Jhesrhi stepped forward with flame dancing on her hand and flowing on up her staff. “You don’t have to do it, Cera. I will.”

She probably could too, and perhaps without it troubling her conscience. Aoth commanded the Brotherhood of the Griffon with a disdain for gratuitous cruelty that he chose to think of as “professionalism.” Still, Cera was certain that, first as the child slave of marauding giants and then as a sellsword, Jhesrhi had watched if not conducted torture before.

Yet eager as she was to be excused, Cera didn’t want Jhesrhi tormenting the ghoul in her place, especially if it wouldn’t bother Jhesrhi. The thought of the wizard feeling nothing as Gosnorn shrieked and thrashed, or perhaps if she even enjoying the dance of the flames, was disquieting.

“Thank you,” Cera said, “truly. But if it must be done, I’ll do it. Maybe divine magic will get it done faster.”

Sarshethrian leered. “Excellent. Then perhaps the fey can hold Gosnorn while we question him.” He likely didn’t want to be close to the ghoul while Cera evoked the Keeper’s light lest it sear him as well.

Jhesrhi spoke to the stag men in Elvish. They gingerly approached the pale demon in his haze of writhing, ragged shadow; gripped Gosnorn; wrestled him down on top of a sarcophagus; and held him spread-eagled.

Cera told herself she had to do what she was about to undertake for the sake of countless decent, living people, and had to do it too, to be reunited with Aoth. She silently asked the Keeper’s forgiveness, anyway then poised her mace over Gosnorn’s body.

“Please,” she said. “Just tell us. Spare yourself the pain.”

The undead messenger spit at her, but thick and brown in the wavering light of Jhesrhi’s fire, the spittle fell short.

“Do your worst, sunlady,” Gosnorn said, and sarcasm turned the title into a jibe. “By all means, do it to oblige one who’s more of a foe to your kind and your god than I’ll ever be.”

Cera took a breath, then reached out through what felt like an infinity of frigid darkness for the warmth and light of the Yellow Sun. It was difficult to draw down even a modest amount, but in this grim circumstance, maybe that was good. She didn’t want to unleash too much power at once and burn the prisoner to ash.

The spiky gilded head of the mace glowed from within, and even that was enough to make Gosnorn avert his face and close his sunken eyes. When she sent the magic blazing down at him, he howled and bucked, and the stag men nearly lost their grips on him. Mottled with spots of rot and mold, his skin smoked and charred.

He cursed and reviled her afterward, though, and for several flares after that, until his hide was riddled with black-edged holes, the air stank of burned flesh, and she felt too sick to her stomach and full of self-hatred to continue. Then she realized he’d finally stopped straining to break free of the stag men and spit sludge onto her vestments. Instead, he was simply shuddering.

“Now then,” Sarshethrian said as, his withered arm cradled to his chest, he approached the prisoner, “tell us all about it.”

Gosnorn hesitated. “Promise to set me free.”

The pale man gave Cera a crooked smile. “I thought you had him convinced, but I see I’m too impatient. Please, continue your ministrations.”

“No!” Gosnorn said. “I’ll tell! It’s Lod! I’m supposed to tell Uramar the prophet is coming to Rashemen!”

His single eye widening, Sarshethrian hesitated. For the first time since he’d accosted Cera and Jhesrhi, the fiend seemed genuinely surprised, if not astonished.

After a moment, he said, “You can’t mean across the ocean by ship and then overland. That would take forever. If he wanted to come, Lod too, would journey via the deathways.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s how I know you’re lying! He hasn’t entered my domain since the night I escaped his death trap. He’ll send fools like you to sneak and scurry through, run his errands, and perish when their luck runs out, but he’s too cowardly to come himself.”

Despite the agonies he’d undergone and the pain that surely lingered, Gosnorn managed another snarl. “He’s not a coward! He’s our champion! Our liberator!”

“What a sad misreading of history. But I don’t suppose it’s worth the time to rebut it. We should stick to the business at hand. Convince me that Lod is on his way. Otherwise, this lady will bring back the sunlight.”

The ghoul hesitated, then said, “He doesn’t tell me everything.”

Sarshethrian nodded. “I realize that.”

“Still, some of it’s not hard to figure out. Faerun is a whole new continent for the Eminence to conquer, and the way I understand it, Rashemen is a special part of Faerun. The fey are stronger there, and if we take control of the place and combine its magic with our own, we’ll have a mighty weapon.”

“In other words,” Jhesrhi said, “Lod has decided the mission there is so important that he ought to oversee it in person.” Consideration of a would-be conqueror’s strategy appeared to have focused her mind. Her speech was as quick and her manner as brusque as they’d been during the campaign to conquer Thesk.

Cera looked to Sarshethrian. “What do you think now?” she asked. “Does it sound any more plausible?”

The lord of the deathways cocked his head and stroked his chin in contemplation while his corona of ragged shadow whipped and coiled. At length, he said, “You know, I believe it does. Rashemen surely is important to Lod, and if I must be honest, his agents like Gosnorn slip through the deathways safely more often than not. I can imagine him deciding to run the risk.”

“So we ambush him,” Jhesrhi said.

Sarshethrian smiled. “My very thought.”

Stretched human skins decorated the walls of the game room, and someone had covered each with elegant calligraphy. Reading one, Aoth discovered the biography of a clerk who’d sought to embezzle funds from the quarrying business owned by a certain Red Wizard. The account was full of extravagant praise for the thief’s cleverness and audacity.

A second skin related the tale of a smith who’d maintained a secret shrine to Kossuth in his home. Here, the ironic expressions of admiration centered on the martyr’s piety and courageous determination to follow the faith of his forefathers.

Aoth too, offered to the Lord of Flames on occasion, and the mockery made him scowl. Then Orgurth, who was watching the door, murmured, “A wizard’s coming.”

Aoth turned, bowed, and kept his hooded head lowered thereafter. In Thay, a land where a fair number of folk bore a trace of inhuman blood, his luminous blue eyes were less noteworthy than in many another realm. Still, it was far from impossible that some observant and well-informed mage would recognize the notorious “traitor” Captain Fezim, especially if allowed a good look at his tattooed face.

The creature in the doorway was a shriveled mummy whose pungent cologne couldn’t quite mask the underlying smells of embalmer’s spice and dry rot. His frayed, stained wrappings made an odd contrast to the gaudiness of his bejeweled crimson robes.

“What are you doing?” the mummy asked, his voice an uninflected croak.

Aoth gestured with his spear to indicate the skins. “These are funny, Master.”

The dead mage cocked his head, and his neck creaked. “You can read the epitaphs?”

“I know enough words to understand the joke.”

“Hm.” The mummy turned and proceeded down the hallway.

Orgurth waited until he judged that the undead had shambled out of earshot. Then he whispered, “I take it the skins won’t help us.”

“No.”

“Then why waste time on them?”

“The writing could have been spells, like on a scroll. I couldn’t know until I checked. Now we can move on.”

When they did, their explorations proved as nerve-wracking and frustrating as before. They kept running into Red Wizards and their underlings. So far, everyone had either ignored them or given them a casual nod, but it might only take one busybody asking which particular mage they served to reveal they were intruders.