a single, insignificant adventure.

"You are finishing Mira's quest," I said. "Honoring her memory, and the love we have for her."

"I said before we left that this would be my last adventure, but I did not truly mean it until now," Ulrika said. "I am going to be an Owl for the rest of my days."

"Then the Owls are in good hands."

We found Thabban's hoard, filled with gold and jewels from all over the world. Though Maireili initially refused her share, we insisted, and this is where she acquired her Widow's Cloak. That remarkable garment would serve her well, and was likely the only way she could have lived at Azureview for the next several years.

As for me, I picked up a small bottle from the hoard. Within, a tiny, glowing fish looked back at me. Though I could not know what this object would eventually do, nor how it would shape my destiny, I could sense its power. This would be my treasure. We took what riches we could, secured in Framzet's bottomless satchel, and were preparing to depart when Maireili gestured.

"There is one place we have not yet explored."

We followed her to a metal-banded door. She opened the lock, and it led down into a stinking dungeon. I have been in places bereft of hope, but none as awful as the place in the heart of the Pit of Khazal. Superstition nearly pushed is back, but a faint rattle of chains reached my ears.

"Someone is down there," I whispered.

I will not describe the charnel house we found beneath that fortress. It turns my stomach to think of, even these many centuries later. If I did not already despise the Rising Shadow, this would have carved my hatred of them in the stone of my heart.

One person yet lived in that abyss. We found her, chained to a wall. Wearing only rags, covered in festering wounds, starving and brutalized, and yet she lived. Greasy black hair hung over her face.

Ulrika and I ran to her. "I can help her, but we need to get her from this place," said the priestess.

The woman stirred, trying to raise her head. The two of us looked into her skinny, pale face, our eyes meeting hers. They were lovely and blue, a faint glow from within. I had only ever seen eyes like that once before. It was Ulrika who whispered the name.

"Mira?"