BHAZ WAS DEAD, slain in gruesome fashion.  Koriva of Tiszarozag knew it without seeing it.

The old rogue had started a fearful shrieking while Koriva was still high above, descending on a rope that hung through a hole in the ceiling.  That narrow aperture provided the only source of light, but in no wise could it pierce the gloom that shrouded the chamber floor below.  Small matter, for, barely a handful of moments after Bhaz's cries of terror and torment had smote her ears, they had ceased.  Koriva didn't spare a breath to call his name.  She knew there'd come no answer.

So she paused, and waited.

Grim anticipation stole over the lady thief like a prickly new skin as she strained to hear something beyond the fading echoes of Bhaz's screams.  Above her, the high mountain wind soughed faintly.  Below her, there was something peculiar: a sound almost akin to the clinking of distant mail-clad body moving through the darkness.  Almost, because somehow the timbre of it spoke of something other than metalwork.

Then suddenly a crash, as of falling rocks, reverberated wildly across the gloom.  Koriva's heart leaped against the walls of her chest, and her grip tightened upon the coarse strands of the rope.  Tense, eerie moments passed, wherein she allowed no muscle even a twitch.  Before long, the clangorous echoes dissipated, and near-total silence reigned in the murky vault.

Ardent words Bhaz had spoken three days before in the city of Raddiari came back to her: "Enough loot to buy a plucky rascal an empire many, many times over!"

"Aye," she muttered to herself as the stink of death greeted her nostrils.  "It had better be."

Tall and fiercely beautiful, Koriva possessed a steely, pantherine physique.  Her eyes were dark and flashing, her countenance proud and aquiline.  She wore her long black tresses pulled back in a ponytail.  Her raiment was practical for rough, dangerous work: sturdy boots, hartskin gloves, sleeveless leather jerkin and woolen breeks.  A rucksack hung from one shoulder, while two braces of daggers depended in sheaths from her belt.

The Tiszar adventuress drew one of her daggers and clenched the blade of it between her teeth.  She clambered down the last stretches of rope to alight at last upon solid ground.

The air was noticeably cooler on the floor of the cavern.  Rather dry as well and curiously untainted by fust or must.  Unnaturally so, Koriva decided, considering that the chamber had had some exposure to rain and snow over a course of years.

Magic.

Even as the realization came to her, she felt its presence gather at the periphery of her senses, flitting about her like the silhouette of a bat across the face of the Near Moon.  Those nameless ancients who'd squirreled away their wealth in this mountain had been a wise and powerful lot, no doubt.  Their necromancies, perhaps of a vintage as venerable as demonolatrous Calosha itself, still clung with strength to these stones and strove on to hinder the decay of damp and niter.

No stranger to spell-play, the Tiszar retrieved a torch from her pack.  Her free hand made a few quick passes over the oil-soaked rags, while she whispered a short incantation in her native tongue.  A yellow-white flame crackled into life and threw forth a nimbus of light that beat back the huddling gloom.

The breath caught in her throat like a solid thing.  No more than ten paces from where Koriva stood lay the broken, gore-spattered corpse of her erstwhile partner.  His clutching hands were blackened through to the bone, as though the flesh had been seared away by hot coals.  An oozing red maw of rent flesh gaped where his throat should have been, while dull, dead eyes stared out through a mask of mingled horror and astonishment.

A dread Koriva could not name clutched at her gut, and it forced a malediction to hiss past her lips.  She glanced at her torch-bearing hand and saw it tremble slightly.  Another oath shot from her tongue, and with it the thief damned herself for a simpering ninny straight off the paddock.

Koriva had trusted old Bhaz fully the distance she might have heaved the Purple Palace of the Emperor of All the Kaeloterras.  Were such sentiment still in her, she might have shed a tear for the little villain.  Instead, she mouthed a simple farewell, one risk-bent scoundrel to another.

She turned away and a knifing chill seized her.  Dire speculations flooded her brain.  With an effort of will, she repulsed them even as she brushed aside a fleeting urge to retch.

Koriva spoke once more in the Tiszar dialect.  Though her torch's flames licked no higher, an illumination like daylight filled the chamber and revealed to her that she stood at the center of a veritable charnel house.  Everywhere the thief's gaze fell it found gray, old bones reposing in shells of begrimed plate and mail.  Some were so ancient, the earth had drawn them almost completely into her gritty embrace.

The chamber itself was circular, about forty paces across, with intricately fretted walls polished smooth to about twice Koriva's height.  There were two openings, the smaller of which was completely choked with rubble.  The other one stood directly opposite and was about twice as wide and half again as high.  What it opened onto was another room.  Three broad, shallow steps beckoned the second-story wench farther, and she cleared them in two strides.

Were Koriva's jaw not firmly bound with muscle to her skull, it would have shattered on the floor like so much brittle clay.  Barely twenty paces away and carelessly heaped upon a platform cut from the native stone sat the prize: the fabled treasure of the mountains!

Not even in her most wine-crazed imaginings had she ever seen such a hoard.  Diamonds, emeralds, garnets, sapphires--more shimmering stones than she could summon the names for--heaped nigh to the height of her navel! They sparkled in the torchlight like clusters of multicolored stars, dazzling the woman's eyes like witchfire.  With but a fraction of them, Koriva knew, she could buy all the Kaeloterras and any land that lay beyond!

Her heart wildly aflutter, the adventuress leaped onto the dais, set her torch into a cresset and drew a sack from her pack.  She greedily plucked up a flawless emerald big as a fowl's egg and watched the reflection of her brand's flickering flame gambol across its facets.

When she moved to stash the stone away, however, a strange warmth began suddenly to emanate from it.  An instant later, it was like an ember straight off the hearth.  With an oath, she cast the jewel back onto the pile.

Undaunted, Koriva took up another gem--a sapphire blue as the everlasting sky.  It, too, was cut by the hand of a master whose skills this age no longer knew.  She exulted in its sheer pecuniary worth.

And again came the heat, swift and sharp, as though the Tiszar were grasping at the wrong end of her torch.  She dropped the stone like a surly beastie in no mood for play.  The places where glove and sapphire had met were weirdly darkened, and Koriva's nostrils detected the faintest odor of singed hartskin.

Eyeing the fabulous trove narrowly, the thief ran her hands along the surface of the dais, just before the edge of the heap.  The slab seemed naught more than what it was: cold, polished shale.  What then could make gems burn with invisible fire?

What, indeed?

Koriva seized a ruby and without pausing to marvel at its cut threw it into her bag.  Hackles stiff as quills immediately rose upon her neck.  The acrid aroma of burning sackcloth appeared together with snaking tendrils of gray smoke.  The bottom of the sack blackened, and a second later the bauble fell through the charred fibers and tumbled back onto the pile.

The Tiszar flung the ruined bag aside and gave voice to a shrill torrent of epithets.  She spied that lying practically underfoot, with feeble wisps of smoke still curling about its snuffed head, was Bhaz's abandoned torch.  A short distance beyond it curdled a puddle of the rogue's spilt blood.  Nursing her frustration, she snatched up the brand and turned to the hoard.

Koriva froze.

Something in the pile stirred.  Little rattles and tinklings began to emanate from it.  The thief cocked her head, expecting some bit of vermin to skitter into view, just in time to get its wee skull crushed by her stick.  But her surmise was wildly in error.  The something in the pile that was stirring was the pile itself!

The jewels shuddered inexplicably, as if responding to some force unseen.  Then suddenly, they were leaping into the air.  On invisible wings, they wheeled and came steadily together, forming ...  a shape!

A thrill of horror shot through Koriva.  Far more sinister sorcery gripped those stones than she had suspected! What had lain only moments before in a seemingly inert accumulation, now stood before her on two great shimmering legs in the form of a man!

Fully a head taller and wide as two of her loomed the hulking, iridescent giant, its bristling, scalelike contours rippling stone upon stone with sinuous, sorcerous strength.  Each great hand and each broad foot tapered into five talons composed of long, keen-tipped diamonds.  The face was a mocking, multifarious array of manlike features, complete with two rows of spiny would-be teeth and two pale-green emerald eyes.

And at the core of it all, pulsing brightly in the monster's chest was the biggest gem of the hoard: a blood-red, heart-shaped ruby.

The impossible thing lunged for Koriva's face like an ambushing predator.  Instinctively, she dived to one side, narrowly eluding the monster's glittering claws.  Koriva swung Bhaz's torch like a club, connecting with a rainbow-hued thigh, but the brand passed through it like wind through brass chimes.

Her free hand tore a poniard from her belt.  The honed steel licked out one, two, three times, and each sweep of the blade slid just as ineffectually through the oncoming monster's unnatural form as did the torch.

Borne on by incredible swiftness, the gem-man seized Koriva by her shoulders with its vicious talons, bearing down upon her with all the power its fulsome frame bespoke.  Already the strange heat was rising in the dozens of stones that sank their implacable edges through her jerkin into her flesh.  The glittering, demonical face leered down at the thief, its aspect at once savage and impassive, its diamond-teeth glinting cold death, and its emerald-eyes a-smolder with green malice.  Koriva fought back an urge to scream ...

Somehow, the she-rogue tore herself free and vaulted from the dais to the floor.  The gem-man sprang after her with uncanny athletic grace, its bejeweled form ringing dully upon the shale flags like links on a coat of mail.  Impelled by desperation, Koriva gained the steps and cleared them in a bound.  Some unseen bit of debris caused her foot to skid when she hit ground, and she toppled roughly onto the still, sticky corpse of Bhaz.

Snarling bestially, Koriva shoved the gory carcass away and reeled with a drunkard's grace to her feet.  From the corner of her eye, she saw to her astonishment that the gem-monster had lost all interest in her! As if she no longer existed, the fell thing stalked back onto the dais, where it promptly collapsed with a crash once more into a lifeless, unordered heap.

The Tiszar stood rooted like a tree, sweat pouring over her scowling brows, stinging her eyes, while bafflement swirled and eddied about her brain.  Slowly, she slumped to one knee and paused to reign in her stampeding thoughts and emotions.

The grim drama of Bhaz's demise was crisply etched onto her brain: greedy fingers that refused to turn loose their loot seared into black, crumbling charcoal, the screaming robber then mauled into eternal silence by relentless, razor-sharp gauds, and the remains discarded like offal to the gutter.

Koriva cursed sullenly when she thought how close she'd come to repeating the feat.

More importantly, she wondered, just how does a plucky, fornicating rascal plunder a treasure that can defend itself?

Even as she posed the question, her cagey mind turned to the pulsing red gem she had seen floating in the midst of the constellation of jewels that formed the monster's chest.  Its resemblance to a human heart was no accident, but calculated artifice.  But was it merely some twisted joke of the ancients, or was it more? The great ruby was the only stone of the bunch that generated its own light.  Clearly, it contained some store of power the others did not ...

Koriva strode back into the thing's abode and remounted the dais.  The ruby was nowhere to be seen amidst the sparkling collection; an easy wager it was buried somewhere at the bottom.  But, were she to move with enough speed, could she dig out and snatch away the monster's heart before the monster was fully formed? Might doing so break the force of the spell that protected this trove?

The adventuress drew a deep breath and dived at the pile like a starveling at a haunch of roast stag.  Barely had two handfuls been thrown aside when the baubles were flying about her in a bedazzling blizzard of colors.  The gem-man came alive again, and too swiftly for Koriva to check the pulsating heart as it shot past.

Leaping away like a palsied acrobat, Koriva drew dagger and flung it at the thing's chest.  The point piercing the luridly effulgent ruby just enough to stick.  It quivered faintly, but that was all.  The heart did not shatter.  The monster came on unfazed.

And as it did, the dagger began to glow and the leather covering the hilt to blister.  An instant later, the blade was a bright orange, the wrapping crumbling and emitting smoke.  Then the whole of it burst into flames, and before long the remnants melted and fell away, dissipating into white-gray ash before even hitting the floor.

Scrambling to get clear, the thief slipped in the pool of Bhaz's blood and went down hard upon her side.  The fiend overtook her again, seizing her ponytail.  Half-shrieking/half-growling, Koriva thrust her body backwards between its legs.  The monster retained its fierce grip, and Koriva felt as though her very scalp was being ripped from her head.

Two sets of Tiszar-born toes and one set of fingers clawed frantically at the flagstones, seeking any handhold there might be, while the other set of fingers jerked another dagger loose.  In the next instant, she was hacking blindly at the hair at her nape.  The gem-thing pulled on, and agony and rage ripped white-hot through Koriva.  Finally, the tresses parted.

The cursed hoard of gems tottered as it dragged forth nothing but a talonful of long, black hair.  Koriva, meanwhile, bolted forward, scrabbling madly on hands and knees.  She flung herself at the stairs and tumbled into the main chamber like a hapless sot being turned out onto the street.  Amidst a dull clatter, the thief collided with the nearly vacated armor of one of the nameless husks that littered the floor.

Snatching up a centuries-discarded sword, Koriva jumped up to face the monster.  As before, though, and with a mind-numbingly priceless rattle, it abandoned the chase and returned with unhurried strides to the dais, crumbling again with a resounding impact into a sparkling, rainbow pile.

The battered thief remained in a partial crouch, swaying slightly, sword dangling half at the ready.  Breath wheezed out of her as though her lungs were a pair of raggedly pumping bellows.  She was smeared with sweat and grime and with both her blood and Bhaz's.  Shorn nigh bald, the back of her head throbbed with pain of a most singular quality.  Yet, all that and every other abrasion she'd reaped were fair trade for what she believed she had learned.

Koriva plodded back to the dais, convinced the great ruby was truly the heart of the malevolent configuration and the key to her primary purpose.  Why else would the thing come alive so swiftly and fiercely if not to protect the source of its unnatural life? A dagger was of no use, but a sword--even in her inexperienced hands--might have the heft she needed to strike down the pulsing stone.

A jewel shifted slightly on the pile.  Koriva jerked her weapon to what she imagined was a defensive posture and nearly tumbled off the dais with the blade's unfamiliar weight.  Her eyes peered doubtfully at the gems, but nothing more was forthcoming.

The thief raked back unruly, truncated locks, and the suspicion icily dawned on her that, if she had not gone completely mad, then she had just been challenged.  She stood as good as paralyzed, letting the notion sink in.  She found it very easy to believe that a malign intelligence animated the stones and that it was quite aware of her intent.

Imagining herself to be the first real excitement those evil jewels had encountered in centuries, Koriva threw back her head, about to laugh, but chanced instead to glance at the sword she held.  Two blinks of her eyes followed, and she began to examine it closely.

To her surprise, the ancient saber was exquisitely worked.  Its scalloped hilt was chased with silver and encrusted with gems as fine in their own way as any to be found upon the dais.  Even under manifold layers of dust, it was an unmistakable work of art, and a most worthy prize.

Fired by an altogether new curiosity, Koriva gathered up her things and returned to the antechamber.  She magicked up a fresh torch and began scratching amongst the remains of the luckless adventurers that had preceded her.  Her efforts quickly turned up gold coins, ornate rings, bejeweled scabbards and more.  The floor was crawling with booty, and the realization moved her to swear by all the gods she revered and even by those she disdained.

The first rule of roguery plainly states that treasure is where the rogue finds it, and Koriva had come to plunder this hole, not stage a siege against a murderous mound of walking baubles.  The wealth strewn about the antechamber might not have bought her all the Kaeloterras, but they'd surely fetch her a goodly piece of one of the better Kaeloterras!

Just then, a sound the Tiszar knew all too well revisited her ears.  The gem-monster was making its eerie, clinking way from the dais.  She glanced over her shoulder at her rope, letting her gaze trail up its length to the distant circle of light high above, but she made no move toward it.  The thing reached the top of the triad of steps, where it paced along the lip like a caged tiger.

As strange as the monster itself was, this new turn was stranger still.  The creature seemed ...  anxious.  No approximation of a human emotion was rendered by that multihued mockery of a face, but Koriva had no doubt from its demeanor that it was, in its bizarre way, upset.

The adventuress smiled and addressed the gem-man: "Don't take it so hard, old boy.  You're not the first man to lose my interest, and you won't be the last." With a hoarse chuckle, she turned to her new enterprise.

Then suddenly a hideous, hellish howl smote the air like the blast of the Horn of Perdition.  Stark reverberations stunned Koriva almost like a physical blow.  The Tiszar thief whirled around to discover the gem-monster bathed in blinding light, like a piece of the sun made incarnate.  Voicing its malefic moan all the more forcefully, the fiend placed its foot upon the first step!

"FORNICATE ME!!" Koriva screamed, lunging desperately for where the ancient saber lay upon the dirt floor.  Even as her gloved hands reached the hilt, she saw to her mounting horror that her furiously effulgent foe was already stepping over Bhaz's body to reach her.

Though no sworder, the Tiszaress had enough brawling instinct to heave up that three-foot blade and bring its keen edge down through the clustered jewels of the monster's shoulder.  The sword struck the ruby heart solidly and rebounded.  Koriva staggered and drew back a step.

And so, too, did the gem-man! But only for an instant--

Again Koriva swung her sword.  It streaked like living lightning for the now silent thing's chest, finding the resolute red center once more and connecting decisively.  Her foe's multifarious body shivered, and its renewed charge halted stillborn.  Her blood surging now with a kind of battle-lust, the Tiszar wildcat hewed the pulsating ruby a third time and nearly shook it from its station.  The monster's blazing glow dimmed like a dying flame.

Koriva hacked again and again, hurling insults with each wild thrust of her saber.  The gemstone-monster was giving ground step-by-step.  Emboldened to recklessness, the thief pressed her attack tenaciously until a misdirected slice caromed into the dirt and unbalanced her.

The iridescent fiend grabbed Koriva by the waist and heaved her high into the air.  The sword pinwheeled from her grasp and clattered somewhere she could not see, while Koriva herself arced up and over the steps that led to the dais room.  She landed with a sickly soft smack on the shale flags, a cry of shock and pain exploding from her lungs.

Ablaze once more with unholy radiance, the gem-man leaped in pursuit.  Koriva lurched dazedly to her feet and staggered farther into the room, struggling to reclaim the better part of her senses.  Her foot caught on the lip of the dais.  Koriva tumbled and rolled until alighting in a fetal ball at its center.

The gem-man was less than ten paces away, glowing like the fires of a hundred forges.  A wall of intense heat smote Koriva.  The cacophonous howl rose up again from its unnatural throat.  Koriva squeezed her eyelids shut, clapped her hands against her ears, balled herself more tightly, but none of her efforts did aught to block out either the visual, aural or tactile assault on her senses.

It loomed over her, straddling her body with its massive legs.  Hellish heat washed over the thief like a searing volcanic tide, and she knew the monster meant to burn her to a minuscule cinder.  In the dregs of desperation, Koriva shrieked out Tiszar words of power just as the whole world went white ...