Gerrex found the bronze Aten medallion Helena had worn lying on the ground, but there was no other sign of our missing people. Amenaruu did what he could with his spells to heal us, but none of us were unmarked by our last battle and our wounds were extensive. Charles was demanding that we search immediately, even as he fell to his knees, lightheaded from blood loss. We had no choice but to take the time to let our magic rings heal us.

"Dimitri," I asked urgently of my friend, "would you bring me my Bag of Holding?"

My friend did so, and I pulled out the magic mirror Argenta had given me. I extended my thoughts into the mirror, searching for either Chai or Helena, but finding neither. I cursed under my breath and felt panic rising up in me as my breathing got shallow and fast. I knew I could not succumb to the panic, but I felt powerless to stop it. There was a soft clinking sound as Helena's holy symbol, which I had forgotten that I was still holding, tapped against the mirror. I quickly focused on that, letting the golden sheen of the bronze become my focal point and I found myself praying to this strange god from another land.

"You certainly took your time in reaching out to the Aten," a voice said inside my head.

"Lowen? You are the Aten?" I asked in mind-talk quite surprised to hear an answer back.

There was a flood of humor at the question before Lowen answered, "No, I am but a servant. However, I have been waiting for you, as it is my duty. Your lady is missing, and you need help, this I know. Help is at hand, your plans are near to bearing fruit, just look for the answers you seek in the humblest of places."

The contact was broken then, and I found myself wondering at the riddle I was given until a small warm head thrust itself gently into my left to get my attention. I looked down and saw Helena's familiar standing beside me, raised upon his back paws with his intelligent eyes looking up at me.

"You know where your mistress is," I said softly. I reached out with my medallion and gained enough information, as fragmentary as it was, from the little stoat that I was able to use the mirror to scry where Helena and Chai were at the moment. Once I had their location firmly in my mind, I used the mirror to send a message to an ally I had been cultivating for some time.

"Dimitri," I said as I gained my feet unsteadily, "you are in charge. I will be back shortly with Helena, keep everyone, especially Charles here in camp. Likely there will be another attack, and no one can come with me or Helena will certainly be killed, so stay here and heal."

With my Dig Spell, I created a crude set of earthworks to help us defend the camp that I had not been able to do before, to aid my companions as much as I was able. I grabbed a spear dropped by a wererat and I used it as a walking staff as I followed the brown and white stoat as he led me through the thorny, twisted undergrowth and the ruins of the town that once was here. The stoat moved in quick furtive bursts, running quickly forward and then waiting for some unseen, by me, danger to pass. I had to trust his more developed instincts as the exertion had me panting like a dog as we went along, with me leaning heavily on the spear to stay upright. One half of an hour later, the little creature was bounding up some stairs, not many but enough to hurt me as I followed. When I reached the tops of those ragged, cracked stairs I found myself on plaza, one that reminded me of another dead city far away from here. There was a small fire burning on the cobbles and Helena, bound and gagged looked at me with wide frightened eyes, was just behind, kneeling at the foot of some more ancient steps that led to a cracked and broken memorial column and Chai stood behind her with a dagger pressed dangerously into the white skin of her neck. Forming a backdrop to the scene were the ruins of some large gray stone building sitting at the top of the stairs behind the stub of a column. It was so decrepit and rotten with time it was impossible to tell what it used to be.

"Tell me," I said so my voice carried to my erstwhile friend across the plaza that was maybe twenty yards (18.3m) to a side, "is that the same dagger you used to stab me in the back before you threw me into the sewers back in Gensmot?"

"So you finally figured that out," Chai said with an arrogant smile.

"Not finally," I said as I made my way painfully to a large moss covered stone so I could sit down. I walked slowly and did nothing to provoke Chai. I knew that he could cut Helena's throat quicker than I could launch a spell or physically attack him, even if I had been capable of doing that at the moment, which I was not. I sat down with a sigh.

Chai looked at me with hatred but with suspicion and curiosity in his eyes.

"You see," I said answering his unasked question, "I have been suspicious for some time. You have been making mistakes. Your first mistake was not making sure I was truly dead before you threw me in that sewer, but you know that. The second mistake was you whispered 'finally' just as you jammed that blade into my back, and that told me the attack was personal. That made me think, the only person who was still alive that I considered to be my enemy was Brey, but he had an alibi. So I had to accept the fact that the attack could have been done by a friend, and I only had two, you and Dimitri, and Dimitri has had hundreds of chances to kill me over the last ten years and did not do so, which led me to think of you, supposedly back in the East, but there you were at Sternberg. You claimed to have just come over the Eastern pass, but I spoke to the trader who broke the trail through the pass last spring, and he did not see you or the trail you would have had to leave behind you. Then there was the manticore attack. Dimitri, Helena, even Gerrex came to me as I lay wounded, but not my good friend…that is not right, you were more than a friend. I would say you are more of a brother to me, yes that is appropriate, and you my brother never bothered to come over to see if I was still alive. That's when I knew that you were my hidden enemy."

"You have always been a clever one," Chai said in his mocking tone, but my deductions had made him nervous.

I nodded and said, "I figured out the who, but not the why. Why does someone I considered to be my brother hate me enough to kill me?"

"Because of her!" Chai spit out at me.

I looked at the frightened Helena and my confusion must have been written on my face for he said, "Not this slattern, you fool, Leeanna!"

My mind reeled at that name and I thought back to that final fight in the swamp ten years ago. Somewhere in the back of my mind, the answer snapped into place.

"You loved her," I spoke softly, but loud enough to be heard.

"She was good and light and warmth and she died because of you!" Chai spit the accusation out at me like a cobra spitting venom.

"I did not kill her, Chai," I answered calmly. "She was killed by the Lizard folk under the control of that Drow."

"She died because she followed you! She should never have been in that stinking place."

"I did not know she had lost favor with her god, Chai. If I had known, I would not have taken her into the swamp, or maybe I would have, because I needed help to try and save those children, but if I had known that she was without her spells, I could have planned for that, but it was she who kept her fallen state from me."

"She could not tell you. You the one that was always going on about our brotherhood and how we bound by our honor to each other. She was ashamed to tell you, so afraid of your judgement that she kept her silence and followed you to her death."

I hung my head and stared at the ground, my mind turning in circles, but then I raised my head and in a loud firm voice I said, "No."

"You were the cause of her death, and I shall repay you now by cutting your wench's throat so you can feel the pain I felt."

Chai pressed the razor edge of the dagger even harder against Helena's throat and I heard her cry out, muffled because of the gag, but still audible.

"Chai," I said to him with great earnest, "I loved Leeanna, as well. I have already known the pain of her death deep inside me and that is not something you have to teach me. Let me tell you how it felt, it felt as if all the light had gone from the day and even the songs of the birds became flat and dead and it leaves a peculiar hollowness inside of you that you feel you can never fill. I know this because I have mourned for her loss many times, but I did not kill her and you know that. I think what you feel is shame, shame that you did not save her and you have made me the focus of that shame and put your self-hatred on me. I have made mistakes and I have seen people suffer for my mistakes, but I realized one day that we all choose our own way through this world and Leeanna chose hers, and I will not dishonor her memory by taking that sacrifice away from her with self-pity."

Winston was slinking toward Helena, running in his funny way from shadow to shadow, and trying to make his way to his mistress unseen. I did not know how much help he could give, but we needed every advantage we could find at this moment.

"You twist everything around," Chai accused me, "to make excuses for what you have done and to make yourself out to be a noble man. You are a blight and a pestilence on your friends and the people who follow you."

"Yet," I pointed out to Chai, "here we are with me trying to save an innocent girl from your dagger. What happened to you turn you from the Chan path to enlightenment and to make you an assassin?"

"I have been shown the real truth," Chai said to me with desperate sincerity, "this world is full of corruption and hate, and it deserves to be destroyed."

I thought furiously and then took a stab in the dark, "You were corrupted by the beings on the other side of the portal. Evil is the absence of Good, or the perversion of Good, or so I have been told. Your love for Leeanna has been perverted into hate. We left you there alone, and they called to you and twisted your grief into a weapon they could use."

"They enlightened me!" Chai shouted back at me. "I was shown the truth and I accepted it."

"Who are they, Chai?" I asked to buy some time and to solve a mystery that has haunted me for last ten years.

"The Illithids," he said with a wicked grin, once more feeling once more in control with his hidden knowledge that he could mock me with.

My guts ran cold at the ancient word for that corrupt race. Mind Flayers, the hidden ones, only half-remembered by sages for many thousands of years, but such was the fear the wrought in man no one said their proper name out loud.

"Those are foul and corrupt beings," I said emphatically to Chai. "You cannot serve them; they seek to destroy this reality."

"You are a fool," Chai responded, "they do not seek to destroy this world, but to remake it to perfection and now they have the power. They have spent many millennia traveling to far places in the darkest planes and in the coldest reaches of space to find the way to remake reality to their own vision and they have found it. They will soon be here and no one will stop them. But before they come, I will have my vengeance on you."

"How is it the Illithid are interested in a quest offered up from Old Valker that they should invest some much into stopping us? There is more than just your hatred of me in such an effort."

"They have their seers too," Chai explained, "and they saw there was a slight chance, a very slight chance, that your efforts on behalf of that doddering old fool, Valker, could thwart their plans. But they take no chances and so the decision was made to stop your quest and giving me the task of killing you was merely a gift they gave to me. But first, I am going to kill your whore so you can watch her die like I watched Leeanna die."

"You know nothing about Valker," I said quickly, desperately playing for time. "You must know that I run an alchemist's shop. I was wearing an Alchemist Ring, you know what that is, the night you attacked me. It protects us from our ingredients and even our own potions, so when you forced me to drink the Veritas Potion, I was able to shrug off the effects and lie to you. That was the third mistake you made. Would you like to know more about Valker? I was chosen to lead this quest because I know who he really is and he felt he could trust me because I have kept his secrets. You are interested in Valker, are you not?

"He is a dying old man," Chai stated, but there was some uncertainty in his answer, "and must be dead now for he took to his sick bed the night before we left Gensmot to follow you."

"No," I replied easily, "that is a ruse, and I will tell you why if you tell me what your interest in Valker is, and that is more than a fair trade, I promise you."

Chai looked uncertain but he knew me well enough to know that I was not lying to him.

"You have no hope of rescue," Chai replied with a mocking, spiteful certainty, "for even now my ally's forces are attacking your camp. Your party will not come here in time to save you. So I will speak to you just to prolong your misery. Valker has been working against The Following, trying to thwart our efforts," Chai replied albeit reluctantly, "and he has had some success, but remained ignorant of our true nature."

"'The Following'", I said. "That is what you call yourselves?"

"Aye," Chai agreed, "but keep your bargain or I cut her throat."

I held up my hand to stay his murder and said, "I will tell you what I know. Valker is not dying and the Bloodstone we seek has nothing to do with his health. Valker cannot die."

"Why can Valker not die?" Chai demanded of me, his face clouded with puzzlement.

"First," I said, "tell me who this ally of yours that is attacking my party."

Chai shrugged and said offhandedly, "The one who rules this valley. He is not of The Following, but he shares our vision for his own reasons. Now, speak of Valker or I kill her."

"Valker cannot die, because he is already dead and has been for many hundreds of years," I replied to him, dreading that I had to give out Valker's secrets, but I needed to so I could play for time for my allies to arrive. "Valker is a vampire. He wants the Bloodstone to remove from him the need to feed on human blood. I am guessing you have tried to eliminate him already, and failed. You failed because you did not understand his true nature, but you scared him, I will give you that. I think he wants the Bloodstone to be able to hide if things go bad, although he did not give me a reason, but I think my guess is accurate."

"Thank you, now that I have the information, I am sure our efforts to eliminate him will succeed," Chai smiled mercilessly.

"Tell me one more thing," I replied quickly. "Why did you kill Lord Bellock's man? He was one of your people. I found his signet ring in the sewers and the hidden rune of your cult within it."

"Sometimes the weak-minded cannot gaze upon the minds of our masters and behold the perfection that exists there without it breaking their own minds," Chai replied with a disdainful dismissal of one weaker than him. "The Drow elves are mostly immune, but he was becoming erratic from the mental contact and trying to openly recruit people, something that is forbidden. He was eliminated to keep him from revealing the Illithids as the source of our power. We will speak no more, for our conversation is over, it is time for you to watch this wench die."

"You will not harm the girl," I replied with such absolute certainty that Chai blinked at me. Chai knew that I did not bluff when I made a command.

"You are powerless to stop me and you cannot defeat me," Chai said with a forced laugh. "You will both die, but yours will be the slower death."

"It is true, that I am too weak to stop you, but they are not," I said pointing to the stairs I had come up. Chai looked suspicious, but his curiosity got the better of him and he turned to look and his face turned deathly pale.

"No!" He exclaimed in a horse whisper full of shock and fear.

Standing at the head of the stairs was Master Ling, Chai's master at his Chan Monastery. Master Ling was old, but also ageless, with his yellow skin stretched tight over his skull but his eyes were youthful, but his back was straight and stood easily. There was a glow about him, a golden fire that surrounded him with holiness. It was written in the way he stood that he was a rock that the chaotic ocean of life would beat upon fruitlessly, never moving him an inch (25mm). He was flanked by three other monks of Chai's monastery. Two of them carried the heavy halberds favored in the East and wore orange and saffron robes like their master. These two were men in their prime, dangerous looking even when standing still. They were both older than the young man wearing russet colored robes, he was obviously of lower rank and he stood with a staff slightly behind the other two. Back when I had told Helena go to Chai and have him describe his home so many weeks ago, I had eavesdropped on their conversation with my medallion and I was able to use the vividly detailed description he provided to make contact with Master Lin via the scrying mirror and I informed him, again using my medallion and a Tongue's Spell, of Chai's fall from his order. He had come now to collect his wayward follower.

Helena, her hands now free thanks to the ministrations of her familiar, that little stoat nibbling at her restraints to free her while Chai and I exchanged words. Helen reached down and slipped a small dagger from her boot, apparently she had done as I had instructed and learned that life lesson from Dimitri, to always keep a backup weapon hidden on your person, and she sliced at Chai's hand, the sudden attack making him flinch away from the pain and Helena rolled free. Chai, angry at the pain she had inflicted upon him, reached for her, but a single word barked by Master Lin brought him up short. Chai turned to look at his former master who pointed at the ground at his feet, ordering Chai to attend him.

"No!No!No!No!" Chai screamed as if in pain. He backed away from his fellow monks. He tripped and fell but continued to push himself while scooting on his butt away from the holy radiance that emanated from his master. Once again Master Lin barked out his single word of command and Chai froze and then once again the Chan Master pointed to the ground by his feet. Whimpering, Chai began to crawl forward on his belly, unable to deny the compulsion of the sacred oaths every monk of his order swears to bind themselves in a mystical and absolute geas of obedience and loyalty the temple and its leaders. A mage may bind someone to him with a Geas Spell, but the type of mystical magic the Chan temples used was far stronger than any Arcane spell.

Each movement Chai made was strained and reluctant as if they caused him great pain or his sins against his order were becoming heavier the closer he got to his master. Chai was weeping openly now, and I could feel his thoughts through my medallion as the illusions he had created to justify his actions were burned away by holiness of his master, leaving only the knowledge of how far he had fallen from his path toward enlightenment and the full measure of the evil he had done.

I hurried to Helena as fast as my cracked bones would allow and I took her in my arms and held her tightly as she cried in relief. But she did not cry for long, and she dried her eyes and stood straight once again, stooping to pick up her little familiar and rub her cheek against his in love and gratitude and then she leaned into me, and I found I welcomed the warmth and comfort of her being near me, but she could feel me shaking from the thought of losing her and she reached down to take my hand, giving it a warm, gentle squeeze to let me know everything was all right.

Chai had made it to his master's feet by now and the two fierce looking monks reached down and grabbed him under his arms and pulled him to his feet. He would not look his master in the eye, but simply wept. With the barest of nods, Master Lin gave his two monks a silent order and they began to drag him away down the broken stairs. Master Lin turned to me and Helena and the shorter, younger monk came up next to him and the old master spoke quietly to him as the younger monk nodded.

"Master Lin," the young monk said in perfect common to Helena and me, "wishes you to know that Brother Chai will begin his rehabilitation immediately. He will return to the path that he has abandoned, Mage Barrim. Master Lin would like to thank you for showing mercy to him even when you had cause not to do so."

I looked at Master Lin and then to his interpreter and said, "He was once like a brother to me, maybe he will be again. I did not want to abandon him to his hatred. I knew that something was affecting him, and it is the influence of the Illithid. Do you know this word?"

"We do," the young monk said seriously and then he repeated what I had said to his master in way that showed he was disgusted with the very words he had to say. Master Lin's eyes narrowed when he heard what had caused his student to fall from grace, but there was no other emotion evident. The two of them exchanged some more quick words with the younger monk nodding as Master Lin spoke.

"Master Lin, in his wisdom," the young said finally, "once again gives you thanks and blesses you for your mercy. Our Order accepts responsibility for Chai's actions and the cosmic debts his actions have caused. In partial payment, I will remain behind to serve you as best that I am able to alleviate some of that debt."

"What is your name?" I asked the monk. I did not argue with him, for I had learned from hard experience that student of the Chan discipline will not be dissuaded if he feels he owes someone a karmic debt."

"I am called, Brother Lee."

"Welcome Lee," I said to him, placing my left hand over my right fist to give him the traditional greeting I had learned from Chai, and which Lee returned. "But I must tell you, our path has been a dark and dangerous one and I have a strong suspicion that the darkness and danger will not end with the completion of this quest."

"If it so, then all the more reason I should walk it with you for the darker the path, the greater the merit for bringing light to it." Less said with a slight bow.

"Then we must return to our compatriots for they are under attack as we speak," I said urgently.

Lee translated to Master Lin and he acknowledged our departure with a graceful nod and then he turned to leave, walking effortlessly down the stairs to his waiting monks, almost floating, as he descended so completely had he mastered the movements of his body. I wish I could have made those stairs so effortlessly, but my wounds still gnawed at me and Helena and I went more slowly. We had only made it to first step when Helena slipped out from under my arm and ran back to the small fire that was quickly dying behind us. Looking in the shadows until she found a small purse and came back to me, she also brought Chai's staff that he had set down near the fire. She dumped her Ring of Spell Storing and her magical necklace into her hand from the purse, which she replaced the items back in their rightful place.

"He took them from me when he knocked me out," she said simply. I nodded in reply and took the staff to give it to Lee.

"This is enchanted and it was given to Chai to stand against the Illithid," I said as I presented the staff to Lee. "It is right you should take it up now for the fight that is to come."

Lee bowed formally in a silent thankfulness and accepted the staff and then the three of us made our way back to our camp as the best pace possible. Thanks to my healing ring, I was almost able to walk without the assistance of the spear, but I still felt tired to the bone.