She absently brushed a stray hair away from her face and finally saw what she had been waiting for. About seventy-five feet away, Tazi caught a glimpse of what looked like a humanoid figure, pale skinned in the blue light and of average build, nearly nude and devoid of any hair at all. She squinted for a better look at the lean and lanky man, but there wasn't enough light for more details than that. She could see, however, that he was filling a recessed ledge with an armful of something that glinted dully in the weak light, and he had some type of weapon dangling from his waist. Tazi dropped a little lower and began to mark the time. She frowned slightly when she realized how stiff her legs had become while crouching there, and she berated herself for her carelessness. While she counted off silently, she began to tense and relax the large muscles in her thighs and calves, readying herself.

When the first figure had left and another one similarly burdened replaced him, Tazi knew approximately how many minutes she had. She passed her hands over her gear. After taking a quick inventory of supplies, she freed her coil of rope and knotted it around the frozen stalagmite to her right. She let the other end of the rope drop to the vault floor and snapped a clip from her bandolier onto it. She threaded the rope behind her waist, grabbing the tied-off side with her left hand and the free end with her right. She tugged once to test the knot and, satisfied that it was secure enough, she launched herself over the ledge.

Tazi dropped down in an arc that curved back to the ice wall. She braced her legs for the impact and launched herself back out as soon as she made contact. As she pushed away, she let another ten feet of rope play out before she touched the wall again. Tazi rappelled down the icy face in less than a minute before her feet touched the bottom. She undipped herself from the rope and moved silently toward the cache set in the wall.

Tazi glanced once in the direction where the figures had disappeared to verify she was alone. The diffuse light in the large cavern didn't accommodate much of a view, so she had to satisfy herself that she had their timing down. Tazi hurried over to the recessed ledge and the pile of rocks that twinkled in the sick light. She gave the wall a cursory glance for traps, but couldn't discover a single one. She suspected there wouldn't be any considering how haphazardly the two humanoid creatures had dumped their loads, but Tazi always checked.

She moved up to the natural-rock shelf and slowly pulled down her muffler in awe. Lumped in a pile was what appeared to be a mound of gold. But this was no ordinary metal. Even in the half-light, Tazi could see that the odd-shaped pieces had a red cast to them and also emitted a faint, crimson glow of their own. She used her teeth to pull off one of her gloves and tucked it into her belt. She picked up a piece in her bare hand and smiled a little at the slight tingle she felt from the ore. It should have been freezing to the touch, but a gentle heat radiated from it. Tazi tossed the chunk in the air a few times and judged its weight. Finally, she pulled a small dagger from her left boot and tried to knick the gold, to no avail. Satisfied, she smiled and filled the sack at her hip with a few pounds of the stuff. Caught up in her success, Tazi didn't notice the pale figure that emerged from the tunnel to her left.

But he saw her.

Fastening her pouch shut, Tazi nearly dropped the whole sack as a high pitched whine echoed throughout the frozen chamber. She slipped her glove back on while she whirled in a circle to discover the source of the noise. She eventually spotted the pale creature, whose cache she was robbing, near the entrance to the tunnel off to her left. Tazi realized his cry was one of alarm. She didn't know how many of the creatures she might face and had no intention of waiting around to find out. With a lopsided grin plastered to her face, she made a mad dash back to her rope, over a hundred feet away.

Tazi didn't bother to look back and see if any were gaining on her; she knew they would be eventually. The series of icy hedges were all that lay between her and her rope. Tazi didn't miss a beat. Placing both hands on the waist-high barrier, she swung her legs together as one over the side, easily clearing the hurdle. She cleared the second swinging her legs the other direction Цке a pendulum, but felt something grip her left ankle at the third hurdle. Tazi let the subterranean dweller spin her around by her foot. As soon as she was facing his direction, she braced her hands on the ice hedge, now behind her, and brought her right leg around in a powerful sweep. She heard the crack as she made contact with the thing's jaw. Caught unaware, the thing was knocked backward off his feet by the momentum of her blow. Glancing past the fallen creature, she could see he was no longer alone. At least four or five more of his kind ran from the far tunnel in her direction. Tazi wasted no more time and sprinted the remaining distance to the rope.

Casting safety to the wind, Tazi leaped the last few feet for the line and started to shimmy up the coil, now stiff with the cold. With lightening speed, she moved hand over hand and pistoned her legs all the way to the ledge of her original perch. She grabbed the stalagmite and swung herself up, only then affording herself a glance at her pursuers. The first one she had kicked was receiving a helping hand from the reinforcements, while one of the others had just grabbed Tazi's rope. She watched, momentarily amazed at his strength as he began to pull himself up using just his arms, but snapped herself from her reverie. Tazi drew the same dagger that she had used to test her treasure's hardness and hastily cut her rope free of the stalagmite. As the length of cord whistled away, Tazi leaned forward to see the creature tumble back to the frozen floor, not much worse for wear. She shot him a mock salute and turned to flee, realizing she had probably only bought herself a few minutes at best.

With her legs pumping away, Tazi ran through the passage, all the while reversing the turns she took to get to her vantage point. She had hesitated to use any kind of glow stones or other markers along her path for fear of drawing unwanted attention. Still, some attention was unavoidable, no matter how cautious one was.

As she took a corner while looking over her shoulder,Tazi nearly struck her head on a low ceiling. She did bump into something soft and velvety that exploded into a flurry of wings and screeches. Tazi had crashed into a nest of ice bats. Larger and covered by thicker fur than ordinary bats, they had razor-sharp claws to better grip and pierce the slick, cold surfaces of their frozen depths. Tazi drew her guardblade and cut a swath through the swarming eruption of beating wings and raking talons. She skewered a few, but mostly nicked a wing here and there until the majority fled into one of the many crevices in the passageway. She sheathed her weapon and continued along what she hoped was the right direction.

The tunnel narrowed a bit, and Tazi paused for just a moment to lean forward with a hand against her side and the other braced against her thigh. Running in the cold had taken a toll on her, and every breath burned like a shaft of fire cutting through her chest. Her ragged breathing, however, masked the sound of gentle slithering directly above her until it was too late. Just as Tazi started to straighten herself, a thick coil, four feet long, dropped down in front of her. It wrapped itself around her neck with lightening quickness and yanked Jazi a few feet off the ground, nearly snapping her neck. She grabbed at the red- and black-stripped, scaly loops in an attempt to free herself or, at the very least, take some of the pressure off her throat. Her legs kicked futilely at the air, in a dizzy parody of a jig. As Tazi felt herself raised toward the broken and uneven ceiling, a withered face lowered itself into her view.