I turn to face the river, but instead of black waters, I am staring at the amphora. The wind is roaring out of the adjacent passage, stirring up eddies of gray ash, and my mouth is parched with despair. Where now, my heart: Carceri, Avalas, Malbolge? Must I pull another strand to leam the answer, then another to discover hence from there?

From that void beneath my breast rises a fierce, tumultuous boiling; it matters not whether I pull the strands one at a time or all at once, I will never know the answer until I have emptied the jar-and, now I realize, not even then! If I did jump after the satchel, I would have forgotten the reason I leapt! A ferocious storm rises in Sigil: hailstones fall as large as fists, pounding roofs into rubble and striking men dead where they stand; gales blast through the lanes, smashing sedan chairs into walls and walls into each other; chains of lightning dance from fountain to fountain, shattering catch basins and choking deep-dug wells with rubble. The ground itself trembles beneath my rage, and fissures run down the streets side-by-side, racing to see which one can topple the most buildings. Thus does rapacious Poseidon hope to bring Sigil low: by stirring me to such a state that I destroy the city myself, so that he might stroll among the ruins and make a slave of me with nary a fight.

Perhaps, had I been fool enough to pull the stopper, the plan would have worked. The memories would have rushed from the jar and seized me one after another. In the fervor of the moment, I might have believed that I had jumped into the River Lethe after my heart, that I had drunk of its dark waters to escape Set my betrothed and Poseidon my father.

But if I drank then, how can I call the river now by its true name? Lethe.

Thus is Poseidon's treachery defeated, and now does the ground in Sigil stop quaking; the lightning fades to crackling forks, the hail blanches to cold rain, the wind but moans. The city is safe again, and so it will remain as long as the King of Seas' vile tricks remain safe inside the amphora.

And who can make that so, if not the Lady of Pain?

I fill my palm with ash, then wet it with blood squeezed from Tessali's severed hands. The patching paste is brown and coppery smelling, and sure to attract the monster of the labyrinth. Karfhud

There had been no choice, really, except to enter the conjunction. The only place for the wine woman to go had been through the black square, and so the Amnesian Hero had tucked the wayward sandal into his belt and followed. Unlike the first time he had entered one of the strange portals, he had experienced no sensation of falling, heard no great roaring, felt no wind tearing at his hair or ash scouring his face. He had merely stepped into the darkness and stood there waiting – forever it seemed-to emerge on the other side.

That was when the Amnesian Hero recalled the gout of flame that had nearly incinerated him earlier, as Silverwind stepped from the iron maze into the ashen one. The fireball had erupted the instant the bariaur passed through the conjunction: large, bright, and too hot to miss. And later, on the other side, he had cautioned the Thrasson about standing too close to the black square, for fear that it would "torch up" and draw the monster's attention.

There had been no fireball when the wine woman disappeared.

The Amnesian Hero stood pondering in the darkness, his mind spinning with fever and his sweaty body trembling with weakness. The wine woman could have gone no other place; the conjunction had been the only route out of the blind – at least that he had noticed. He considered going back to see if he had missed something, then found himself wondering if he could return. Presumably, the black square hung directly behind him, but what if he was moving? There was no fluttering in his stomach, no air stirring against his skin, no sensations at all suggesting motion – yet he had been standing there in the gloom quite some time. He had to be moving. He could imagine no other reason for the delay.

Better, then, to continue waiting. He could only guess what might happen if he tried to step one way or another while passing through a conjunction-would he come out someplace different than he should? Stay lost in the darkness forever? Vanish into oblivion? All these possibilities seemed disastrous. Moreover, even if the wine woman had disappeared down a. side passage, she would be long gone by now. He could only hope that, just as this conjunction differed from the first in duration of crossing, it also differed in not expelling gouts of flame when someone stepped through.

Still, the Amnesian Hero saw no need to stand about in tomb-like darkness. He pulled that star-forged sword from its scabbard and held the blade aloft.

"Starlight cleave the night," he commanded.

A brilliant blue radiance burst from the tip, creating a small globe that bathed the area in an eerie sapphire light. After the long darkness, the sudden illumination hurt the Thrasson's eyes, and he was still trying to blink away his blindness when he perceived a woman-sized shape slipping from the brightened circle.

"Wait, I beg you!"

Eyes half shut, the Amnesian Hero started after the fleeing figure and found himself clumping down a narrow dirt lane. A row of windowless mud brick tenements bordered the street on each side, their open doorways as still and black as a conjunction square. The Thrasson cursed himself for a berk, wondering how long he had been standing about in the dark thinking himself caught between mazes. It was a wonder the wine woman had still been near when he lit his sword.

"Please… wait!" he gasped. "I'm too… sick to keep this… up."

The Amnesian Hero clumped past an intersection and saw, out of the corner of his eye, the woman's figure turning to flee. In the blue light, her gown looked more gray than white, and her shoulders seemed somewhat more hunched than he remembered, but there was no time to ponder the differences. The Thrasson lurched into the alley and lunged out to catch hold of her.

Her shoulder seemed soft and spongy, and the cloth covering it had the dusty, brittle feel of ancient linen. The gown was no longer belted at the waist, but hung like a sack, dingy and stained, down past her knees. In the sword's blue light, her hair looked colorless and drab; it was also stiff as straw, and so thin it barely concealed her red-blotched scalp.

"Lady? Is that… you?"

The woman's only reply was to lean forward and try to pull away. The Amnesian Hero squeezed her shoulder – then groaned in disgust as her flesh erupted beneath his grasp. A foul, too-sweet stench filled the air, and a warm, slimy fluid coated his fingertips. He pulled his arm away, still holding a handful of moldering cloth and some brownish stuff that had probably once been flesh.

The Amnesian Hero gawked at his hand. "I…" He could not think of the words to apologize. "Lady, please forgive my clumsiness! I meant no harm."

"What did you mean?" The woman's voice was haggard. She spun on the Thrasson, raising a lumpy, gnarled mass at the end of a scaly arm. She extended her index finger, all that remained on the hand, and pointed at her head. "To look on this? Is that what you meant?"

The Amnesian Hero stmggled not to retch. The woman's face was a sagging mass of folded flesh and festering boils, so grotesquely misshapen that it scarcely looked human. A pair of black marbles peered out from beneath a puffy brow, while her nose had vanished – nostrils and all – into an enormous dark nodule that had taken over the middle of her face. Only her mouth, an enormous gash rimmed by red, cracked lips, remotely resembled its original form.

"I… I beg your… pardon.* The Amnesian Hero suddenly felt very weak and braced his ichor-covered hand against a wall. Twice had he braved the Leper Cities of Acheron to rescue the Virgins of Maimara, and never had he set eyes on such a gruesome, pitiable visage. "I thought you were… I was looking for a young woman in white… Perhaps you saw her… come this way?"