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darted in and out of the shadows of the cavern. Smoke and dust billowed, clouding everything. The drahls were a deadly threat here, where he could not fly and fight properly.
    The drahls flashed overhead, sputtering freezing fire. He snapped at them, but they were fast, and hard to follow. He felt a chill. Where were they now?
    Craning his neck, he spotted them close to the ceiling, their cold fire flickering over the stone. That was puzzling; they seemed to have forgotten him. "Hodakai!" he hissed—but there was no answer from the spirit. Keeping a wary eye on the drahls, he extended half his awareness into the underrealm, trying urgently to understand the sorcery he was facing.
    He heard a crack of splintering stone, and suddenly understood. A spell was unraveling: the spell that held the cavern intact! Could drahls have such power? He was in peril if they could destroy the cavern. It would be one thing if he knew the weaving that bound it together, to defend it. But he didn't, and there was no time now to explore it. The cracking sounds were growing louder.
    He had to get out. He probed feverishly in the underweb, through the murk that the drahls had stirred up, searching out the entry and exit spells. The way he had come in was closed, but there had to be other ways out of this dragon stronghold!
    Rocks were falling deafeningly around him; he tried to ignore them as he traced pathways through the fog of the underweb. He heard the drahls keening, preparing to attack, and he ignored even that. And then he found it: a fold in the underweb where an opening was concealed. It was all he needed. Finding the thread that would pull it open, he exclaimed, " Gharkeei! " — and opened his eyes, spread his wings, and leaped toward the fracturing ceiling, past the startled drahls.
    The way was clear. But even as he passed into the spell-opening, he glimpsed another spell collapsing—and the drahls flickering out of sight. He heard raucous laughter. His last glimpse behind was of a completely intact cavern, with no sign of drahls at all.
    Before he could react, dizziness hit him, then a blast of cold. His wings bit into a freezing nighttime air, and before he could even focus his eyes, he knew that he was high above the mountains in the dead of night. And he knew, too, that something had just gone shockingly wrong. The drahls had been works of illusion, smells and all, and so was the falling ceiling! Only his own exit spell had collapsed the image.
    He had been tricked by Hodakai—tricked into leaving. Whether it was ancient dragon magic or the Enemy's sorcery that the spirit had commanded, he had used it diabolically well.
    Windrush banked and turned, fuming. An angry fire burned deep in his throat, and he vented it at the mountain he had just left. The peak was a jagged, sullen presence in the night, and his flame an impotent protest. He could probably force his way back in, but for what? To take revenge for the humiliation? No, the demon wielded surprising powers, and it would be pointless to engage in a contest with it now. When Windrush returned to speak with Hodakai, it would be on his own terms.
    His pride stinging, he climbed higher in the night air to find his bearings for the long journey home.

Chapter 4: Rent
    Hodakai laughed long and hard. He laughed until his laughter became hollow, his triumph cold and lifeless. He had humiliated the intruder with his trickery, but that dragon was the first real visitor he had had in a very long time. He hated dragons, to be sure. But that one seemed less arrogant than his captors, even if it had refused to free him. And now, it had fled to freedom while Hodakai remained trapped here in a demonic bath of light in the emptiness of the cavern. He knew perfectly well that the dragon had merely been caught off guard by a sophisticated illusion. If it returned bent on vengeance, there was little he could do to stop it.
    Still, he knew something that the dragon wanted to know. He had