"Do you think the bloodstone was destroyed?" Danyal asked, shivering as he looked toward the ruined stronghold.

The next sound came from behind them, however, and the four companions whirled in unison as the rasping, dry laughter sounded from the darkness.

"The bloodstone was not destroyed. I still have it, safe and sound!"

The voice of Kelryn Darewind drew a gasp from Danyal and a low scream from Mirabeth. With one arm, the bandit lord held the lass in a grip of crushing force. His other hand held a knife, and its keen tip was already pressing into the young woman's throat.

Kelryn moved forward, lifting Mirabeth so that her toes barely touched the ground. Dan, Emilo, and Foryth could see that the once dapper bandit lord looked terrible. Much of his hair had been burned away, and a scar of red tissue covered his forehead and one cheek. His clothes were grimy and smelled of char.

Seeing their looks of incredulity, Kelryn chuckled bitterly. "I knew the dragon was coming, so I had a few seconds of warning. While my men were charging onto the bridge, I jumped into a ditch. I was half buried in mud when the fire came!

"And you are right, historian. The skull has to be in the lair of the dragon!" gloated Kelryn. "Apparently you are not the fool I took you for. Now you will take me there!"

Danyal's hand was already clenched around the hilt of his long knife and his knees were bent, ready to lunge toward the hated bandit who had somehow survived to follow them here. Before he could attack, however, he saw one more fact in the eerie red light.

A tiny trickle of blood dribbled from the wound on the young woman's neck, the place where the sharp knife point was pressed. Mirabeth held utterly still. Dan knew the cut must have hurt, but she revealed no trace of discomfort or fear. Instead, she looked at him with an expression that pleaded for him to stay calm, to listen, to think.

Overcoming his fury and terror, the lad tried to do just that. Still, he growled a warning. "If you hurt her, I'll kill you. I swear by all the gods, I don't care if it costs my own life. You will die!"

Kelryn nodded in acceptance, as if the lad's passion was the most natural thing in the world. "Just don't you do anything that gets her killed," he declared in an easy, conversational tone.

"And now," he added to Foryth, "I heard you say something about a map. Well, get it out, historian. You're going to lead us all to the skull of Fistandantilus!"

Danyal stared in disbelief, but it was Foryth who asked the question. "How could you have known about the dragon?"

"What do you mean?" The menacing swordsman was nonplussed by the question. Then Kelryn pulled the bloodstone, still attached to its golden chain, from beneath his tunic. "He told me-the soul of the bloodstone, who waits for my coming, my prayers!"

"Fistandantilus?" Foryth said with detached, scholarly interest.

"The same. At last he has brought me to you, where my destiny and his shall come together!"

"What do you want?" demanded Danyal. "Power? Knowledge?"

Kelryn laughed. "I knew the historian had discovered my notes, and I suspected he would have solved the puzzle, learned where the dragon's lair is."

"And the skull." It was Foryth Teel who answered. Kelryn nodded, encouraging the historian to continue. "From the notes I saw in the library, you believe that the combination of the skull and the bloodstone will give you one of the great powers of Fistandantilus."

"The power to travel through time!" Kelryn Darewind could no longer contain his exultation. "The skull to show the way, and the bloodstone to give catalyst to my flight!"

"But why?" Danyal was mystified. He could understand a lust for riches or lands, could even see a vague purpose behind a man's desire to master other people, to make himself a lord or a king. But this was a craving that made no sense to him.

"There is no greater tool for one who would seek to further his own ends," Foryth Teel intoned. "A man who knows what will happen on the morrow can position himself to take full advantage of his enemies' misfortunes. I'm afraid what I told you before is true: He could become unstoppable."

"And so he will!" gloated Kelryn. "My power in Haven, before the coming of the dragons, was a small and pathetic thing in comparison to the might I will wield when I am Master of Past and Present!

"Now lead us through the mountains, historian. We go to claim the skull!"

Reapember, 374 AC

It was so close now-the bloodstone was right here. He could almost feel it, could almost touch and taste the powerful talisman that was at the very heart of his immortal existence.

But there was still interference, a fog of mysterious power that masked itself even as it competed for the artifact. It was a shield that refused to let him pass, denied him his ultimate triumph.

It wasn't the boy who was the cause of his frustration; he knew that with certainty now. Instead, it was an arcane force, a mysterious and extremely powerful essence that was for some reason centered around, but not within, the human lad.

He possessed a talisman of arcane might that acted to thwart the will and intentions of the archmage. Even worse, there was something strangely familiar about that competing power, and it was every bit the equal of the archmage's own might.

And that meant that it was most assuredly something to be feared.

Third Misham, Reapember

"There-the twin peaks, with the smoking crater between them. That has to be the place," declared Foryth Teel. His excitement over the discovery apparently overcame the fatigue, fear, and anger that had been with the companions constantly on their long, difficult trek through the High Kharolis.

For a moment Dan felt his frustration and anger expanding to encompass the historian, who could be so detached about their own circumstances, but the lad quickly quelled the emotion, saving his antipathy for their real enemy.

"The lake is steaming," Kelryn Darewind added.

"That's got to be the boiling lake that shows on your map."

The bandit's knife remained pressed against Mira-beth's throat, though the man conversed about the view as if she weren't even there. "The lair-and the skull of Fistandantilus-has got to be somewhere up that mountainside."

"Let's see " Foryth Teel was not entirely convinced.

He flipped open his book, tracing his fingers across the symbols on the page. "I see the boiling lake, and there we have the twin conical summits. But the glacier- there's supposed to be a glacier."

For the thousandth time, Danyal's hand closed around the hilt of his knife, and he cast a sidelong glance toward Kelryn Dare wind. As always, it seemed the man had anticipated his interest. He winked, flashing the lad a smile as cold as the stare of a dead fish.

"I have to admit this looks like the place," declared Emilo Haversack.

"Sure," Kelryn chatted easily about the connection. "The two mountains are both pointed. And that one has a glacier on the south face, just like the map shows. Now, let's move."

"Then that means the lair should be a cave mouth about halfway up the right-hand peak," Foryth concluded triumphantly and with as much confidence, Danyal thought sourly, as if he were describing where in the marketplace one might find a vendor of melons. Still, the historian refused to be hastened as he scrutinized the view.