The word plucks a harp string inside the Thrasson's breast, sets his whole being to thrumming. Suddenly, he stops dreaming. Theseus was somebody's name, he remembers.

It was his name.

His eyes snapped open, and the Thrasson found himself lying on the hard brick pavement, looking up not at the Lady of Pain's face, but at that of his wine woman. She was beautiful as ever, with olive skin and emerald eyes and high, proud cheeks.

"Theseus?" he croaked. "I am Theseus?"

"You remember!"

The wine woman gave him a moon-bright smile and hugged him close to her breast, and that was when the Thrasson – no, Theseus-that was when Theseus remembered the throbbing husks of ichor dinging to his breast.

"No, wait…"

A trio of yellow pods burst, filling the air with the stench of spoiled meat. A pasty yellow ichor spread down the Thrasson's breast Belts of crushing agony tightened around his chest; the pain began to sink, dropping through his sternum and slipping down between his ribs, settling deep into his torso. A blanket of grim wet pain fell over his lungs, and Theseus found himself fighting to draw every anguished breath. He felt cold fingers around his heart, not squeezing so much as holding, thwarting the swell of each beat so that his entire chest cramped with every pulse.

As the pain deepened, the reek of the yellow ichor grew stronger and more bitter, until the smell grew so overwhelming that Theseus could not prevent himself from gagging. The convulsion caused more yellow pods to burst; more golden ichor spilled over his body, and crushing bands of agony began to tighten around his stomach, his legs, even his throat. The rancid rotten-meat stench grew overwhelming, and he knew he could not keep himself from retching.

The wine woman barely had time to push Theseus's head off her lap. She jumped up and glared down at him, her mouth twisted into an expression of distaste.

"Is the scent of my bosom so sickening to you, Theseus?" Her emerald eyes" betrayed no hint that she smelled the stench of the awful ichor that covered his body, nor that she saw the bloated pods clinging to it. "Has our love grown so repulsive to you?"

Theseus shook his head, and a painful ringing echoed through his skull. "No. Our love is well – I am sure."

"Then prove it." The woman raised her chin. "Tell me."

Now that the green and yellow pods had burst, Theseus was not so heavily burdened. He managed to raise his head so that he could look his wine woman directly in the face. "I love you."

Tears welled in her eyes. "You're lying! How can you declare your love without even knowing my name?" She began to back away, her lips trembling. "I thought you would remember if I told you your name-but you've forgotten me!"

"No!" Theseus stretched a hand toward her, causing the last yellow husk to burst. His arm went limp and dropped to the ground, feeling as though Karfhud had stomped on his elbow. "Can't you see? I'm in pain!"

"So am I!"

With that, the woman spun and ran out of sight.

"Wait!"

Theseus gathered his strength and rolled onto his side, intending to rise and go after her. Instead, he smashed two red pods clinging to his flank. The husks burst, filling the air with a smell so cloying and sweet it dizzied him. The red ichor did not spill over the ground, but spread upward over his body, drawn into his flesh as lamp oil is drawn into the wick. His skin began to bum, then went strangely numb. He suddenly felt hollow and broken inside. A vague nausea welled up someplace deep in his belly, and what little strength he had been able to muster abruptly drained from his limbs. He rolled onto his back, crushing more red pods; he felt the ruby ichor rising into his flesh, stinging his skin with that strange burning numbness.

Theseus thought the hollow feeling would start expanding again; he expected to grow weaker, to feel even more broken within. Instead, he experienced a fierce longing to hold the wine woman in his arms, to fill the emptiness inside him and feel her lips pressed to his, her bosom crushed against his chest, her loins grinding into his own. He could think of nothing but her, of his desire for her and how unfair she was to desert him. He would have her; he would hunt her down and seize her and make her understand that he had forgotten her through no fault of his own.

The Thrasson's strength rushed back to his limbs. He pushed himself upright and saw that the wine woman had dragged him away from his companions. The passage was flanked by the rusty red walls of the iron maze and paved with the same dark bricks, but he was sitting in a small dogleg passage he did not recognize, and there were no signs of his four companions.

It did not matter; nothing mattered except catching his wine woman. Theseus started to draw his legs up, and that was when he saw the hand.

The thing was flopping there at the end of his leg, just below the inflamed, crudely stitched seam where it joined his ankle. About twice the size of a normal hand, the appendage was still ugly and charred and covered with scaly black flakes and mottled patches of bare skin. The pinky was where his big toe should have been, and the thumb was on the outside where the little toe should have been. The long fingers, seared and slender as they were, made the thing look more like a fiend's claw than a man's foot.

Theseus tried to bend his big toe. The blackened pinky started to curl, and that was when his last red pod burst He had done nothing to squeeze the husk or jar it. The thing had just grown too full and split, spilling ruby ichor down his breast.

Again, there was that cloying sweet smell and the strange numbness sinking into his skin. Something shattered inside, and a terrible, overwhelming grief filled Theseus. He would never catch the wine woman with that ghastly thing on his foot! And, even if he did, how could she ever return his love? If not a monster, he had become at least a monstrosity – hardly worthy of the adoration of someone so beautiful as his wine woman!

Theseus let his body slam back to the ground, barely noticing as his skull smashed onto the hard bricks.

"Karfhud," he cried, "what have you done to me?"

The Thrasson had barely uttered the fiend's name before a blocky, homed shadow fell over his face.

"There you are. I was beginning to fear you would not think to call my name." The ground shuddered beneath the fiend's steps, then Karfhud's yellow-fanged muzzle appeared over Theseus. "I cannot imagine how you wandered this far. Silverwind said you would be in too much pain to walk."

"It was my beloved," the Thrasson explained. "She brought me here."

"That cannot be. Jayk is still-" Karfhud stopped in mid sentence, reading the Thrasson's next thought even as it formed itself. "I shall have to keep a careful watch for this wine woman. It is a rare kidnapper who can steal a caper – comrade while my back is turned."

"She did not steal me." As the Thrasson stared up at Karfhud's face, he was surprised to notice a thick coating of yellow ichor and a golden, goiterlike pod throbbing on the fiend's neck. "Had I been awake, I would certainly have gone willingly. I would do it now."

"And miss the battle with Sheba?" Karfhud scoffed. "I thought you wanted to recover your amphora and steal my maps-or have you lost your ambition, now that you recall your name?"

"There is still enough I do not recall." Theseus was surprised to notice another yellow pod, much smaller, dangling beneath the fiend's pointed ear. He wondered if Karfhud was aware of the two husks. "And whether I recover the amphora or not, I will never lose interest in finding the exit to this place."

"Then let us return to the others; Silverwind must ready you for battle, and then we will attack."

Karfhud stepped around to Theseus's side and kneeled down to pick him up. The fiend's body was coated in yellow ichor, and there were at least ten golden pods, ranging in size from no larger than a thumb to as big as Sheba's head, dangling from his body. The Thrasson saw no husks of any other color hanging on the tanar'ri.