Tazi was lost in the shadows. There was no longer any pain. The severe burning of her flesh had eased and cold night was everywhere. She realized she had never known such peace before this moment, alone in the dark. The rage that had boiled inside her had also faded to only a whisper. And somewhere in the blackness, a voice sighed. She could almost understand the words.

"Tazi." She finally did hear her name and somehow managed to swim up from the icy depths to consciousness.

"Hmmm…" she sighed and stretched her body slowly, reveling in the feeling of comfort. Her eyelids fluttered open and, at first, she didn't know where she was. Tazi could make out that she was in a darkened room, lying in a large bed, covered by a heavy, satin coverlet.

Her head rested atop several down pillows. She was confused but not frightened. Her mind raced as she tried to remember what had happened. She placed a smooth, white hand against her forehead and rubbed her temples with her thumb and fingers.

Her face felt cool and uninjured. What happened to the burns? She raked her hands through her hair, and not only were there no longer any wounds on her scalp, her hair was thick again, and it was as long as it had been before her father died.

She threw the coverlet from the bed and saw that she wore a sleeveless nightgown of amethyst silk with a plunging neckline. But what was startling was that she could very easily see, through the near-transparent material, that she was whole again. There were no longer any burns or wounds anywhere along the length of her body. Nor did she feel the fever in her mind that had raged there since she had immersed herself in the alchemical blood. It seemed her bond to the Blooded Ones had been severed by their death in the volcano. Tazi was stunned. A soft cough startled her, and she looked about the room for the source. A shadow separated itself from the wall and moved toward the bed.

"Justikar," Tazi said and didn't hide the pleasure in her voice. She could see he had cleaned up. The soot and grime from the past few days had been scrubbed away, and he no longer wore the foolish, jade-colored shirt that Naglatha had forced him to wear. He wore new trousers and a tunic made of home-spun cloth, both in shades of the earth.

They suited him, she thought. What hair he had was combed and he had re-plaited his beard. He also, Tazi noted, carried a bundle wrapped in a ruby-red velvet cloak.

"Don't get all worked up," he said, raising his free hand in warning. "I knew you'd get it wrong and think I had stayed here for the last few days in some sort of vigil by your bedside like a lovelorn suitor."

"Last few days?" Tazi asked and a frown crossed her delicate features. Her memories were fuzzy, frayed around the edges, and she was startled at her lost time.

"Well," the duergar added with the slightest hint of gentleness in his voice, "I expect you'd be a bit muddled after what you went through. When I carried you back to the Citadel after I was certain the crater was truly sealed off, I figured you were dead, as burned as you were."

Tazi nodded and remembered her final confrontation with the demon-king. Burned severely along her right side, more than half her flesh had been charred beyond healing. She had closed her eyes after she knew Eltab was gone and had been ready for death.

"I should be dead," she murmured.

The dwarf nodded. "And you probably would be if it hadn't been for the necromancer."

"What do you mean?" Tazi asked as she sat back against the pillows-though in her heart, she already knew the answer.

"Oh, don't worry," he told her gruffly, "you're not one of his undead. But I wouldn't be too sure he wouldn't have raised you for his own if you had died.

"When I approached the Citadel, he must have been watching from one of his perches. He swooped down right away, and I swear there was genuine sorrow on his face when he saw what a pitiful sight you were. He took you from my arms and brought you to a chamber lower down that had somehow survived the quakes intact."

"And?" she prodded him, but somewhere in the recess of her mind, Tazi saw images and flashes of herself on a cold slab as the skeletal lich worked and conjured over her. She felt, more than she saw, that the lich had cooled the rage that burned within her as well as her ravaged flesh. Tazi squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head a little, wondering what it had taken for a necromancer to heal a living being.

"You all right?" Justikar asked and reached out to her.

"Fine," she lied. "Go on."

"It took longer than he thought, because you were so far gone," the duergar explained. "And because the burns destroyed so much of your tissue, he said there wasn't much to work with. But I'll give that skeleton his due, because he didn't give up on you. I sure had," he added sincerely.

"That's why you brought me back instead of leaving me on the battlefield," she pointed out to the sour dwarf. He squirmed uncomfortably, and Tazi saved him from added embarrassment by immediately asking, "What's that tucked under your arm?"

"You're not the only one to receive a gift from the lich," he said simply. Justikar laid the swaddled bundle onto the bed with great care. He pulled back the material to reveal several ivory bones.

"My brother Adnama. Or, rather, what's left of him. After Tam was certain you were going to live, he had a slave bring the bundle to me. He said that it was a reward for my service to the Thayan people. Instead of raising him up as some dead thing to serve in his significantly smaller army, I could take his remains." The duergar became silent.

Tazi knew how much Justikar had wanted to find his brother and the hell he had put himself through for the quest. Now, to know he was truly dead had to be bittersweet. She gently laid her hand on the gray one that rested on the bones. Their eyes met briefly and something silent passed between them.

The dwarf then shrugged off her hand like it wasn't there, wrapped his precious cargo back up, and stored the package in a leather sack he had near the chair. She looked over and saw that he also had a walking stick and his stolen war axe stacked near the doorway.

"Now what will you do?" she asked him.

Justikar paused from his packing and looked at her for a moment before replying, "Follow in his footsteps, I suppose. I don't really have a choice now that he's gone. We're a dying race, and as I was so recently reminded," he paused with a wink to her, "there is definitely safety and power in numbers. I'll keep searching for our kind. They've got to be down there somewhere."

Tazi pulled up her knees and wrapped her unblemished arms around them. She watched as he made a final check of his gear and slung the pack and the war axe onto his strong back. He walked over to the door to collect his walking stick, and Tazi thought that he was simply going to walk out without another word. But he surprised her and turned to look at her a final time.

"Just so there is no misunderstanding between us," he told her, "should we meet up again, make no mistake. We are not friends. And if our paths do cross again," he warned her, "I can guarantee you that the circumstances will not be pleasant."

Tazi swung her legs off the bed. "And these were pleasant?" she quipped. She placed her feet on the ground and slowly rose, testing her legs experimentally. She realized she needn't have bothered because they were unscathed.

She padded across the thick carpeting to the drawn curtains on the far side of the room. Hesitantly, she grabbed the heavy drapes and wrapped her fingers in their velvet softness. She steeled herself and drew them back to let sunlight stream into the dark room.