One of the survivors, a lamp-maker, had fled Requiem with three clay lamps in her pack. Jeid now raised one of those small lamps. The oil was low, and the wick flickered; they had enough oil for only another day or two of light. The orange glow revealed a hole—perhaps a foot wide—in the granite ceiling. Blood stained its rim.

"What in the Abyss?" Dorvin frowned. "That hole's barely wide enough to piss through. You think whatever killed Serra came through there?"

Jeid wove his fingers together. "Go take a look. I'll give you a boost."

The young man's eyes widened. "I'd sooner bugger a dead bloated whale."

"Shut your mouth and look."

Dorvin grimaced. "And if whatever's in there chews my face off?"

"Then at least I won't have to look at your ugly mug anymore."

Grumbling under his breath, Dorvin placed a foot in Jeid's hands. Jeid shoved, boosting Dorvin up toward the ceiling. The young hunter winced, cursed, but dutifully peered into the hole.

"Emptier than Maev's skull," Dorvin said. "And stinkier than your backside, Grizzly. Whatever got Serra was here all right. There's damn blood and mucus all over." He hopped down onto the floor and shuddered. "By the Sky Goddess's teats, if there were room to shift in here, I'd claw that hole open and tear apart whatever's living in there."

Jeid grunted. "Even if we had room to shift in here, the walls are mostly granite. Harder than marble. We'd be chipping away an inch at a time; could take years. But something dug this hole, something with sharper claws than dragons. Stay here, Dorvin. You're guarding this hole from now on."

Dorvin's eyes grew so wide his eyeballs looked ready to pop out. "Warthog's shite I am!" He gestured down at the hollowed-out body. "You saw what that creature did to Serra."

"I did. And I don't want it doing that to anyone else. So draw your sword, boy, and guard this hole." Jeid smiled wryly. "Whatever's in there, it's no deadlier than the army of sphinxes outside."

As if to answer his thoughts, screams rose from far above in the caves. Jeid tensed.

The sphinxes.

He cursed and ran.

He whipped around bends in the labyrinth, racing past the other survivors until he burst into the wide chamber near the mountainside.

Jeid had positioned Verin, an old man with a long white beard, to guard the entrance in dragon form. When Jeid had left this place, Verin had been blowing fire out the exit, a gray dragon with cracked horns. Verin now lay dead upon the cave floor, a human again. Two sphinxes stood above him, ripping into his flesh and guzzling it down. Three Widejaws were walking across the cave in human form, approaching the tunnel, bronze-tipped spears in their hands.

Jeid roared, drew his sword, and ran to meet them.