Tesela shook her head in wonder. “I didn’t think it was possible to heal someone so quickly. Not someone as near death as you. I think, given practice-Mishakal forbid!-and the will, I might be able to do it as quickly most every time! If only I’d known! The lives I could have saved!”

Kaz felt his legs grow steadily stronger. Try as he might, though, he could not yet lift his battle-axe properly. “Where is Argaen Ravenshadow? For that matter,” Kaz suddenly recalled, “where’s Delbin?”

“Mishakal forgive me!” Tesela leaped to her feet. “He could be dying of poison at this very moment!”

The trio searched the main room of the library as quickly as possible. It became apparent that neither Delbin nor Argaen were in the immediate vicinity. With a sinking feeling, Kaz knew where they should look.

“The vaults!” he muttered.

That Delbin could get past the much-vaunted safeguards of the Knights of Solamnia was a certainty in the minotaur’s mind. Why Ravenshadow would try to poison them was another question.

“What can we do?” a pale-faced Darius asked.

Kaz shook his head, trying to clear it. He lifted his axe and knew that he still lacked the strength to use the weapon properly. Battling against crazed knights was not something he wanted to do, anyway. And Kaz did not doubt the abilities of Argaen Ravenshadow. Somehow he had gotten Delbin to agree to try to enter the vaults, perhaps by holding as incentive the lives of the two humans and Kaz.

“We’ve no choice,” the minotaur said reluctantly. “I can’t leave Delbin, and I can’t fight. I think we should demand an audience with the Grand Master. Sane or not, I think that any warning I give will be enough to stir Oswald interest. You two had better remain here in case I’m wrong.”

“Would you call me a coward, minotaur?” Darius demanded. “And yourself a fool? You have more of a chance of succeeding if you are accompanied by a member of the knighthood as your guard.”

“They might run both of you through without a second thought,” Tesela reminded them. “Argaen said-”

Kaz snorted angrily. “Argaen said a lot of things that I find suspect now.”

The column slowed. Bennett had no desire to call a halt now, but advice from his uncle rang in his head.

“Making good time in the day is no reason to go blindly in the night, lad,” the elder knight would say. “Many’s the time a patrol rode straight into an ambush. Go slow… steady but slow.”

“Steady but slow,” he muttered.

“What was that, milord?” the ranger next to him asked.

“I want you to go scout up ahead. Be careful. We’ll be following at a slower pace.”

The man looked at him critically. “You intend to travel during the night?”

“We must. Can’t you feel it?”

“Feel what?”

“The-” How can I put it? Bennett wondered. “The- presence-has withdrawn! We should have felt it by now, tearing at our minds, threatening our sanity…” The knight let his voice fade away as he recalled some of the things he had done under the sway of that power, that spell. He cursed silently.

The ranger was happy his face was hidden by the darkness. His nervousness always grew worse when Bennett talked like this. There was always the fear that the madness had left a permanent mark on those he rode with. The ranger sighed.

Bennett was still insistent. “We will move on! You have your orders, man!”

“Yes, milord.” The ranger urged his horse forward and rode off.

Staring off into the darkness, Bennett tried to make out Vingaard Keep. He knew that, on a sunny day, the outline would have been visible near the horizon. Sunlit days were a rare commodity in recent months, however. It was almost as if the war were beginning all over again.

A bad feeling was developing, a feeling that something was going to happen very soon, and that Bennett was going to arrive too late to do anything about it. A disquieting feeling.

With a wave of his hand, he summoned one of his aides. The knight saluted his lord. “Sir?”

“How are the men holding up, Grissom?”

“We are Knights of Solamnia, milord!”

At one time, that would have been all the answer Bennett needed to go charging pell-mell through the dark toward Vingaard Keep. Not now. Another knight, these five years dead, had taught him otherwise.

“How are they really holding up, Grissom?”

The broad-faced knight shrugged. “They could use rest, but none of them are unfit. We could ride three more days before the first would begin to keel over. I think some of the horses would go first.”

The hint of a smile touched Bennett’s lips. “If we ride through the night, we can be at Vingaard before morning. Have you felt anything at all, Grissom?”

“Nothing, milord.” The aide sounded hopeful. “Could that mean the threat has been crushed? That the spell has been broken by our brethren who remained behind?”

“Unlikely, if you recall our own minds as we rode off to-what was it, anyway?-to crush our nonexistent enemies to the south or something?”

“I… forget.”

Bennett nodded. “I force myself to remember. We have much to answer for, spell or no spell.”

“What do you think is happening at Vingaard, then, milord?”

Gauntleted hands tightened their grip on the reins. “I cannot say for certain, Sir Grissom, save that I think our final destination will be a true trial of our strength, in mind as well as in body.” Bennett muttered a small oath to Paladine, then added, “It’s time we moved on. Send word down the column. Slow but steady, Sir Grissom.”

“Milord.” The other knight turned his horse around and departed.

Bennett continued to stare in the direction he knew Vingaard Keep had to be, trying not to think too much about what he would do once the column made it there. He wondered whether they would be, as he feared, too late really to do anything.

“You realise,” Darius whispered, “that this plan of yours might be the product of the same sorcerous madness that has affected Vingaard and the lands surrounding it.”

Kaz nodded almost imperceptibly. “Very much so, but then, everyone we’ve been dealing with suffers from the same affliction, so that means what we’re doing is practically normal, doesn’t it?”

The silence of the empty keep was at least as eerie in its own way as that first night when they had been stalked by the winged thing and attacked by the wild knight. Time almost seemed to be holding its breath, waiting. The hair on the minotaur’s back began to rise.

“Look!” Tesela whispered.

Blinking, Kaz joined Darius and Tesela in staring at the scene unfolding before them.

The amassed figures did not resemble the phantom knights, though distance and the flickering light of the torches made it impossible to say for certain. Kaz estimated maybe four dozen. The thought occurred to him that maybe these were phantoms, too, but he discarded that idea almost immediately. These were flesh-and-blood Knights of Solamnia, and they looked ready to defend the stronghold of the Grand Master at any cost.

‘They still haven’t seen us,” Darius whispered quickly. “You two could remain in the shadows. I am one of them.”

In lieu of a reply, Kaz straightened and stepped into sight.

Not one of the knights so much as turned a head. They remained where they were, resolutely guarding against… what?

Darius, accompanied by Tesela, quickly stepped up behind the minotaur. One knight slowly turned his helm toward them. Then another. And another. Like some bizarre puppet show, ten or twelve of the figures turned to stare in the direction of the trio. They stared-and did nothing else.

“I like this not,” Darius muttered.