Prince Shayanaq flung open the doors to his throne chamber and glared down the long room to the robed crone playing with her dried bones before his throne. He strode angrily forward. "Morg has escaped! Your Hell-spawned beast slaughtered half the guards to get at him, and now lies dead itself in an empty, long cursed part of the dungeon. I agreed to your sorcery to rid me of the barbarian because it seemed the easiest way of dealing with the matter. No trial during which his supporters could rally about him, simply a death that could not be blamed on me. But my spies tell me I am blamed...moreover, I look weak because the assassination ultimately failed."

"Perhaps my angel killed Morg before he died."

"There is no body!" He loomed over her threateningly. "You profess to see the future -- how then could you not see the failure of your own agent! The Cult of Shalli still plagues the streets, and now I have an enemy in an unpredictable barbarian, escaped from my own dungeons! If your bones do not start proving more reliable, old woman, then mayhap it shall be your bones I will role to divine the future." So saying, he turned and stormed from the chamber...

From within the old woman's cowl, a harsh chuckle bubbled forth...

Morg suppressed a low growl building in his throat. Crawling on his hands and knees, he squeezed his broad shoulders through the secret tunnel that led from the dungeons. He had only his keen, barbarian senses to guide him through the darkness. And they told him little. The tunnel smelled musty and old -- not surprising if it truly was a long forgotten secret avenue. It felt cold, and he suspected that he was moving, not up to the streets, but deeper still. Occasionally a whiff of perfumed femininity came to him, assuring him that the dark-skinned slave girl had gone this way. But it was only a vestige of her presence, nothing more.

She had gone ahead, his erstwhile "rescuer", while he battled the demon that had pursued them. No doubt unsure if he had vanquished or been vanquished, and with fear of the creature pushing at her pert bottom, she had scurried through these tunnels as fast as her smaller form would allow. But Morg still thought he would have caught up with her by now.

Those were the chief thoughts in his brain: follow the tunnel until its end, and reunite with the girl. There were other questions that clamored for attention in his mind, and were he a civilized man he might have heeded them, and so become paralyzed with indecision. But not Morg. Life in the wild taught a man to focus only on the now, and two minutes ahead. No more. The future would arrive soon enough, and he would deal with what it brought when it came. So though he was curious as to who had sent the girl to free him, and why, or who built this seeming ancient tunnel, and where might it ultimately lead, he was content to push such questions aside. For now.

At last the tunnel opened up into a wider passage and the brawny barbarian sighed gratefully as he rose to his full, towering height. He shook his mane of sun-bleached hair and looked about, scowling. There was illumination here cast from a torch discarded upon the ground. The girl, Lali's, torch.

He clenched more tightly the bloodied chain that was his only real weapon, then he bent and retrieved the fluttering torch. Keeping an easy bend to his knees, so that he was ready to spring at the first sign of trouble, Morg looked about him. There was only an arched passage that led off to one side. Ahead was a dead end. Clearly Lali could only have gone in one direction. Just as clearly, if the fallen torch was any clue, she had not gone willingly.

But who was there to have grabbed her? They were, after all, in a supposedly deserted network of tunnels far beneath the city.

Moving his muscular form with surprising grace, Morg ducked through the arch into the area beyond. He grunted. It was nothing more than another long passage, ending at a bronze, heavily engraved foor. He crept closer, frowning. The carvings were bizarre and unsettling. Not because he could make out what they represented...but because he could not. Ravatheth was an old city state in an old part of the world. Who knew how many civilizations had risen and fallen on this very ground before the current peoples claimed it as their own?

He felt the metal of the door with his fingertips, and started. It was cold to the touch. Here, beneath the sultry streets of the city, he would expect the ambient temperature to be cooler. But not like this. Stealing himself, he grabbed the icy handle and pulled. The door groaned, but fell open with little effort. He thrust his torch through the aperture, to startle any who might be lying in wait on the other side. Instantly the room beyond flared white and he growled in his throat, flinging an arm before his eyes. Squinting past his spread fingers, he looked again and was even more amazed.

The blinding glare came not from any source beyond, but from the light of his torch reflecting off the ivory white surfaces of the floor and walls. Beyond the bronze door, the cavern was coated with ice and snow!

The hackles at the back of his neck rose. Even a barbarian mercenary could smell the stink of sorcery when it struck him. There was nothing natural about snow beneath the earth. Nor was he dressed for it, wearing only boots and a loin cloth. But he was better equipped for it he knew than the ebon skinned southern girl he pursued -- she who had doubtless never seen snow in her life, and was bare foot and dressed only in a brief, decorative skirt. As the cold tightened across his chest, Morg inhaled deeply and grinned wolfishly. It reminded him of home.

He pounced through the portal and landed easily upon the snow dusted floor. Had his mysterious benefactor -- the one who had sent Lali to free him from the dungeon and to guide him through this "escape" route -- had he known what lay forgotten in these hidden passages? Was this part of a plan Morg could not fathom? Then Morg shrugged. It hardly mattered for the moment.

In the cavern he found himself, there was an unsettling look of antiquity. He realized the chamber was not all ice and stone, but carved pillars of handcrafted design stabbed up toward the ceiling. Against one wall, a block of ice was revealed, after greater scrutiny, to be a table encasped in snow. He frowned. It was as if he strode through the remnants of a long forgotten city that had become consumed by winter and never released.

Crouching and bringing his torch low, Morg could make out disturbances in the snow that seemed to indicate footsteps. Rising, he moved forward again, only to find the passage fractured into a latice work of branching corridors, each one gilded in ice and snow, dagger sharp icicles dangling from the ceiling. Swinging his chain over his head, Morg snapped it out and cracked one of the thicker icicles from the ceiling. He caught it as it fell, them wrapped his chain around its base so that he could hold it without his body's warmth melting it too quickly. Now armed with a makeshift sword, Morg looked again for signs of earlier traffic.

He did not like what he saw. Everywhere was the snow bestirred and evidence of footsteps.

Just then, a sound whispered to his ear -- the scraping, shuffling sound of feet dragging over snow. He whirled just as a figure lumbered into sight from out of another corridor.

It was a towering man -- if man it was. A head taller even than Morg, and his body was sheathed in a thick, white, long hair that dangled from his arms, chest, between his legs. Eyes like black coals glared from beneath distended, snow white brows. In one thick, callused hand he carried a broadsword that made Morg's icicle weapon, good only for quick stabs, seem almost facetious. Still, Morg held his ground, locking his knees in a fighting stance, ready with his makeshift weapon.

Then, slowly, as his brain shifted through the sounds his ears heard, he looked around him. From out of many of the adjoining corridors, more white-furred men began to emerge, armed with swords, or spears, or axes.