"I may have misjudged you, Thrasson. I took you for the sort of fool who might regard the lives of his companions more highly than his own desires." Karfhud, already sitting atop the wall, swung his legs to the other side. "Make your decision soon. I won't wait for you."

The fiend pushed off and, even before he dropped down the other side, vanished from sight. The Amnesian Hero snorted his frustration, then jumped up, caught hold of the crest of the wall, and pulled himself to the top. As much as he relished the thought of being free of Karfhud – though he suspected that could not truly be while the tanar'ri's heinous face remained tattooed on his palm – the Thrasson knew the fiend had judged him correctly. No man of renown could abandon his companions in a time of such dire need-even if it meant breaking his word to a god. He pulled his chest atop the wall, then swung his legs to the other side and pushed off.

It is not like passing through a conjunction.

The Thrasson's stomach does a flip. His body rotates, his feet drifting up over his head. He is falling, he thinks; then no, he realizes, he is floating; an instant later, he decides he is suspended like a beetle in amber, in the syrup of nothingness. In his nostrils, there is nothing, not even the reek of his own unwashed body. His ears roar with silence, his skin prickles with the touch of emptiness, his tongue craves the taste of his own teeth. He sees what dead men see: not darkness, but an ocean of endless, colorless depths. Something goes slack, and the Thrasson feels himself uncoiling inside; his spirit and his mind and his body all drift toward their own separate peace.

Then a terrific jolt drives his knees up to his chin. He finds himself squatting on his heels, his ears ringing as though someone had boxed them, his bones shuddering from the impact. It would be wrong to say the Thrasson has landed; that would imply falling in the first place. It is closer to the truth to say his paradigm has shifted. Now he sees himself crouching between two rows of brambly hedges with dagger-length thorns, watching in morbid astonishment as Karfhud snuffles about searching for the marilith, harrowing the sandy floor with his blighted face.

It is clever, is it not, how the Amnesian Hero avoids thinking, even to himself, what a buffoon is that lust-struck tanar'ri? The Thrasson knows, better than any of us, that there is no marilith; would not his Hunter's nose have scented her spoor back in the blind? Would not those special eyes have seen beneath the top layer of ash to pick out her slithering trail, or those fingers have sensed the slimy dampness of her passing? The blood that has so roused Karfhud's passions belongs to Jayk, who was conceived at death and spawned from a marilith's leathery egg, but the Amnesian Hero is careful to think of none of this. He watches the tanar'ri sniff, his thoughts full of concern for his companions and strategies for fighting snake-women. Wiser to play the fool, to hide his nature until the time comes to betray his new keeper and make the fiend his.

A dangerous game, to be certain – and the only way to defeat the monster of the labyrinth – but how does the Thrasson know all this? Certainly, I did not tell him. And who else could, but you? Someone has a loose tongue, I fear, and they will pay.

But do not trouble yourself now. It will change nothing in the end, and what good is punishment if it comes expected? Even now, Karfhud has changed directions. The fiend is sniffing back toward the Amnesian Hero, who stands in the middle of the passage, somehow not thinking about the faint rasp of Jayk's breath whispering down the passage from the intersection, somehow pretending that his Hunter's ears don't hear a thing. What happens when Karfhud stops at the Thrasson's feet, it would not do to miss.

"This cannot be right!" The fiend has jerked his face from the sand and pointed down the passage, away from the intersection. "The blood trail leads around that comer, but the marilith went the other way – with a human!"

The Amnesian Hero scowled. "That can't be. I was the only human in our party."

"My nose may look blighted, Thrasson, but it does not lie."

Karfhud turned to stomp up the passage, leaving the Amnesian Hero to clump behind as best he could. Though it was only a short distance to the intersection, the tanar'ri reached it several paces ahead of the Thrasson. The fiend stopped and looked first left, then right. His great wings flared, drawing a curtain of darkness across the corridor; from his throat rumbled a sonorous growl, so low it felt like an earth tremor.

"Tiefling!"

Jayk's voice came around the corner high and shrill, cracking with fear as she uttered her incantation. A tremendous crackling bounced down the passage, and Karfhud's huge wings folded over his back satchel just as a cloud of fire boiled out of the side corridor to swallow him. The passage filled with a yellow smoke that stank of brimstone and charred flesh. The Thrasson stopped and turned away, shielding his face, daring to hope the tiefling had freed him from the fiend.

The heat of the flames continued to build. The Amnesian Hero flattened himself on the sand and tried to hold his breath. The foul smoke had already filled his longs, and he could not keep from coughing; with each gasp, he swallowed more of the fiery fumes, which caused more convulsions, and he thought he would suffocate.

Though a lifetime seemed to pass, it did not take more than a few seconds for the.flames to die down. Still coughing, the Amnesian Hero pushed himself off the scorching sands and peered up the passage. Karfhud looked a little blacker than usual, as if that were possible, but stood exactly as he had before the fireball engulfed him.

"Now will you have reason to lament, tiefling!" The fiend unfolded his great wings, revealing the blackened exterior of his back-satchel. There was a wisp of brownish smoke rising from the pockets where he had stored Tessali's hands, but otherwise the sack appeared intact "For that fireball, and for raising my appetites with that false smell of yours!"

"Karfhud, wait!" The Amnesian Hero started up the passage, but the fiend was already rounding the corner. "It's not her fault!"

"Zoombee?" cried Jayk. "Help me!"

The Amnesian Hero drew his sword and clumped around the comer. Karfhud's wings blocked the passage from one side to the other. Between the fiend's feet, the Thrasson could see Jayk lying on her back, frantically trying to push herself up the passage. She flung a handful of sand toward the fiend's face and ran her fingers through the gestures of a spell, but she was so badly frightened that she could not choke out the incantation.

"Karfhud, stop!" When the fiend did not obey, the Amnesian Hero rushed forward, sword raised to strike.

As soon as the Thrasson started to bring the blade down, the weapon slipped from his grasp. He could not violate his oath to the tanar'ri.

Karfhud stooped down to grasp Jayk in his clawed hands. She shot a frightened glance through the fiend's legs, then tried to call out to the Thrasson. She managed little more than a croak.

The Amnesian Hero dropped to his knees and snatched up his sword. Then, hoping he had guessed correctly about how to free himself from the fiend, laid his tattooed hand in the sand. He raised the star-forged blade above the wrist, took a deep breath, and started to bring the weapon down.

A huge, black-taloned hand caught the Thrasson's wrist.

The Amnesian Hero looked up to see Karfhud's massive homed head sitting backward on the fiend's hulking shoulders. The tanar'ri's maroon eyes, smoldering with suppressed fury, were glaring down over his scorched back-satchel.

"She is yours?"

"She is my friend." The Amnesian Hero twisted his sword arm free, still determined to strike off his tattooed hand-if that was necessary to defend Jayk. "But harm to her is harm to me."