His lungs burned. The rough stone grated against his injured hands. They would be raw and bleeding again soon. With a desperate shove, he broke through the slimy surface and hit his chest against a stone platform.

Coughing and spitting slime, Kall hauled his lower body out of the cube and onto the stone platform. He lay on his back gasping for a moment. His entire body was saturated with slime, but at least he could breathe air again.

Kall wiped his eyes clear and saw darkness, illuminated faintly by Meisha's fire globes drifting below. The light filtering through the cube cast eerie green glows on the walls.

Gathering the rope about his waist, Kall pulled until it came taut three times. He hoped Meisha's slighter weight would make the climb easier.

A tense moment later, a cap of black hair broke the surface, and Meisha crawled up beside him onto the stone ledge.

"What a wonderful experience," the Harper said, flicking the substance off her fingers. Slime plastered her hair to her forehead, and her eyelashes stuck together in dark clumps.

The others followed slowly, until only Garavin and Borl remained. It took the combined strength of Kall, Morgan, and Dantane to haul the pair through the cube, Borl with his muzzle and nose tied shut with cloth. By the time the dwarf was clear of the creature, he barely breathed. Kall quickly unfastened the cloth that kept the dog from breathing in the slime, then turned to Garavin.

"Help me clean him off," Kall ordered. "The slime will corrode his skin if it's left alone."

They laid the gasping dwarf down onto the stone platform. Garavin dredged up a grin for Morgan as the thief tried to wipe away the slime.

"Laerin would be chuckling if he could see ye playing nursemaid," the dwarf said.

Morgan offered one of his halfhearted grunts. "Don't get used to it," he said.

"All right, finish up," Kall said. "We have to keep moving." He pointed to a tunnel angling away from the shaft. "Level ground, Garavin," he said. "Easy going."

"If it lasts." Dantane said, always the voice of dissension. He nodded to the dwarf. "He won't make another climb like this."

"I'll be looking after myself just fine, young one," said Garavin sharply. He got to his feet unaided, but leaned heavily against the tunnel wall.

Kall exchanged a glance with Morgan. Garavin never lost patience with anyone. For the taciturn dwarf to do so now frightened Kall more than a little.

"We'll rest here," Kall said. "Dantane's right. We don't know how long any of us will last if we encounter another long climb."

The others moved away to give the dwarf some room. Kall guided his friend back to a sitting position and settled beside him.

Garavin leaned heavily on him for support. When he looked at Kall, his pupils had dilated to two piercing black holes surrounded by a mound of wrinkles. He seemed to have aged a decade in the space of a moment.

"What happened, Garavin?" Kall asked, keeping his voice low. "Was it really Dumathoin on the bridge?"

The dwarf closed his eyes and breathed. The rough wheeze was barely audible. "It was ... a power I've never felt before, lad—or could ever hope to feel again."

"Did the power consume you from the inside?" Kall asked urgently. "Can you recover?"

"I think so," said Garavin. "To live on—feels like Dumathoin's plan for me." He looked at Kall. "But we—none of us, have the guarantee of living through this passage."

"Don't worry, I'll see to that," said Kall.

Across the tunnel, Meisha listened with half an ear to their conversation, and used her remaining attention to direct the light globes down the tunnel to scout ahead.

"Stay back here, Talal," she called out to the boy, who'd wandered halfheartedly to follow the globes. She heard the scrape of feet on stone and Talal's voice, echoing back to them.

"The tunnel slants down!" he called out. "Spikes on the walls, but the bottom's clear."

Through her exhaustion, the words came to Meisha sluggishly. Spikes on the walls.

Memories of her own trek through the caverns came rushing back from a buried place in her mind.

With an incoherent shout of warning, Meisha came to her feet. She ran in the direction Talal had wandered, knowing even as she skidded down the slant that she would be too late.

The boy's foot touched a pressure plate identical to the one Shaera had encountered on her ill-fated journey farther up the Climb. Meisha heard Morgan shout as the thief recognized the danger, but her eyes were only on Talal.

She pushed off, using the slanted stone for leverage, hurling herself into the boy. They crashed together to the floor as rocks rained down on them.

"Meisha!" Kall shouted, but his voice was lost in the hail of battering stones.

Meisha heard Talal screaming in her ear. She felt the impact of the stones against her back, smashing ribs and bruising flesh.

"No," she whimpered, when Talal's screams abruptly cut off. She felt the boy go limp in her arms. In Meisha's mind, all she could see were Shaera's dead eyes, all she could hear was the prayer to an unknown god the girl had whispered in the dark. Talal had no one to watch over him. He was alone in the dark.

Shaera's blood-covered visage . .. Varan's ruined eye .. . Laerin's blood on a demon's claws.

Something inside Meisha broke. Without thought or hope, she called the fire.

Flame blazed from her eyes, her mouth, from every wound torn open by the falling stones. Meisha's pain disappeared, replaced by raw burning—a heat that should have incinerated her body but did not. The fire did not even singe her clothes. Instead the flames shielded her, casting away the falling stones or burning them to smoking blisters before her eyes.

Meisha had never experienced this kind of release. The power within her swelled, and for the first time in her life, she felt nothing could harm her. The fire consumed all, taking thought and emotion and turning the world black inside her mind. Safe in the flaming cocoon, she could exist as one with her element and never have to feel the pain of the world again.

Is that what you want?

Dantane's words echoed in her mind. "Yes, oh yes!" she screamed, crying tears of black flame.

Let me stay this way, always.

"Meisha!"

She heard the voice near her ear, frightened but insistent, distracting her from her paradise. Meisha tried to ignore it. The fire beckoned her, seductive and soft, a lover's touch that banished all her memories. She did not even recognize the voice calling her.

"Meisha."

Hands gripped her shoulders, shaking her and sending waves of cold through the inferno. Meisha shuddered at the icy touch.

"Go away," she snarled, hearing the flames in her own voice. "Leave me be!"

The hands shrank back, and for a moment Meisha thought they would retreat. Then she felt the slap across her cheek, sharp and brutal. The hands shook her again, harder.

Meisha reared back, prepared to burn her attacker to cinders, when she heard the choked cry of pain. The voice spoke her name again, this time in anger.

"Meisha—stupid, flame-kissing Harper—have done!"

Meisha opened her eyes. The flames drained out of her body, leaving her weak and quivering. She collapsed on top of Talal, who squeaked in fresh agony.

"How many ways are you trying to kill me!" the boy screeched, pushing her off and scrambling away.

"You're alive," Meisha said wonderingly. "The cave-in ... I thought it had killed you. It killed her—Shaera."

"Is she all right?" came Kall's voice from somewhere above her head.

"Babbling something, but I always knew her mind was addled," Talal said. The boy snorted, but his eyes were filled with concern when he looked down at her.