He walked down the wooden passage. The torchlight revealed no signs of boards or even tool marks on the wood. In fact, if anything, it seemed that he walked through a hollowed out log rather than a building made of boards. The curve to the walls and floor gave the impression that he moved through a natural passage or tube that extended through a tree, if such a thing was possible.

The passage took Vheod a few paces then reached a staircase leading down. The steps were of the same smooth wood as the walls and floor, but no tool had crafted these regular, perfect stairs. Some sort of sorcery must be involved here-wherever here was.

Vheod looked behind him, again hoping to see Melann. How could they have been separated? He looked down at the torch he didn't remember lighting, and the sword he didn't remember drawing. Blood.

Lords of the Abyss, not. The very thought that he might, have harmed Melann churned his stomach. How could he have done such a thing and not realized it? He looked at the Taint. Was it possible, he wondered in horror, that somehow something else had taken control of him? Worse yet, he considered that it might not be something else at all-perhaps the tanar'ri side of his nature had forced him to do things he now no longer remembered.

He couldn't remember ever losing time like this before, but maybe his dark, fiendish side did this to him from time to time. Perhaps he wasn't as in control of his life as he thought.

Vheod ran down the stairs, this time shouting, "Melann!" He so wanted reality to prove his fears wrong. "Melann!" he cried out again as he reached the bottom of the winding stairs. Already he grew disoriented in this strange enclosed environment. Mist still swirled around every footstep he took. The bottommost step led him into a rounded chamber, the torchlight illuminating most of it. Vheod saw no furnishings, but there was still some sign that an intelligence had designed the chamber and lived within it. He now understood the movement he'd heard.

Ravens flitted about the room, roosting on a high shelf along the opposite side from the stairs he'd just descended. Their droppings stained the floor and gave the room an acrid smell. Black rose-covered vines ran up along some of the walls, entwining around the ravens' roost and down again. The ravens stopped when he entered, watching him with their black, soulless eyes. Emotionlessly they stared, as if waiting to see what he might do or say.

Vheod did and said nothing. He stared back in confusion. Ravens. He must have somehow arrived here while following the ravens that had taken Whitlock. The last thing he remembered was riding through a valley thick with trees, Melann at his side. She'd appeared so frightened. He'd wanted to comfort her, but things like that didn't come easily to him. He had no experience with such displays of emotion or caring.

"Melann!" he called again.

At the sound of his shout, some of the ravens nervously flapped their wings, and two or three even flitted to a higher perch on the shelf. A few cawed.

Vheod looked around him quickly. He stepped into the room. The chamber's only other exit was another curving staircase, leading down even further-Keeping a cautious eye on the ravens, Vheod went to the other staircase and went down. The ravens did nothing, though they watched his every move.

The stairs led Vheod down into yet another room that seemed identical to the first, including the climbing rose vines, though there was no roost filled with ravens. Instead, a wooden table and four simple stools filled most of the room. Vheod looked at the furniture and saw that it wasn't furniture at all. The stools and even the table grew up out of the floor, from the same smooth, uncut wood that made the rest of this place. Obviously, some sort of plant-affecting sorcery was at work here, though even that didn't explain where he was.

A few bird droppings scattered about the floor, just enough to indicate that the ravens-or some of the ravens-came down here occasionally, but this wasn't their main roost. The mist was even thinner here, and rose vines crawled all about the walls and on the table. Vheod didn't see any of the black moss here, or even in the room above, like he'd seen in the corridor where it had seemed he first arrived.

Another stairway descended farther, and Vheod left this room and the sounds of ravens behind. This stairway led down into silence but not darkness. Vheod saw that he no longer needed the torch he carried, for the room below was illuminated by a glowing sphere of soft, blue light. The sphere floated in the middle of the room, which seemed about the same size as the two above it, and round like those as well. These rooms seemed grown rather than built. As before, the room was all wood-almost. In this chamber, unlike those above, the wood on the floor parted, leaving patches of exposed, wet soil. Another staircase descended farther on the opposite side of the chamber, but Vheod could see that it sank down into the earth, not wood.

Near the bottom of the stairs, the climbing black rose vines formed a curtain so thick Vheod couldn't see what it concealed. Judging by its size, however, he thought it might be a door. He had little desire to descend underground at this point, so he hoped the answers he sought would lie beyond the curtain. He paused to yell for Melann again but received no response. In a change of tactics, he called out, "Whitlock?" but still no reply came.

Trying to avoid the long, sharp thorns the vines presented, Vheod gingerly pushed the curtain to one side. Even though he was careful, a thorn pricked him lightly, and he winced for a moment, then cursed himself for forgetting to use his sword to move the curtain again. Again?

What did that mean? He definitely, for a moment at least, felt as though he'd moved this curtain aside before.

Using his sword to help this time, Vheod passed through the curtain and found himself back in the woods. These seemed to be the same trees into which he and Melann had ridden, though the exact surroundings were not familiar. In the distance, Vheod thought he heard running water, like a river or a stream. Ahead he saw their horses. Both lay slain on the ground, dozens of ravens picking at the flesh of their corpses.

He stepped, out of the trunk of a giant tree, larger than he really had the time or inclination to grasp. At his feet, near the curtain-door, lay a giant raven like those he'd fought earlier, dead. It had been hacked by a blade, and its bloody corpse actually brought a sigh of relief to Vheod. The blood on his blade was almost certainly the same blood that stained the feathers of the giant raven.

The blood was not Melann's. He hadn't lost control to his darker side, or at least so it seemed. His memories had still left him somehow, for it seemed almost certain he'd been here before and fought this monstrous raven. There were many unanswered questions, the most important of which was where was Melann, and what was this yellowish syrupy substance on his blade?

As if in answer to his silent query, a creature trotted around the trunk of the tree to the doorway in front of which Vheod still stood. This creature seemed canine, walking on four legs. It stood almost chest high to the cambion, and its flesh was a dark yellow. Unlike a dog, which it resembled in the shape of its face, its tall, pointed ears, and its body's shape, it had no fur. Instead, covering its flesh were the same black tendrils of rose vines that grew within the chambers through which Vheod had just passed, and he now noticed they grew so thickly over the surface of the giant tree that he almost couldn't see its bark. The only difference between the black rose vines on the dog creature was that the thorns on it were pronounced and appeared particularly dangerous.

The thorn-covered beast growled at Vheod and leaned back into a battle-ready stance. Vheod had no desire to fight this dog, but judging by the wounds on its back and side and the yellowish substance that oozed from them like sap from a tree, he'd fought before. Now the creature that he couldn't remember wanted a rematch. Vengeance and anger filled its red eyes. “Fine," Vheod said to the beast resignedly. "If this is what you want so badly, come and get it." He hefted his blade, dropping the torch to the bare earth so he could hold his sword in both hands.