"The Lady took them." Silverwind's reply is weary, impatient, even gruff. "It'll do you no good to confuse the issue now; I saw what I saw, and you can't change it. They're gone."
The elf shakes his head, frantic. "I feel them!"
"You imagine you feel them. But I imagine they're gone, and since I am the One, they are gone." Silverwind palms both stumps, rubs them hard enough to draw a gasp of pain. "You see?"
Tessali squints, leans forward and stares at Silverwind's palms covering his wrists where still he feels his own hands. Slowly, the elf struggles up through the darkness, back to the gray light; the glassy sheen vanishes from his eyes. His mouth gapes open.
"The Lady took my hands!" He jerks the stumps from Silverwind's grasp, crosses them over his breast. "What am I to do? Without hands, I cannot heal!"
Jayk kneels next to the elf, wraps a consolatory arm around his shoulder. Her head is pounding, but she knows when she has been called. "Do not fear, my friend. I can help you, yes?"
"You can?" Tessali looks more hopeful – even relieved – than wary. "How?"
Jayk smiles. Her pupils elongate into diamonds. She presses close to the elf. "We make kiss, yes?"
Tessali leaps to his feet, tears free of her embrace. "No!"
Jayk pouts, fangs dripping venom on her lower lip. "There is no need to be afraid; you are already dead. If you admit this, nothing will trouble you."
"I'm not ready to admit anything – especially that!"
Tessali eases from the tiefling, fixes his gaze on Silver-wind, who is looking down the thorn-walled corridor. The passage continues about thirty paces before rounding a sharp comer. Behind them, it joins a cross passage.
"Silverwind?"
The bariaur turns, but says nothing.
Tessali holds his stumps before Silverwind's face. "You're the One Creator. You can make me a new pair of hands."
Silverwind shakes his head. "No, I cannot."
"Of course you can." Tessali's expression has grown sly. "If you're truly the One Creator, you can make whatever you want"
The old bariaur gives him a reproachful sneer. "By that logic, I would create only what I want – which, since I had never intended to create you or your friends, would hardly be good for you." He pushes away Tessali's stumps. "Count yourself lucky I have limitations. It is better to lack hands than not to exist at all."
Again, the elf thrusts his stumps toward Silverwind. "You don't understand. Without my hands, I can't cast spells. I can't restrain the bannies, or protect myself from the Menaces. I'm nothing!"
"Then you are nothing." Silverwind shrugs. "If I had something to work with, perhaps I could restore what you have lost-but even I cannot create something from nothing."
Tessali's eyes 'grow wide. He glances up the hedge, sees the two divots where Silverwind's hooves scraped the top. "Jayk," he says, turning to the tiefling, "if you go back and fetch my hands, no one will ever try to lock you in the Gatehouse again. I'll see to that."
The tiefling narrows her eyes, suspicious. "How?"
"It doesn't matter," interrupts Silverwind. "You can't go back – not by climbing. There's no telling where you'll end up, but it won't be in the ash maze."
With that, the bariaur snorts and turns down the passage.
"Wait!" Tessali calls. "Where are you going?"
"If you are so determined to have your hands back, we'll have to go and look for them, won't we?"
"You know the way?"
"I'm as lost as you are." Silverwind continues toward the corner. "But now that the Thrasson is gone, what else is there to do?"
"We must wait here!" Jayk stamps her foot, brings the bariaur to a stop. "If we are gone when Zoombee jumps over the wall, what will he think? That we have left him, yes?"
"Jayk, come along." Tessali arches his brow. "The Amnesian Hero won't be jumping over the wall. He's dead."
"So are you." She glares at the elf's wrists. "And did I leave you behind? No!"
"You know that's different" Tessali has assumed his patient mind-healer's voice. "The Lady only maimed me. She kill – er, annihilated – the Amnesian Hero."
"How do you know? Did you see this?"
"What else could have happened?" The elf stretches a stump toward her, as if he still had a hand to extend. "The Amnesian Hero wouldn't want this; he sacrificed himself so we could escape."
Jayk folds her arms. "That is why we will wait. He deserves that from us, yes?"
"He would, if he were coming. But-"
"Tessali, the mazes do have their scavengers," Silverwind interrupts. "Do you want to find your hands or not?"
"Jayk, let's go." The elf cannot keep his head from pivoting down the passage. "There's no use waiting here."
"You only worry about your hands." Jayk looks away. "I wait for Zoombee."
"You may do as you wish, but you do understand that once we're gone, you'll be alone? We may never see each other again."
"I did not ask to see you the first time."
"As you wish, Jayk." After restoring a thousand madmen to their senses, Tessali knows a bluff when he sees one – or so he thinks. He turns and, with Silver-wind's help, climbs on the bariaur's back. "I will miss you."
Confident Jayk will follow once she sees he is serious, Tessali nods, and Silverwind turns and trots down the passage. When they round the corner, Jayk is still standing where they left her, arms folded across her chest and gaze locked atop the hedge.
It will be some time before she sees the Thrasson come leaping over the crest. At the moment, he is still falling through the sweltering darkness, his heart rising into his throat, his stomach light as air. There is a woman's voice, keen and high, ringing in his ears; she is trilling a single name over and over, the syllables tumbling and gurgling over each other like the lilting aria of a waterfall. The Amnesian Hero keeps trying to understand what she is singing, as though catching hold of her voice might spare him the crash at the end of his plunge, but it will take more than that to save him.
The Thrasson is still falling when he opens his eyes and finds himself lying in the dirt street. He does not remember hitting the ground, and his insides remain squeamish and unsettled, but either he has stopped moving or everyone is moving with him – he cannot decide. He is staring up at a ring of sagging, rumpled faces illuminated in the sapphire light of his star-forged sword, which the tanar'ri Karfhud has picked up and raised high aloft, like a fog-haloed moon in the darkness.
The Amnesian Hero could not pick out the woman he had seen first. The faces above him were all round festering masses of folded flesh and dark nodules. Some, those in the earliest stages of the disease, retained something of their original shapes; brows and cheeks and jawlines still manifested themselves beneath flakes of dead white skin. Other visages, unbearable to look upon, were mere ooze-glistening blobs that made the Thrasson feel guilty for his own good fortune.
A peal of deep laughter boomed from Karfhud's round muzzle. "Stranger, you are not so fortunate! The star that guided you here was a foul one indeed." The fiend turned to the others. "My friends, we have here a noble one. He truly feels for us!"
"Then leave him be, Karfhud." The rasping words slipped from the lips of a blob-face. "He means us no harm."
"Truly, I do not!" The Amnesian Hero propped himself on his elbow, at once surprised by the plumes of darkness that this small exertion sent shooting through his head and how well the fiend had read his thoughts. "And I will do… whatever I can… to aid you."