By the time Koros reached the south side of the marketplace, the sword appeared to be ordinary steel, though the black grip was hot in Garth's hand.

He found the three robed humans perhaps halfway to the gate, walking toward the center of town. They saw him at almost the same instant that he spotted them; one turned to flee, another hesitated, while the third fumbled with something beneath his ruddy robe.

Garth bellowed, urging Koros into a charge.

The fumbler stopped his actions and stood up straight, defying the warbeast and overman. "Ho, Garth!" he began.

Then the Sword of Bheleu struck his neck; with a roar and a sheet of flame, the blade passed through the protective aura and into the Aghadite's throat. Blood spurted, and the man's severed head rolled forward, tottered grotesquely, and fell to the ground as his body began to crumple. White sparks spattered from the dripping blade, and something hissed fiercely.

The man who had hesitated had no time to react before the sword swung around in a gleaming arc and beheaded him as well, spraying blood and fire across the packed dirt of the street.

Before the second corpse could fall, Garth twisted the sword back and impaled the dead man, holding it upright, the blade thrust through the chest-though the head had fallen to one side, where the overman ignored it. He was not willing to let both these foes escape with so quick and clean a death as simple decapitation.

The third Aghadite was still fleeing; Garth urged the warbeast after him, dragging the headless corpse alongside with the sword.

He gained on the human rapidly, despite the encumbrance of the dead body, but not rapidly enough; he saw wisps of red vapor gathering about the man's head, staying with him as he ran. With a growl, Garth tore the sword from the corpse's chest, letting the body fall aside, and urged Koros to greater speed.

It did no good; the Aghadite vanished before Garth could reach him.

The overman bellowed in rage and frustration. The man had escaped him!

Haggat was standing by the pentagram when the cult's surviving agent reappeared in a cloud of mystic vapor; he had given up trying to follow events in Skelleth. The Sword of Bheleu had the capability of resisting any attempt at scrying spells, should it choose to do so; Aghad's high priest had learned that fact almost three years earlier, at the cost of a good glass. On this occasion he had not bothered to try to observe the overman at all, after the image distorted and vanished at the instant that Garth's hand touched the sword's hilt. Instead he had followed the actions of his three cultists, keeping one of his wizard-acolytes ready with one of his handful of transporting crystals. Even that image had been lost, however, when the overman attacked the threesome, and Haggat's brief resulting confusion had given Garth time to kill the two who had chosen to rely on the protective spell.

It was of interest, Haggat thought, that the spell, which he had believed quite potent, had been unable to resist the Sword of Bheleu for as much as a second. The sword was obviously a weapon well worth having, and a very serious threat in Garth's hands.

He had not thought that the overman would take the sword back from the strange old man in rags. That, it seemed, had been a miscalculation, one that had cost the cult two good men already and that might prove disastrous.

Garth had sworn to return to Dыsarra and wipe out the whole sect; now that he had the sword in his possession once more, there was a chance that he might actually manage it. Haggat considered it essential to distract the overman, to harry him, to do whatever could be done to keep him busy until defenses could be prepared.

With that in mind, Haggat signaled for his advisers and assassins to attend him. Obediently, a dozen red-robed figures clustered around him.

While the Aghadites were gathering about their master, Garth sat astride his warbeast, roaring with anger and swinging the Sword of Bheleu in circles over his head. Streaks of shimmering white fire hung like smoke, emitting waves of intense heat. Thunder rumbled in the distance, drawn by the sword's power.

The human had to be somewhere, Garth told himself. The red mist was merely a transporting spell, nothing more. It did not create people out of thin air, nor snatch them into nothingness. The Aghadite was still alive somewhere, perhaps nearby, perhaps laughing at his escape.

Wherever he was, Garth would find him; he would find him and cut him apart, watch his blood pour out, watch him suffer and die. He promised himself that, ignoring the tiny inner voice that protested this open bloodlust.

Koros had slowed and stopped when its prey vanished; now, at the urging of its rider, it turned back toward the inhabited portion of Skelleth. As it passed by each of the headless corpses, Garth thrust the sword out casually and set both afire with the weapon's supernatural flame.

That done, he rode on, considering his next move.

His first thought was to return to the marketplace and begin searching for the escaped Aghadite there, but that, he decided, would be a mistake. The man was almost certainly hiding somewhere in the ruins, where no stray villagers would wonder at mysterious colored smoke or strange noises. Garth had lived in Skelleth for almost three years and had not seen anyone wearing the distinctive red robes between the time of his giving up the Sword of Bheleu and his finding of Kyrith's body-yet now these three had turned up suddenly. None of the faces was familiar; he could not recollect having seen any of them in other garb. Therefore, he guessed that they had only recently arrived in Skelleth-and since newcomers, other than caravans, were rare enough to excite a great deal of comment, Garth thought he would have heard of them if they were living openly in the inhabited part of the town.

Therefore, he concluded, they had been living in concealment somewhere in the ruins, and it was in the ruins that he must search for the survivor, and any others who might have taken part in Kyrith's murder.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he remembered the behemoth destroying Ur-Donmulk, but somehow it seemed far less important than dealing immediately with the cult of Aghad.

Besides, he told himself, surely he couldn't object to destroying ruins, and that would keep the sword busy and Bheleu happy.

That thought troubled him somehow; something seemed wrong with it, and perhaps with his other decisions as well. Something appeared to be clouding his thoughts.

The idea refused to come clear, so he dismissed it. He had an enemy to hunt down and destroy; that was what mattered. He turned Koros off the road leading into the market and set out instead into the ring of ruins that encircled Skelleth's inhabited core.

The town had been built as a border fortress, and its houses were constructed mostly of stone as a result, so that they would not burn readily. After three hundred years of neglect, many houses and buildings had lost roofs and floors, and some walls had fallen, but many still stood, making the streets a maze, with some routes blocked by rubble, others still open, and all divided by crumbling buildings.

Garth, armed with the Sword of Bheleu, did not bother to find his way through this labyrinth; instead, he dismounted and marched in a straight line, Koros trailing behind. Whenever he found his way blocked by a standing wall or a pile of debris, he blasted it apart with the Sword of Bheleu-only open pits were sufficient to turn him aside. When he came across those, he would pause and send a wave of flame down into them, to incinerate any Aghadites who might be lurking therein.

The use of the sword's power, he found, came very easily, almost without any thought or effort at all; the god's long restraint had not affected the increase in power that accompanied the establishment of the Fourteenth Age. Garth discovered quickly that all that vast resource was at his command, ready and eager to be applied.