Karfhud rolled his eyes. "We tanar'ri are wiser than to expect – especially from humans. I am only saying that you cannot have matters both ways, hero." He spoke this last word as though it were an obscenity. "You tried that back at the palace gate, and it cost me a wing. From this moment forward, you must choose whether you will please yourself, or do what is best for your companions. I have no care which, but I will have nothing to do with this trying to have things both ways."
"If that means you'll have no more to do with me, I welcome it," Theseus growled.
"Truly?" Karfhud glanced back up the tunnel. "Then you have no wish for my help against Sheba? Or have you decided to abandon Tessali, too?"
"He's alive?"
"Do you wish my help or not?" Karfhud spoke with an exaggerated air of impatience. "The longer it takes to decide, the more difficult it will be to track her. We are already quite far from where I saw them."
Theseus thought the fiend might be bluffing, but the claim did make a certain amount of sense. Without a raft to cling to, both the elf and the monster would have been hurled free of the stream soon after emerging from the whirlpool-long before he had managed to light his sword. Assuming Karfhud could see in the dark-
"I can," the fiend interrupted. "Just the warmth of bodies, of course-but Tessali and Sheba were almost fiery. The excitement of the hunt, I imagine."
"If this is a trick…"
"Theseus! Have I ever lied to you?"
Without awaiting a reply, Karfhud pushed off the raft and landed gently on what Theseus had at first taken to be a wall. Silverwind quickly followed, alighting opposite the fiend on what should have been the ceiling. With the bariaur standing upon it, the surface looked as much like a floor as where the tanar'ri stood. The Thrasson pushed off the raft and landed between them. The stone beneath his feet certainly felt like "down." By all appearances, both his companions were standing on the walls, while the stream was running through the air above his head – which made no sense at all. Even if "down" happened to be wherever one's feet were planted, the water should have been coursing along the walls instead of flowing through the center of the passage.
"Just accept what you see." Karfhud started up the tunnel, spiralling around the river as he walked. "If you try to figure out the Plurality, you will go as mad as – but I suppose that is not possible. You could never truly be as mad as a baatezu."
"I fear I already am," whispered Silverwind.
Theseus followed his companions up the tunnel, twining around the gaping side passages and trying to swallow his anger. Tanar'ri lord or not, Karfhud had no business making lectures. Had the fiend held onto Tessali, the attempt to turn back for the wine woman would have caused no harm to anyone. As far as the Thrasson was concerned, the blame for the elf's misfortune lay not on his own shoulders, but squarely on those of Karfhud.
Of course, Theseus did not expect the tanar'ri to repent his treachery. Karfhud had his own reasons for hunting Sheba, and no doubt releasing Tessali had somehow furthered the fiend's cause. That Theseus did not understand how only underscored his need to discover what the fiend was really doing: mapping the mazes, certainly, but why?
If Karfhud was eavesdropping, he neglected his usual admonition for Theseus to mind his own business. Instead, the fiend stopped at a side passage. A faint odor of rotting meat exuded from the dank tunnel, and there were strings of sticky black blood smeared just inside the mouth.
"I believe this is the one." Karfhud sat down on the edge of the passage and dangled his legs inside, then cast a wistful glance toward the swirling waters above his head. Although the stream was spinning past at breathtaking speed, it made only a soft gurgling and did not interfere with the fiend's voice. "How I wish I had a mapping skin!"
With that, he stepped onto the wall of the side passage – and promptly plunged headlong into the darkness. A short, gravelly curse rumbled up the shaft, then he was gone.
Theseus dropped to his belly, reaching down with his sword to illuminate the pit. Perhaps ten paces below, the shaft started to bend away, but he could not see where it went.
"Karfhud?"
When no answer came, Silverwind suggested, "Maybe he was killed."
Theseus shook his head. "We can't be that lucky."
The Thrasson tried again to call the fiend. When he received no answer, he dangled his own feet over the edge, then turned around and slowly lowered himself into the pit. The passage walls were as rough as those of any cavern; he had little trouble finding a foothold, and, having found it, even less difficulty dinging to it with the fingers of his borrowed foot. Although the stones were damp and slimy in his grasp, Tessali's hand made Theseus feel so secure that he did not even bother to pass his sword to Silverwind before descending the shaft.
With four split hooves and two hands, the bariaur was even more sure-footed than the Thrasson, and he followed close behind. The damp air grew thick with the reek of decay and spoiled meat. Theseus knew the stench well enough; he had smelled it in the lairs of more man-eating monsters than he could recall.
At the bottom of the shaft, they found Karfhud waiting just beyond the bend. The fiend's maze-blighted flesh looked rather scuffed and his remaining wing hung crumpled and broken on his back, but the fall seemed to have caused him no other harm.
"Why didn't you-"
The fiend spun around, one talon pressed to his black cracked lips. "I see a heat glimmer up ahead." So low was the tanar'ri's whisper that Theseus had trouble hearing it over the rush of blood in his ears. "About ten paces away. It's coming from around a comer."
"Then she's seen our light by now." Theseus twisted his sword hand back and forth, sending rays of sapphire radiance dancing across the entrances of half a dozen adjoining passages. "We may as well go."
Silverwind pulled a handful of white sand from his satchel. "I am ready."
Karfhud nodded and started up the passage, but the Thrasson caught hold of the fiend's shoulder and took the lead himself. In the cramped confines, it would be easier for the tanar'ri to reach over his head than for him to strike around the fiend's dark bulk. Theseus sprinted ten paces up the tunnel and turned down the first side corridor, where he stopped so suddenly that Karfhud slammed into his back and sent him tumbling across the floor straight toward what had caused him to stop.
Me.
I am standing, as I have been since Karfhud tumbled down the chute, waiting in the darkness as I promised to wait, my halo of blades scratching at the tunnel ceiling, my gown hanging limp and still in the damp air, my feet flat on the stone, invisible, a spider awaiting her prey. He should have rushed headlong into my arms, the smell of old death thick in his nose and worry for the elf pounding in his breast, his blood boiling with battle fervor, his nerves prickling with watchfulness – but when he rounded the comer, his mouth fell open, he stopped, and the tanar'ri hit him in the back. Now here he lies, upon my very feet, gaping up at my countenance and white with fear.
How he can see me, I wish to know.
The Thrasson's mouth starts to work, and he lifts himself on his foot and three hands and scrambles away backward. "The-the-the Lady!"
The tanar'ri and the bariaur scowl at his terror and look straight through me and show no sign of fear, and so I know they cannot see me.
"She's only in your mind." The bariaur pushes past Karfhud and goes to shake the Thrasson. "Stop imagining her – before we see her too!"
The tanar'ri pulls the old cleric back. The fiend cannot see me directly, but he knows what is in the Thrasson's mind, and so he supposes me to be some new trick of Sheba's.