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Kerik looks at him. “You?” He pauses and looks a little closer. “You are the man from Klish. You were once hers?”

“There isn’t time. She has Damon. And she has Perl,” Lyr says, unstrapping Kerik’s legs as fast as his fingers will allow.

“Perl? The faerie is here?”

“Yes. Can you walk?” Kerik looks weak. Is he really going to be able to save them? He has a series of cuts across his chest. Horribly familiar. Perl said Jareleezi was planning to drain Kerik. Has she done it? If Kerik has already been drained does that mean the plan will not work?

Lyr feels frozen for a moment. This chamber, these memories. It’s all too much. He should have fled when he had the chance. Or not come at all as Damon had begged.

A great shattering sound comes from the chamber beyond. It sounds like nothing Lyr has ever heard before. And then a horrible screaming.

“Perl!” Kerik exclaims, “Lyr, we need to go.” He starts to race back to the main chamber, only stumbling a little.

“Wait,” Lyr says, remembering Perl’s plan. “You need Iceheart. Is it here?”

“Yes,” she used it to cut me.” Kerik scans the tiny cavern, before grasping a pale sword, sparkling white like it is wrought of ice. He grabs hold of it and runs out.

Lyr follows.

Jareleezi is standing over Perl. His leather jerkin is torn, half hanging off his pale shoulders. He has a mark across his bared chest that looks like a burn. “Perl,” Kerik shouts across the cavern. “Perl. I’m here.”

Perl sees Kerik. His face seems to brighten, sun shining on snow. “Kerik,” he shouts back, relief clear in his voice. But they are not safe. They have lost. Kerik has been drained of power, Damon is gravely injured. And it would seem Perl too. Lyr does not think they will escape this cavern. They will all be Jareleezi’s prisoners.

As Perl looks over at Lyr and Kerik, Jareleezi looks too. But she does not look at Kerik. She does not seem to even see him, freed from his binding and with Iceheart in his hand. Jareleezi only looks at Lyr.

Lyr feels himself freeze under her gaze. Fear that could overwhelm him.

Jareleezi's voice is sweet, “Lyr,” she says, sounding almost affectionate. “My old vessel. I always hoped that when the Gods had me send you away they would be so kind as to bring you back to me. I have missed you so.”

Lyr’s belly bucks with nausea. He cannot move. He stares at Jareleezi.

Damon, still on the cavern floor, but conscious now, sits up with effort. “Do not touch him,” he growls. And Lyr is sure he means it, but he knows Damon cannot protect him from Jareleezi. He only lives still because she needs him alive to defeat Ur-Durik.

“I no longer belong to you,” Lyr says. He cannot hide the shake in his voice. “Damon took me as a spoil from the conquest of Jur-Mattan.”

Jareleezi laughs, a soft laugh but it seems to make Lyr’s inside shake.

She pauses and looks around the cavern. “That matters not. You are bound to me far more deeply. There is no power here that can defeat me. You will all remain here and draw the rest of the princes to me so we can defeat that foul demon as the Books of Alios tell that my ancestors did.”

“The Books of Alios, destroyed by you in petty vengeance,” Perl spits. “You claim you want to defeat Ur-Durik, and yet because of you the most important text that tells us how to do that is lost.”

Jareleezi laughs again, louder. “You really believe that I would destroy them. I would no more do that than I would destroy you.”

Perl looks shocked. “Then where are they?” his eyes dart around the cavern, as if looking for them.

But Lyr knows. The memory seems to unlock inside him as simply as a key in a door. He remembers it, years ago, when Perl took Kerik and she swore vengeance. Jareleezi’s rage, inevitably directed at him. Lyr hadn’t known the name of the books she burnt, page by page, during those nights that followed. But as she had done so, she’d had him strapped down on her ritual altar. Bound on his belly. And on his back…

It had been burned into his skin with magic, letter by letter.

The Books of Alios. They had them all along. He is the Books of Alios. His back is covered with the details of how they defeat Ur-Durik. “Me,” he says, quietly. “I am where you hid them.”

Jareleezi smiles.

Lyr looks at Damon. Damon is still sitting on the cavern floor. He stares at Lyr.

Perl says quietly, “Lyr,” then louder, shouting in Magaar, “Kerik, use your magic.”

“I’m not powerful enough,” Kerik answers in his own words of Magaar. “She drained me.”