No one in all the Bloodstone Lands was better able to discern movements and patterns better than Olwen Forest-friend. The ranger could track a bird flying over stone, so it was said, and no one who had ever seen Olwen's deductive powers at work ever really argued the point.

"They've got a gate," Olwen said to Kane and Emelyn when they came down from the wall into the main open courtyard of the castle. The tracks of the goblin and kobold army were clear enough to all three, the ground torn under their sudden, confused—and forced, Olwen assured his friends—charge.

The ranger nodded back toward the main keep of the place, a squat, solid building set in the center of the wall that separated the upper and lower baileys. "Or they've found tunnels below the keep where the monsters made their home," he said.

"No tracks coming in?" Emelyn asked.

"The goblins and kobolds came out that door," Olwen assured the others, pointing at the keep. "But they never went in it. And three hundred of them would have pressed the castle to breaking."

"There are many tunnels underneath it," replied Emelyn, who had been through the place before.

"Finite?" Olwen asked.

"Yes."

"You're certain?"

"I used a Gem of Seeing, silly deer hunter," the wizard huffed. "Do you think I would allow something as miniscule as a secret door to evade my inspection?"

"Then they have a gate," Olwen reasoned.

"Two-way, apparently," said Kane.

The ranger looked around at the emptiness of the place, and paused a moment to consider the silence, then nodded.

"Well, let us throw the place open wide, and inspect it top to bottom," said Emelyn. "King Artemis and his dark-skinned, fiendish friend will not so easily evade us."

Emelyn and Kane turned to the gates and portcullis, and to the room open along the base of the right-hand guard tower, where a great crank could be seen. But Olwen kept his gaze focused on the keep, and while his friends moved toward the front of the castle, he went deeper in.

He could move with the stealth of a seasoned city thief, and his abilities to find shelter in the shadows were greatly enhanced by his cloak and boots, both woven by elf hands and elven magic. He disappeared so completely into the background scenery that any onlookers would think he had simply vanished, and his steps fell without a whisper of noise. In fact, it wasn't until they noticed the keep's door ajar that Kane and Emelyn—who stood near the crank, trying to figure out how to reattach the broken chain—even realized that Olwen had moved so far from them.

"His grief moves him to recklessness," Kane remarked, and started that way.

Emelyn caught the monk by the shoulder. "Olwen blazes his own trails, and always has," he reminded. "He prefers the company of Olwen alone. No doubt his training of Mariabronne incited similar feelings in that one."

"Which got Mariabronne killed, by all reports," said Kane.

Emelyn nodded. "And Olwen likely realizes that."

"Guilt and grief are not a healthy combination," the monk replied. He glanced back behind them. "Fix the chain and bring our friends," he instructed, and he started off after Olwen.

The furniture and half-folded tapestries in the audience chamber didn't slow Olwen. He moved right to the multiple corridor openings on the far side of the room, all of them bending down and around. He crouched low and moved across them, finally discerning the one that had seen the most, and probably most recent, traffic.

Axe in hand, Olwen jogged along. He came through a series of rooms, slowly and deliberately, and the repetition did nothing to take him off his guard, to bring any carelessness to his step. Nor did the multitude of side passages distress him, for though there were few tracks to follow, he suspected that they were all connected. If he misstepped, he could easily regain the pursuit in the next room, or the one beyond that. Silent and smooth went the ranger, down another corridor that ended at an open portal, spilling into a candlelit room beyond. As he neared the doorway, along the right-hand wall, the ranger noted the fast cut of the tracks to the right, just inside the door.

Olwen crept up. Barely a foot from the opening, he held his breath and leaned out, just enough to see the tip of an elbow.

He looked back at the floor—one set of tracks.

With grace and speed that mocked his large form, Olwen leaped forward and spun, bringing his two-handed axe across for a strike that the surprised sneak couldn't begin to block. Satisfaction surged through the ranger as his perfectly-balanced, enchanted blade swiped cleanly through the air with no defense coming. It drove hard into the sneak's chest; there was no way for the fool to defend!

Off to the side of the portal where Olwen had abruptly and aggressively entered, in the shadows of another corridor, Artemis Entreri watched with little amusement as the ranger's weapon blew apart the chest of the mummy Entreri had propped next to the opening.

The weapon went right through, as Entreri had planned, to slice the securing rope set behind the perserved corpse, before finally ringing off the stone.

Across from the mummy, on the other side of the intruder, a glaive, released by the severing of the rope, swung down.

Entreri figured he had a kill, and that there was no turning back because of it.

But the burly intruder surprised him, for as soon as the ring of stone sounded, almost as soon as he had cut through the rope, the man was moving, and fast, diving into a sidelong roll. He tumbled deeper into the room, just ahead of the swinging glaive, and came back to his feet with such balance and grace that he was up and crouched before Entreri had even fully exited the side corridor.

And even though Entreri moved with unmatched silence, Olwen apparently heard him, or sensed him, for he leaped about, axe swiping across, and it was all Entreri could do to flip Charon's Claw up and over to avoid getting it torn from his hand.

Olwen cut his swing short, re-angling the axe with uncanny strength and coordination, then stabbing straight out with it, its pointed crown jabbing for the assassin's throat.

Entreri let his legs buckle at the knees, falling back as Olwen came on. He finally got Charon's Claw out before him, forcing the ranger to halt, but by that point he was so overbalanced that he couldn't hope to hold his ground. He just twisted and let himself fall instead, his dagger hand planting against the ground.

Olwen's roar signaled another charge, but Entreri was already moving, using those planted knuckles as a pivot and throwing himself out to the left over his secured hand, twisting and tucking his shoulder to turn a sidelong roll into a head-over somersault. He was up and turning before Olwen could close, coming around much as the ranger had done in dodging the glaive trap, with Charon's Claw humming through the air before him as he spun.

"Oh, but you're a clever killer, aren't you?" Olwen asked.

"Isn't that the difference between the killer and the deceased?"

"And Mariabronne wasn't so clever?"

"Mariabronne?" Entreri echoed, caught by surprise.

"Don't you feed your lies to my ears," Olwen said. "You saw the threat of the man—the honest man."

He finished with a sudden leap forward, his axe slicing the air in a downward diagonal chop, right to left. Olwen let go with his top hand, his right hand, as the axe swung down, and he didn't slow its momentum at all, turning his left arm over to bring it sailing back up, catching it again in his right with a reversed grip, then executing a cross-handed chop the other way.

Entreri couldn't begin to parry that powerful strike, so he simply backed out of reach. He planted his back foot securely as the axe came past, thinking to dart in behind it. As Olwen let go with his left hand, the axe swinging out to the right, his right hand gripping it at mid-handle, Entreri saw his opening. With the shortened grip, Olwen couldn't hope to stop him.