"When Crooked stepped back out the roads of Emptiness, Stone Man was on him. They wrestled then for a long time as the palace itself fell around them, their strength so great and their contending so mighty that the very stones of the earth were all broken and crushed, so that what had once been a rocky fastness of peaks above Stone Man's house fell down into dust, and the land sunk, and the ocean rushed in all around them, so at last they were fighting on an island of stone amid the waters.

"At last the two of them caught at each other's throats. Stone Man was the stronger, and Crooked could only step into the ways of darkness, but Stone Man held on and was carried with him. As they fell through emptiness, Stone Man bent Crooked's back until it was nearly breaking. Crooked could not draw another breath, and neither could he think as Stone Man crushed out his life.

" 'Now look into my eyes,' Stone Man said. 'You will see a darkness greater than anything Emptiness can make or even imagine.'

"Crooked was almost caught, for if he had looked once into the eyes of the Lord of the Black Depths he would have been pulled down into death, but instead he turned his head away and sank his teeth into Stone Man's hand. Stone Man was so pained that his grip loosened and Crooked was able to shake him off, then Stone Man fell away and away into the cloudy, cold dark.

"Crooked wandered a while in the most distant lands of Emptiness, dizzy and confused, but at last found his way back to Stone Man's house where his mother's body lay. He kneeled over her but found he could not weep. Instead he touched his hand to the place she had kissed him, then bent and kissed her cold cheek.