"It's ready."

"One more thing," said an elf. "Actually, many small things."

From the darkness, elves approached Sunbright to surround him. They said nothing, but touched him in a dozen places with tiny things Sunbright supposed were charms or talismans. Slim elven fingers tucked a four-leaf clover into his sleeve. An elven woman tied a bead to the rawhide binding his hair. A young lad stooped and fastened a silver heart to an iron ring on his boot. A woman pinned a striped feather to his bosom. Other charms were laid on him. Finally old Brookdweller shuffled forward on twisted feet. Raising a withered fern, she brushed Sunbright from head to toe, back and front, even signaling to raise his arms to brush underneath, all the while she crooned a song like a lark's trill. Brushing his hands, she and the other elves drew back.

Sunbright thought to say thank you for whatever they'd done, but they'd been silent and so he answered the same way. His mind was elsewhere anyway, already fighting the battle, or already dead, as if he moved in a dream world.

Polishing, polishing, Drigor inverted Harvester and offered it to Sunbright.

But the barbarian gazed east, out over the prairie, where a band of yellow light filled the horizon.

"Almost dawn," he said absently. Reaching, he caught Harvester's pommel and slid the enchanted sword home over his shoulder. The weight at his back made him stand taller.

Then he marched toward the sunrise.

One minute's walk, and Sunbright was alone on the rolling grasslands. Elves and dwarves stopped at the first grass as if lining an arena. Barbarians came too, drawn by the sun, and stopped to watch their tribesman stride out alone.

Then, from thin air before him, stood the monster. Its black flint hide sparkled with minerals in the rising sun. Knucklebones hung limp from one claw, her strength gone but her single eye alive. The little thief watched Sunbright approach with a mixture of love, hope, and fear.

Sunbright stopped a dozen feet from the monster, hands on hips, and studied it for the first time. The bald head, thick skin of stone, fierce claws, mismatched, mighty arms, long, splayed feet, all suggested a creature fashioned for killing. But the bulging blue eyes this morning looked familiar.

Raising a long arm, the monster hoisted Knucklebones in the air, and flung her like a rag doll. The thief pinwheeled across the tops of the grass like a skipped stone, and came to a gentle, dizzy landing three hundred feet away. Croaked the monster, "She's nothing to me."

"She's everything to me," replied Sunbright. "Will you tell me your name?"

"You know it. Knew it." The voice was painful to hear, like a man strangling on poison. "In life I was called Sysquemalyn."

"Sys-" Sunbright's brow clouded. "I don't recall-"

"You know me!" the fiend screeched. "I was chamberlain to Polaris, whom I've beaten and banished beyond hell! I was competitor to Candlemas, whom I transfigured into a horror, then tore to shreds!"

"Aaaaah!" Sunbright nodded. "A beautiful woman, tall and striking, with red hair."

The barbarian's denseness annoyed the former mage.

"The most beautiful!"

"Beautiful, yes. You posed as Ruellana to seduce me. And as a courtier to the One King. You played some game, a wager with Candlemas. I never wholly understood it, but-"

"But why seek revenge? Why come I to kill you?" Sysquemalyn raised curved claws and slashed the air. Sunbright's calm befuddlement, rather than stark fear, made her squirm. The mortal should beg for his life, not pose idle questions. She shrieked at him, "Look at me! Look at the horror I've become! Think on the suffering I endured in my own personal hell, trapped for three years when every second was torture!"

Sunbright, awake all night, poised for battle-madness, was yet cursed with curiosity, so struggled to understand. "Why hate me?" he asked. "I spared your life in hell, when that big winged hell-king ordered I behead you, and I did nothing to imprison you."

The monster's gashed mouth champed in frustration. Where was the fear, the cowering, begging, and whimpering?

"You were there! You helped condemn me, did nothing to prevent it! For this I will kill you, and all you hold dear!"

"Vengeance?" Sunbright scratched his horsetail as he said, "Revenge rings hollow, I've found. I planned to avenge myself on my tribe for years, too, but when I finally found them, they were helpless as baby birds. I was needed, so pitched in to help them survive. My mother insisted. Revenge would have killed us all. It's foolish."

"Foolish?" Sysquemalyn stamped forward, lowered her head like a bull about to charge, and hissed like a snake, "It's foolish to beg for your life, for this morning you die!"

"I don't beg, and won't," he said. Sunbright squinted with sun in his eyes. Sysquemalyn didn't listen well, for she was mad. And dangerous. Stepping backward through knee-high grass, the shaman said, "I'll ask one question, if you please. Tell me why, with the powerful magic at your disposal, you hare about gaining revenge? Why not use your power to restore your beauty?"

For a second, the idea so stunned the monster, it froze her in her tracks. Never once since crawling from hell had she considered regaining her beauty. She'd been too bent on revenge. On her enemies, such as the barbarian before her. Who enraged her with calm words and awkward thoughts.

"You'd pity me?"

With a shriek that shriveled grass, the monster charged.

Sunbright was staggered by the ferocity of the attack. And slow from fatigue and worry. He wasn't really prepared for this fight, didn't want it. Lately, battling raiders and monsters and even his own tribe, he'd fought enough for a lifetime.

Yet if his mind was distracted, instinct saved him.

Without thinking, Sunbright stepped back on his left foot, body following, and cocked Harvester over his right shoulder. Before he knew it, the sword sliced a path of death through the bright winter sky.

Sysquemalyn bellowed in rage, and slashed to deflect the blade with a stony wrist. Yet as the sword, swung with all Sunbright's strength, clanged off her arm, a tiny chip of stone flew free. In a blind fury, the monster didn't see or feel the wound, but the shaman did, and took note, and heart.

Then the fiend was on him like a pack of wildcats. "I'll flay your flesh from your bones!" she screamed.

A long-fingered hand clamped atop Sunbright's head. Flexing claws like broken glass dug in, punctured his shaven temples and scalp. Sunbright felt blood start, and his skull ached. Yet something, he sensed, kept his skull from collapsing. An elf had tied a bead to his horsetail thong, he recalled. Did that protect him?

Howsoever, he could strike back. Retaliating, he shot the pommel of the sword straight at the monster's skull face. The heavy steel end banged and skidded off. Sysquemalyn chuckled and twisted the claws fastened to his head. Pain shot through Sunbright's skull and down his neck. He had to get free, even if he ripped his own flesh, but the monster's other hand snatched at his throat. When he made to grab it, fearsome claws closed around his wrist and squeezed. The shaman groaned as bones ground together, but the mighty claws didn't crush him, and again he sensed protection. The four-leaf clover tucked in his sleeve? Could these piddling charms protect against such evil?

But it was idiotic, Sunbright thought, to fight barehanded when he possessed a magic sword. With a gasp, he flailed his right hand to flip Harvester and chop at Sysquemalyn's head, but the sword only wobbled in the trapped hand. To drop it was to die, but he couldn't engage. Nor think, for pain exploded in his head like northern lights. Finally, he simply dropped his whole body.