It was the Fjel who had built Darkhaven, in accordance with his Lordship’s design; but these passages were not built to a Fjel’s scale. They were behind the walls, the province of rats and scuttling madlings. Rats, Vorax had expected. He was amazed at the progress Ushahin’s madlings had made; widening breaches in the masonry to open connections between passages where none were meant to exist, forging exits and entrances where none were intended. There was no danger to his Lordship, of course; no madling would touch dare the three-fold door and risk his wrath. Still, it made him uneasy to think how extensively they had penetrated the fortress. He wondered if Ushahin knew.

At one point he encountered a deep chasm in a passageway, and had to sidle across the verge of it on his heels, both hands outflung to grasp the dimly veined walls, toes hanging out over empty nothingness. His knees creaked with the effort of balancing. Pausing to steady his nerves, Vorax looked down, gazing past his boot-tips. Dry heat blasted upward in a column.

The chasm went down and down, deeper than a mineshaft. Somewhere, far below, was a flickering light cast by blue-white flames and a roar like that of a distant forest fire, or dragons. Vorax shuddered, and edged clear of the chasm, back onto solid ground. That was no work of madlings. He wondered what fault in Darkhaven’s foundation had permitted the chasm to open. It was as close as any man should get to the Source; and a far sight closer than any Staccian ought. He’d had enough infernal heat to last him an immortal lifetime. It was cool in Staccia.

Betimes, he missed it.

Perhaps, when this latest threat had passed, it would be time to consider passing on his mantle. To retire to a pleasant estate, where the sun shone in a blue sky over a white, wintery landscape, and the wolf tracked the hare through new-fallen snow. He could continue his duties in Staccia, binding the earls and barons in fealty, negotiating lines of supply and men for Darkhaven, negotiating the companionship of their pretty younger daughters for himself, spinning out his days in soft, blissful comfort, freed from the constraints of his vow-branded flesh to age his way into easeful death, pillowing his head in the laps of Staccian maidens. It was not a bad idea, after all, to have a presence in Staccia. It had been too long since he had made himself known there.

The path took an upward turn. Trudging doggedly up the steep incline, he tried to imagine if his Lordship would ever agree to such a thing. He rather thought not. After all, Staccia’s very peace and prosperity were dependent upon the bargain Vorax had struck with his Lordship so many years ago. He had not imagined, then, that there could ever come a day when immortality would become burdensome.