Her name is not Sheba, of course. Karfhud calls her that because she reminds him of a succubus who once bested him in the fray. But the monster of the labyrinth has no name; she would not even understand what a name is, for it is beyond her to think of others apart from herself. She is like Silverwind that way-or any of us, if we look deeply enough – except that she never despairs, and that makes her ever so much stronger-strong enough, even, to defeat a tanar'ri lord.
That is what the Amnesian Hero is thinking as he clumps down the Great Way, trying to keep pace with Jayk. Unlike the tiefling, he is losing his fear of Karfhud, for he has begun to understand what the tanar'ri wants from them. For centuries – it has been millennia, but no mortal can truly conceive of such a time – for countless ages, the fiend has been lost in the labyrinths. The Thrasson is no tanar'ri, but he knows enough about the wicked race to understand that to a powerful lord like Karfhud, being trapped is less an abuse than not being master of the prison.
What the fiend wants is to kill the monster. The Thrasson begins to form his plan; he is thinking of the amphora, of course, and of Karfhud's maps, and he is wise enough to know that the tanar'ri knows what he is thinking. But there will be a battle, and battles breed confusion, and when the confusion passes, it will be the one who still stands that has the amphora and the maps and his life.
And so, leaving it to Jayk to ignore the comers and see the Great Way as a straight line and count the alleys on the right and guide them into the twenty-ninth on the left, the Amnesian Hero plots and schemes and falls so deeply into thought that he does not notice as Jayk guides them to the left at the "T" intersection, and he does not mark the growing ramble of thunder or the rising steam-laden breeze, and he does not hear the clatter of galloping hooves reverberating off the iron walls, or heed even the monster's sonorous roar until it breaks over the maze like Hephaestus's mighty hammer knelling upon its anvil.
By the time the Amnesian Hero has realized what is happening and draws his sword, Silverwind has rounded the corner ahead at a full gallop. With Tessali's gruesome stumps wrapped around his waist and the roar of a hailstorm echoing close on his tail, the bariaur glances at Jayk and the Thrasson only briefly, as though he has expected all along to meet them in precisely that spot, and continues on.
"Flee for your lives!" Silverwind veered toward one side of the passage. "Oh, I have recalled you at a bad time!"
"The monster's hard behind us!" Tessali looked far too frightened to be surprised by the Amnesian Hero's return. "Run!"
Seeing that there was no time to convince his companions to stay and fight, the Amnesian Hero extended his brick foot and caught Silverwind's front hooves. The bariaur bleated and pitched forward, then he and Tessali bounced off the hot iron wall and went tumbling across the bricks together.
"Zoombee?" Jayk sounded more curious than alarmed. "Why do you-"
The Amnesian Hero pushed her behind him. "Prepare your spells – and tell Silverwind to do the same." A cloud of rust-colored steam boiled around the corner ahead, followed closely by a wall of driving hail. "Maybe you have something to clear the storm?"
Behind him rose Tessali's voice, groaning and cursing the Thrasson for a menace and a berk. The Amnesian Hero ignored the insults and clumped forward, veering toward the inside wall of the comer. He knew better than to think he would surprise the monster – Sheba was much too cunning to round a blind corner on the inside – but he only needed to stall her long enough for Karfhud to arrive.
The Amnesian Hero stopped two paces shy of the comer. He took his sword in both hands and pressed as close to the scorching iron as he could bear. Behind him, his companions, mere silhouettes in the curtain of hail, were standing close together. Both Jayk and Silverwind were fumbling for spell components, but their attention seemed alarmingly divided. Tessali was leaning across the bariaur's back, gesturing wildly with his wrist stumps and hurling questions at Jayk. The tiefling shrugged and shook her head in disavowal, less concerned with the coming battle than with appeasing the elf. She was still in shock from Karfhud's attack; certainly, she would never have worried about such a thing before.
The Amnesian Hero felt a cold prickle between his shoulder blades. He looked across the passage to see an ice-gray blur rounding the comer. Her long mats of fur rendered her almost invisible in the driving hail; she seemed a mere deepening of the storm, a ghostly mass drifting slowly forward through the orange steam. Only the neck of the amphora, protruding on the far side of her body, looked at all solid.
The Thrasson cursed his bad luck that the jar was on the other side of the monster, then sprang across the passage to slash at Sheba's leg. If he could strike her lame, he would be free to stall until Karfhud arrived to finish the kill. After that, surviving-and laying claim to the fiend's maps – would become a simple matter of keeping his head while the tanar'ri and the monster killed each other.
The Amnesian Hero thumped down beside Sheba, his star-forged blade already biting into her leg. In the next instant, a deafening bellow reverberated down the iron passage, then a huge hand came from nowhere to crash into the Thrasson's shoulder. He lost his sword and went tumbling across the bricks and, three somersaults later, slammed into a scorching wall. There was a loud sizzle and the smell of burnt flesh, yet the Amnesian Hero felt only a faint nettling where his bare flesh touched the blistering metal. He pushed off the wall and tumbled to his knees, then found himself staring up at a curtain of matted fur. A huge, black-taloned mitt was reaching down to clutch him.
The Amnesian Hero ducked his shoulder and rolled, only to have Sheba pivot around before he could get his feet under him. He glimpsed a stripe of oozing black sap where his star-forged blade had bit into the knee, but the limb appeared discouragingly whole. He saw no sign of his weapon; the sword lay lost somewhere in the steam. The monster reached for him again, and the Thrasson began to wonder if his companions had abandoned him.
"Jayk?"
His scream was answered by the hail-muffled syllables of the tiefling's incantation. A pair of yellow streaks flashed through the orange steam, pulsing into the monster's shoulder, then bursting in a spray of golden light and silver fur. Sheba grunted and stumbled a single step back.
The Amnesian Hero crab-scrambled around behind the monster, frantically sweeping his hands across the bricks in search of his sword-and hoping he would not find it by slicing his fingers off. Sheba gave a baffled growl, then her head began to pendulum back and forth as she searched for him.
Silverwind cast his spell, filling the passage with a booming incantation even louder than the pounding hail. A roaring wind came blasting down the corridor to sweep the steam around the comer and blow the hailstorm back the way it had come.
When the tempest cleared, Sheba was staring directly at the Thrasson's sword, which lay less than three paces in front of her foot. The Amnesian Hero, slightly behind her and off to one side, found himself well beyond the limit of her peripheral vision – at least that was what he hoped. The amphora was tucked beneath the monster's arm on his side of her body. He considered trying to knock it free and dive for his sword, but decided that he had a better chance of getting stuck in her gummy fur than coming up with either his weapon or the jar.
The monster pivoted, her head tipped forward to search for her foe. The Amnesian Hero started to crab-walk around behind her, hoping to complete the circle and grab his sword – and that was when he noticed a huge black shadow slipping around the comer.
At last.
The Amnesian Hero let his brick foot clatter on the ground behind the monster, then he threw himself in the opposite direction, diving for his sword. Sheba was already spinning; her talons raked furrows of cold pain down his spine, but he was much lower than she had expected and going in the opposite direction. He belly-flopped onto the bricks and crawled to his sword, then whirled onto his mangled back, bringing the blade around just in case she attacked him instead of switching to Karfhud,