Aerie had taken him to seemingly a dozen temples in Athkatla, but not one could bring back Andrey's lost hand. He would never have been able to afford such a potent spell by himself anyway. It occurred to him to wonder why Aerie didn't seem to employ any priests in her own group, but he had not felt able to use his voice to ask her.

"I want you to come with me tonight," Aerie asked him. She was dressed in a rippling black robe that flowed like water around her. The hood of a heavy cloak concealed her pale hair. "You will need to play a bodyguard. I think it will be worth your while."

She gave him dark clothes and armour similar to that Alcaze wore, a scarf to cover his face, a sword-belt that made a mockery of his loss. Then she gave him a custom object from the dwarven smith Cromwell, the finest craftsman in Athkatla. Andrey knew what it was. He'd been measured for it. A cold and lifeless prosthetic hand, made from light ivory, with a discreet grey glove to cover it.

Andrey dressed himself alone. It was a painfully slow and painstaking process, yet he would not ask for help. Last of all he strapped on the awkward hand to his stump, feeling the weight drag him down. If he rested it against the sword belt, a casual observer would not be able to perceive him.

Aerie's look, he thought, denoted approval rather than impatience when he finally returned to her atrium.

"I have spent rivers of coin to Lehtinan," she said. "Lehtinan has at last arranged a meeting between myself and his supplier; he will be there, of course, to introduce me to her. And tonight, Lehtinan's account falls due."

Aerie nimbly crossed the room and unlocked a drawer so cunningly concealed in a vanity that most would have not seen it was there. Andrey recognised the box within: it was the item she had sent him to pay Ribald Barterman. He had never seen what was inside it.

Nestled inside the wood atop new lurid-green velvet was an old dagger. The metal seemed dull with long years, scratched with use here and there. A plain black gem set in its hilt seemed to suck in light rather than reflect it.

"A gift for you if you choose to take it." Aerie's voice was a hushed, reverent whisper. "This is called the Soultaker dagger. It was made by a worshipper of the Lord of Death, a long time ago. It was used until recently to imprison a demon, and now it has been cleansed of that taint. It is ready for you. Use this dagger if there is someone that you want to kill above all others, someone who deserves not mere death but the enslaving of their soul for eternity. Lehtinan enslaved and murdered countless people, you one among many in his foul trade.

"If it is your will to use this, then you will know what to do when the time comes."

Andrey bowed his head down by the rushing underground waters. He had walked right past Lehtinan, his tormentor, and the man did not know him. He stood in Aerie's shadow, his head bowed, almost a matched pair with Alcaze. He breathed through the scarf that covered his face, and kept his false hand upon his useless sword hilt.

A ship bowed and creaked behind them. The caverns were massive enough to hold a full vessel, a vessel that had crept through rocks to dock in a harbour that should not exist. It was a cargo ship: the cargo were men. It was crewed by monsters, even if they looked human. Moans from cages spread through the air, broken up by orders and blows.

"It is strange to see one of your kind so interested," said Lehtinan's supplier. Hissed, rather. Her voice was cold, so very cold. She wore a veil across her face and was the height of a short human woman. More than that, Andrey had not seen.

"I am in the market for speciality goods," Aerie said. Her voice was sharp as glass. She spoke as if she truly was a slaver, as if she was the monster Andrey had expected her to be when they met. There was something cold and icy inside Aerie that she brought to the surface now, a frost-dusted adamant that matched Lehtinan and the likes of him strike for strike. "If yours are good enough, we may do business. If they are not, I will continue my journey."

"Then I have more than any on the western continent can source," the supplier boasted. "Lehtinan assures me that you will buy what he cannot."

"Lehtinan exaggerates. You will find my standards are higher than his," Aerie said. "His toll in blood is high, but a vast quantity of ore is only of use if one finds the occasional star sapphire. Tell me why you have useful gems."

"I suppose it cannot do harm to tell the story," said the stranger. Her sibilants had an echo to them, as if she had too many teeth in her mouth. "Have you heard of a place called Brynnlaw? No? In that case, you shall not hear of it again. It was a pirates' isle, on which sat Spellhold, a prison asylum owned as private property by the Amnian lords. Strange magics lived there, strange magics and stranger experiments. Lehtinan tells me that such strangeness intrigues you. Oh, yes, my child; Lehtinan has told me much about you, just as he has told you about me.

"Brynnlaw was sacked and ruined. All the souls that still breathed were taken by lucky ships. That is why I have sold and sent more cargo than most traders will see in a lifetime. Buy now, for such an opportunity won't arise again. Spellhold was a magical place. Should you wish to spy a woman who can see into other planes - a little girl who transforms into any shape she desires - a once archmage who travelled beyond the skies and was driven mad by what he saw there - then I have what you wish.

"Do you have what I wish?"

Aerie extended her right hand. She held a dull old piece of rock there, its dark surfaces smooth as glass. "I have the ancient sunstone from the forsaken temple to the sun god Amaunator, buried within the Umar Hills. I offer it to you to hold as a sign of good faith. Take me to see your wares. Then, we will bargain for the rest of what we both have to offer."

It was not the first time Andrey had set foot on a slave ship. He shuddered away from it, each creaking step on the boat a splinter in his soul. He smelt rusty blood in this place, smelt it more than he had done even in the arena. Aerie's black cloak trailed on the ground behind her, seeming to leave tangible marks there. Slaver guards roamed the ship, each of them veiled or hooded to match the seller. Men and women and even children called out from their cages.

A singer's voice from a far distant cage haunted Andrey. "I used to have my pretties, piled up beyond the sky. Oh, how I miss my pretties. I'll find them by and by."

"He was a bard with such a gift for sorcery that his voice could tame armies, once," the seller said. "So gifted was he that was taken to the skies to play before gods. Somehow, the gods took their revenge on him."

A woman in a bloodstained dress sat with her hands folded in her lap. Her eyes were gone. She had scratched them out. Perhaps she had seen too much.

"That sort of thing can be fixed, if you know how," the seller said.

A gnome shook the bars of his cage. He tried to spring at the passers-by like a wild beast, but a guard slammed the shaft of an iron spear into his chest and he was forced to back down.

An elf sat in the corner of his cage with his arms wrapped around his knees. "Bad dog," he repeated over and over again. "Bad dog, bad dog, bad dog."

A little girl looked up with the offer, "Dili turn for you? Dili will be whatever you want. Please, please, mistress." Her body twisted and rippled and turned into a dryad, into a minotaur, into a voluptuous drow. That was the worst of them all, Andrey thought.

"These rarities will go to you, or to another buyer. It makes little difference to me," the seller said, in her coldest voice. "Once they are gone, you will have lost your chance."

"I suppose this is the last cargo from Brynnlaw," Aerie said. Andrey understood what she meant. You always overcrowded a slave ship; there was no sense in giving property the luxury of space to move in. This one was relatively sparse.

"It is, and my crew has tired of such things," the stranger said. "Come to the captain's cabin to settle our deal."

Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly. The cabin was furnished like a coloured illustration of a Calishite brothel in one of the Candlekeep books Andrey hadn't been allowed to read. Plush velvety cushions and blankets, flung haphazardly about the place with no pattern to them. Jars full of dead flowers sending thick scents into the air. Heavy brocade tapestries pinned up on the walls with no heed paid to their clashing colours - one of them falling down and not quite hiding a long scratch mark in the wall, as if some powerful beast had scraped deeply with its fingernails. There had once been a lamp in the centre of the room, but it was bent and damaged, so that Andrey doubted anyone could light it. A guard of Lehtinan's carried a torch for them, but somehow Andrey knew that these people needed no light at all.

Aerie sat at the flimsy gold-gilt table, inspecting the scroll before her. The cabin door closed behind them all. The sun gem lay between her and the seller.

"You have a strong interest in artefacts linked to the sun," Aerie said. "The brightest lights cast the longest and darkest shadows. Who do you serve, that so desires to corrupt the remains of a dead god in this way?"

"I serve my mistress," said the seller.

Aerie spoke softly, in a steady cadence. Her voice was music. "What is your name?"

"Tanova, once of Suldanessellar, now of the dark," the seller said.

"And the name of your mistress?" Aerie's voice was soft, gentle, yet as persistent as a stream. Anyone would have been drawn into its rhythm.

"Bodhi."

Then the seller's head jerked upward in a sudden, dissonant motion. "You think you have gained something from me. But you have not. The name means nothing and she is a goddess now. I brush away your pitiful enchantment, outcast."

Aerie smiled, and said nothing, and snapped her fingers. Then the fragments of black powder that Aerie had trailed from her cloak throughout the slave ship exploded. The light was blinding.

And the battle was joined. Andrey could only gasp at the power on display. Aerie shielded herself with bright steel-blue light and summoned lightning and fire to her hands. Strands of black silk from her hands grew and spread across the walls like webbing, tangling her foes in them. Tanova bared white fangs and sprung. She was a vampire, and so were all her minions. Perhaps there were so few slaves because they had already eaten them all.

Andrey turned. He found himself looking into shining white eyes out of a jet black face. He startled back. But the shadow creature seemed to smile at him, and dashed forward. It flung itself over a guard of Lehtinan's. It tangled and twisted, resisting each blow and stab through it. It was a hollow man: made of black silk with button eyes. Andrey had seen Aerie buy its ingredients, at the marketplace. The woven golems swarmed and bound their enemies in place, whispering to each other like the wind.

Aerie threw an egg at the vampire. The egg brought forth a beacon of fire, erupting, cleansing, immolating Tanova where she stood. The vampire collapsed to the ground, but blackened and burnt she still strove to rise. Aerie summoned shining poles of steel that rose from the ground and pierced her through.

Lehtinan suddenly wrenched open the cabin door. He fled. Andrey raced after him, feet pelting the ground. Other vampiric guards were aroused to race back and forth in the chaos. Aerie's seeds had broken every cage on the ship. A vampire ran straight at Andrey. He sped up rather than slowed, lowered his head, and butted him in the chest. He left the vampire behind to chase after Lehtinan. He leapt off the gangplank, landed awkwardly and rolled, struggled to his feet with his damned stump. Lehtinan fled into his caverns, back to his domains. He would not be allowed to escape again. The ship flared with light from behind him that illuminated Andrey's path. His strides drew closer once more to Lehtinan's cowardly running feet.

A soft hand tapped Andrey on the shoulder. "Not alone," Aerie said. She appeared out of thin air behind him. Lehtinan neared his door back up to his prison - he had to fiddle with his keys, he'd locked it - and then he dropped the keys and turned on his pursuers.

"If you think I'm easily taken you're wrong, bitch. Had a mage long prepare me this." Lehtinan flung a small case the size of a bean to the ground.

Out of Lehtinan's toy there erupted a vast crimson thing with too many teeth. Nothing like this had ever existed on this land, should ever exist on this plane. It was the size of a thousand-year-oak tree, wide and round as a house. It was all made of rippling, blind flesh, except where it had sharp shining teeth the size of a giant's forearm apiece. Its maw brimmed with more of those teeth striping all the way down a throat the size of a well.

Instantly, Aerie was swallowed by it.

"Let her go!" The howl was torn from Andrey's throat. He sounded like a starving wolf. He rushed Lehtinan, pummelled him with his good arm. The trader in so many gladiators' lives was a coward, when alone. Andrey had him down on the ground. He forced his arm over Lehtinan's neck. "Make. It. Stop."

"I can't," Lehtinan got out greedily. Andrey remembered the dagger and drew it. He struck blindly down at Lehtinan's throat. Then he faced the hellish creature that had swallowed the elf whole, armed only with the Soultaker dagger.

He rushed forth and stabbed. The dagger sunk into the creature's flesh. It twitched a bit. It flung him off and to the ground. Then the gaping toothed maw loomed above him.

But from deep inside the creature, something bulged. The creature shook its head from side to side, as if it suffered. It deserved to suffer. An unearthly grumbling howl began from somewhere in its depths.

Then it exploded into gobbets of meat. Powerful magical force had blasted it away from the inside. Aerie emerged from its insides, battered and bruised and dripping with fluid. She had tried to change herself to stone to protect herself. Parts of her limbs were covered by stone, parts were covered by cracked stone, and large parts of her were only red raw flesh. She had never looked more beautiful. She held a red thing with purple veins up in her left hand. The thing still pulsed and beat.

"Your dagger was made to kill demons," Aerie gasped. "Take its heart."

The Soultaker met that last piece of pulsing flesh. Then all stilled. Aerie swayed and staggered on her feet, hurt near to the limits of her endurance. She was tiny, not quite reaching Andrey's shoulders. She carried unimaginable realms of arcane power within her. For a moment, she rested, exhausted.

The moment passed. They forced themselves over Lehtinan's corpse and up to the gladiators' cages. They freed Hendak the Northman and gave him a sword, and after that victory was a foregone conclusion.