Lillandra

There was a heavy wooden door, banded with iron, at the top of the stone steps. Arai sucked in a deep breath to settle his nerves and pushed it open.

The room beyond was, indeed, a magical laboratory of some kind. There was a cauldron in the center of the room, and shelves full of dried liquids and powders. There was also an anvil in one corner, and a bellows, and a huge hearthfire and chimney, which snaked up to the ceiling -- Nharlek had apparently been a smith of some kind, as well as a sorcerer. Like Lillandra's lair at the top of the Nightfall, it resembled a manufactory as much as a wizard's workshop.

The floor was littered with bodies -- seven or eight, at least, but it was hard to tell, because most had been reduced to skeletons, and their bones were all jumbled up with one another. Some of them were still wearing their rotted clothes; one was wearing a purple robe and slippers.

"Nharlek, I presume," Arai muttered, doing his best to tamp down his revulsion. He stepped all the way into the room...and that's when he saw Lillandra.

She was sitting in a chair and wiggling her fingers through the air, as though she were plucking the strings of an invisible harp, but her eyes were glazed over and her expression was completely blank. What in the world was she doing?

"Lillandra?" Arai whispered. And then, a little louder, "Lillandra?" But she refused to even look at him.

"What's wrong with her?" Shell whispered urgently. "What's she doing?"

Arai walked up to her and tapped her on the shoulder. That, finally, elicited a response: she looked up at him, furious, and snarled, "Stay away."

"Are you all right?"

"Leave this place," she growled, "or I'll kill you."

Unsure what to make of this, he touched her on the shoulder again, and this time she responded by leaping to her feet and trying to claw his eyes out. He jumped back, and for the briefest of moments, considered turning his sword on her. That vacant look in her eyes had given him pause, however, and he wondered now if she was in her right mind. He backed away from her. "Lillandra? Don't you recognize me?"

"Leave this place," she said again.

There was definitely something wrong with her; even her voice sounded strange.

"She's under a spell," Shell volunteered.

"I think you're right," he agreed. "We have to get her out of here." He reached out to take her hand...

...And a dark, humanoid shape suddenly dropped out of the ceiling, landing right between them. Arai shouldn't have been surprised, but he was; he stumbled back, while the monster lunged for him, its long arms extended. He hadn't seen its face the last time, but he got a good look at it now -- it was a hideously ugly thing, with a slavering dog's mouth and lizard-like eyes which glowed red.

Shell screamed, which distracted the thing for just a moment. Arai, recovering his balance, immediately took advantage, bringing his sword down in a glittering arc. Silus obliterated enchantments; all he needed was a single strike.

But Nharlek's assassin-beast was incredibly fast, much faster than he had anticipated. It dodged the swing and began bounding all over the room, bouncing off the walls and even the ceiling, before evaporating into the shadows.

Lillandra, meanwhile, had returned to her seat and gone back to playing her invisible harp, as though nothing particularly interesting was happening.

"Arai!" Shell shouted. "Look out!"

The monster had reemerged behind him, leaping out of the shadows like a mad dog. He narrowly avoided it, pivoting on his heel, and attempted to slash at it as it came rushing by. A single strike! A single strike was all he needed.

But to his own amazement, he missed -- his blade slid over the monster's back without touching it. This was more than an ill-timed swing; something else was happening here. When the monster turned and came at him again, he lowered his sword, preparing to impale it as it came forward, but again, it somehow managed to avoid the blade, slipping around him and diving into the shadows behind him.

The monster was obviously protected by some kind of magic -- a magic that even Silus couldn't penetrate. In one of their battles with the Al'mud in the Frozen Mountains, Vex had cast a spell on himself that had deflected arrows away from his body and prevented swords from striking him -- the Sheltering Wind, it was called. The monster's power was similar to that.

Silus ought to have been able to cut through it, however. The Radiant Blade cancelled out magic completely; the Sheltering Wind shouldn't have had any effect on it.

Nonplussed, and now more than a little worried -- he couldn't kill this thing if he couldn't touch it -- Arai tightened his grip on the hilt and looked around wildly, trying to guess where the monster might emerge. He looked up just in time to see it drop out of the ceiling once again, but he was in no position to use his sword, and was forced to back away from it. Once again, it charged him, and this time it managed to knock him off his feet and pin him down. Silus went flying out his hand, and the monster's doglike face snapped at him, slaver flying.

The creature was incredibly strong, but he somehow managed to wriggle one hand free and seize it by the throat. He squeezed as hard as he could, but the monster was solid muscle, and the cords of its neck were so tight that he was unable to harm it in this way. So he slapped its snout to one side and jammed two fingers in its eye instead. It made a kind of barking noise and jumped off of him, blinking its blood-red eye.

Arai dove for his sword. At the same moment, the monster once again dove into the shadows.

"Shell!" Arai shouted. "Get ready!"

The elf girl nodded smartly and pulled out the Candle of Hours. She fixed her eyes on the blob of wax, which began to glow softly.

Arai's gaze flew from the ceiling, to the walls, to the floor, as he sought the creature, trying to guess, once again, where it might emerge. Finally, he saw a faint stirring in the shadows near the hearth, and immediately shouted to Shell: "Now!"

The girl squinched up her face, and with a triumphant yell, raised the Candle of Hours over her head. Light exploded out of it.

At the same moment, the monster attacked, flying forward...but it was only halfway out of the shadow when Shell suddenly filled the room with light. The monster's head and part of its torso burst out of the dark, but with the shadow now dispelled, the rest of its body failed to follow. It landed in front of Arai with wet thump, severed at the waist.

Arai wasted no time dispatching the creature. This time, Silus cut through whatever enchantment had been protecting it, and it died, dissipating into magia particles and leaving behind a few slivers of black maginite. The objects that had been tangled up in the fur of its back remained behind as well, clattering to the stone floor.

Lillandra abruptly awoke from the trance. She jumped to her feet and whirled all around. "What happened?" she demanded. "Where am I?"

Shell was still clutching the Candle of Hours, which was still blazing bright. "I did it," she whispered, a smile slowly spreading over her cherubic face.

"You did it," Arai agreed, returning her smile with one of his own. "I knew I could count on you."

"What happened?" Lillandra asked again, more forcefully. "The last thing I remember..." She spotted the cauldron then, and the anvil and the shelves of ingredients, and asked, "What is this place?"

"Nharlek's laboratory," Arai provided. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, of course. Only I..." She looked at him, and then at Shell. "The monster brought me here, didn't it? And the two of you..."

"We rescued you," Shell said helpfully. She held up the Candle. "Look at this! Isn't it amazing?"

"Yes," Lillandra said after a moment, her gaze now having fallen on Arai again. "Amazing."

* * *

The objects that had fallen off the monster were zemi. "This is a Chain of Strength," Lillandra said, picking it up, "and this is a Badge of Deflection. No wonder you had a hard time hitting it. It was protected by the Sheltering Wind."

"Why didn't Silus cancel it out?"

She shrugged. "The Sheltering Wind is a very simple spell. It deflects attacks around the user by stirring up magia to create wind. Your sword can cut through any kind of magical shield, but it can't stop the wind from blowing."

Arai was not entirely satisfied with this answer -- he had thought the Radiant Blade totally anathemic to any form of magic -- but he put that aside for now. "And this?" he asked, picking up a small, round stone with an blue eye painted on it.

"An Eye of Domination," she said, taking it from him. "It was using this to control me." She shook it a few times. "The magic's gone out of it. You must have destroyed the spell with your sword."

"Why was it trying to control you?"

"It wanted out."

"Out?"

"Out of the castle. This sorcerer, Nharlek, put up a barrier to prevent it from leaving. I noticed it when I first entered the castle. The monster couldn't break the spell on its own, so it used the Eye of Domination to try to get me to break it." She looked around the room, at the assorted skeletons. "It probably did the same to all those who came here -- controlled their minds, tried to get them to undo the spell. But none of them could do it, because they didn't have any magical potential. So it simply killed them. I was probably the first one it captured who could have actually freed it."

Arai informed Lillandra of what they had read in Nharlek's journal. "He was trying to make an assassin, eh? That's interesting. And he had a Dragon's Bit; that's even more interesting. We should try to find it, if we can."

"What's a Dragon's Bit?" Shell asked.

"It's a zemi that gives the user power over monsters. I made one for myself, years ago."

"What happened to it?"

"I left it back in Velon."

"What about the Eagle's Wing?"

They looked around, scouring the laboratory from top to bottom, and even searching the body of Nharlek himself, but they found nothing that might have been an Eagle's Wing. They did, however, find several simple zemi that Lillandra thought might be useful to them. "This is an Everlasting Chalice," she said, holding up a small, golden goblet which she had discovered on one of the shelves. "It produces fresh water for anyone who touches their lips to it. You don't even have to be a sorcerer to use that one."

"Is it safe?" Arai asked.

"Of course."

"Can I try?" Shell asked.

Lillandra handed the goblet to her. The elf girl looked at it doubtfully, for it was empty, but as soon as she made to drink from it, water spilled down the the front her shirt. "It works!" she exclaimed, and she went on slurping from it for several seconds.

An infinite supply of fresh water would definitely be useful to them on the road, Arai thought, and even moreso when they reached the Scarred Lands.

They also found a Witch's Dagger, which Arai gave to Shell, and a Mermaid's Glass, which, according to Lillandra, allowed a person to breathe underwater for a time. Of the zemi that had fallen off the monster, the Eye of Domination and the Chain of Strength were apparently useless, but the Badge of Deflection still worked. Arai gave that to Shell as well; she pinned it on her cloak.

They couldn't find Nharlek's Dragon's Bit, either, but that was just as well; Arai wasn't sure he trusted Lillandra with such a powerful zemi.

Having gathered these things, they left the Haunt and began making their way back to the village. Though the skies were still dark, the storm had passed, and the rumble of thunder had grown distant.

"She's very brave," Arai said of Shell, who was skipping ahead of them. "If not for her, the monster probably would've killed me."

"She may have more potential than I realized," Lillandra admitted. But she seemed distracted, so Arai asked her what was the matter.

"It's nothing," she said, and she remained silent all the way back to the village.

The innkeeper was astonished to see them safe and sound. Arai told him what had happened, and also let him know about the bodies they had seen in the sorcerer's laboratory. "The monster's previous victims," Arai explained. "There might still be some monsters running around up there, but the most dangerous one is gone now. You might want to get some people together to retrieve those bodies and give them a proper burial."

The innkeeper nodded. "Thank you. I'll see to that." He looked thoughtful for a moment. "Perhaps this will bring some measure of comfort to Uther."

"I hope so."

"But how in the world did you defeat this monster?" the innkeeper wanted to know.

"My sword," Arai said. He grinned at Shell. "And her sorcery."

Shell grinned back.

* * *

They remained in the village for the rest of the day, and left in the morning. The weather had cleared once again, the sun breaking through big, puffy clouds. Arai threw a backwards glance at the Haunt as they made their way out of town; though Nharlek was dead, and his monster destroyed, the castle continued to loom like a dark shadow over the valley. It reminded him, he realized, of the Nightfall -- the ancient tower in which Lillandra had taken up residence after she had overthrown King Reemus. Both structures were huge and architecturally strange, and both had been built before the Harrowing.

Suddenly curious, he turned to Lillandra and asked, "Why didn't you take up residence in the Waterglass Palace after you overthrew the king?"

She frowned at him. "What?"

"It couldn't have been comfortable, living in those cold, cramped rooms at the top of the Nightfall. I know you were sleeping most of the time, but wouldn't you have preferred the Palace?"

"The Nightfall is very old. I had more magia to work with there. Besides..." A strange, furtive look suddenly flickered across her features, and she shook her head, dismissing whatever it was she had been about to say. "I had my reasons."

"I see."

She went quiet again after that; she was obviously still brooding over something. "What's wrong?" he asked her again.

She stopped suddenly, turning to face him. "Thank you," she said. "For saving me from Nharlek's monster."

This wasn't quite what he had expected. He shrugged. "I couldn't just leave you there. I still need you to reverse the spell on Odo and Maya. And anyway...it wouldn't have been right, leaving you to die."

She snorted. "Don't I deserve to die, for all the wrong that I've done? Isn't that what you keep telling me?" She sounded bitter. "I'm the Night Queen, after all."

"You're the Night Queen," he agreed. "But you're Shell's friend, too, and she'd never forgive me for leaving you there."

"I suppose that's true," she grumbled.

He gave her a questioning look. "Would you have made an effort to save me, if the monster had taken me instead?"

"No," she said instantly. "That's what's bothering me."

"Ah."

"I don't like feeling indebted to people," she added.

"Especially me?"

"Especially you."

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, I wouldn't have blamed you for running off, if the monster had captured me instead. We're enemies, aren't we?"

"You don't hold me to the same standards you set for yourself?"

"I'm the hero," he said, winking at her. "You're the villain."

"Heroes and villains," she muttered. "You really are naive, aren't you?"

"Hey!" Shell suddenly shouted at them, from up ahead. "What are you two waiting for? Let's go!"

Arai motioned for Lillandra to proceed. "After you," he said, with faux gentlemanliness.

She gave him a dirty look, but for the briefest of moments, he thought he saw a hint of amusement in her dark eyes as well.