Leesil and Sgaile ducked clear as she let go.

The beam dropped, and a dull clang echoed through the library as it settled. Leesil bent over, panting. Sgaile wavered on his feet and was breathing shallow and fast.

"Where is Li'kan?" Wynn repeated.

Magiere slumped against the stone door. When Li'kan's hunger returned, it would grow into starvation, and they couldn't let her loose into the world.

"She can't leave this place," Magiere panted. "Ever."

Wynn stood up, but Leesil cut in before she could speak.

"Did Chane come out?"

Wynn swiveled toward him. Her mouth opened, then closed as she glanced toward the path around the ends of the bookcases.

"Yes," she finally answered. "But he left. He is not in the castle."

Leesil groaned in frustration. "You don't know that. Chap, see if you can sense him."

Chap growled, loping off along the row of bookcases.

Magiere glanced toward the iron beam's other end still resting on the floor. Leesil and Sgaile were spent, and she didn't feel any better. But they had to finish.

Li'kan must never leave this place.

"What was that thing?" Leesil suddenly panted out.

Magiere shook her head, not because she didn't know, but rather that she didn't want to think about it.

"An undead," she sighed. "That's all I felt, but worse than any other… I could barely stand it."

"Not Li'kan," Leesil said. "In the light… what was that misshapen serpent… horned snake… whatever tried to swallow us?"

Magiere stared at him, baffled by what he said. Chap loped back into sight, coming up beside Wynn. The dogged huffed once for "yes."

Wynn's mouth tightened. "As I told you, Chane is gone."

Magiere turned back to Leesil in puzzlement.

"I didn't see anything in the light," she said.

Sgaile shook his head. "I saw nothing, just light too bright to look into."

Leesil straightened, his sweating face gone blank.

"How you could miss it?" He glared at everyone in disbelief. "It could've swallowed the whole platform. It had teeth instead of fangs, and rows of horns taller than you, and scales all over its face and snout. Its coils were turning all over the cavern!"

"Coils?" Magiere whispered.

She hadn't seen a serpent's head-just the coils in her waking dream, and the sense of an undead all around her… within her.

"Don't look at me like that!" Leesil snapped. "I know what I saw. Those coils were taller than two men… maybe three!"

"No," Magiere said. "I didn't see-"

"Fay?" Wynn whispered.

Magiere stared dumbly at the sage.

Wynn knelt beside Chap, looking into his eyes. "He says he sensed a Fay. Not all of them together, as when they come to him. Just one alone… cold… malicious."

"It was an undead!" Magiere snapped.

Wynn ignored her and frowned at Leesil. "You couldn't have seen… what you say. Maybe you heard or read something and the shadows played tricks on you."

"No!" Leesil snapped. "We were practically blinded, there was so much light."

Magiere was so tired, she didn't care anymore what anyone had seen.

Wynn shook her head at Leesil. "I can only guess, but it is not real- only a myth. Even less, just a metaphysical emblem, a weurm or-"

"What are you babbling about now?" Leesil growled.

"It is Numanese, my language," Wynn growled back, "for a type of dragon."

Chap snarled and lunged between all of them.

Wynn flinched. "Stop shouting at me! We heard you the first time-a Fay!"

The sage's anger vanished when she spotted blood-matted fur on his neck, and she reached for him.

Sgaile's angry voice startled Magiere. "Enough talk! We must bar the doors!"

She turned wearily along the tilted beam to grab its other end. But Chap's and Leesil's claims of what they'd experienced below-what either had seen or felt-ate at her.

One had sensed a Fay, and the other had seen a dragon, while she had felt the presence of an undead.

It was nonsense, nothing but the madness of this place. Leesil and Chap were wrong.

Magiere called the last dregs of her strength and hoisted the iron beam's grounded end.

"Someone comes," Danvarfij whispered and notched an arrow to her bowstring.

"Wait," Hkuan'duv warned in a hushed voice and belly-crawled a short way out from the wall.

His companion was having difficulty breathing the frozen night air, but they had to retain their vigil. In the moonlight, he saw the tall, auburn-haired man slip out of the castle gates and trudge across the snow. But he was alone.

Hkuan'duv waited, but neither the man's white-templed companion nor their robed followers came out.

The man kept on with two bulky packs over his shoulders and a large folded canvas in his arms. He paused to look back.

Hkuan'duv let the hood of his white-covered cloak drop low and peered under its edge, watching.

The man closed his eyes, sagging where he stood. He looked lost and defeated when he gazed listlessly about the white plain. The man turned and pushed on, never looking back again.

"Should I fire?" Danvarfij whispered.

Hkuan'duv considered having Danvarfij bring the man down. But they would have to move into the open to retrieve him, risking exposure, and then hide a body once they had finished questioning him.

Only the artifact, and dealing with Magiere, mattered to Hkuan'duv.

"He is nothing to us," he whispered to Danvarfij. "Let him go."

Magiere explored the castle's near reaches with Leesil and Chap, while Wynn tended to Sgaile and Osha in the library. They had all agreed to wait out the night and return to camp after dawn, but their efforts quickly became pointless.

They found no beds, blankets, kitchens, or sculleries. Either no furnishings had been brought to fill this place, or they had long ago decayed and been cleared away. They gave up and returned to the library, finding Osha awake.

As they entered, Wynn went still for a moment as if listening. "Since you did not find anything, Chap says we should move to the study that he and I first occupied. Though small, there is a heat source there."

Magiere nodded and heaved up the orb. "All right."

Sgaile and Leesil supported Osha as Chap led them through the varied passages to a tiny room. Neither Chap nor Wynn understood anything about the floor brazier filled with glowing fist-sized crystals, but Magiere didn't care. Without fuel for a fire or a place to burn it, any heat was welcome. The castle had grown colder as the night stretched on, and they had all slept in worse places.

Then again…

Not with madness written upon walls in an undead's fluids. Not with an ancient undead, perhaps impossible to kill, locked in the depths beneath them.

Doubts nibbled at Magiere. More so as she set the orb with its deceptive spike in the study's back corner. Still far too close for her peace of mind.

"Will Osha be all right?" she asked.

"I believe so," Wynn answered. "And Chap's neck appears to be healing."

Magiere ran her hand over the dog's head. She hadn't forgotten Chap's claim that he'd sensed a Fay in the cavern. It was harder to dismiss than Leesil's claim from half-shadows glimpsed within the orb's glare. Then again, she'd seen coils in her dreams.

"Sgaile's wound is the worst," Leesil said. "He may have chipped his collarbone, but I dressed it as well as I can."

"At least we're all alive," Magiere said, but didn't add for now.

Whatever had led her here and toyed with Li'kan-and by whatever name anyone called it-their three separate perceptions of what had come to the cavern didn't match up.

Undead. Fay. Dragon.

Magiere didn't want to know the answer to that puzzle. She didn't like thinking that the voice Chap had heard in Li'kan's mind was the same one in her own dreams. And when she looked at the orb in the corner, she didn't even want to stay in this room.