"How much further?" Taen asked their goblin guide.

"We not too far away," Yurz replied. "We almost out of the undertomb."

"Good," the half-elf replied, wiping the slime and congealed blood from his sword. They had spent a long time traversing the cramped passages and chill crypts of the citadel undertomb, dodging more goblin patrols and a seeming horde of skeletons and zombies. Several times they had entered a seemingly empty room only to be beset by ravenous ghouls and even the occasional wight lurking in the shadows. Taen's arms ached with fatigue, his muscles long since pushed past the point of exhaustion. This last battle had nearly undone him. He sheathed his now-clean sword and rested briefly, his breath coming in great ragged gasps.

"Friends rest now," Yurz said, shooing Taen and his two companions to the center of the crypt. "Me search for secret way up into citadel." It was a testament to their fatigue that no one attempted to gainsay the anxious creature.

Taen dropped to the floor and massaged his sword shoulder. Borovazk and Roberc did the same, though the halfling spent most of his time cleaning the blood from Cavan's matted fur. The ranger looked around at their surroundings, unease written clearly upon his face. This room was larger than most, its smooth stone handsomely decorated with fading murals and elaborate stonework. Two of the walls were filled with human-sized horizontal alcoves, each occupied by a skeleton bedecked in ancient armor. Several sarcophagi sat in the center of the room, their heavy stone lids shattered by the force of the ghouls that had poured out of them.

"What's the matter, Borovazk," the halfling asked, "besides the fact that we're trapped in an undead-infested tomb trying to rescue Marissa from the clutches of a powerful hag?"

Taen found his temper rising as the halfling's acerbic comments filled the silence of the room. Fatigue won out over anger, however, so the half-elf bit his tongue, grasping the hilt of his sword as he did so and cursing the necessity for rest that caused them delay. Besides, he knew that Roberc would fight through every layer of the Abyss to rescue Marissa.

For his part, Borovazk ran a meaty hand through his sweat-soaked hair before answering the halfling. When he did finally speak, his usually resonant voice barely filled the chamber. "This is great resting place of heroes," the ranger said hoarsely, pointing to the walls of the crypt and beyond. "Borovazk feel sad to fight Rashemi whose bodies have been corrupted by the foul work of the hag and her witch ally. Is not right. The dead deserve honor." This last he nearly shouted.

Taen looked up and cast a measuring glance at the ranger. The skin beneath Borovazk's eyes sagged, bruised and nearly black with fatigue. The human's normally irrepressible smile had faded-when that had happened, Taen hadn't noticed-replaced now by a wide-mouthed frown. Dried blood and thick black patches of congealed slime marred the normally pale hue of his face.

At that moment, the half-elf realized that he wasn't the only one who blamed himself for Marissa's capture. Both Borovazk and Roberc held a haunted look in their eyes and a grim cast to their features. That fact unaccountably lightened his own heart, and he recalled something that his father used to say: "A burden shared is a burden lightened." He was so caught up in his own misery that he hadn't realized how deeply his companions grieved for Marissa. The half-elf began to understand-in the way that one does when light first shines in a dark place-that perhaps this was the root cause of much of his problems: he was always focused inward on himself, on his own guilt and misery.

"Don't worry, Borovazk," he said at last, resting a hand upon the ranger's shoulders. "We will find Marissa, and when we do, we shall make the witch and her hag minion pay for what they have done here."

Borovazk looked Taen in the eye, and the half-elf could see the Rashemi's desire for that revenge. "Is good to hear, little friend," the ranger responded. "Borovazk think that he is done with this little adventure soon, and he will be glad of it."

A shriek erupted from a shadowy corner of the crypt, followed by the sound of Yurz's cackling laughter. "Me find it!" the goblin proclaimed loudly. "Come, friends of Pretty Lady! Yurz find the door. We not far now!"

For what seemed like the first time in quite a while, a smile split the grim terrain of Taen's face. "Perhaps," he said to Borovazk, "our adventure will end sooner than we had hoped!"

With a grunt and a sigh of effort, the half-elf pulled himself to his feet, gathered up his gear, and strode toward the now-open secret door. Without a second thought, he walked through it.

Chapter 23

The Year of Wild Magic

(1372 DR)

Marissa breathed fire.

It seared her lungs; her chest burned with each labored inhalation. The druid struggled once more against the bonds that held her, but the steel chains just cut deeper into the skin of her wrist with each movement. The room was dark-it was always dark, except when the hag came. Shadow and flame defined her universe. She wanted to scream, but her voice, too, had become fire, so Marissa wept glistening trails of tears that were her only comfort.

The druid had no idea how long she'd been a prisoner. She remembered the bridge, remembered the sting of spider venom, and the next thing she'd been aware of was the cold kiss of her steel shackles and the bitter voice of the hag whispering hateful secrets into her ear. At first Marissa's mind seemed numb and sluggish-as if wreathed in a chill gray fog that drained thought and speech. She fought off the sensation, realizing at the last moment that it was merely a spell cast by her captor.

That was when the pain began-physical and psychic assaults that left Marissa barely conscious. She cried out again and again to her god for some measure of mercy but received nothing but more agony.

It was all about the Staff of the Red Tree. The hag had made that clear from the first moment. Somehow the artifact resisted her attempts at mastery, and the monster assumed that Marissa held the key. Perhaps she did, the druid thought bitterly, for even now she could hear the voice of the staff, muted, like a distant whisper, calling to her in the depths of her mind. If Marissa held the key to the staff's power, she had no idea how to access it.

She hung in the darkness, weeping, waiting for the hag's next visit. She thought now and again of Taenaran and her friends battling for survival somewhere in the bowels of the earth below the citadel. She had no idea if they were still alive or if the hag's minions had slain them. She remembered, dimly, the promise of a conversation with Taenaran, a conversation that she had put off until the end of their journey. Endings, she thought bitterly, have a nasty habit of coming when you least expect them, yet Marissa still held out hope that she and Taen would see each other again. She hung by that thin silver thread of hope over the abyss of despair as surely as she hung by the steel chains that bound her.

She was surprised, therefore, by the voice that cut through her interior wrestling. "Do not think that anyone will come for you," the voice said. "You are alone."

At first Marissa expected to see the hag, green skin and misshapen face leering out of the darkness. It only took her a few moments, however, to realize that the voice sounded different, huskier than the hag's. Dim light filled the room. The druid blinked hard as the illumination aggravated her eyes. When she could focus, Marissa saw a brown-haired figure standing before her. At first her heart leaped at the sight of the stranger- until she caught sight of the ore rune hanging around the figure's neck. The stranger's scarred face and her flat, gray eyes confirmed what Marissa suspected-the half-orc standing before her was no sympathetic rescuer but rather a servant of the hag.