No, Tiuren had to run-for the moment, the pair had their backs to him. He had to act fast. He had to reveal the new king's insidious plot. Maybe he could not save his friend, but he could avenge him. He sprang from the wardrobe and ran for the door.

Tiuren was quick, but not quick enough. As he left the bedchamber and dived into the antechamber, the door slammed shut, seemingly of its own accord. He reached it and tugged, but it held fast. His foe had cut him off using some sort of spell. Count-King Darius stood behind him, a curved blade in his hand, his skin crackling with amber lightning of magical origins. Tiuren whirled to face the wizard, his hand instinctively going for a sword that wasn't there.

'Tiuren," the evil wizard said flatly. "Always where you aren't wanted."

Steely eyed, Diccona stood behind Darius, her arm casually resting on his shoulder, her other hand still covered in her husband's blood.

"How… how could you do this?" Tiuren asked, directing the question toward Diccona. As he spoke, he pressed his body against the door behind him, still attempting to somehow get it open. No use-he was trapped.

"It was simple," Diccona boasted. Her long black hair whipped about her face as she grew excited at their victory. "The old fool did it to himself, really. I married him for power. He married me for love. Now I am with Darius, who will bring Vantir to new heights with his wizardry. I have more power than ever, and Kohath is dead." She paused to glance back at her husband's body.

"How could I?" The queen laughed. "How could I not?"

"With the growing magical might of the larger, more powerful kingdoms like Netheril, Asram, and Anauria, how long could we have survived without a wizard on the throne?" Darius said, stepping closer, clenching the knife more firmly. "This land needs me. Diccona needs me. Neither needs a foolish old sword-swinger blinded by emotions."

"No," Tiuren protested, bracing himself against the locked door. "Kohath's love for his wife, however misplaced, was a virtue, not a shortcoming. And no one has ever or will ever do more for this kingdom than he," With that, he sprang at Darius, throwing his own body into his foe, sending both crashing down. The knife clattered to the floor, and Tiuren lunged for it.

He never made it. Hot, searing fingers jabbed him in the back. Magical energies reached into his guts and twisted him from the inside. He wrenched himself around so he lay on his back, his body rigid with pain.

Diccona stood over him, dark eyes smoldering, an evil grimace contorting her face. She had cast a spell upon him. Gods! She was a wizard too.

By this time, Darius had righted himself and retrieved the knife. His forehead bore a red welt from hitting the floor, not enough of a wound to disable him. Besides, Tiuren could not even move, his body so cramped with agony.

It was all over.

The Dark Eye marveled at the incredible ease with which love could be manipulated, twisted into hate. And such hate. As it watched the events unfolding in the palace above, it realized that no mortal it had ever known had burned with such passionate malice. The Eye suddenly concluded that a mortal's emotions had much greater power than it had ever dreamt.

The intensity of the feeling was perfect for its purposes. This Kohath was perfect. The fact that he was dead made him even better. After observing Kohath's emotional transformation, the Eye began magically working upon his physical transformation. Soon, the Dark Eye would have a new tool.

From his position on the floor, Tiuren glanced over to his fallen friend. He wanted to look upon him one last time before Darius buried the knife in his own chest.

How could it be? He had never seen anything like it…

Kohath's flesh-the skin, muscles, and organs-had almost completely liquified. Most of his friend's bones and skull were already visible, glistening wet in the fading light from the window. Even worse, the bones were shaking in some sort of death palsy. Tiuren had seen death before, but never like this.

Rather than focus on this disturbing sight-it had to be a delusion, the bard told himself-Tiuren turned back to his attackers. Diccona still reveled in the success of her dark spell. Darius muttered something unintelligible while gently stroking his head wound and summoning his strength for the deathblow.

Suddenly, the wizard's face curled into a visage of utter pain, his mouth forming a silent scream. The upraised dagger glowed white-hot. Wisps of smoke issued from between his fingers. He unclenched his hand to drop the weapon, but it was already seared to his flesh. He dropped to his knees, stuttering out a high-pitched sob, his unhurt hand squeezing his wrist to force the knife from him.

Diccona saw this and screamed in terror. She had enough intuition to turn around, though the sight was probably one she would rather have missed.

Tiuren's attention was meanwhile drawn to the presence within the bedchamber.

The skeletal figure of a man, still dripping with the remains of his flesh and blood, stood. His jaw mouthed horrible but unintelligible words.

Kohath?

Who else could it be? But how could Kohath, or whatever Kohath had so quickly become, stand here in the room where his corpse had lain just moments before? Could a man's passions allow him to defy even death? Could hate be so powerful a force?

With terror-filled eyes, Darius and Diccona looked at the risen Kohath.

"Kohath? Is that you?" Diccona asked, her voice cracking with fear.

The monstrous thing turned his head toward his traitorous wife. With a hideous creaking, a bony arm rose from his side. The fingers of the hand curled as if clutching some unseen object. A high-pitched whine began.

Darius turned to flee.

"Kohath?" Diccona said again, frozen in place.

The whine had become very loud now, as though its source drew ever closer. Darius dispelled his magical seal and dived out the door.

"Ko-"

The horrible whine drowned out Diccona's words. A dark object entered the room from the open door, hovering four or five feet from the floor-riding on the whine itself. Tiuren had only to look upon its oval shape and dark green color for a moment before he recognized it.

"The Dark Eye of Gavinaas!" he shouted, struggling to his feet.

He and Kohath had slain Gavinaas long ago, when the evil Anaurian wizard had threatened tiny Vantir's northern reaches with a conjured army of misshapen monsters. They had locked the wizard's talisman away in a deep vault below the palace. Now it was here.

The object flew into Kohath's outstretched hand, which grasped it so tightly Tiuren could hear a crushing sound. Only then did his mind register that the piercing whine had stopped. Kohath's skull turned its black, empty sockets toward him for the first time.

"No," Kohath rasped in a voice that seemed to originate from somewhere far, far away, "the Dark Eye of Kohath."

Realization washed over Tiuren, causing him to step backward with a gasp. "The Dark Eye caused this?"

"No," Kohath said again in his grinding mockery of articulation. "The Dark Eye only permitted me to do what I must." Kohath turned back toward Diccona, his skeletal body moving with a disturbing fluidity. His free hand pointed a single bony finger at her. "She caused this."

Diccona screamed.

"The Dark Eye has given me power," Kohath said, "but my reasons-my motives-are my own. Look upon me and remember this. After the wrongs wrought upon me this day, I do what I do willingly."

Diccona began the frantic gestures of a spell.

"So, my dear," Kohath said, his hideous skull glaring at the queen. "You wanted magical power. You wanted a wizard as a king and as a lover. Let me now show you power." With that, he released his grip upon the Dark Eye, which floated slowly up to his brow, attaching itself as a ghastly third eye.