Chapter one
A madman clawed at the debris with torn and bleeding fingers. The close confines of the tunnel echoed to a hoarse and desperate gasping. The detritus spilled in a heap as massive to a distraught imagination as the whole of the Stratemsk, daunting, heartbreaking, agonizingly slow to clear. Dust choked everywhere distorting the weak light of the torch wedged into a cleft. A maniac tore at the jumbled rock. A fellow bereft of his senses cursed and choked and ripped at the sarcophagus that entombed all he loved dear on two worlds.
That poor demented creature was me, Dray Prescot.
Delia had stood here to warn me, the real, wonderful Delia and no weird phantom conjured by Illusionist magic. She had warned me — and the roof had fallen on her.
The jagged chunks of rock lacerated my fingers, scored my palms. There was blood — so what did that matter? Nothing! The insensate mass aroused such hate within me I choked with bile and dust. I had to break through! I must see what horror there was to see.
The aftershock of the explosion of the Prism of Power had brought the roof down and among my retching gaspings the roof creaked above. I ignored it. Nothing mattered in all of Kregen save my Delia... nothing!
The picture of Delia with the roof falling in shards and sharp-edged shatterings all about her burned itself past my retinas into my brain. That ghastly picture would torture me past remorse — for at the time I’d dismissed Delia as a mere apparition sent by San W’Watchun to warn me. The roof creaked again; or was that my diseased imagination demanding retribution?
A large jagged boulder resisted my efforts. I bent and pulled and hauled and shook the thing, trying to prise it away. That stupid piece of rock was ugly, hateful, despicable, disgusting. It lay there with rivulets of dust trickling from its edges and in my rage and despair I swore the nauseating thing leered back at me and mocked me.
In this waking nightmare gripping me I imagined I heard above my frantic pantings a distant shout. I distinctly felt the floor tremble — or was that me, trembling in fear and terror for my Delia?
Dust smoked into my face. The torch tumbled down and was extinguished. For a moment, a moment only, a ray of light struck past my shoulder. The rumblings in my head sounded distant and vague. But they were not in my head. For a single instant I glanced up in the darkness and saw the roof splitting apart.
The roof fell on me and the black cloak of Notor Zan enveloped me in the embrace of oblivion.
When I woke up for the first time I let out such a yell of pain I thought it would bring down this roof on me, too.
I felt the needle’s little prick, then another, and most of the pain faded away. My eyes appeared to be surrounded by yellow so I knew my head was heavily bound up with clean yellow bandages. Another needle pricked into my skin and off I went again into unconsciousness.
The second time I woke up the pain had dulled to a throbbin
