Horrified he might have been, but it was an automatic gesture for Sunbright to haul Harvester from its sheath scabbard. The leather-wrapped pommel felt warm and comforting in his hands. The long steel shank stood up before his face, sturdy as a tree. But inwardly his guts felt pierced by a thousand icy knives, and it was all he could do not to throw the sword away and run in blind terror. Of all the legends of the tundra, the stories of undead monsters who sucked the life from men-and yet left them undead to do the same-were the most fearsome. And here Sunbright, exhausted and drunk but rapidly sobering, was trapped in a death pit with an undead fiend.

The thing provided its own hideous light. A wreath of flame enveloped its head, and empty eye sockets flickered with flames as if through a slot in an iron door. The rest was indistinct in the wavering light, but Sunbright thought he wouldn't see it well under any conditions. According to folklore, wraiths and wights and ghasts were not entirely of this world, but wafted between the seen and unseen planes, so there might be only a portion of the monster visible, or it might be seen as thinner than it really was. So its shape flowed and folded like shadows on a rippling blanket. And here in the dark, it was master of its element.

Still, whether the creature was dead or undead, a shaft of hardened steel could still dispatch it from this world to the next-or to none-if one could strike hard and fast without shirking.

But his assault started out badly.

His head still reeling, Sunbright kicked himself upright and dropped back to brace for a long swing… and stepped on open air.

His iron-ringed boot jingled across torn rock; then his knee banged excruciatingly on a jagged edge of stone. Yet the misstep might have saved him, for the writhing wraith hooked a taloned hand at him, like a net of fishhooks, but barely grazed the front of his bearskin jerkin.

Gasping in pain, the barbarian dragged back his shorn knee. His long shirt was sopping wet, not with wine this time, and the clammy touch of it chilled his skin like glacier runoff. Shoving the sword straight at the beast to fend it off, he gingerly tested his leg, found that it wasn't sprained, only smarting. Afraid to fumble another step and cripple himself, he whipped his head around to study the trap.

By rippling hell-flame, he'd first thought the walls were coal, square-cut, and faintly glistening, or else somehow painted black. But neither idea made any sense for a simple cellar in the abandoned part of town. Wary of the advancing ghost-thing, he swished his sword right and left at the glistening walls, but touched nothing.

Frantic, he stabbed far to his left. Still nothing. Yet a glance overhead showed he was almost underneath the threshold he'd tumbled over. So either this cellar undercut the street tremendously, and the threshold sat on nothing, or else…

… or else he'd blundered into another world, another type of space altogether.

A world where wraiths stood triumphant.

The monster undulated like a hovering snake and snatched at his scalp with one hand, then the other, testing. A jab, a poke, and the slashes were turned. But for how long?

Chills raced down Sunbright's spine, raised hackles on his arms and neck and legs. If this were some other vacuous world, he might stumble into any kind of pit, fall down any slope, become lost in a world of blackness and death.

Or something worse than death.

"Sunbright!" Greenwillow's shrill brought him back from the edge of fear, back to life. The elf-maid hunched in the doorway, one hand on the jamb, the other dangling her slim sword blade. She's going to jump, the barbarian thought in terror.

"Don't!" His voice was unnaturally high. "Don't come down here! It's not real! It's somewhere else!" He was blathering, spouting nonsense that conveyed no information. "Stay there!"

He had to twist in a half-circle as the wraith circled him, as a fox would circle a caged bird. He tracked the thing, which mimicked his turnings. Sunbright had about screwed himself as far around as possible without moving his feet, when the ghast swooped in.

A clawed hand as wide as a pitchfork grabbed for the barbarian's shoulder, the other his face. Twisting, Sunbright ripped a figure eight in the air, a pure defense. But somehow a hand got through, raked his cheek, twitched upward for his eye, and Sunbright almost snapped his neck jerking backward. Then he fell in a tangle.

His feet clumped on something solid, but his left elbow disappeared into a hole with a downward-sucking roar that must have vanished into the earth. Rolling in terror from the awful depths suggested, the barbarian found a bigger crevice yawning on his right, one wide enough to swallow his shoulders. Freezing stock-still, he tried desperately to think.

What was the floor made of? His jumbling thoughts couldn't form a picture. Was he standing on the tops of flat rocks with cracks between? Or poised at the lip of some curvy cliff like a broken-backed snake? Or something else, a terrain the human mind couldn't map?

Whatever, he had to get up. Rocking forward, he slapped his hands down, found solid footing, and planted his hobnails on it. But where-?

Icy hands like ice picks latched on to his neck from behind. Ten pricks broke skin, brought forth red blood that steamed against the alien claws. A half-inch, an inch into his neck muscles, plunged the nails. Any more, and he'd have his head severed like a chicken's.

But his feet were secure, so he could strike. With a stomach-wrenching grunt, he slashed his great sword Harvester overhead and down. A satisfying chunk answered him, and the pricking nails retreated. Yet the chilly horror of them lingered and kept his spine crawling, his back muscles spasming.

He had to get out of here, somehow, anyhow. But to panic would be to die, or be lost.

"Sunbright!" Greenwillow shrilled again. She'd been screaming at him steadily, he guessed, but he heard little. It was as if the pit sucked up sound as well as life. "Lead it over here! My sword is silver and ensorceled!"

But so is mine, he thought. Chandler poured an enchanting potion over the steel. It lets me wound shielded creatures. Yet assessing the blow he'd struck, he couldn't be sure if he'd wounded the wraith or simply knocked it back.

Stooping, feeling the ground with one hand, he swung blindly behind him with his sword and crept a couple of paces forward. His left toes were suspended over a pit. How could that be?

And why was he dizzy? He'd thought the effects of the wine gone by now, sweated out in buckets of terror. This was more a weakness, a sapping, as if he'd swum too long in icy water and developed chills. But perhaps that was a function of this nightmarish not-world.

Swinging behind him again, he eased to the right, felt solid ground, took a step. Greenwillow was above him, but seemed higher up now. She'd lain flat on her stomach, hanging her arms and sword inside, yet he couldn't have touched her sword with his own. Was the ground sinking farther? Would it continue to drop, like water behind a leaking dam, until he'd sunk to the bowels of… hell? No, not hell, for that place was warm. This was home to ice worms and ghasts.

And here the flaming beast returned, now outside sword range. So he had hurt it! He hawked to spit and throw it a challenge, but his throat was dry and his voice a pipsqueak. Never mind the bravado, he thought. Escape.

With no sound, the thing rushed. Red flames filled Sunbright's vision. How had he ever mistaken this for Ruellana? Swinging wildly from his left hip, he carved frigid air and forced the wraith to veer, but it only swooped low, fastening needle fingers on his leg.

Down he smashed with the pommel onto the thing's back, at the ring of fire, its head. But it ignored the blows. Like some northern shark intent only on prey, it fastened deeper into his flesh, freezing muscle to the bone, chilling the marrow. Desperate, the warrior sliced Harvester hard and fast inside, close enough to shave hair off his own leg. The cold blade thrummed on the skinny black arms, chipped flesh like ice. The wraith let go, and Sunbright felt blood pulse through his leg, and out of it.