"So are you." She glares at the elf's wrists. "And did I leave you behind? No!"

"You know that's different" Tessali has assumed his patient mind-healer's voice. "The Lady only maimed me. She kill – er, annihilated – the Amnesian Hero."

"How do you know? Did you see this?"

"What else could have happened?" The elf stretches a stump toward her, as if he still had a hand to extend. "The Amnesian Hero wouldn't want this; he sacrificed himself so we could escape."

Jayk folds her arms. "That is why we will wait. He deserves that from us, yes?"

"He would, if he were coming. But-"

"Tessali, the mazes do have their scavengers," Silverwind interrupts. "Do you want to find your hands or not?"

"Jayk, let's go." The elf cannot keep his head from pivoting down the passage. "There's no use waiting here."

"You only worry about your hands." Jayk looks away. "I wait for Zoombee."

"You may do as you wish, but you do understand that once we're gone, you'll be alone? We may never see each other again."

"I did not ask to see you the first time."

"As you wish, Jayk." After restoring a thousand madmen to their senses, Tessali knows a bluff when he sees one – or so he thinks. He turns and, with Silver-wind's help, climbs on the bariaur's back. "I will miss you."

Confident Jayk will follow once she sees he is serious, Tessali nods, and Silverwind turns and trots down the passage. When they round the corner, Jayk is still standing where they left her, arms folded across her chest and gaze locked atop the hedge.

It will be some time before she sees the Thrasson come leaping over the crest. At the moment, he is still falling through the sweltering darkness, his heart rising into his throat, his stomach light as air. There is a woman's voice, keen and high, ringing in his ears; she is trilling a single name over and over, the syllables tumbling and gurgling over each other like the lilting aria of a waterfall. The Amnesian Hero keeps trying to understand what she is singing, as though catching hold of her voice might spare him the crash at the end of his plunge, but it will take more than that to save him.

The Thrasson is still falling when he opens his eyes and finds himself lying in the dirt street. He does not remember hitting the ground, and his insides remain squeamish and unsettled, but either he has stopped moving or everyone is moving with him – he cannot decide. He is staring up at a ring of sagging, rumpled faces illuminated in the sapphire light of his star-forged sword, which the tanar'ri Karfhud has picked up and raised high aloft, like a fog-haloed moon in the darkness.

The Amnesian Hero could not pick out the woman he had seen first. The faces above him were all round festering masses of folded flesh and dark nodules. Some, those in the earliest stages of the disease, retained something of their original shapes; brows and cheeks and jawlines still manifested themselves beneath flakes of dead white skin. Other visages, unbearable to look upon, were mere ooze-glistening blobs that made the Thrasson feel guilty for his own good fortune.

A peal of deep laughter boomed from Karfhud's round muzzle. "Stranger, you are not so fortunate! The star that guided you here was a foul one indeed." The fiend turned to the others. "My friends, we have here a noble one. He truly feels for us!"

"Then leave him be, Karfhud." The rasping words slipped from the lips of a blob-face. "He means us no harm."

"Truly, I do not!" The Amnesian Hero propped himself on his elbow, at once surprised by the plumes of darkness that this small exertion sent shooting through his head and how well the fiend had read his thoughts. "And I will do… whatever I can… to aid you."

The blob shook his head. "You can do nothing, stranger."

"Do not be… hasty. I am a man of renown… the slayer of the Hydra of Thrassos… the tamer of the Hebron Crocodile… the bane of Abudrian Dragons…" The Amnesian Hero felt more feverish and parched with each declaration. For once he wished his listeners would interrupt, but the villagers had all the time in the multiverse to listen. "The champion of Ilyrian Kings… the killer of the Chalcedon Lion… the scourge of foes too numerous to name… and always have I done as I promised."

"Then you have never promised what cannot be done." The blob-face raised his chin and swiveled his head toward his fellows. "It'll be best to leave him where he lies."

The speaker stepped back and vanished into the darkness. The other villagers followed, squeezing past Karfhud and disappearing down the gloomy lane.

"Wait!" The Thrasson knew better than to think he could cure their disease, but Tessali or Silverwind might well be able to help. "I'm not alone…"

"You should save your strength," Karfhud rumbled. "Yelling will not change their minds."

"But there are…"

"Maze Blight cannot be cured," the fiend interrupted. "The magic of your healers is of no use."

The Amnesian Hero scowled. "Do you hear everything I think?"

Karfhud nodded. "I do. And you must not be angry with my companions."

The Thrasson raised his brow. It had not yet occurred to him that he was angry at being abandoned, but, of course, the fiend was right. Despite his obvious need of water and rest, the villagers had left him to die in the street

"They are doing you a kindness. Better to die of fever, quickly, than to linger here. It would take a century for someone of your health to rot away."

"All the same… I prefer to take my chances… In a century… I'll be dead… anyway."

The fiend's black lip twitched upward. "You will certainly wish you were."

Without awaiting a reply, Karfhud dropped his gaze to the Amnesian Hero's flank, where the infected scratch had grown so puffy and inflamed it was about to split. A chill tickled down the Thrasson's spine. He caught himself gawking at the sagging brow beneath the fiend's wicked horns, wondering if the tanar'ri meant to imply he had already contracted the Maze Blight Surely, the disease could not be so catching that one acquired it simply by walking into the village.

"Do you forget what happened when you grabbed Dorat's shoulder?" asked Karfhud, again intruding on the Thrasson's thoughts. "But truly, not one of us can say how he acquired the disease. There is a certain beast-"

The monster of the labyrinth! thought the Thrasson.

A little more of Karfhud's fangs seemed to show beneath his lips. He lowered the Thrasson's sword and began to inspect the glowing blade. The blue light reflected off his maroon eyes, filling the lane with brown flashes.

"A most wonderful weapon." The fiend scraped his thumb across the blade, grating off a cascade of tiny black flakes. "Star-forged, is it not?"

"You know your weapons." The Amnesian Hero had no doubt the fiend intended to steal it from him…

"On the contrary!" Karfhud kneeled, his enormous legs straddling the Thrasson's chest, and flipped the weapon around so that he was holding it by the naked blade. "I was hoping you would make me a gift of it-after you die, of course."

"I… I have no intention of… dying."

"No? More the pity for you, then." The fiend laid the hilt in the Amnesian Hero's hand, then stood. "Still – and I hope you do not find me rude for noting this – you don't look well. In case you happen to expire, would it be too much to ask the command words that activate the magic?"

Of course, even as he thought not to think it, the phrase flashed through the Thrasson's mind: Starlight cleave the night.

"One spell!" Karfhud growled. "For such a magnificent weapon, that hardly seems enough!"

"It is all… you will discover!"

Knowing what Karfhud would surely do next, the Amnesian Hero lashed out at the fiend's belly with a vicious backhand slash.

Karfhud, of course, had realized the Thrasson's intentions even as he formed them. The fiend was already out of reach when the blade flashed past