"Sir?"

"There's a hidden fortress in the Idium desert in Lucidia called Andesqueluz. Carved out of the living rock of a mountain. A long time ago an ugly, murderous cult operated out of there. They were exterminated by the rest of the world. Which always happens when that kind of people gets too ambitious. A few years back the great mage of Dreanger, er-Rashal al-Dhulquarnen, sent a band of Sha-lug warriors to Andesqueluz to steal the mummies of the slain sorcerers."

"Er-Rashal al-Dhulquarnen?" He mispronounced it. "Wasn't that the one… ?"

"He was at al-Khazen. Yes. We distracted him while you and the Emperor eliminated his associates. We couldn't keep him from getting away. I expect he's back home and up to some other mischief."

"So what would he want with dead bodies? Well, you said mummies. That's not quite the same thing."

"Specifically, mummified sorcerers who were of the first water when they were alive. Some of the worst ever. More than one lord of Andesqueluz ascended before death dragged the rest down."

"Uh… Ascended?" Hecht knew next to nothing about sorcery. He would have been damned if he did.

"They worked sorceries powerful enough to make themselves over into Instrumentalities of the Night. Demons, if you will. The djinn of the east were all human once. The cruel immortality was once much less difficult to achieve, and the more so near the Wells of Ihrian. One would suspect that the Dreangerean has a scheme to transform himself." Delari took careful steps sideways. Hecht followed, round a skeleton wrapped in scraps of rotted linen. The skull had wisps of hair attached. The empty eye sockets seemed to track him.

There were dozens of skeletons, then. Someone had ripped open countless crypts. "No jewelry," Hecht noted. Grave robbers."

"No. These are the earnest Brothen Chaldareans. They didn't believe in jewelry. They took nothing to the grave but what they brought into the world when they were born."

"Times have changed."

"Human nature will prevail."

"If this sorcerer can turn himself into a god… Well, what's he likely to do if he does?"

"The conventional wisdom says ascendants lose interest in their old lives. They get busy doing the same old things inside the Night, going after more and more power. But that's really just speculation. Nobody really knows. They don't come back to chat about what it's like on the other side. And there hasn't been a lot of it happening in recent centuries. Stop!"

Delari's voice fell to a whisper. "Say nothing. Do nothing."

The old man turned his head slowly, side to side, listening intently. Eyes shut, he sniffed the air. He breathed, "It's time to go." He began to retrace their path carefully, straining for silence.

Hecht asked no questions. His amulet had suddenly turned bitter cold.

Something extremely unpleasant had begun to stir out in the darkness.

The old man relaxed visibly once they entered the tunnel to the Chiaro Palace.

"What happened?" Hecht finally asked.

"We almost walked right into something very dark and very powerful. It was asleep, but suddenly restless. I didn't want to waken it." Soon afterward, he added, "It may be the thing responsible for those grotesque murders. Now we know where it dens up, we can go after it."

"Why not now?"

"Because I'm one old man, by myself, all alone, and worn out from showing you this tiny slice of the world below." A chuckle. "And because I'm unarmed and it felt like it might be nastier than anyone guessed before."

Princess Helspeth started angry. Algres Drear kept dragging his heels. She stayed angry. Drear persisted in his claim that waiting a few weeks would make for a dramatically easier journey. Weather was Drear's determined ally in thwarting her desires. Her most fervent desire.

She wanted to be in her city of Plemenza. Now.

Weather be damned, just days after Lothar bestowed the Plemenza honors, Helspeth and those of her household hardy enough moved from Alten Weinberg to Hochwasser, on the Bleune. Hochwasser was a ghost town just beginning to show signs of life because the Emperor was expected. The Bleune was wide, filthy, and speckled with floes of ice, some the size of warships.

The serious delays came at Hochwasser.

Couriers reported only one pass even remotely usable. This was the worst winter on record. Only the toughest, most determined travelers had any hope of getting through. Helspeth was determined to try. And did, accompanied only by Captain Drear and two Braunsknechts who felt the eyes of Johannes Blackboots's ghost crisping the backs of their necks. They refused to let Hansel's baby girl go alone once it was clear she could not be dissuaded.

Helspeth demonstrated a stubbornness the Braunsknechts found disturbing. Weather did not stop her. Cold did not stop her. The threat of frostbite did not intimidate her. The presence in the mountains of something abidingly awful did not frighten her into turning back, though it stalked them for days, singing in the wind. Algres Drear was both impressed and deeply concerned.

That was a prince of the Night out there. Something remarkably wicked and cruel, a near god. You needed no mystic talent to sense it. Yet, this time, it was content to stay its evil. And the folk below the mountains were amazed and disturbed.

This dread spirit had sown terror liberally for close to a year, its predations worsening dramatically with the weather. Those who claimed expertise in the forms assumed by the Night believed it must be some wind-stalking demon-thing somehow displaced from the realms of permanent ice now advancing from the north.

Ignorant folk concluded that the Princess was favored by God. Or was about to become a bride of the Night. Each conclusion led to its special set of fears.

Helspeth reached Plemenza two weeks before spring officially commenced. In a punishing sleet storm that coated men and animals with ice and left the footing so treacherous she thought she might die on the cobblestone street after having survived the worst handed her by the high Jagos.

Other Braunsknechts and hangers-on dribbled in throughout the following month. Following an annoyingly dramatic change of weather that began almost as soon as she reached the Dimmel Palace. Ten days later there was no snow or ice to be seen on the Firaldian side of the Jago Mountains. Traffic through the range normalized quickly.

Algres Drear never said a word.

Which made Helspeth want to cane him with a bamboo flail till he puked up the smug "Told you so!" smiling behind his calm gray eyes.

More galling still was an illness that claimed her for several weeks. Her cough became frighteningly fierce.

Ferris Renfrow reentered Helspeth's life at the height of her fever. She lay in bed, curtains drawn. She was always too hot or too cold, always exhausted from continuous coughing. She pretended sleep to evade her fussing women. Worst were Lady Chevra diNatale and Lady Delta va Kelgerberg. The former was an unpleasant old cow related to the former Counts of Plemenza. Lady Delta was just four years Helspeth's senior but ancient in her perception of the way an Imperial Princess should comport herself. Lady Chevra was a devoted Brothen Episcopal and, probably, a tool of the Council Advisory. Va Kelgerberg was a devoted companion but tedious to the point of excruciation.

The true, deep horror was that both women believed they knew best what was best for Princess Helspeth Ege.

When Helspeth first heard Renfrow she thought it was the fever talking. Purely wishful thinking. He would not enter her personal quarters.

Renfrow asked about her health.

"She brought this on herself," Lady Delta opined, with a superior sniff. "She's a spoiled, willful child. Much too selfish and far too stubborn. She will have what she will, when she wills it, never mind the cost of her self-indulgence to others. It's a miracle Algres Drear and those two sergeants…"