Suddenly Artus was twenty years old again and here to rescue someone. That's right. The tunnel led under the jail in Surd, where his father was being held before his execution. The Sembians never took pity on highwaymen, especially those who preyed upon merchant caravans. Besides, hanging the notorious Shadowhawk would gain the local lords favor with the country's overmaster.

This was the third time in as many years Artus had found himself breaking his father out of jail. Shadowhawk, indeed. The old man might have been a real threat to travelers in Cormyr and Sembia a decade ago, but not now. He was getting too slow for all this "robbing from the wealthy" stuff.

"It's a good thing no one at the temple of Oghma knows about you, Father," Artus grumbled. He prodded the ceiling with his staff. Yes, he might want to start digging here. "The loremasters just wouldn't understand how I could let you keep on robbing merchants, They aren't too open-minded, not like Nanda…"

Artus stopped digging into the ceiling with the unstrung elven bow and put his hand to his forehead. Nanda hadn't crept into his thoughts for years. He'd been married to her for only a few months, just after he'd turned twenty. It was a whirlwind romance, ending in a union approved by neither his parents nor her guardian. That had made it all the more attractive to both of them. Sadly, those few months had turned out to be the worst of Artus's life, especially after he discovered his new bride's secret devotion to Loviatar, the Goddess of Pain.

No, he wasn't here for his father, and Nanda had left him fifteen years ago. He wasn't even in the Heartlands now. The thoughts swirled in his mind. Chult. He was lost somewhere in Chult.

Dazed, Artus looked around the tunnel again. "What am I doing here?" he hissed.

"Looking for the Ring of Winter," someone said.

Artus looked down, wondering how the wombats knew about the ring; he hadn't told them about it-at least he didn't think so. "How do you know that?"

He found his two companions in complete disarray. Byrt's eyes were closed tightly and he was walking in a circle, whistling a cheerful tune. Lugg had collapsed onto his side. His eyes were open, but he seemed stunned.

"This is a sorry-looking group, though I'm not one to judge, I suppose."

Pontifax cleared his throat, trying to draw Artus's attention. He stood farther up the tunnel, ghostly and pale, just as he had appeared in the Batiri prison. The explorer took a step toward his old friend, and the phantom backed away. "This way," Pontifax said. "Gather up your two furry cohorts, and come this way."

"Wait," Artus said. "Why are you here?"

"There's no time," the ghost wailed.

"Was your death so-"

Holding up a transparent hand, Pontifax replied, "All that matters right now is that you keep moving down the tunnel. You've got to get out of this golden light. It's some sort of enchantment, a wall of confusion."

That would explain my jumbled thoughts, Artus decided, but not the ghostly mage's presence. But before he could question Pontifax further, the phantom mage disappeared. The explorer paused for a moment and stared at the spot where Pontifax had been. He tried to piece some reasonable explanation together, but found it increasingly difficult to concentrate.

He lifted Byrt-who was still walking in a circle, oblivious to the phantom Pontifax and everything else around him-and tucked the wombat under one arm, along with the unstrung bow. Then he leaned down and grabbed Lugg by the ear. The brown wombat followed along docilely, a blank look in his eyes. It was awkward going. The bow slipped twice and clattered to the ground. Even when it stayed under Artus's arm, it constantly whacked Byrt on the head. That didn't stop the gray wombat from whistling, though.

After a time, the golden fight faded and the swirl of confusion subsided from Artus's thoughts. Soon after, Lugg realized with a start that he was being led along by the ear. With a huge frown, he pulled away from the explorer and hurried ahead. Byrt took longer to recover, but Artus found it hard to tell the difference; the little wombat acted strangely all the time. And when Artus asked Byrt and Lugg about the ghostly visitor who had rescued them, both wombats responded with looks that announced their concern for Artus's sanity.

Finally the tunnel ended. The floor here was smooth, the walls more carefully hewn from the surrounding stone. A wide crack split the wall before the tired, hungry trio. That meant release and, hopefully, food.

The low-ceilinged cavern they entered was dark and full of debris. A quick look around told Artus the crumbling stones were the ruins of some ancient structure. Ornate columns lay in pieces near the edges of the room. Heavy, square blocks of granite, used as the bases for long tables, cluttered the center. The wooden tops from those tables, and the shelves that had once filled the iron brackets attached to the walls, had long ago crumbled to dust.

"This might have been a library at one time," Artus ventured. He knelt to study the engravings on a fragment of masonry. The glyphs, which depicted dinosaur-headed men and women, were unlike any he'd seen before.

"Do they serve food in libraries?" Lugg asked, nosing through the rubble.

"No," Byrt replied. "You get books from libraries, not baked goods. That question makes me wonder if you have lived a tome-free life, old man."

Lugg snorted. "All the tomes in the world won't 'elp my stomach now… though I might stoop to nibbling on a picture book of onions and radishes, if one 'appened to present itself."

They continued on, though the next room and the one following proved to be very much like the first-crumbled columns, topless tables, and empty brackets hammered into the walls. Eventually, though, they came to a stout wooden door, around which a halo of light shone brightly. Artus pushed it open… and what lay beyond took his breath away.

The room was huge and utterly deserted. Thin stone columns stood at even intervals along the walls, supporting globes that burned with a magical radiance. Smaller globes rested upon each of the dozens of tables set in orderly rows across the floor. Books of every sort stood upon sturdy shelves, row after row, more volumes than even the much-lauded library of the Stalwarts held. Artus slipped through the door and grabbed the nearest book. The words were totally foreign to him-a mixture of symbols and picture-glyphs like the ones on the ruined columns.

"I don't suppose either of you can read?" Artus asked.

"Most certainly I can," Byrt replied. When Artus held the book down to him, he smacked his lips and sighed. "I stand corrected."

All the other books on the shelves nearby proved to be written in the same unusual language. Artus was trying to decide which tome to take for more careful study when the door on the opposite end of the room swung open.

Even at such a distance, the stranger's beard proclaimed him a man, despite the flowing tan robe that hid his frame. Close-cropped and white as snow, the beard met up with the shock of silver hair atop the man's head, making a bright halo around his darkly tanned face. Engrossed as he was in the large volume open in his hands, he didn't immediately notice Artus. He read as he walked, shaking his head in vehement disagreement every few steps.

With his nose buried in the pages before him, the silver-haired man walked to a table close to the still-unnoticed strangers and sat down. He leaned toward the glowing globe at the other end of the table and said something Artus could not hear. Four tiny legs sprouted from the globe, and it ran to the man's side, coming to rest only when it was right next to his book.

It was then that Artus got his first good look at the man. "Lord Rayburton!" he exclaimed. He took a step toward the long-lost explorer, amazement clear in his eyes. "You're alive!"