The image shifted, as though the magical eyes through which Tol was seeing the scene were rushing toward the front door. No guards stood watch, but the heavy portal was secured by one of Elicarno’s sturdy iron locks. It proved no barrier. The scene changed to the inner room beyond.

The great room was only dimly lit, filled with Elicarno’s many machines. Unerringly the image tracked through the gears, pulleys, and standing frames until it found the stairs leading to the living quarters. With dizzying effect, the scene swung up, rising into the pitch-black stairwell.

“Stop!” Tol cried.

He raised his sword but made no other move. Whatever Mandes was doing, he was doing it from his lair. This image was intended as a mirror of what was happening in far-off Daltigoth. He could do nothing but stand and watch.

The magical invader moved along the second story, passing several open doorways and peering into each as it ghosted by. Elicarno’s crew, apprentices and journeymen alike, were sleeping four to six to a room. Although he could plainly see mouths gaping from snores, no sound came to Tol’s ears.

At the end of the upstairs hall was a closed door. Again the phantom pierced the locked panel effortlessly. This room was lit by the soft blue glow of a lamp atop a shelf near the door; the lamp’s chimney was a polished, hollowed out lump of lapis. A curtained bed stood by the far wall.

The scene halted for a moment, and for the first time Tol glimpsed the intruder-a heavy, hairy paw, tipped with ivory claws like a bear’s, came into his field of view. No longer an incorporeal wraith, the thing moved forward with deadly deliberation, reached out a claw, and parted the velvet curtains surrounding the bed.

Tol shouted with frustrated rage, advancing a step toward the fire. Plainly visible by the azure light were the sleeping forms of Miya and Elicarno. Heavy with child, Miya slept on her side, facing the intruder. Her husband lay close behind, one arm draped around the curve of her swelling belly.

Claws reached for Miya’s throat.

Tol clenched his eyes shut, praying to the gods this was not a real occurrence. It must be an illusion, designed to frighten him into giving up his mission. Mandes was a powerful sorcerer, but even he couldn’t send murderous phantoms to do his bidding from so far away, could he? Yet the golems had been sent to Tarsis to kill Tol-

Something brushed Tol’s shoulder, and he threw himself away from the odd, feathery contact. To his surprise, he saw the second gray-robed phantom had come forward out of the snow and now was standing beside him. Even at close range, he couldn’t make out the phantom’s face, but he felt a presence behind the cowl, a presence he somehow knew was both benign and terribly angry.

“Felryn, help them!” he cried, gesturing to the smoky vision.

As he continued to watch, Elicarno awakened just before the monstrous claws reached Miya’s neck. He shouted soundlessly as he grappled with the hairy paws. Miya awoke, thrashing, her throat taut with unheard cries. She rolled aside and fell out of bed. Elicarno, clad only in a breechcloth, braced a foot against his attacker’s chest. Ivory claws raked down his arms. Blood flowed.

Miya snatched up a stool from beside the bed and pounded the invader with it. The image jounced and shook with every blow she landed.

Tol cheered, but what she really needed was a blade-a table knife, a pointed tool, anything! He called upon every god he could name to send her assistance.

The monster dragged Elicarno off the bed and held him up. The engineer’s feet dangled above the floor. After raking his face and chest with its claws, the intruder hurled him against the wall. Elicarno slid down and did not move. Miya was next.

The view shifted suddenly from Miya’s horrified face to the doorway. Wild-eyed apprentices were spilling into the room, armed with whatever came to hand-staves, hammers, a carpenter’s square. When they beheld the monster attacking their master and his mate, their faces went pale as candle wax.

“Don’t stare-fight!” Tol bellowed. He edged forward.

The terrified workmen mustered their courage and attacked. Forming a protective line between the monster and Miya, they held off the nightmare beast as best they could. Lightning-fast claws tore into them time and again, and the brave engineers went down bleeding, battered, eyeless. Only one still stood when more help arrived. These were older men, Elicarno’s journeymen, armed with halberds. They jabbed and hacked at the beast, its blood spattering their spearpoints.

Now the image began to shimmer, like a view distorted by heat. Miya snatched a halberd from one man and swung the thick blade at the monster’s head.

The monster drew away. The bloody paws it held up were no longer solid; Tol could see the carpet through them. It retreated from the valiant Dom-shu woman.

Leaving the remaining men to fend off the injured beast, Miya knelt awkwardly by her husband. Tears coursed down her cheeks. She lifted her face and let out a long shriek of grief.

A log in the fire broke, and the image dissolved in a tide of sparks.

Tol turned. “Felryn! Is Elicarno alive-?”

He woke up. He wasn’t standing by the fire, sword in hand, but sitting with his back to the chill boulder. His weapon, still sheathed, lay across his lap. The fire was only a pile of dimly glowing embers. Tol’s hands and legs were numb with cold.

“Early! Early, get up!”

A brief mumble was the kender’s only reply.

Tol forced himself to his feet, willing his icy limbs to move.

“The fire’s going out!” he said. “If it dies, we die!”

He stirred the coals, adding more deadfall wood. The embers blazed into life.

“What’s the matter?” Early asked, sitting up and blinking at Tol who was wildly circling the snowy clearing. “We bein’ attacked?”

Tol related the experience-dream?-he’d just had. He mentioned the one of the night before as well.

“There’s no sign anyone else was here,” he finished. “I don’t even know if what I’m seeing is real!”

The kender drew his fur collar up close to his eyes. “Oh, it’s real enough. If the Mist-Maker was throwing illusions at you, they’d be a lot worse. You say your woman friend lived, but her husband, this builder-fella, seemed bad hurt, maybe dead? Probably true, I say. If it was only an illusion, everything would’ve gone Mandes’s way, wouldn’t it?”

Early’s logic made horrible sense. On the other hand, Mandes was wily and might not overplay his hand. He knew Tol well enough to tailor his phantasms.

Tol drove a fist into the palm of his hand; This uncertainty was maddening! How could he know for sure?

Early was regarding him with surprising sobriety. “You’re going to have to kill him, you know,” the kender said. “Taking him back to your emperor ain’t gonna be enough.”

Snow hissed down around them, and the fire crackled with renewed life. Early was right. They couldn’t possibly take the rogue wizard all the way back to Daltigoth safely. No one Tol cared for would be safe until Mandes had drawn his last breath.

“I’ll stand by you,” Early added solemnly. “All the way.”

Now Tol was truly taken aback. While kender could be foolishly brave in the face of terrible peril, they weren’t noted for selflessness, or for sticking to a plainly dangerous course.

In Early’s green eyes Tol saw something he hadn’t before: determination. Moreover, the kender’s face seemed different somehow, its lines subtly altered.

“I’d like to finish this with you.”

“I’d welcome your company,” Tol said even as the odd phrasing, the tone of the words, stirred something within him.

Before Tol could say more, Early’s chin dropped to his chest and he muttered, “The passes’ll be treacherous. What we need are snowshoes…”

The words trailed off into raspy breathing. The kender had fallen asleep.