The winds at this elevation are often hazardous and unpredictable, but now they seemed in accord to my will and propelled me forward until I was dizzy from the speed. I rode them like a small raft on wild rapids, but I was in control, keeping upright and holding direction. In less than half the regular time it usually took to travel the distance, I reached the castle and swelled to human form, my feet touching down lightly on the walkway outside my bedroom. I looked back, illogically on guard against pursuit, but nothing marred the moon-bathed sky for miles in any direction.

It meant little. I was far from safe.

I pushed through the outer doors and swept through my otherwise unused bedroom to the inner door leading right to my library and glared at the ranks of book-covered shelves. They were less orderly than I liked since Azalin always plucked them down for use with abandon and rarely returned any back into place, but certain tomes were untouched. I found the one I wanted, dusty and ignored, seized it, and flipped it open, heedless of the stress on its cracking pages.

The chapter I sought was some three quarters of the way through, marked by a distinctive illustration of a creature that closely resembled what I'd just seen in the shambles of the laboratory. I couldn't find it, though, and went over the pages twice before thinking I had picked up the wrong volume. I checked the title. It was correct, matching the one in my memory. This was the right book; it had a whole section devoted to the lore surrounding liches-a section that appeared to be missing.

I carefully examined the spine and binding, but found no crude cutting away of pages. He had made a careful job of it. The contents had been purged, even the page numbers matched up. If I hadn't known it should have been there, not been purposely looking for it, I would never have noticed the alteration. Quite seamless.

Surveying all the other books of my collection I could take it for granted that they had also been subjected to a similar expurgation. He must have begun the process from his very first day here. Angered, I started to fling this one across the room, but caught myself just in time and carefully slid it back into place. I summoned a miniature dust devil to swirl over it and its neighbors so all would appear to be undisturbed. Azalin must get absolutely no clue from me that I'd found him out.

Should he suspect, he would probably take quick and deadly action to try to kill me. I might survive, might even destroy him instead, but I was in desperate need of preparation to guarantee it.

I needed to know more. There was but one other unlikely source of information left to me in the castle. I quit the library and sought my daylight sanctuary in the crypts far below. Here, in one of the most secure refuges I had ever constructed, I kept certain important spell and magical books hidden from him, along with my personal journal. So far as I knew he had no idea of their existence. If this lot had been tampered with…

I'll deal with it then.

My crypt, where I most often sheltered from the sun during the day, was the best defended chamber in the whole of the castle. There I had rigged countless traps and protections, many designed specifically to hold against the kind of intense magic of which Azalin was capable of summoning. I spent months perfecting and charging them with lethal power. The idea was to delay and drain him, using up precious daylight time, and I had put in enough to last through the longest mid-summer had to offer. But those spells were not designed with a determined assault from a lich in mind. I would have to correct that.

Once in the crypt I went straight to the concealed alcove built into the base holding the sarcophagus and muttered the words that would open it. Thin lines appeared in the unmarked marble and widened to the point where I could grasp the stone plate and pull it to one side.

All was as I had left it, the books, the journals; the crystal ball in its velvet casing was elsewhere. I seized one of the books, a rare reference volume, and searched it page by page. My memory of the contents was fairly clear, though I hadn't opened it in several decades. I was sure there was some mention about liches within.

No more. It was as clean as the library collection. The same went for the rest of them, except the one Alek Qwilym had brought me, for its pages were still black.

Azalin had been remarkably thorough with the others, though. And I could assume he had managed to read my private journals.

The rage flooding through me at this violation was too great for the stone chamber to hold. I surged into the larger, outer crypt to give proper vent to it, roaring and smashing things with abandon. It was some time before I came to myself again and could survey the situation with a somewhat cooler head.

Yes, he had purged the books, and yes, he had invaded the record of my innermost thoughts. I'd have done precisely the same thing given the chance. He knew all there was to know about me-but only up to this point. I could plan around that, compensate for it, and do it in such a way as to continue a pretense of my ignorance. Not too very difficult. I'd had centuries of practice at dissembling; this would be but an extension of that useful skill. I had but to give him what he expected to see. As for my enemy…

My knowledge of liches was now limited to what I could recall from casual reading. I had never made an especial study of the creatures, thinking it most unlikely I would ever encounter one. They tended to stay in one spot once they initiated the hideous spell work to bring about the awful change they desired. Once done it could never be revoked, and they would continue on, dead and yet not dead, but in a manner far removed from my own form of existence. I still took sustenance from the living, sometimes killing to maintain my life as everyone else, but a lich was sustained itself by magic, by the kind of foul necromancy so filthy and black as to make my own dark deeds seem celestial by comparison.

All the little clues, his lack of breathing and heartbeat, his never eating, the abnormal, biting cold of his mere presence, the burning red glow of his eyes-they should have told me the truth far sooner than this. Had I been so wrapped up in the preparation for escape that I had overlooked their importance?

Not likely. No. Impossible. I knew how my own mind worked and this sort of mistake was quite out of the ordinary for it. The only explanation was that Azalin had cast a very subtle spell upon me, one that prevented me from seeing what was now painfully obvious. Only when the aftermath of our explosive escape attempt had stripped him of all guise and spell work had the truth finally dawned. His cleansing of the books had been to prevent me from stumbling accidentally upon the subject which would likely have negated his spell. The more I considered it, the more obvious it became. It was the only way I could account for such a tremendous lapse of perception on my part.

In some twisted way I could take it as a compliment. He must view me as being a real danger to him once I found him out. Certainly I did have lethal means at hand to use against him, possessing any number of captured magical weapons that might do the job, except for those with auras that repelled me as well.

If it came down to a fight, he was my superior in many areas of magic, and I was all too vulnerable to supernatural injury from him-especially during the day. On the other hand, were we to engage in face-to-face physical combat, I could destroy him. Or at least his outer body. An important detail I recalled about liches had to do with them placing their life-force in some object or container for safekeeping. If their bodies were disposed of they could use it to magically transfer themselves into another vessel, a corpse being the preferred receptacle.