"I am here," Magiere whispered, but the cavern's silence made her voice seem loud.

She stepped forward to the landing's edge.

A long and narrow stone walkway stretched out over a round chasm, so deep that Magiere couldn't see the bottom. The orange glow rose from below.

That one bridge joined three others, all reaching out from the distant cavern walls. They connected at a center point and blended with a stone platform suspended over the chasm. Looking around, Magiere saw pock-marks on the nearer cavern walls.

No, not marks, but more burial hovels carved in the stone-and more bone figures so old they resembled the color of the surrounding rock. Skeletons crouched and cowered with their heads and eyes cast down. They filled the cavern walls halfway up to its domed top.

"Who are they?" Magiere asked.

She didn't expect any answer, but Li'kan let out a voiceless hiss that grew too loud in the cavern's silence.

Li'kan looked at Magiere, the same way she had at Wynn, as if fascinated that anyone spoke to her. But the white undead never glanced at the walls.

A trace of disdain crossed her pure features, like one who saw nothing of any interest. Not even for those centuries-old dead, who still bowed before this ancient one-and whatever it served.

"Did you lock them down here… once they finished making this place?"

Li'kan didn't respond.

Magiere felt no rage at such injustice. What more could she expect from a monster?

A lightening sensation had washed through her from the moment she'd stepped into the tunnel. The deeper she had gone, the more it had taken away her hunger, but it also kept her dhampir nature at its peak. Yet anger, the source of all her strength and will, felt smothered.

Even the loss of that did not matter.

Magiere looked to the meeting point of those narrow stone walkways- to the landing hovering above the chasm's depths. Something stood upon it, barely visible through the misty air.

Li'kan stepped onto the narrow walkway.

Magiere followed, and waves of humid heat rose around her.

In the long depths below, she saw clouds gathered above a glow of orange-red. Water trickling down the chasm's walls met with severe heat somewhere below, and vapor collected in thick mist, obscuring the depths.

Vertigo filled Magiere, and she quickly turned her gaze on the walkway's narrow stone.

What was she doing here, following a voice in her dreams and an instinctive pull she couldn't name? That visitor hidden in her slumber hissed its words, and all she'd seen of it were writhing black coils.

This same voice had whispered to Welstiel-and to Ubad, instructing him in Magiere's creation using the blood of five races. But it had abandoned the necromancer.

Had it abandoned Welstiel as well? Was that why he'd never found this place on his own-and had tried in Bela to get her to join him?

Magiere knew she had followed the whispered urgings of some thing that couldn't be trusted. And now she was passively following a mad undead across a chasm to seek… what?

She saw the three other bridges leading off to three other hollows in the cavern walls. Perhaps above there were other barred stone doors. The burial hovels around the cavern and in the winding passage suggested that hundreds had labored here, perhaps hauling up excavated stone to build the immense fortification above.

Li'kan blocked Magiere's view of the platform, but when the undead reached it, she stepped aside.

A four-legged stone stand rose smoothly from the platform. A perfectly round opening had been carved through the center of its top.

In the wide hole rested a globe, slightly larger than a great helm.

It was made of a dark material Magiere couldn't name, as dark as char and faintly rough across its round surface. Atop it, the large tapered head of a spike pierced down through the globe's center-and the spike's head was larger than her fist. When she crouched to peer through the stand's four legs, she saw the spike's tip protruded a hand's width through the globe's bottom.

Magiere saw no mark of separation to indicate that the spike could ever be removed. Both spike and globe appeared to have been chiseled from one single piece.

Was this the "orb" she had come for?

All Magiere's doubts slipped away. It was trapped here, and she had to free it-protect it-keep it from all other hands. This was why she had come. And still all trace of her hunger was gone.

Magiere rose from her crouch and looked at Li'kan. "This is how you've survived. It… sustains you."

Li'kan just stared at the orb, as if she had not seen it in a long time.

Magiere saw grooves around the spike's head. Looking closer, she found that they ended in notches on opposing sides of the spike, and she glanced back at Li'kan.

The undead raised her slender hand, and her fingertips brushed the circlet around her neck. Like the one Magiere wore, its open ends were adorned with inward-pointing knobs.

Magiere's eyes widened as she looked down upon the spike's grooves and notches.

"How do I-"

"This is not what I expected," said a refined voice.

Magiere whirled about.

Welstiel stood halfway across the narrow stone bridge.

Leesil had barely crawled to his knees when Sgaile and Chap leaped past him.

But the last robed undead was already gone. Panic hit him as he scrambled up and grabbed the back of Wynn's coat.

"Come on!" he growled, pulling her up. "Welstiel and Chane are already after Magiere, and now that big undead!"

Then he saw the state of his companions.

Chap's neck was matted with blood, and a split in Sgaile's cowl collar and the shoulder of his tunic were soaked in dark red. Wynn favored one leg, though she stayed on her feet, but Osha was slumped unconscious against the wall. Blood trailed from his hair across his temple, and more leaked from the side of his mouth.

Leesil wavered, desperately wanting to find Magiere.

"Wait," Sgaile said.

He held one of Leesil's old blades in hand and looked to the first undead Li'kan had left broken near the wall. It did not move, but its body was intact. Without hesitation, Sgaile walked over and hacked the winged blade through the undead's throat.

A wet and muffled crack sounded as the blade severed its spine.

Leesil watched Sgaile with a flicker of surprise. Apparently the man had overcome his revulsion of dismemberment. Sgaile returned and gripped Osha's limp arm, and Leesil helped lift the younger elf over Sgaile's good shoulder.

"The library," Sgaile said.

Leesil took Wynn's arm, steadying the limping sage as they headed down the passage. When they reached the vast library and turned toward its far end, they saw that the iron beam now lay on the floor.

The stone doors were partly open.

Sgaile lowered Osha, and Wynn caught the young elf's shoulders, helping ease him onto the floor.

"I will tend him," she said. "Go after Magiere-hurry!"

"I can't just leave you here!" Leesil shouted in frustration.

"Yes," she insisted. "You heard Welstiel tell those mad undeads, 'Protect my way. He commands them. That is why the large one ran to assist him when the others were destroyed. Now go!"

Leesil looked uncertainly to Sgaile, standing before the doors and cradling the arm below his wounded shoulder.

"I can still fight," he said flatly. "Now come!"

Chap loped past Sgaile through the space in the doors.

Leesil's instincts screamed for him to run to Magiere, but another part railed against leaving Wynn alone.

"What if…," he began, but hesitated to say the name aloud. "What if another undead comes back past us?"

Wynn cocked her head at him. "No matter what has happened here, Chane would never harm me… and I will never allow him to harm Osha."

Her reckless confidence infuriated Leesil. "Chane's not the only one down there!"