"That power is yours now, Deliverer. You need but accept it. Follow Sahmanan. Let her become your first minister in the restoration of Nawami."

The woman in white beckoned from the shadows. Ethrian walked toward her. She preceded him into darkness.

That darkness grew more intense, more tangible with every step. He extended a hand, expecting to encounter the stone between the beast's huge forelegs.

He walked many times that distance. He encountered no barrier. The woman vanished. He kept touch only by pursuing a sort of wordless whisper she trailed behind. He could not take her hand. Unlike the stone beast, she had no substance.

Suddenly, he stepped into light.

He gaped. And a tale came back, told him by his father's erstwhile friend, Bragi Ragnarson, the godfather who might have conspired in the destruction of his godson's family.

The Hall of the Mountain King. The Under Mountain, or Thunder Mountain as the Trolledyngjans called it. The caverns where a King of the Dead held sway, and sent damned spirits riding the mountain winds in search of mortal prey...

He stood on a narrow ledge overlooking a cavern so vast its nether bounds could not be discerned. Sahmanan stood beside him. She gestured. So faintly it was almost inaudible, he heard, "All this is yours to command, Deliverer."

They were arrayed in motionless battalions and regiments, in perfectionist rank and file, an army frozen in time. Their number was beyond Ethrian's comprehension. They were both warriors in white and warriors of the breed that had stormed Nawami in the name of Nahaman the Odite. Footmen. Horsemen. Elephanteers. Fell skullfaces still astride their dragon steeds.

They had been captured in a crystalline moment, like insects in amber. They poised motionless beneath a light from nowhere that neither waxed nor waned nor wavered. An air of tension, of impatient waiting, pervaded the cavern.