Zedd idly fingered the stone through the coarse cloth of his robe, where it was nestled in an inner pocket, as he watched the claws pull back through the rips in the metal. He turned and watched the boundary warden carrying Rachel down the hall. They hadn’t gone more than a few dozen strides when one of the doors flew off its hinges with a horrific boom. The strong hinges shattered as if they were made of clay.

Zedd dove out of the way, the gold-clad iron door just missing him as it flew across the hall and crashed against the polished granite wall, sending shards of metal flying and stone dust boiling down the hall. Zedd rolled to his feet and ran.

The screeling bounded out of the Garden of Life and into the hall. Its body was hardly more than a squat skeleton covered in a veneer of dry, crisp, blackened skin. Like a corpse that had dried in the sun for years. White bone stuck out in places where the skin, hanging in flaps here and there, had been torn in the fight, but that didn’t seem to bother the creature; it was a thing of the underworld, and not hindered by all the frailties of life. There was no blood.

If it could be torn up enough, or hacked apart, maybe it could be stopped, but it was awfully quick. And magic certainly wasn’t doing it much harm. It was a creature of Subtractive Magic; Additive Magic was just being absorbed into it like a sponge.

Maybe it could be harmed with Subtractive Magic, but Zedd had nothing of that half of the gift. No wizard in the last few thousand years did. Some might have had the calling for the Subtractive—Darken Rahl was proof of that—but none had had the gift for it.

No, his magic wasn’t going to stop this thing. At least, the wizard thought, not directly. But maybe indirectly?

Zedd walked backward as the screeling watched with blinking, bewildered eyes. Now, he thought, while it’s standing still.

Concentrating, Zedd gathered the air, making it dense, dense enough to lift the heavy door. He was tired; it took an effort. He pushed the air with a mental grunt, crashing the door onto the back of the screeling. Dust rolled up and across the hall as the door slammed the creature to the ground. It howled. Zedd wondered if it was howling in pain, or anger.

The door lifted, stone chips sliding off. The screeling held the heavy door up with one clawed hand as it laughed, a woody tendril of the vine he had tried to strangle it with still coiled around its neck.

“Bags,” Zedd muttered. “Nothing is ever easy.”

Zedd kept walking backward. The door crashed to the floor as the screeling stepped out from underneath it and followed. It was starting to learn that the people who walked were the same ones who ran or stood still. This was an unfamiliar world to it. Zedd had to think of something before it learned any more. If only he wasn’t so tired.

Chase went down a wide marble stairway. Zedd followed him at a quick walk. If he had been sure it wasn’t Chase or Rachel the screeling was after, he would have gone a different way, drawing the danger away from them, but it could just as easily go after them, and he didn’t want to leave Chase to fight it alone.

A man and a woman, both in white robes, were coming up the stairs. Chase tried to turn them around but they slipped past him.

“Walk!” Zedd yelled at them. “don’t run! Go back or you will be killed!” They frowned at him in confusion.

The screeling was shuffling along toward the stairs, its claws clicking and scraping on the marble floor. Zedd could hear it panting with that nerve-jarring near laughter.

The two people saw the dark thing and froze, their blue eyes going wide. Zedd shoved them, turning them around, and forced them back down the stairs. They both suddenly broke into a run, bounding down the stairs three at a time, their blond hair and white robes flying.

“Don’t run!” Zedd and Chase yelled at the same time.

The screeling rose up on its clawed toes, attracted by the sudden movement. It let out a cackling laugh and darted to the stairs. Zedd threw a fist of air, hitting it in the chest, knocking it back a pace. It hardly noticed. It peered over the carved stone railing at the top and saw the people running.

With a cackle, it grasped the railing and leapt over, dropping a good twenty feet to the two running, white-robed figures. Chase immediately put Rachel’s face to his shoulder and reversed direction, coming back up the stairs. He knew what was going to happen, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Zedd waited at the top. “Hurry, while it’s distracted.”

There was a very brief struggle, and screams that were just as brief. Howling laughter echoed in the stairwell. Blood splattered in an arc up the white marble, almost to where Chase was charging up the stairs. Rachel hid her face against him and hugged his neck tight, but didn’t make a sound.

Zedd was impressed by her. He had never seen one so young use her head as well as she did. She was smart. Smart and gutsy. He understood why Giller had used her to try to keep the last box of Orden away from Darken Rahl. The way of wizards, Zedd thought—using people to do what must be done.

The three ran down the hall until the screeling appeared at the top of stairs; then they slowed to a backward walk. The screeling grinned with bloodred teeth, its deathless black eyes momentarily reflecting golden in the sunlight coming in a tall, narrow window. It winced at the light, licked the blood off its claws, and then loped after them. They went down the next stairway. The creature followed, sometimes stopping briefly in confusion, seemingly unsure if it was them it was after.

Chase held Rachel in one arm and a sword in his other hand. Zedd stayed between them and the screeling as they backed down a small hall. The screeling climbed up the walls, scratching the smooth stone, and sprang across tapestries, tearing them with its claws as it followed the three.

Polished walnut side tables, each with three ornate legs carved in vines and dotted with gilded blossoms, tipped over into the hall as the screeling pushed at them with a claw, grinning and laughing at the sound of cut-glass vases shattering on the stone floor. Water and flowers spilled over carpets. The screeling hopped down and tore a priceless blue and yellow Tanimuran carpet to shreds as it howled in laughter and then skittered up the wall to the ceiling.

It advanced along the ceiling like a spider, head hanging down, watching them.

“How can it do that?” Chase whispered.

Zedd only shook his head as they backed into the immense central halls of the People’s Palace. The ceiling here was well over fifty feet high, a collection of four-pointed ribbed vaults held up by a column at the corner of each vault.

Suddenly the screeling sprang along the ceiling of the small hall it was in and leapt at them.

Zedd released a bolt of fire as the creature flew through the air. He missed, the fire boiling up the granite wall, leaving a trail of black soot before it dissipated.

For the first time, Chase didn’t miss. With a solid strike his sword lopped off one of the screeling’s arms. For the first time the screeling howled in pain. It tumbled around on the ground and darted behind a green-veined gray marble column. The severed arm lay on the stone floor, twitching and grasping.

Soldiers came running across the vast hall, their swords to hand, the clatter of their armor and weapons reverberating off the vaulted ceilings high overhead, their boot strikes echoing off the tiles around the devotion pool as they skirted it. D’Haran soldiers were a fierce lot, and they looked all the more so at finding there was an invader in the palace.

Zedd felt an odd sort of apprehension at the sight of them. A few days ago they would have dragged him off to the former Master Rahl to be killed; now they were the loyal followers of the new Master Rahl, Zedd’s grandson, Richard.