For several heartbeats, the air was utterly still.

Wendonai was dead, even though his body had not been consumed.

And Cavatina was still alive.

A miracle.

The glow that enveloped Cavatina abruptly ended. She let out a shuddering sigh. "Praise be to you, Eilistraee. In my time of need…" Realizing something, she amended her prayer of thanksgiving. "Masked Lady," she corrected. "My heartfelt thanks, for… everything."

She moistened her wind-chapped lips. They were crusted with salt, but she tasted something far sweeter.

Redemption.

She shuffled on her knees to where the demon lay. Using the length of blade that protruded from his back, she sliced apart the tight binding of leather around her wrists. Then she sat, raised her bound legs, and sawed the bindings off her ankles. She nicked herself in several places but didn't care. It was all part of the dance.

Leaping to her feet, she gave in to it. Whirling, clapping, spinning in place. A victory dance. Not just for herself, but for the Masked Lady. Embracing all that they both had become.

Only in the middle of it did she suddenly remember Halisstra. She whirled in place, but the salt-encrusted plain was as bare as it had always been. Empty and flat, stretching as far as the eye could see.

"Where is she?" Cavatina wondered aloud.

She'd asked herself the same question, nearly two years ago, after slaying Selvetarm. Just as she had then, she vowed to search for Halisstra. Only when Cavatina found her again, Halisstra would pay for her treachery.

With a grunt, Cavatina flopped the dead demon onto his side. His lips were pulled back, his fangs exposed in what looked like a grin.

"Go ahead and smile," Cavatina told him. "It's Eilistraee who has the last laugh." She planted a foot on his chest and yanked out the singing sword. She whirled it around her head, letting the dark blood slide from it. The sword pealed its joy.

What now? Cavatina thought as she glanced around. This is the Abyss, and I still need to escape.

Her eye fell on the pile of blackened skulls. A thin tendril of black seeped from the eye socket of one of them. She crouched and peered at its source.

The void she stared into left her mind spinning. For an instant, she felt nothing-not even the beating of her own heart. Her very soul teetered on a blade's edge: on one side, life; on the other… nothing. Just a terrifying emptiness.

Cavatina reeled back, sickened. The eye socket was indeed a portal. A portal to death itself.

There had to be another way out of there. Halisstra must have gone somewhere. And if she could escape, then so could Cavatina. She was a Darksong Knight. A slayer of demons. No, a slayer of demigods. She…

She smiled. There is was again. Pride. It had nearly been her downfall, more than once.

Still, she would find a way out of there. When she'd trained as a Darksong Knight, her instructors had foreseen just such an eventuality. More than one of them had followed a demon onto its home ground, slain it, and returned to tell the tale. They'd told her how it was done. The prayer was one Cavatina had never attempted before, but she was certain she could master it.

Anything was possible, with Eilistraee's grace.

Holding her sword in both hands, Cavatina raised it until the blade was horizontal with the ground. Then she spun and sang. Her blade tried to dip toward the skull portal, but she would not allow it. Muscles straining, she kept it level. Then suddenly the point plunged down, driving itself deep into the salt. A shaft of twined moonlight and shadow shot out from that point, a hair's breadth above the ground and thin as a sword blade. A path that only a devotee of the Masked Lady could see. A path to the next nearest portal.

Cavatina yanked her sword from the ground. With the softly humming blade balanced across one bare shoulder, she set out upon the path.

Karas stepped down into the boat, taking care that his too-short legs didn't stumble. Getting used to being half his usual size was the easy part. Coping with having his face bare was harder. His mask- a bright red handkerchief-peeped out of the pocket of the leather vest his piwafwi had transformed into. He resisted the urge to touch it.

Gindrol and Talzir followed him, each seamless in his magically altered form. Their disguises were perfect to the last detail: bare scalps, mottled gray skin, wiry muscles, and pebble-black eyes. They even wore a deep gnome's suspicious glower. They might have been born svirfneblin, for all anyone could tell.

The rowboat was narrow and black, with blunted ends. The three disguised Nightshadows settled onto its bare wooden seats, Karas in the front with the strongbox resting on his knees. Gindrol, just behind him, took the oars in hand. Each was a length of fused armbone, ending in a cupped hand.

The splashes of the oars were drowned out by the clattering of bone on bone. The lake-filled cavern was vast, but its entire ceiling was studded with skulls, giving it a bumpy, off-white appearance. The lake itself was utterly flat-the slight wake the rowboat produced immediately stilled. A chill emanated from the water, up through the wooden plank on which Karas sat. He found himself shivering and tried to force his muscles to relax. He didn't want the others to think he was afraid.

The lake was deep, but the Faerzress that permeated the stone there shone up from below, lending the water a faint bluish glow. Silhouettes flitted through its depths: water spiders, hunting their prey.

At the center of the lake lay an island, on which stood the ruined city of V'elddrinnsshar. The island itself was a slumped mass of off-white limestone whose top had been leveled. Streets wound between empty stalagmite buildings that rose like tapering fingers questing for the ceiling. At the center of the island stood a larger spire of stone, its top sheared off. Kiaransalee's temple capped it, a brooding block of black marble. Ghosts flitted above it like demented swallows, their anguished moans filling the air in an eerie chorus.

As the boat drew closer to the island, Karas could make out huddled shapes choking the streets of the abandoned city: the bodies of the dead. Several lay on the dock, arms or legs draped loosely over the edges where they had fallen. A dozen rose to their feet in silence as the boat scraped against the stone steps that led up to the dock. All were drow, their skin paled to dull gray. Each had flesh pocked with enormous, long-since ruptured blisters: the puffball-like hallmark of the ascomid plague. Had those blisters been fresh, the slightest touch would have ruptured them, releasing a cloud of deadly spores that would propagate the disease. But it had been a century since the plague had swept through there, killing everyone in the city.

Karas twisted around on his seat and saw that Talzir's eyes were wide, his lips tight. Gindrol, who was rowing, still had his back to the dock.

"Steady," Karas told them, his svirfneblin voice strange in his ears. "Remember, they need our voidstone. They're not going to kill us… yet."

The svirfneblin that was Talzir cracked a grim smile.

One of the undead drow-a female whose finery hung in tatters on her blistered body-staggered down the steps and reached down for the strongbox Karas held. Shaking his head, he drew it out of her reach.

"This isn't for you, Mistress," he told her. "It's for your Reaper."

A chuckle sounded from one of the doorways at the rear of the dock. From it stepped a drow female wearing the loose black robe and gray skullcap that marked her as a Crone.

Silver rings decorated each finger. An hourglass, filled with white sand, hung against her chest, and a dagger with a bone handle was sheathed at her hip. Her skin was smudged with gray: ashes, taken from a pyre and mixed with rancid fat. Karas steeled himself against the smell as she approached. Back in Maerimydra, it had always made him gag.