Pa-pum. Pa-pum.

Durwyn shouted at his comrade, but the distance, the everpresent heartbeat, and the sounds of the stone dwarves' laborious movements prevented Kestrel from making out the words. Whatever he said, however, seemed to sink through Corran's thick skull. The two began to retreat, Durwyn leading them along a circuitous route past the last of the sleeping statues. A dozen stone dwarves approached from all sides.

Ghleanna muttered something. Kestrel, her attention divided between Durwyn's plight and the half-dozen statues marching her own way, missed what she said and asked her to repeat it. When she glanced at the sorceress, however, she realized Ghleanna was casting a spell.

A huge mass of sticky strands suddenly draped itself over most of the dwarves chasing Durwyn and Corran. The enormous spider web gummed up the statues' movements, impeding their pursuit. At the same time Jarial uttered a command of his own at the dwarves approaching the door. Their advance instantly slowed to a rate that would have looked comic had the danger they posed not been so great.

The two fighters still had to dodge the blows of four unaffected statues that blocked their path. As they darted past, one of the dwarves landed a strike on Durwyn's left arm, nearly severing the limb. The warrior cried out and gripped his arm to his side, but kept moving.

Pa-pum. Pa-pum.

Kestrel forced herself to watch their final approach but could not look at Durwyn's face. The agony she'd seen flash across it had been so intense it left her own knees weak. Blood streamed down his side.

Anger at Corran battled fear for her friend. Her friend. She hadn't thought of Durwyn that way until this moment, but she'd probably be dead right now if he hadn't stayed behind in the courtyard waiting for her. He'd been a faithful companion to her, to them all-which was why he was now injured. She regretted every unkind or impatient thought she'd ever had toward him.

The two made it to the door just as Jarial's spell wore off the nearest dwarves. Kestrel, Jarial, and Ghleanna swung shut the heavy door while Faeril immediately attended Durwyn. "Sit down," she said calmly, helping him to the ground.

Pa-pum. Pa-pum. With the door closed, the thumping echoed louder. Kestrel tried to block it from her mind as she knelt beside the injured warrior. Durwyn's face was pale-he'd already lost a lot of blood. His eyes held the steely look of someone trying to mask suffering.

She'd never felt this scared for someone else, not since Quinn had died. Instinctively, she reached for his good hand and forced herself to give him a wobbly smile. "We're lucky Faeril is with us. You're going to be fine." Eyes never leaving his face, she said to Faeril, "Tell me how to help you."

"Just keep doing what you're doing," the elf said gently, beginning her prayer of healing.

Behind her, Kestrel heard Corran approach. He cleared his throat. "May I assist?"

She looked up at him, her face hot. "I think you've done quite enough already." She had much more to say, but she didn't want to make a scene in front of Durwyn.

Remorse flickered across the paladin's features. "Perhaps I have," he said more to himself than to her. She wished he would just go away, but he remained, watching Faeril's ministrations.

Kestrel talked to Durwyn quietly while the cleric tended to him. The warrior was weak but lucid. "Thank you for watching my back earlier, in the courtyard," she said.

"I-" He paused as if choosing his words. "I know that I'm not the smartest guy in the world. I'm good with an axe, but I'm not so good at figuring things out. So when I find people smarter than me, I trust them to do most of the thinking. You've been right about a lot of things so far, Kestrel. When you said there was a trap, I believed you."

Durwyn's words heartened her. She hadn't been shouting into the wind this whole time, struggling in vain to be heard. Someone had been paying attention.

When Faeril finished, Durwyn's arm was fully healed. He rested awhile on the floor as the remainder of the party assessed their surroundings. They stood inside the main building of the fortress, in a great hall with numerous wooden tables, benches, and other furnishings all still in excellent condition. Even the tapestries on the walls, colorful depictions of dwarven artisans engaged in their crafts, seemed unaffected by age.

At the opposite end of the hall, two staircases led to the second floor. The periodic thumping sound, louder in Kestrel's ears now that Durwyn was out of danger, resonated off the stone walls. It repeated every minute or so, like the heartbeat of a man who refused to die. The noise seemed to come from above.

Pa-pum. Pa-pum.

They climbed the stairs to find a single large room-and Harldain Ironbar. Or so they assumed. A dwarven spirit occupied the center of the chamber. The middle-aged lord had apparently been a figure of some standing in Myth Drannor, judging from his thick fur cloak, ringed fingers, and the chain of office around his neck.

"I'd say that's Harldain, all right," Kestrel said. "But what's the matter with him?" The dwarf stood transfixed, his translucent image unmoving even under the party's scrutiny.

Ghleanna held two fingers up to the ghost's face, gliding them back and forth as she watched his eyes. When she moved her fingers quickly, the eyes remained still. But when she moved them slowly, his pupils followed the movement. "He seems to be in a state of arrested animation," she said. "He can't move, but I'll bet he can hear us."

"Y… y… yes," the ghost said. Kestrel almost missed the single word, as the thumping noise had repeated at the same instant. The heartbeat sound was still louder up here and seemed to come from the other side of a door in the southwest corner of the room.

"He can speak!" Corran moved to stand directly before the spirit. "Are you Harldain Ironbar?"

No answer. The paladin repeated his question but still got no response.

"Let's try another question," Jarial said. Corran stepped aside so the sorcerer could face the spirit. "Anorrweyn Evensong and Caalenfaire sent us," Jarial told the ghost "Do you know them?''

Still no response.

Kestrel thought they needed to get to the point. "How can we free you?" There would be enough time for other questions once the spirit could talk easily.

"P… u… mp."

"What did he say?" Ghleanna asked. His answer had coincided with the thumping noise again.

"It sounded like pump." Kestrel looked around the room. "But I don't see anything in here that looks like a-"

"Maybe he said thump," Corran said. "Perhaps that thumping sound has something to do with this."

Kestrel knew she'd heard a "p" sound, not a "th," but pointing that out to the paladin would require actually speaking to him. Still nursing her anger over Corran's pigheaded endangerment of Durwyn, she let his suggestion pass without comment. Besides, she had no better idea to offer.

Corran tried the southwest door and found it unlocked. When he opened it the heartbeat sound repeated, the strongest they'd heard it yet. "This way."

The door exited onto a small balcony with a narrow stairway leading up to the rooftop. They trotted along the fortress's battlements, following the rhythmic thumping noise, until they reached a similar staircase heading down. The steps deposited them in the stronghold's pumphouse, where the mechanical pump struggled to perform its duty. The slow pa-pum was the sound of the device fighting to draw water from the Onaglym's ancient cistern, which lay in a courtyard beyond.

"I knew he said pump," Kestrel muttered under her breath.

Ghleanna wrinkled her nose. "What's that smell?" A putrid odor filled the air, as of rotting garbage. Or decaying flesh.

Kestrel raised her guard, remembering the zombies that seemed to appear whenever they'd previously detected such a stench. She heard no telltale shuffling of animated corpses, only the slow, laborious sound of the pump.