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The sreased, doard sloping corridor, his feetahead and keep hiht - no easy task Wisps of s tear showed down the side of his left pant leg, with bright blood oozing beneath

Arte it, not using it to break his dizzying dash, for to do so would be to allow the lich to catch sight of him

And that, above all else, the assassin did not want

He caainst the wall before hionally down the narrow hallway He heard the sound of flahter of Jarlaxle, his drow conized that the confident dark elf was trying to unnerve the pursuer with that cackle, but even Entreri heard it for what it was: a discordant sound unevenly roiling above a bed of coether had Entreri heard any hint of worry fro it, and that only reinforced his own very real fears

He ell beyond the illu corridor by then, but a sudden and violent flash fro him that the corridor ended abruptly a dozen feet beyond and ht turn The assassin took full note of that perpendicular course, his only chance, for in that flash, he saw clearly the endgame of the lich&039;s nasty trap: a cluster of sharpened spikes sticking out froain went into a roll On one turn, he sheathed his tradeed to slip his sword, Charon&039;s Claw, into its scabbard on his left hip With his hands free, he better controlled his skid along the wall The floor was more slippery than an icy decline in a windless cavern in the Great Glacier itself, but the walls were smooth and solid stone His hands worked hard each time he came around, and his feet skidded and spun in place as he rolled his shoulders to keep hiht He approached the sharp turn and the abrupt, deadly ending

He yelled as another thunderous explosion rocked the corridor behind hith as he ca, he threw his upper body forward to strengthen the e As soon as his feet slid off that rease abruptly ended He caught the corner and pulled hiainst the wall He glanced back only once, and in the diht could see the sharp, barbed tips of the deadly spikes

He started to peek around, back the way he had co forrab at Jarlaxle, but the drow eluded hiht his companion doomed on the end of the spikes

But Jarlaxle didn&039;t hit the spikes Somehow, some way, the drow pulled up short, whipped to the left, and slammed hard into the wall opposite Entreri The assassin tried to reach out but yelped and fell back behind the corner as a bolt of bluewhite lightning streaked past, exploding in a shower of stinging sparks as it crashed against the back wall, shearing off several of the spikes in the process

Entreri heard the cackle of the lich, an emaciated, skeletal creature, partially covered in withered skin He resisted the urge to sprint away down the side corridor and growled in defiance instead

"I knew you&039;d getwith fury, Entreri leaped back into the middle of the yi!" the assassin roared

The lich ca out behind it, lipless face, rotted brown and skeletal white, grinning wide

Entreri went for his sword, but when the lich reached out with bony fingers, the assassin instead thrust his gloved hand out before hie - as another lightning bolt blasted forth

Entreri felt as if he was in a hot, stinging wind He felt the burn and tingle of tre around him He was down on his knees but didn&039;t know it He had been thrown back to the wall, just below the spikes, but he didn&039;t even register the firainst his feet He was still reaching forith the enchanted glove, ar in the air and disappearing into the glove

None of it registered to the assassin, whose teeth were clenched so forcefully that he couldn&039;t even yell any louder than a throaty growl

Spots danced before his eyes, and waves of dizziness assailed hi cackle of the lich

Instinctively, he shoved off the wall, angling back to his left and the side corridor He got one foot planted on that non-greased surface and sprang back up He drew his sword, blinded still, and scrae, then leaped out as fast and as far as he could, swiping Charon&039;s Claildly and having no idea if he was anywhere near the lich

He was

The dark blade caht the bulk of the energy froh the metal of its companion sword

The lich, surprised at how far and how fast the opponent had come, threw an arm up to block, and Charon&039;s Claw sheared it off at the elbow Entreri&039;s strike would have destroyed the creature then, except the impact with the ar&039;s energy

Again the explosion sent Entreri sliding back to the wall to sla of the lich forced the assassin to reach out and retrieve his scattered senses He turned hiain grasped the hilt of Charon&039;s Claw He looked up the corridor just in ti, cloak aflaht, to where the drow had been pressed up against the wall

Confused to see only the wall, Entreri looked back into the corner, expecting to see a charred luone

Entreri stared at the wall and inched hireased section, he regained his footing and nearly ju at him from within the stone of the opposite corridor

"Well done," said the drow, pressing forward so that the outline of his face appeared in the stone

Entreri stood there stunned Somehow Jarlaxle had melded with the stone, as if he had turned the wall into a thick paste and pressed himself inside Entreri didn&039;t really knohy he was so surprised - had his co within the realm of the ordinary?

A loud click turned his attention back the other way, up the hall He knew it immediately as the latch on the door at the top of the ramp, where he and Jarlaxle had met up with, and been chased away by, the lich

The floor and walls began to trerowl

"Get me out of here," Jarlaxle called to hiravelly and bubbly, as if he was speaking from under liquid stone, which, in fact, he was He pushed forth one hand, reaching out to Entreri

The thunder grew around the bad was co

The assassin snapped up Jarlaxle&039;s offered hand and tugged hard but found to his surprise that the droas tugging back

"No," Jarlaxle said

Entreri glanced back up the sloping, curving hallway and his eyes went so wide they nearly fell out of his head The thunder ca fast his way

He paused and considered how he e, when before his eyes, the ball doubled in size, nearly filling the corridor

With a shriek, the assassin fell back into the side passage, stulanced at Jarlaxle&039;s for into the stone once more, but he had no time to stop and ponder whether his companion could escape the trap

Entreri turned and scra for his life

The explosion behind him as theagain, the jolt bringing hilanced back to see that the impact had taken most of the ball&039;s ain, slowly, but gatheringat Jarlaxle yet again for bringing hiot his feet under hi distance between himself and the ball That wouldn&039;t hold, he knew, for the ball was gaining speed, and the corridor wound along and down the circular tower for a long, long way

He sprinted and looked for some way out He shouldered each door as he passed but was not surprised to discover that the trap had sealed the portals He looked for a place where the ceiling was higher, where he ht cli

He glanced back to see if the ball hugged one wall or the other, that he ht slide down beside it, but to his aain, until its sides practically scraped the walls

He ran

The shaking made his teeth hurt in his mouth Inside the stone, every reverberation as the sphere s He felt it to his bones

For a an to recede, rolling along the adjacent corridor

Jarlaxle took a couple of deep breaths He had survived that one but feared he ht need to find a new coain but stopped when he heard a fa out through a thin shield of stone, and the lich stood before him The drow didn&039;t dare breathe orat hi victoriously To Jarlaxle&039;s great relief, the powerful undead creature beganon water

Jarlaxle wondered if he could just press backward out of the tower then sione froh, inflicted by Entreri&039;s reversal of the lightning bolt and the heavy strike of Charon&039;s Claw, and another possibility occurred to him

He had come with the idea of treasure after all, and it would be such a shalide down around the bend Then the drow began to push out from the wall

"It has to be an illusion," Arterow, after all, but how could it be? It was so real, in sound, shape, and feeling how could any illusion so perfectlyan illusion was to set your thoughts fully against it, Entreri knew, to deny it, heart and soul He glanced back again, and he knew that such was not a possibility

He tried to block out thethunder behind hi himself to recall all the details of the corridor before hier did he try to shoulder the doors, for they were closed to hi time in the futile effort

He pulled the small pack frorapnel and tossed the bag to the floor behind hi momentum of the stone ball

It didn&039;t The ball flattened it

Entreri didn&039;t allow his thoughts to drift back to the rollingits length, picturing the spot in the corridor still soth he&039;d need

The floor shook beneath hiht every step would be his last, with the sphere barreling over him

Jarlaxle had once told him that even an illusion could kill a man if he believed in it

And Entreri believed in it

His instincts told him to throw himself flat to the floor off to the side, in the prayer that there would be enough rooe of his pursuer He never found the heart to follow that, though, and he quickly put it out of hisinstead on the one best chance that lay before him

Entreri readied the cord as he sprinted for all his life He bounded around the next bend, the ball right behind He ran past where the wall at his right-hand side dropped into a waist-high railing, opening into the center of the large toith the hallway continuing to circle along its perirapnel, expertly thrown to loop around the large chandelier that was set in the top of the tower&039;s cavernous foyer

Entreri continued to run flat out He had no choice, for to stop was to be crushed The cord was set firmly in his hands, and when the slack wore out he let it force hi as the rolling iron sphere rushed past, ever so slightly clipping him on the shoulder as he swooped out into the air He spun in tight circles within the larger circles of the rope&039;s ed to watch the continued descent of the ball, thues, but was quickly distracted by afro to free up and drop the rope below hi down the rope He felt a sudden jerk, then another as the decorated crystal chandelier pulled free of the ceiling

Then he was falling

The door stood slightly ajar Given the trap he&039;d set off, there was no reason for the "innkeeper" to believe any of the intruders would be able to get up to it Still, the dro out a wand and expended a bit of its ht blue, revealing no traps, erly pushed through

The rooray stone walls were unadorned, sweeping in a see, wide-backed chair of polished wood Before that seat lay a book, opened atop a pedestal

No, not a pedestal, Jarlaxle realized as he crept in closer

The book was suspended on a pair of thick tendrils that reached down to the floor of the roo that he had found the heart of the construction, the ical architect of the tower itself Heit a wide berth, then ca froical runes there A quick recital of a siht those runes into better focus and clarity

He moved closer, drawn in by the power of the toes of runes in the air above it, spinning and dipping to the pages below He scanned a few lines then dared to flip back to the beginning

"A book of creation," he es as common phrases for such dweomers

He clasped the book and tried to pull it free, but it would not budge

So he went back to reading, ski for some hint, for some clue as to the secrets of the tower and its undead proprietor

"You will find not h-pitched voice that see, a voice held tenuously, like a high note, ready to crack apart into a shivering screech

Jarlaxle silently cursed hiarded the lich, who stood at the open door

"Your na his honest desire to scream out in terror "Why would I desire to know your na one?"

"Rot i could be farther from the truth"

Jarlaxle slowlyto put as much distance and as many obstacles between himself and that awful creature as possible

"You are not Zhengyi," the drow remarked, "yet the book was his"

"One of his, of course"

Jarlaxle offered a tip of his hat

"You think of Zhengyi as a creature," the lich explained through its ever-grinning, lipless teeth, "as a singular entity That is your error"

"I know nothing of Zhengyi"

"That h to co in voluers

Greenish bolts of energy erupted fro and spinning around the book, the tentacle pedestal, and the chair to explode into the drow

That was the intent, at least, but each ical bolt, as it approached, swirled to a specific spot on the drow&039;s cloak, just below his throat and to the side, over his collarbone, where a large brooch clasped his cloak That brooch sed the missiles, all ten, without a sound, without a trace

"Well played," the lich congratulated "How many can you contain?"

As the undead creature finished speaking, it sent forth another volley

Jarlaxle was ht back The ain, as they neared him, they veered and swooped around him to be sed by the brooch

The drow cut to the side, and as he turned halfway toward his eneical bracer fed another dagger into his hand, which he proh the air at the lich So furious was his streaer was in the air before the first ever struck home

Or tried to strike home, for the lich was not unprotected Its defensive wards stopped the daggers just short of the

The lich cackled, and the drow enveloped it in a globe of coy burst frolad indeed that he had h the toall, disintegrating the stone as it went

Entreri tucked his feet in tight and angled the He drew his head in tight and tucked his shoulder, allowing hiy of the fifteen foot drop

He continued to roll, putting as much distance as possible between hilass and crystal shattered and flew everywhere

When he finally came up to his feet, Entreri stu He had avoided serious injury but had not escaped unscathed

Nor had he actually "escaped," he realized a moment later

He was in the foyer of the tower, a wide, circular rooh above, the stone ball continued its ru roll Before him, beyond the shattered chandelier and just past the bottoh which he and Jarlaxle had entered the reat iron statue the pair had noted when first they had entered, a construct Jarlaxle had quickly identified as a golem