Sobbings and snivelings rose from outside the circle: the lesser, still-living children, probably as much afraid that they'd be expected to venture to their deaths next, as they were grieving Maelra.

Dolmur ignored his writhing, facedown youngest brother for the moment, and asked Multhas flatly, "What's your wish that we do now?"

He'd expected the ever aggressive Multhas to explode into either hot or icy rage, but surprisingly, his bearded, usually blustering kinsman just shook his head, empty-faced, and whispered, "Nothing. Not another drop of Bowdragon blood must be given to Serpent-ridden, plague-riddled Aglirta. Let us build a spell-wall, turn our backs on it, and try to forget. Nothing will bring our dead back."

"No," Dolmur told him, as flatly as before. "We must know what happened to her. The time for revenge may not be now, but we must know. Or that 'not knowing,' and her loss, will haunt us and change us forever."

The patriarch lifted his gaze from the dark, despairing eyes of Multhas to regard the younger Bowdragons around the circle, and ordered, "Get your most powerful magics together, and meet me back here, as swiftly as you are able."

The younglings stared at him in awe-or was it terror? -until he let a frown settle onto his face. Then they hastened to obey, the youngest fleeing for the doors like storm-driven rags, and the eldest reaching out to drag away the ashen Multhas and the weeping Ithim.

The blade-transfixed young man staggered in the Dwaer-light, turning agonizedly toward his slayers-in time to see Hawkril furiously hack both warriors to the ground, torches bouncing and rolling. He swayed, face twisted in pain, as Craer ran toward him and Embra called, "Craer! Get away! I can't heal him if your Stone's too close!"

"Overdukes!" the dying man cried. "Get to your King!" And then he fell on his face and rolled over, bluish blood gouting from his mouth and nose.

Reaching him, Embra stared down at… features that were melting from Raulin's into… blank facelessness. A Koglaur!

She looked up at her fellow overdukes, as they gathered around her in this deepest cellar of Flowfoam. They stared down at the corpse, traded astonished looks-and then turned and raced back to the passage that had brought them to this hidden place.

Bats circled and swooped around Embra's head as she hastened, emitting tiny, chill chuckles of mirth. She ignored them-but knew full well, as she ran, that in his cell the Master of Bats was hanging in his chains, coldly laughing.

Raised in exasperation, Baron Phelinndar's voice sounded like the building-to-a-scream growl of a great hunting cat on the prowl. "You think we've still got time for spell-frippery, with this Gadaster bone-wizard on the loose, looking for you?"

Ingryl Ambelter stepped around a motionless Melted with a sigh meant to warn the baron that his patience wasn't infinite, and placed the long-locked coffer carefully on the table.

He silently bade the dust-covered undead to step back and make more room here in the center of the cavern, and then turned to the simmering Phelinndar. "We need this more than ever if Mulkyn survives," he said coldly. "And if he hasn't, we should proceed as we've planned, so as not to end up striving against a triumphant Church of the Serpent after they've secured their rule over the Vale, when they'll have leisure enough to send priest after priest after hiresword army at us."

He beckoned a single Melted forward, and made the shambling, grotesquely twisted thing hold out its hands. Brushing dust from each gray-and-yellow palm, he put into them small items he'd need once he began spellweaving, produced a key from empty air with a murmured word, and unlocked the coffer.

"More than that," the Spellmaster added, eyeing the glowering baron, "I keep my promises, and you were most insistent-were you not? -that I fully inform you of my plans and magics."

He gestured grandly at the table. "So, now, observe or not, as you prefer, as I begin the long and exacting process of interweaving a Sword of Spells that will give me-us-control not only of the mind of someone but their powers."

"Such as Embra Silvertree?" Baron Phelinndar growled, hands clutching the hilt of his sword, where they always went when he was in need of comfort.

Ambelter nodded. "Or Gadaster Mulkyn, or Dolmur Bowdragon, or even this outlander Talasorn wench who seems to have been made an Overduke of Aglirta when our backs were turned. I have, however, someone other than all of these in mind."

"Oh?" the baron asked, but the Spellmaster had already started to chant a spell, raising his arms out in front of him as if to proffer a chalice or bowl that wasn't there to someone taller than he, who also wasn't present.

The air between his empty hands shimmered restlessly as the incantation rose in volume and urgency, was briefly shot through with sparks, darkened as if a long evening shadow was falling across it… and then thinned to emptiness once more.

Ingryl Ambelter let his hands fall, and then nodded as if satisfied. He seemed to be able to see something Phelinndar could not; all that the casting had achieved, as far as the baron could tell, was to create a certain singing tension in the air that had not been present before.

"Who?" he asked roughly, persisting. "Three take you, Ambelter-have we an agreement, or have we not?"

"We do," the Spellmaster replied curtly. "Patience, please. I'll tell you when I'm done. This series of castings is exacting and precise, and I must keep many things in my mind as I work-or all will be ruined. Rest assured that when I'm done, my intended victim won't have been chosen by the magics; we'll have ample time to debate then."

The two men stared at each other across a cavern that now throbbed and thrummed with magic, an ever-growing din of power that crackled around Ingryl Ambelter as the baron watched-crackled ever more hungrily, though the Spellmaster stood calm and expressionless.

Phelinndar wondered if he was watching a weapon being built before his eyes that could slay him with careless ease-or if Ingryl himself was becoming that weapon. Either way, he stood in peril if he fought the wizard now. Staring into Ambelter's eyes, he nodded slowly.

Ingryl gave him a mirthless smile and then turned to his table and launched into an incantation.

The baron glowered at the mage's back, then sighed, turned away, and found his chair. If he was going to be blasted to ashes before the day ended, there was nothing he could do to prevent it, or to successfully flee and hide… so he might as well wait in comfort.

The Dwaer-Stone was glowing on a little table in a far corner of the cavern, away from Ingryl's spellweavings-but throbbing in time to those building spells. Phelinndar glanced at it, and then walked over and scooped it up. If Ambelter had put some sort of warning spell on it, to alert him if someone other than he touched it, well that was just too bad. Let all his spells be wasted, and let him rage.

If Ingryl was going to have his Sword of Spells, his forgotten and taken-for-granted baronial sidekick was going to have what was his, too: the Dwaer. Phelinndar sat down, swung his booted feet up onto the Melted who'd been made to kneel into a footrest some days ago, drew his sword and laid it ready in his lap-just in case-and hefted the Stone in his hand.

The glows of spell building upon spell rose brightly around the distant Spellmaster. Watching them rise and feeling the matching thrum of rising power in the Stone in his hand, the baron began tossing the Dwaer a handspan into the air and then catching it, tossing it again, and then catching it. A lump of rock that wizards would kill for. Truly, Darsar was strange.