“There you go,” she told him as he writhed and choked. “Another notch for the bedpost.” Even as she was speaking she had a second arrow nocked. “How about you steer clear of anything that looks like magic?”

“Oh—Dark Lord’s Wrath!—it wasn’t magic! I don’t do magic! She does the magic!”

“Shut up, moron!” the woman spat, and then the edge of Harathes’s blade came to rest companionably under her chin and she followed her own advice.

“Get something out of them, at least,” Lief suggested. “They must know what’s waiting above us, if nothing else. You can tell if they’re lying, right?”

“The Light shall illuminate the truth,” Dion agreed. She fixed the two hapless Doomsayers with a steely glower. “You’ll answer what we ask, and truthfully, or you’ll end here.”

The woman tried a defiant look, but it was somewhat spoiled by Harathes inching his blade up, forcing her to stare at the ceiling or cut her own throat.

The male Doomsayer’s gaze was fixed on the steady point of Cyrene’s arrowhead. “Look, please. We were just—”

“Evidently,” Dion finished for him. “And just as evident, you’re servants of the Dark Lord. Why are his chiefest servants always human? Why not Ghants or specters? There is nothing more abominable to the Light than those who cast away its gifts to choose Darkness.”

“No, no, we’re not, we were never chiefest anything,” the Doomsayer told her hurriedly. “We’re very minor, not important, not really… I never wanted to be evil, it was just, things happened, and…”

Dion remembered the vacant sockets and gapes of his leather vest, and her lips thinned.

“I’ll talk,” he got out hurriedly, seeing that dangerous expression. “Please, I’ll tell you it all. Just, don’t kill me. Take me back for judgment, I’ll do whatever you want, just…” He could see that Cyrene’s arm was beginning to quiver, that soon she must loose or relax.

Dion exerted her faith again, fighting against the innate resistance of this place to circle his brow with a blazing golden band. It obviously pained him, but it would burn far fiercer if he tried to lie to her. “Tell us what lies above,” Dion commanded him.

“All right, all right! There are about half a dozen more spook traps,” he said, stammering over the words. “There was a guardian serpent, but someone forgot the password and we had to put it down. The armory has a whole load of locks and glyphs and things on the door but I don’t know how to get past them. I’m not important enough, please—seriously, there’s not much up there. The top levels, nobody goes there anyway.”

“Except Darvezian,” Dion prompted.

His eyes bugged. “You’re looking for…”

“Wait,” Cyrene broke in. “You’re saying Darvezian isn’t up the tower?”