From the black sky booms my father's voice. "There, Foul One, upon the shores of the Styx! Hurry, or she is lost!"
I turn to face the river, but instead of black waters, I am staring at the amphora. The wind is roaring out of the adjacent passage, stirring up eddies of gray ash, and my mouth is parched with despair. Where now, my heart: Carceri, Avalas, Malbolge? Must I pull another strand to leam the answer, then another to discover hence from there?
From that void beneath my breast rises a fierce, tumultuous boiling; it matters not whether I pull the strands one at a time or all at once, I will never know the answer until I have emptied the jar-and, now I realize, not even then! If I did jump after the satchel, I would have forgotten the reason I leapt! A ferocious storm rises in Sigil: hailstones fall as large as fists, pounding roofs into rubble and striking men dead where they stand; gales blast through the lanes, smashing sedan chairs into walls and walls into each other; chains of lightning dance from fountain to fountain, shattering catch basins and choking deep-dug wells with rubble. The ground itself trembles beneath my rage, and fissures run down the streets side-by-side, racing to see which one can topple the most buildings. Thus does rapacious Poseidon hope to bring Sigil low: by stirring me to such a state that I destroy the city myself, so that he might stroll among the ruins and make a slave of me with nary a fight.
Perhaps, had I been fool enough to pull the stopper, the plan would have worked. The memories would have rushed from the jar and seized me one after another. In the fervor of the moment, I might have believed that I had jumped into the River Lethe after my heart, that I had drunk of its dark waters to escape Set my betrothed and Poseidon my father.
But if I drank then, how can I call the river now by its true name? Lethe.
Thus is Poseidon's treachery defeated, and now does the ground in Sigil stop quaking; the lightning fades to crackling forks, the hail blanches to cold rain, the wind but moans. The city is safe again, and so it will remain as long as the King of Seas' vile tricks remain safe inside the amphora.
And who can make that so, if not the Lady of Pain?
I fill my palm with ash, then wet it with blood squeezed from Tessali's severed hands. The patching paste is brown and coppery smelling, and sure to attract the monster of the labyrinth. Karfhud
There had been no choice, really, except to enter the conjunction. The only place for the wine woman to go had been through the black square, and so the Amnesian Hero had tucked the wayward sandal into his belt and followed. Unlike the first time he had entered one of the strange portals, he had experienced no sensation of falling, heard no great roaring, felt no wind tearing at his hair or ash scouring his face. He had merely stepped into the darkness and stood there waiting – forever it seemed-to emerge on the other side.
That was when the Amnesian Hero recalled the gout of flame that had nearly incinerated him earlier, as Silverwind stepped from the iron maze into the ashen one. The fireball had erupted the instant the bariaur passed through the conjunction: large, bright, and too hot to miss. And later, on the other side, he had cautioned the Thrasson about standing too close to the black square, for fear that it would "torch up" and draw the monster's attention.
There had been no fireball when the wine woman disappeared.
The Amnesian Hero stood pondering in the darkness, his mind spinning with fever and his sweaty body trembling with weakness. The wine woman could have gone no other place; the conjunction had been the only route out of the blind – at least that he had noticed. He considered going back to see if he had missed something, then found himself wondering if he could return. Presumably, the black square hung directly behind him, but what if he was moving? There was no fluttering in his stomach, no air stirring against his skin, no sensations at all suggesting motion – yet he had been standing there in the gloom quite some time. He had to be moving. He could imagine no other reason for the delay.
Better, then, to continue waiting. He could only guess what might happen if he tried to step one way or another while passing through a conjunction-would he come out someplace different than he should? Stay lost in the darkness forever? Vanish into oblivion? All these possibilities seemed disastrous. Moreover, even if the wine woman had disappeared down a. side passage, she would be long gone by now. He could only hope that, just as this conjunction differed from the first in duration of crossing, it also differed in not expelling gouts of flame when someone stepped through.
Still, the Amnesian Hero saw no need to stand about in tomb-like darkness. He pulled that star-forged sword from its scabbard and held the blade aloft.
"Starlight cleave the night," he commanded.
A brilliant blue radiance burst from the tip, creating a small globe that bathed the area in an eerie sapphire light. After the long darkness, the sudden illumination hurt the Thrasson's eyes, and he was still trying to blink away his blindness when he perceived a woman-sized shape slipping from the brightened circle.
"Wait, I beg you!"
Eyes half shut, the Amnesian Hero started after the fleeing figure and found himself clumping down a narrow dirt lane. A row of windowless mud brick tenements bordered the street on each side, their open doorways as still and black as a conjunction square. The Thrasson cursed himself for a berk, wondering how long he had been standing about in the dark thinking himself caught between mazes. It was a wonder the wine woman had still been near when he lit his sword.
"Please… wait!" he gasped. "I'm too… sick to keep this… up."
The Amnesian Hero clumped past an intersection and saw, out of the corner of his eye, the woman's figure turning to flee. In the blue light, her gown looked more gray than white, and her shoulders seemed somewhat more hunched than he remembered, but there was no time to ponder the differences. The Thrasson lurched into the alley and lunged out to catch hold of her.
Her shoulder seemed soft and spongy, and the cloth covering it had the dusty, brittle feel of ancient linen. The gown was no longer belted at the waist, but hung like a sack, dingy and stained, down past her knees. In the sword's blue light, her hair looked colorless and drab; it was also stiff as straw, and so thin it barely concealed her red-blotched scalp.
"Lady? Is that… you?"
The woman's only reply was to lean forward and try to pull away. The Amnesian Hero squeezed her shoulder – then groaned in disgust as her flesh erupted beneath his grasp. A foul, too-sweet stench filled the air, and a warm, slimy fluid coated his fingertips. He pulled his arm away, still holding a handful of moldering cloth and some brownish stuff that had probably once been flesh.
The Amnesian Hero gawked at his hand. "I…" He could not think of the words to apologize. "Lady, please forgive my clumsiness! I meant no harm."
"What did you mean?" The woman's voice was haggard. She spun on the Thrasson, raising a lumpy, gnarled mass at the end of a scaly arm. She extended her index finger, all that remained on the hand, and pointed at her head. "To look on this? Is that what you meant?"
The Amnesian Hero stmggled not to retch. The woman's face was a sagging mass of folded flesh and festering boils, so grotesquely misshapen that it scarcely looked human. A pair of black marbles peered out from beneath a puffy brow, while her nose had vanished – nostrils and all – into an enormous dark nodule that had taken over the middle of her face. Only her mouth, an enormous gash rimmed by red, cracked lips, remotely resembled its original form.
"I… I beg your… pardon.* The Amnesian Hero suddenly felt very weak and braced his ichor-covered hand against a wall. Twice had he braved the Leper Cities of Acheron to rescue the Virgins of Maimara, and never had he set eyes on such a gruesome, pitiable visage. "I thought you were… I was looking for a young woman in white… Perhaps you saw her… come this way?"
"How do you know you haven't found her?" So deep and rumbling was this new voice that the Thrasson seemed to hear it in the pit of his stomach. "In this place, we all wish we were someone else."
Behind the woman appeared an enormous darkness, not creeping into the sapphire light so much as forcing back the radiance. The gloomy figure stood easily half again as tall as a man, with a torso so broad it filled most of the narrow lane. As the Amnesian Hero's eyes grew more accustomed to looking at what was essentially a darker shadow standing in the murk, he saw – or imagined he saw – two maroon eyes flashing somewhere beneath a set of wickedly curved horns. Behind the creature's broad shoulders, there seemed to be a pair of folded wings that rose a good six feet above its head and ended there in two bony hooks.
The newcomer leaned over the woman, bringing his head toward the glowing sword and highlighting the curved horns and maroon eyes the Amnesian Hero had noticed earlier. Even so, it was not until the dark visage actually entered the globe of light that the sapphire glow brightened its features. Hidden beneath sagging folds and black nodules similar to those covering the woman's face were the venom-dripping fangs and vaguely apelike muzzle of a great tanar'ri.
The Amnesian Hero grew suddenly as hot as steam. A distant ringing filled his ears, his vision blackened around the edges, and he felt too frail to stand. The fiend pushed his face closer, and the Thrasson had to pull back to keep from touching the brute's inflamed black lips.
"This girl you have lost, by what name is she called?" The fiend's breath reeked of cinders and rancid flesh. "Karfhud is a favorite of all the girls! Is that not so. Do-?"
The Amnesian Hero did not hear the woman's name, for the ringing in his ears had grown too loud. The darkness rushed in, sweltering and thick, then his legs went limp, and he felt himself fall.
Down he falls, down to the boundless, eternal dark, down to the black cold void where monsters hatch and slither, down to the stale hissing murk that churns like slow-boiling pitch inside us all. Were Jayk there to catch him, the fall would not feel so endless. But she is somewhere beneath a low, copper sky, lost upon a sandy path, beset by thorn brambles left and right, keeping watch on the hedge crest – with fear for me, with hope for the Thrasson – her cape hem hanging ragged where the old bariaur has torn away strips to swaddle Tessali's wrists.
And the elf: he stares, glassy-eyed and confused, at the emptiness at the ends of his wrists; his arms throb up to his shoulders, his bones ache to the core and out again – but not his hands. Those hurt not at all. He still feels them hanging from his wrists, still feels his fingers moving when he tries to make a fist, still feels his knuckles brushing the bariaur's chest as the old fellow works-but does not see them. For some reason he does not understand, they have turned invisible. He is like the ghosts who, by hiding in the shadows of things past, slip the Unbearable Moment.
He should know better.
The Bleak Cabal calls it the Grim Retreat, this taking of refuge in dark places. With every breath, Tessali draws that murk down into himself; with every breath, the gray light grows a little dimmer to his eyes. If he stays too long in the shadows, the darkness will fill him completely; he will lose himself to his blindness as surely as Jayk has – or as I might have, had I not seen the treachery of Poseidon's gift.
Before Silverwind has finished swaddling Tessali's stumps, the black bandages are soaked with blood. The weary bariaur can do nothing about it. He has already cast spells to ease the elf's pain and slow the bleeding, but he has no more healing magic until he has rested.
Tessali spreads his stumps, looks between them. "I can't see my hands." He frowns at the red drops falling from the ragged bandages; his eyes grow vacant, he looks back to Silverwind and asks, "Why can't I see my hands?"
"The Lady took them." Silverwind's reply is weary, impatient, even gruff. "It'll do you no good to confuse the issue now; I saw what I saw, and you can't change it. They're gone."
The elf shakes his head, frantic. "I feel them!"
"You imagine you feel them. But I imagine they're gone, and since I am the One, they are gone." Silverwind palms both stumps, rubs them hard enough to draw a gasp of pain. "You see?"
Tessali squints, leans forward and stares at Silverwind's palms covering his wrists where still he feels his own hands. Slowly, the elf struggles up through the darkness, back to the gray light; the glassy sheen vanishes from his eyes. His mouth gapes open.
"The Lady took my hands!" He jerks the stumps from Silverwind's grasp, crosses them over his breast. "What am I to do? Without hands, I cannot heal!"
Jayk kneels next to the elf, wraps a consolatory arm around his shoulder. Her head is pounding, but she knows when she has been called. "Do not fear, my friend. I can help you, yes?"
"You can?" Tessali looks more hopeful – even relieved – than wary. "How?"
Jayk smiles. Her pupils elongate into diamonds. She presses close to the elf. "We make kiss, yes?"
Tessali leaps to his feet, tears free of her embrace. "No!"
Jayk pouts, fangs dripping venom on her lower lip. "There is no need to be afraid; you are already dead. If you admit this, nothing will trouble you."