Looking up from the book, Evin saw in horror that the lich had raised its hand and was once more casting the spell of black, tendrily magic that he was certain would mean Bet’s death.

A metal box. Evin strained his mind. The only metal, boxlike thing he’d seen anywhere near this ritual was…

“Bet! I’ve got it!” Evin leaped to his feet, pulled a dagger free from his belt, and flung it through the air. Just as the lich began to finish his killing spell, the blade hit his thin wrist, snapping the bone in two and sending the hand flying into the darkness.

“You!” the lich bellowed, spinning to face Evin. “I suppose now it’s your turn to feel my touch?”

Evin didn’t respond. Instead, he ran around the perimeter of the keep toward the open hatch, pumping his arms and legs as fast as he could. The lich cried out phrases of magic as it tossed fireball after fireball at him.

Evin dived and landed hard against the stone steps, then leaped to his feet and ran down them three at a time. Above his head, the wooden hatch exploded into flames.

Into the tower Evin ran, bounding down sets of stairs until he reached the room in which they’d been held captive. In the center of the study, atop the rug, the slab still lay beneath the runic grate, Hennea’s pale, drained body still impaled atop it.

Pulling free the short sword he’d carried all this time but had yet to use, Evin let out a cry and hit the crystal shaft with his blade. The crystal cracked, and Evin shoved at Hennea’s body until the shaft broke and the fat woman rolled off the slab and fell into a heap onto the floor.

“You cannot escape me, human!” the lich’s wheezing voice called as the creature hovered in the hallway. “You are nothing against me!”

Evin fell to his knees beside the slab, digging his fingers between its bottom and the rug. He strained his weak muscles. If Hennea Vudge could move this thing, then certainly he could. He had to.

“Nothing,” the lich rasped, and Evin shot his head around to find the monster hovering in the doorway right behind him, watching him with his empty eyes, smiling his skeletal grin. His white hair and tattered robes swirling about him, Sefron the Ebon Lord raised his hand. Tendrils of black magic curled around his fingers.

“And now you die,” Sefron said.

The tendrils congealed into a bolt of black magic and shot at Evin.

Evin heaved the metal slab up, angling it into the path of the lich’s dark spell. The slab and the spell collided, exploding into a shower of silver sparks and strips of parchment that sizzled into nothingness as they fluttered about the room.

“Noooooo!” the lich wailed, raising his head to look into the sky.