The Amnesian Hero nodded, more than a little relieved by the elf's generosity. He looked around for someplace to escape the storm. Finding none, he retreated down the corridor to where the hail was not so heavy, unwinding the golden thread as he went. He braced a hand on Jayk's shoulder, then Tessali squatted down and lifted the Thrasson's foot out of the orange fog. A thin veil of steam was rising from the thawing flesh-but not thickly enough to hide its slimy, claylike texture.

Tessali pulled his dagger from its sheath, drawing a suspicious glare from Jayk.

"I warn you, mindtangler, if you try any of your tricks-"

"You'll see that I regret it, I know." Tessali did not even look up as he spoke. "Jayk, I'm well aware that the Amnesian Hero is all that stands between you and my death. The last thing I'm going to do is cause him harm."

With that, Tessali began to probe the thawing flesh. To the relief of the Amnesian Hero, nowhere did the dagger tip sink more than a coin's thickness into the pearly ooze that covered his foot.

Tessali nodded in approval. "Good. It's thawing from the outside. There's no chance of the ooze working its way into your bones." He cleaned his dagger blade on the ground, then returned the weapon to its sheath. "I can't restore your foot to normal – that would require a better healer than I – but I can keep the ooze from consuming the rest of your body."

The Amnesian Hero narrowed his eyes. "You do not mean to cut it off…"

Tessali smiled and shook his head. "No, nothing like that." He felt around on the ground for a moment, then came up with the jagged corner of a broken brick. "This should do nicely."

"To do what?" Jayk demanded, ever suspicious.

"Turn his foot to stone-or brick, in this case," Tessali explained. "When a patient shows an unusual talent for escaping, we are occasionally forced to use such a spell to keep him restrained."

The Thrasson scowled. "I am not fond of being restrained."

"You won't be," Tessali assured him. "You, I'm not going to mortar to the floor."

"I still dislike this idea," the Amnesian Hero said. "Can't you do something else? If we run into trouble, a brick foot will slow me down."

"Not as much as turning into a puddle of ooze," Tessali countered. "I'm sony, but this is all I can do. Besides, you're already lame. The only difference you'll notice is that your foot seems heavier. And I'll change it back the instant we find someone to restore it."

The Amnesian Hero stared at his thawing flesh for several moments, then finally nodded. The elf pressed the stone into the slimy flesh, but jerked his hands away when a deep, rumbling bellow rolled over the passage.

The roar was not nearly so loud or sudden as the thunderclap that had preceded the hailstorm. Rather, it built more gradually, seeming to echo out of all the side corridors at once.

Jayk's big eyes darted from one side passage to another, then settled on Tessali. "You make this sound!"

Only the Amnesian Hero's firm grasp kept her from lunging at the elf. "Leave him alone. Tessali has nothing to do with it."

The bellow sounded again, a little louder than before, then died away. Jayk craned her neck to look back down the passage.

"Zoombee, if Tessali is not causing the sound, who is?"

"The monster of the labyrinth, of course." Continuing to hold his foot above the fog, the Amnesian Hero gestured for Tessali to continue. "I was starting to worry there wasn't one."

Tessali pushed the brick shard into the Thrasson's soft foot. "I'd think it wiser to worry because there is one."

"Despite what you claimed earlier, Tessali, you have not played many mazes, have you?" The Amnesian Hero did not wait for the elf to respond. "If there is a monster, he must be fed. And since he must be fed, there must be some way to put food into the maze. Is all this not true?"

"Of course."

The Amnesian Hero raised his left hand, which was all but hidden beneath the unruly tangle of golden filament. "I think the thread is leading us to that place now."

Tessali frowned, puzzled, then suddenly paled. "You mean we are the food!"

The Thrasson nodded and drew his sword. "I suggest you hurry, Tessali. In my experience, the monster seldom strays far from the food gate." Sign Of One

Again, the bellow rumbled through the labyrinth's thousand passages, overwhelming even the roar of the wall-pounding hail. As before, the sound came from all directions at once, left and right and front and back; the dark sky crackled with its fury, and the brick-paved ground trembled at its might. The Amnesian Hero bent forward, as though that would help his gaze pierce the fog's turbid density. He saw nothing but cascades of white hail vaporizing against orange-glowing iron.

"That one sounded louder," whispered Tessali. To prevent the group from becoming separated in the thick fog, both he and the tiefling were holding onto the Thrasson's amphora sling. "It's getting closer."

"Good." The scalding air had reduced the Amnesian Hero's voice to a croak; each time they rounded a comer, the iron walls seemed to glow more brightly with their orange heat. "We must be nearing the exit."

The Amnesian Hero continued to clump ahead, half-lifting, half-dragging his lame foot. Despite Tessali's assurances, the brick was proving more awkward to walk upon than had the frozen ooze. The Thrasson could never quite tell when the dead thing was resting on the ground, and, after hoisting its heavy bulk so many countless times, his entire leg was burning with fatigue. When they finally met the monster, he would need to kill it quickly; if the creature tried to carry off one of his companions, the Thrasson would be helpless to give chase.

The Amnesian Hero stopped and looked over his shoulder. "Perhaps I should go on alone to hunt the beast down and kill it. I'll leave a loop of thread so we can find each other again."

"No!" Tessali and Jayk spoke at the same time.

"At last we agree on something, Jayk." The scorching heat had reduced Tessali's voice to a raw rasp. "We all stand a better chance if we stay together."

"I will not part from you, Zoombee. Not for a minute."

"As you wish. But stay close. If the monster takes one of you, I won't be able to catch it." The Amnesian Hero scowled in Tessali's direction, then added, "This brick foot is somewhat less than nimble."

"I can cut it off any time you like," replied Tessali.

Refusing to dignify the elf's offer with a response, the Amnesian Hero clumped into the hail. As he moved, he slowly twirled his left wrist ahead of him, winding the thread onto his arm while leaving his other hand free for his sword. Already, the spool had grown so thick that he could not have scratched his ear. If they did not come upon the exit in the next league, his arm would become too bulky to move.

They followed the thread down a series of short, dogleg turns, then found themselves in a region of broad, black-paved passages. The iron walls seemed to loom higher than ever, and the hail fell harder. Through the orange-glowing fog, the Amnesian Hero occasionally saw a dark, window-like square set high on a wall's iron face, but the shapes were always too distant to investigate more carefully. Every now and then, what might have been a tongue of flame licked out of one of these portals. The Thrasson tried to stay in the middle of the avenue, preferring to let the black forms remain a mystery-if that was possible.

They advanced perhaps a thousand paces into this strange region before the Amnesian Hero felt a soft tug on his left arm. So gentle was the pull that he thought he had imagined it, then it happened again.

The Thrasson said nothing and continued forward, trying to convince himself that the sensation was a result of his own weariness. He had, after all, been twirling his arm for untold hours, gathering an ever-increasing burden. Sooner or later, the repetition was bound to take its toll. The tug came again. It was difficult to be certain in the hail and the fog, but this time it seemed to him the thread had bobbed.