[piosenniel]

Relief you are seeking, for harbour you're yearning
For happiness, or at least stilling of grief
Relief shall I grant you, while this fell night lasts
And you'll come to me in the morn...

The last of the songs words echoed in Endamir’s mind as he woke in the now cold forge chamber. He struggled to push the false promises from him. The words and music were woven thick, like honey. And like honey one could be trapped within them.

He flexed his shoulders, wondering at the fact he still held his brother’s body balanced over his shoulder. Lindir’s grey eyes met his, and Endamir felt a light pressure as the man gave his hand a reassuring touch.

‘He’s a sorcerer, you know,’ Endamir spoke aloud as Lindir drew back his hand. ‘The singer . . . cruel, really. He’s set the game and pulled us further in and further in. And now he offers some surcease of grief, is it, of loss; a recoup of hope, perhaps…of happiness.’ Endamir laughed, a hollow sound, one sharply at odds with the melody that had so recently filled the room. ‘Look at us! Enthralled by the song…enthralled . . . made thralls; slaves. He stops us as he wishes and now he moves us on, pieces on his game board. And we must move . . . though one not by his own power.’ He laughed again. ‘He’s dead, you know. Quite dead…my brother. Yet still the music and this light-forsaken place pull him onward.’

Tasa, by this time, had finished her round of the forge-room’s main entrances, and found them all locked against the companions’ exit. ‘See, even now we are herded on down ways not of our own choosing.’

Endamir rebalanced his burden and turned toward the rear of the forge chamber. ‘Smith!’ he called out, restraining the urge to add a searing epithet that would mark the man for the foul being he was in Endamir’s mind. ‘Smith! In all your long years here, you must have found a number of ways out of this dreary tomb and into the Keep. Step up and show us the way.’