‘Why?’

Talen grinned a wicked kind of grin. ‘Just give it a shove, Berit. You’ll see.’

Berit looked a bit puzzled, but he reached out with his axe and gave the rigid corpse a good shove. The armoured figure fell, crashing into another. The second corpse promptly beheaded the first, staggering back as it did so, and it was immediately chopped down by a third.

The chaos spread rapidly, and a sizeable number of the intimidating dead were dismembered by their fellows in a mindless display of unthinking savagery.

‘That’s a very good boy you have there, Kurik,’ Ulath said.

‘We have some hopes for him,’ Kurik said modestly.

They turned towards the portal and then stopped. Hanging in mid-air in the very centre of the dark doorway was a misty face engraved upon the emptiness with sickly green flame. The face was grotesquely misshapen, a thing of towering, implacable evil – and it was familiar. Sparhawk had seen it before.

‘Azash!’ Sephrenia hissed. ‘Stay back, all of you!’

They stared at the ghastly apparition.

‘Is that really him?’ Tynian asked in an awed voice.

‘An image of him,’ Sephrenia replied. ‘It’s more of Otha’s work.’

‘Is it dangerous?’ Kalten asked her.

‘To step into the doorway means death, and worse than death.’

‘Are there any other ways to get in?’ Kalten asked her, eyeing the glowing apparition fearfully.

‘I’m sure there are, but I doubt if we’d ever be able to find them.’

Sparhawk sighed. He had decided a long time ago that he would do this when the time came. He regretted the argument it was going to cause more than the act itself. He detached Bhelliom’s steel-mesh pouch from his belt. ‘All right,’ he said to his friends, ‘you’d better get started. I can’t give you any guarantees about how much time I’ll be able to give you, but I’ll hold off for as long as I can.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Kalten asked suspiciously.

‘This is as close to Azash as we’re going to get, I’m afraid. We all know what has to be done, and it’s only going to take one of us to do it. If any of you ever makes it back to Cimmura, tell Ehlana that I wished that this had turned out differently. Sephrenia, is this close enough? Will Azash be destroyed?’

Her eyes were full of tears, but she nodded.

‘Let’s not get sentimental about this,’ Sparhawk said brusquely. ‘We don’t have the time. I’m honoured to have known you – all of you. Now get out of here. That’s an order.’ He had to get them moving before they began making foolishly noble decisions. ‘Go!’ he roared at them. ‘And watch how you step around those guards!’