And then the bandits were gone, footsteps pounding down the road as the rockslide exhausted itself, loose stones and gravel still shifting, settling down the steep slope. Danyal smelled the powdered rock in the air, tasted the dust in his mouth, and tried to imagine what had happened to the lone traveler. His campsite was buried beneath a thick layer of rubble, and nothing seemed to be moving down there.

The lad gingerly picked his way down the slope, seeing that Nightmare had somehow reached the roadway. The black horse regarded him impassively as he probed through the boulders until he was startled by a voice from the shadows.

"Hello there," said the traveler. He came forward, and Danyal saw that he had been sheltered by an overhang of the bluff-the same place he had been driven by the extended swords of the bandits.

"H-Hello," the youth replied. "Are you all right?"

"I think so," said the man. "I'll admit that was bad luck with the landslide."

"Bad luck?" Danyal was amazed. "I think it just saved your life!"

"Oh posh," said the fellow. "It only chased away those men. And I could tell that one of them was just about to tell me his name!"

The youth wanted to reply that, to his eyes, it had looked as though the bandits intended something other than an informative conversation. Still, the stranger seemed so sincere, even genuinely disappointed, that Danyal changed his tack.

"My name is Danyal Thwait," he said tentatively. "Who are you?"

"Foryth Teel," replied the fellow, tsking in concern as he picked up the book that the bandit had thrown against the rocks. "It's not damaged," he said to Danyal, as if he never doubted that the lad was terribly concerned about the condition of the tome.

"Good," replied the youth. "But now, Foryth Teel, why don't you come with me? I think we should find a new place to camp."

On those instances when the essence of Fistandantilus became maddeningly, frustratingly aware, the archmage knew that he had languished within the kender host for scores of years. The spirit hungered for escape, craved the exercise of power that would bring him victims, souls that he could absorb, lives he would use to restore his unprecedented might. But always these desires went unsated, remained mere memories from a long-ago epoch of might and magic.

As more time passed, the archmage's hunger became starvation, and his need for vengeance swelled. He resolved that, when at last he celebrated his ultimate success, his killing would consume whole cities and countless thousands of lives.

In these times of lucidity, he remembered his talisman, the bloodstone. Upon occasion, he could almost feel the gem pulse in his hands, so vivid were his memories of its warmth and vitality. The artifact had ever been an eater of souls, and now it throbbed with the stored power of many consumed lives.

And the stone was still his best hope, for his efforts had brought that artifact into the hands of one who could use it-a man who had once been a false priest and had now become a lord of bandits.

Sometimes the soul of Fistandantilus tried to reach the bandit lord, using the stone as a conduit. The man had been pliable in some ways, and more than willing to use the powers of the stone. But he was also stubborn and independent, and instead of yielding, had learned to use the bloodstone for his own purposes. And because of the directionless kender, the archmage was unable to use his host to retrieve the stone.

Still, the archmage could be patient. Eventually there would come a chance for the kender to touch the stone, and then Fistandantilus could assert power and control: The false priest would become his tool, the wandering kender would be doomed, and ultimately the route for the archmage's return to flesh would lay open before him. Until then, however, Fistandantilus continued patiently to allow the power of the bloodstone to sustain the man, to prevent his aging.

And the ancient being was aware of another avenue of potential survival as well. He saw through a pair of eyes that occasionally gave Fistandantilus a specific view, and even in his ethereal state, he knew he was not beholding the environment surrounding his kender host. No, these were different eyes, eyes of power and magic, but lacking any substance of flesh, tissue, or tears.

When the image was clear, the archmage saw fire and smoke, a dark cavern where molten rock seethed and bubbled.

Sometimes he saw a villainous visage, a great head of scales and fangs that rose to regard him, that met his fleshless eyes with slitted orbs of fiery yellow. This was a great dragon, attempting to commune with the skull. Fistandantilus was forced to be careful; he knew he could never control such a beast, even in the limited way he did the Seeker priest.

For brief instants, the might of the archmage would surge, rising to meet the power of the skull or the bloodstone. These spells inevitably overwhelmed the kender's intellect and will.

But inevitably the power of the ancient wizard could not be sustained, and then the chaos of the kender's mind would twist and pull at him, tearing his rising presence into shreds. His awareness would fade and he would shriek his soundless horror and frustration until the dissolution cast him once more into the eternal wasteland of his own ambitions. The kender, with his awareness and will restored, was once more free to continue the capricious wandering that had occupied him for such an interminable time.

Fistandantilus was barely able to sustain the power needed merely to insure that the kender did not age. Drawing upon the store of lives he had consumed, the archmage maintained the fool's youthfulness for decades, making sure that the host did not suffer the debilitating effects of advancing years. As with the holder of the bloodstone, the ancient sorcerer dared not allow his all-too-mortal tool to suffer the ravages of age, else the mortal might perish before fulfilling the arch-mage's purpose.

But would he ever be free?

In fact, Fistandantilus never accepted the possibility of failure. He was endlessly patient, and he knew that eventually the potent gem and the wandering kender would come together. In anticipation of that moment, he could almost taste the blood, hear the screams of his victims as the wizard worked his deadly, consuming magic. His vengeance would require many, many victims, and he exulted to images of mass conflagrations, of helpless mortals crushed, one after another, by his own hands.

And though such gratifications remained but a dim memory for now, he began to sense an impending confluence. His hope, his talisman, was coming closer. The sensation grew in strength and substance until he could hear the pulse of that constant heart, the bloodstone of Fistandantilus.

It was out there somewhere, and it was not far distant.