On a bluff overlooking Khayyaban, Jenavere and Hendac stood with the old woman, silhouetted by the setting sun, which had been dwindling over the last three months and now glowed a feeble red. Sulfur-tinted clouds had been racing across the land all day. A storm was brewing. Soon, the looming dark of the Demon would be seen on the northern horizon. It appeared more frequently of late -- little wonder the three Master Smiths had hastened to finish the design of their new gemstone armor.

The moons hung low in the east -- swollen, filling more of the sky every day. Some whispered they were falling. Hendac had called it a Hunter's Moon, and Jena had shivered. She held a sputtering torch close to the ground. Just beyond them in a large circle, the sand had changed to a fine, ash-gray powder. "What do you think, Mistress Najmima?" she said. "Is it like the others?"

The old archmage walked to the center of the ash. She stretched out her palms, closed her eyes, and flinched as if struck. "Pain, child," Najmima whispered. "A voice beneath here screams in agony. No . . . many voices, shrieking as one. Voices twisted together by black arts. Life rent and reformed to serve another's needs. It . . . they . . . have slept for ages, but are now bidden to wake and serve again. The magic coursing through the land . . . It twists around a black void. There is . . . a parasite beneath us." Jena and Hendac exchanged a knowing look.