They were in another chamber, this one bigger than the last. Kufa was hurrying across the cavern, heading toward a computer terminal built into the rock itself. She pressed a series of controls and illuminator panels activated high among the stalactites, bathing them all in harsh light. The air was still, almost reverent, and Dis was sure that he could smell the faint tang of incense.

Ro was suddenly in front of him, appearing so quickly that Dis almost reacted with his remaining blade. He stepped back, nearly slipping. Why hadn’t he sensed Ro’s approach?

“This is a sacred place,” Ro said, but Dis struggled to focus on the words. Nothing seemed real. The hum of the lights. The creak of Ro’s leather. The sun beating down from Talor’s eternal sky.

Dis shook his head, trying to clear it. He wasn’t on Talor. He was under the ice on a planet far from home where there were monsters with tentacles and hair and teeth and …

“You are not worthy.”

His head snapped up and he found himself looking at his father. But that wasn’t possible. His father was dead.

“You must leave this place,” the Talortai said, his face twisted into hate, “and never return.”

Dis’s legs buckled, his knees hitting frost-covered stone.

“Dis?”

Not his father’s voice. Ro’s voice. And then another. Thin. Female.

“He is being cleansed,” he heard Kufa say. “Such is the Leveler’s power.”

The entire world was flickering back and forth like a faulty hologram, strobing between the cave and his father’s home, back to the day he was exiled from Talor long ago.

“You have brought shame on the family.” His father’s words again, followed by Ro.

“Would you like to see it?”

“See what?” Dis croaked.

Ro chuckled. “Why we came all this way, of course.”

Dis didn’t want to see anything. He wanted to screw his eyes tight to stop Ro morphing back and forth into the figure of his father. Had he been drugged? What if there was a toxin in the rock that he’d somehow scraped himself up against, something that had gotten into his blood.

“Get up, witch!” his father yelled at him. “Get out!”

“Well?” Ro again, grabbing Dis’s arm, pulling him up. “Do you want to see it or not?”

Dis couldn’t respond. Couldn’t stop himself from being guided … pulled … guided across the chamber. He no longer had either of his wingblades. What had happened to them? He pictured one, lying broken in the other cavern, the other slicing his father’s throat. No. That hadn’t happened, had it? He’d cut Scarspike’s throat. The cobonica’s throat. Someone’s throat.

There was another arch, another doorway. Cavern after cavern. Bones on the floors. Humanoid bones. His bones. No, that was stupid. He wasn’t dead. Was he?

“Witch!”